#all middle eastern nations are one country to them. the crimes of islamists are all our crimes
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a really racist and insidious thing zionists have been doing recently is making memes of gay people being thrown off buildings and saying that this is hamas in gaza. they've been using this as a means of pinkwashing: if you support palestinians in any way, then you MUST support these barbaric hamas members throwing gay people off buildings in gaza.... right?
the images they use, however, are years old images of ISIS in syria, an entirely different islamist group in an entirely different country. this reveals their racist biases immediately and their desire to use these racist biases to their advantage: to them, all of the middle east is one nation, every islamist group is the same (including enemies such as ISIS & hamas!), and every middle eastern life taken is a terrorist life taken. that's vile in itself, but what i find most revealing? they use images of presumed gay people being thrown off buildings by ISIS and practically memeify it. "pride month in gaza" they say, as they share images of people being killed by ISIS. some examples, im censoring the bodies as the images are graphic and i find it extremely disrespectful using the dead bodies of primarily gay syrians to further your movement:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-persecution-gay-men-murder-lgbt-muslim-society/
these people are not allies to gay people and especially not gay people in the middle east. they are using our oppression to push us into supporting other peoples' oppressions and laughing at the deaths of gay people while doing so. they stereotype palestinians as all homophobes who are also hamas members who are also ISIS members- therefore, if you do not support israel killing palestinian civilians, then you are supporting hamas killing gay people. they do this while ignoring that gay palestinians are going to be just as impacted by the killing of civilians as straight palestinians, and ignoring israel's history of blackmailing gay palestinians to achieve their goals, despite pretending to be the beacon of gay rights & humanity in the middle east.
as a middle eastern lesbian, i do not feel that my rights as a lesbian are being fought for when you share these images of (presumably) gay people being murdered by ISIS and then joking that it's "pride month in gaza" or "gay pilot training". instead, i feel like our oppression as gay people in the middle east is being laughed at, while simultaneously partaking in the racist dehumanisation of middle easterners by framing all of us as islamist ISIS or hamas members that throw gay people off buildings. to these people, gay people don't exist in palestine and when they do, their existence does not matter enough to call for israel not to kill innocent civilians in gaza. our deaths and oppression as gay people is only used as a propaganda piece to push for zionism, nothing more & nothing less.
#palestine#israel#homophobia#gaza#tw violence#tw death#tw homophobic violence#i tried my best to censor it but i know it’s disturbing regardless so.#they’ve also used images of gay ppl being hung in iran and gay ppl thrown off buildings by ISIS in iraq (one example above)#all middle eastern nations are one country to them. the crimes of islamists are all our crimes
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Macron: ‘Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today’
French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new law today created to combat “radical Islamism” in order to apparently “defend the republic and its values and ensure it respects its promises of equality and emancipation”.[1]
Macron no longer hiding his feelings about Islam. No longer radical Islam, now it’s just Islam that is the problem https://t.co/ljRK3LuNMM
— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) October 2, 2020
The long-awaited address began with Macron claiming Islam was “in crisis” all over the world.
“Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country”[2]
His comments prompted a huge backlash from Muslims on social media, with French Academic Rim-Sarah Alaoune, tweeting:
“President Macron described Islam as ‘a religion that is in crisis all over the world today’. I don’t even know what to say. This remark is so dumb (sorry it is) that it does not need any further analysis … I won’t hide that I am concerned. No mention of white supremacy even though we are the country that exported the racist and white supremacist theory of the ‘great replacement’, used by the terrorist who committed the horrific massacre in #Christchurch.”
Our chief editor, Dr Salman Butt, commented on the French President’s remarks about Islam:
“Emmanuel Macron, like others who profit from propping up the failed ideology that has caused so much turmoil in the world today, is understandably taking cheap shots at Islam. It is the only comprehensive way of life with a historical track record of creating civilisation from chaos similar to today’s, and it is genuinely a threat to his ill-gotten, temporal privileges. If he were wise he would learn from history and humble himself, lest he join the long list of forgotten losers as footnotes that got in the way of justice, truth and mercy for humanity.”
Shaykh Dr Haitham al-Haddad had a message for President Macron:
Before claiming that Islam is in crisis, he should look at his own values first. Before throwing stones he should look after his glass house. We don’t want to recall the millions of people his ideology in France exterminated in many countries. Maybe he can educate himself with “Calendrier des crimes de la France outre-mer” by author Jacques Morel.
France is still very much in the throes of its white supremacist ideology mascerading as “secularism”. Let us ask Macron how France still look at the black people. How does France view Africa? Ask him about the African countries that must deposit their national currency reserves in France at the central bank. Ask the enlightened civilized macron why a dozen African countries still pay billions of Euros as “Colonial Tax” to France each year.[3] What are these democratic values that he claims to want to protect while France is among the first countries to support dictators all over the world? Who supported Gaddafi of Libya, who is supporting the current Haftar of Libya, who is supporting Hezbollah of Lebanon and meeting secretly with them and others?
Before claiming to fix Islam, fix your civilization and protect your people. Are you aware that your county has the second-highest rates for suicides in Western Europe?[4] France had an overall suicide rate of 12.1 per 100,000 people in 2016. It is also a fact that Europe in general leads the world in suicides.
Despite all the attacks against Islam, it is still the fastest growing way of life in the world. Humanity is fed up with the failed and hypocritical ideology propping up your “civilization”, “technology” and “enlightenment” and want to embrace a way of life that provides them with authentic, non-hypocritical values. They want to adopt a way of life that is not racist and does not take advantage of people and require structural and ongoing oppression just to stay afloat. That way of life is called Islam.
Do not worry Mr Macron, your people are not all like you, they are indeed turning to Islam. The rate of conversion to Islam in France is on the rise. Sooner rather than later, your children or perhaps even you might become Muslim because Islam wins even its enemies. It is better to work with Muslims to fix the problems of your so-called “civilization” before it is destroyed by your values.
Editor of British Muslim news site 5Pillars, Roshan Salih, and spokesperson for the MCB, Miqdaad Versi, also tweeted their response, with many calling the President’s words a blatant attempt to divert attention away from France’s coronavirus second wave crisis.[5]
Just listened to speech by #EmmanuelMacron which could have come out of lips of Boris Johnson or any right wing leader. Political Islam is bad, Islamic separatists are trying to undermine secular values. And then he mentionned French colonialism as if it was thing of the past!
— Roshan M Salih (@RmSalih) October 2, 2020
The willingness to use Islam & minority Muslim communities to rally supporters by promoting a divisive culture war against minorities, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, shows more about those who promote such divisiveness than anyone else… https://t.co/qJxShTIleJ
— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) October 2, 2020
The repression of Muslims has been a threat, now it is a promise. In a one hour speech #Macron burried #laïcité, emboldened the far right, anti-Muslim leftists and threatened the lives of Muslim students by calling for drastic limits on home schooling despite a global pandemic.
— Yasser Louati (@yasserlouati) October 2, 2020
The new measures are aimed towards “liberating French Islam from foreign influences” will see local officials be given extra-legal powers to combat “extremism”.
He added:
“Our challenge is to fight against those who go off the rails in the name of religion … while protecting those who believe in Islam and are full citizens of the republic.”
His speech today represented a broad outline of future measures, with a more thorough plan expected to be drawn up in the next two weeks in preparation for a bill to strengthen a 1905 law which will be presented in December of this year.
Some of the measures include placing mosques under greater control and will put a gradual end of the long-established practice of bringing Imams from other Middle Eastern countries – especially during the month of Ramadan – instead ensuring any Imam arriving from abroad receives training in France before gaining their certification.
It will also require children from the age of 3 to attend French schools, a place Macron said was “the heart of secularism where children become citizens”[6] and that “secularism is the cement of a united France.”
In addition, Macron said outward displays of “religious” affiliation would be banned in schools and the public service. Wearing the hijab is already banned in French schools and for public servants at their workplace.
Meanwhile, Roshan Salih suggested a quicker and less violent solution to the problems Macron claimed to want to tackle:
#EmmanuelMacron needs to realise that once France stops intervening military in Muslim countries and starts treating Muslims as equal citizens then there’s a real possibility that communal relations in France will improve.
— Roshan M Salih (@RmSalih) October 2, 2020
Source:
Notes:
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/02/emmanuel-macron-outlines-law-islamic-separatism-france
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/2/macron-announces-new-plan-to-regulate-islam-in-france
[3] https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jecmaus/blog/300114/franceafrique-14-african-countries-forced-france-pay-colonial-tax-benefits-slavery-and-colonization
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_France#:~:text=France%20ranked%20second%20highest%20for,to%20WHO’s%202016%20suicide%20report.
[5] https://www.euronews.com/2020/10/01/paris-could-see-bars-and-restaurants-close-as-covid-19-worsens-in-six-french-cities
[6] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/frances-macron-details-plan-targeting-islamist-separatism-emmanuel-macron-muslims-france-law-underworld-b746741.html
The post Macron: ‘Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today’ appeared first on Islam21c.
This content was originally published here.
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THE MUSLIM WORLD IS A PERMANENT REFUGEE CRISISIt’s never going to stop unless we shut the door.Wed May 25, 2016 Daniel GreenfieldDaniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.Forget the Syrian Civil War for a moment. Even without the Sunnis and Shiites competing to give each other machete haircuts every sunny morning, there would still be a permanent Muslim refugee crisis.The vast majority of civil wars over the last ten years have taken place in Muslim countries. Muslim countries are also some of the poorest in the world. And Muslim countries also have high birth rates.Combine violence and poverty with a population boom and you get a permanent migration crisis.No matter what happens in Syria or Libya next year, that permanent migration crisis isn’t going away.The Muslim world is expanding unsustainably. In the Middle East and Asia, Muslims tend to underperform their non-Muslim neighbors both educationally and economically. Oil is the only asset that gave Muslims any advantage and in the age of fracking, its value is a lot shakier than it used to be.The Muslim world had lost its old role as the intermediary between Asia and the West. And it has no economic function in the new world except to blackmail it by spreading violence and instability.Muslim countries with lower literacy rates, especially for women, are never going to be economic winners at any trade that doesn’t come gushing out of the ground. Nor will unstable dictatorships ever be able to provide social mobility or access to the good life. At best they’ll hand out subsidies for bread.The Muslim world has no prospects for getting any better. The Arab Spring was a Western delusion.Growing populations divided along tribal and religious lines are competing for a limited amount of land, power and wealth. Countries without a future are set to double in size.There are only two solutions; war or migration.Either you fight and take what you want at home. Or you go abroad and take what you want there.Let’s assume that the Iraq War had never happened. How would a religiously and ethnically divided Iraq have managed its growth from 13 million in the eighties to 30 million around the Iraq War to 76 million in 2050?The answer is a bloody civil war followed by genocide, ethnic cleansing and migration.What’s happening now would have happened anyway. It was already happening under Saddam Hussein.Baghdad has one of the highest population densities in the world. And it has no future. The same is true across the region. The only real economic plan anyone here has is to get money from the West.Plan A for getting money out of the West is creating a crisis that will force it to intervene. That can mean anything from starting a war to aiding terrorists that threaten the West. Muslim countries keep shooting themselves in the foot so that Westerners will rush over to kiss the booboo and make it better.Plan B is to move to Europe.And Plan B is a great plan. It’s the only real economic plan that works. At least until the West runs out of native and naïve Westerners who foot the bill for all the migrants, refugees and outright settlers.For thousands of dollars, a Middle Eastern Muslim can pay to be smuggled into Europe. It’s a small investment with a big payoff. Even the lowest tier welfare benefits in Sweden are higher than the average salary in a typical Muslim migrant nation. And Muslim migrants are extremely attuned to the payoffs. It’s why they clamor to go to Germany or Sweden, not Greece or Slovakia. And it’s why they insist on big cities with an existing Muslim social welfare infrastructure, not some rural village.A Muslim migrant is an investment for an entire extended family. Once the young men get their papers, family reunification begins. That doesn’t just mean every extended family member showing up and demanding their benefits. It also means that the family members will be selling access to Europe to anyone who can afford it. Don’t hike or raft your way to Europe. Mohammed or Ahmed will claim that you’re a family member. Or temporarily marry you so you can bring your whole extended family along.Mohammed gets paid. So does Mo’s extended family which brokers these transactions. Human trafficking doesn’t just involve rafts. It’s about having the right family connections.And all that is just the tip of a very big business iceberg.Where do Muslim migrants come up with a smuggling fee that amounts to several years of salary for an average worker? Some come from wealthy families. Others are sponsored by crime networks and family groups that are out to move everything from drugs to weapons to large numbers of people into Europe.Large loans will be repaid as the new migrants begin sending their new welfare benefits back home. Many will be officially unemployed even while unofficially making money through everything from slave labor to organized crime. European authorities will blame their failure to participate in the job market on racism rather than acknowledging that they exist within the confines of an alternate economy.It’s not only individuals or families who can pursue Plan B. Turkey wants to join the European Union. It’s one solution for an Islamist populist economy built on piles of debt. The EU has a choice between dealing with the stream of migrants from Turkey moving to Europe. Or all of Turkey moving into Europe.The West didn’t create this problem. Its interventions, however misguided, attempted to manage it.Islamic violence is not a response to Western colonialism. Not only does it predate it, but as many foreign policy experts are so fond of pointing out, its greatest number of casualties are Muslims. The West did not create Muslim dysfunction. And it is not responsible for it. Instead the dysfunction of the Muslim world keeps dragging the West in. Every Western attempt to ameliorate it, from humanitarian aid to peacekeeping operations, only opens up the West to take the blame for Islamic dysfunction.The permanent refugee crisis is a structural problem caused by the conditions of the Muslim world.The West can’t solve the crisis at its source. Only Muslims can do that. And there are no easy answers. But the West can and should avoid being dragged down into the black hole of Muslim dysfunction.Even Germany’s Merkel learned that the number of refugees is not a finite quantity that can be relieved with a charitable gesture. It’s the same escalating number of people that will show up if you start throwing bags of money out of an open window. And it’s a number that no country can absorb.Muslim civil wars will continue even if the West never intervenes in them because their part of the world is fundamentally unstable. These conflicts will lead to the displacement of millions of people. But even without violence, economic opportunism alone will drive millions to the West. And those millions carry with them the dysfunction of their culture that will make them a burden and a threat.If Muslims can’t reconcile their conflicts at home, what makes us think that they will reconcile them in Europe? Instead of resolving their problems through migration, they only export them to new shores. The same outbursts of Islamic violence, xenophobia, economic malaise and unsustainable growth follow them across seas and oceans, across continents and countries. Distance is no answer. Travel is no cure.Solving Syria will solve nothing. The Muslim world is full of fault lines. It’s growing and it’s running out of room to grow. We can’t save Muslims from themselves. We can only save ourselves from their violence.The permanent Muslim refugee crisis will never stop being our crisis unless we close the door.READ MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ATFRONTPAGEMAG.COM© COPYRIGHT 2019, FRONTPAGEMAG.COMhttps://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/muslim-world-permanent-refugee-crisis-daniel-greenfield/Frontpagemag | Frontpagemag
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The Uyghur Wuc Is Used by the West – to Detonate the World
You were told, by Western mass media outlets, to pity Uyghurs, an ethnic Chinese minority group from Xinjiang Province. You were instructed to ‘stand by them’, and to “defend their rights”.
They told you that Uyghurs are being discriminated against, and that China is, unfairly, trying to destroy their culture.
What you are not supposed to know is that many seemingly unrelated occurrences that you are following on your television screens or from the pages of your newspapers, are actually directly connected to the Uyghurs and their militant, pro-Western “World Uyghur Congress (WUC).”
You read about the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suddenly exploding, antagonizing Russia, even provoking the European Union, and sending more and more occupation troops into neighboring Syria. You could be forgiven for thinking that he has gone insane.
But no, there is actually a steely logic to his actions. For decades, Erdogan has believed that the Turkic minority ethnic group, mainly found in China’s Xinjiang Province, is the proverbial birthplace of the Turkish nation. When he was the mayor of the city of Istanbul, he even erected a small statue of a Uyghur, in the historical Sultan Ahmed neighborhood.
After the war in Syria erupted, or more precisely, after the West began an attempt to overthrow President Assad, Turkey brought militant Uyghurs from China, and began using them inside the Syrian territory. I described this in my lengthy essay “March of the Uyghurs”, published by this magazine (New Eastern Outlook). The longer version of the essay will soon be published as a book.
Turkey dragged Uyghur jihadi cadres and their families through Indonesia and other countries, supplying them with Turkish passports, for the length of the journey. It trained them in so-called refugee camps, mainly in the Hatay area (historically Syrian territory, arguably grabbed by Turkey after WWI)), eventually injecting them into Idlib (a Syrian province). There, often under the influence of combat drugs, Uyghur combatants committed crimes against humanity, murdering hundreds of men, women and children, while de-populating entire villages and towns. They have been cooperating with various terrorist groups, mainly from the Arab countries, which are still holding the area.
I interviewed several Syrian families who had fled in horror from the slaughter. I also interviewed Syrian commanders on the borders of the areas held by the terrorists, in 2019. Both the civilians and armed forces testified that they had never encountered such brutality in their entire lives.
Turkey, a NATO member, was basically doing a favor for its Western allies. The Uyghurs were injected into the Syrian jihadi battlefields, in order to get hardened even further, and eventually to return to China, disrupting peace as well as the vital “Belt and Road Initiative” – the great internationalist project of President Xi Jinping.
The restive Indonesian island of Sulawesi has also been used, although to a lesser extent, for the training of the Uyghur combatants.
Now, Turkish forces are holed up in the Idlib Governorate, directly engaging the Syrian army, while threatening the Russian military with yet another war.
Russia complains that Turkey has failed to separate terrorists from the legitimate opposition. This is actually defining the situation in extremely mild terms. Turkey is directly supporting terrorists in the Idlib area, and that includes several offshoots of what used to be known as ISIS, and by all means the Uyghurs and their contingents.
Ankara wants to rule over the region, once again, as it used to, in the past. But now it is playing an extremely complex game; it wants to re-build its empire by pitching NATO, the U.S., Europe, the terrorists, Islamists and Russia against each other.
For Turkey, the Uyghurs have just been another pawn in its brutal imperialist game.
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Even in Afghanistan – the new momentum is directly and indirectly related to the Uyghurs.
Syria is being liberated by its armed forces, and the terrorists are being gradually and silently evacuated by the Western allies, mainly Turkey. Where do they go? One of the countries is, of course, Afghanistan. Already two years ago, I was told in both Kabul and Jalalabad that ISIS were moving in huge numbers, to Afghanistan, where they operate predominantly in the rural areas.
There is no doubt that Uyghur jihadis are in Afghanistan, too. Now that thy are well-trained and hardened, they are ready to re-enter China, but also the former Soviet republics, even Russia.
All this goes in accordance with the U.S. and NATO plan.
Plus, the West recently, has been adding various distorted ‘sentimental elements’ to the conflict, portraying the Uyghurs living in Xinjiang as “victims”, twisting reality and suddenly playing what could be described as the “Muslim card”.
China has, historically, no issues with the Muslim people (it is the West that does, through colonialist and neo-colonialist adventurism). A visit to the old Chinese capital of Xi An would clearly illustrate how the Han and Muslim cultures have been inter-connected. Xi An is where the ancient “Silk Road” used to originate from, connecting China with Central Asia, and what is now defined as the Middle East, as well as the rest of the world.
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In December 2012, Global Times reported:
“The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an organization that is reportedly found to be linked to terrorist groups and receives money from Western political organizations, has long played an important role in smearing China’s policies in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and cementing Western media stereotypes of China.
Some Western media and politicians, together with the WUC, have hyped and smeared China’s policies in Xinjiang but remain silent about information released by the Chinese government or its media.
The WUC is headquartered in a low-rise building in Adolf-Kolping-Strasse near the railway station and commercial district of Munich in Germany.
The building, with an unnoticeable exterior, has become the heart of separatists from China’s Xinjiang and the mastermind behind many separatist activists in Xinjiang.
WUC’s core aim to split Xinjiang from China has never changed, Weinsheimer, a German scholar on China’s ethnic groups, told the Global Times.”
Reports like this are usually dismissed by Western propaganda and mass media as an attempt of the Chinese pro-government newspapers to cover up human rights violations against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
However, from my first-hand investigation in Turkey, Europe, Syria, Indonesia and several other parts of the world, it has become clear that China is using an even-handed approach, while facing an extremely dangerous terrorist threat on its own territory.
Even in Hong Kong, the “Uyghur issue” has been used by the West and Taiwan, as recently as in December 2019. I covered it, and as always, I have clear photographic proof.
What Global Times reported was actually only a soft reaction to the brutal policy of the West, which is aimed at breaking the most populous country on earth – PRC – into pieces.
That is why I periodically address this topic, which is so unpopular, even hidden, in the West.
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The Uyghurs are at the frontline of the West’s combat against China.
Washington, London, Berlin have several fronts open against Beijing. Various different types of fronts, too: economic, political, ideological, and even military.
To harm China (and Russia, Iran, Venezuala and others) is the main goal of Western foreign policy.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is ready to assist the United States, Europe and NATO (particularly Turkey) in their efforts to hurt China, and to disrupt BRI (Belt and Road Initiative).
Why? It is because BRI is the worst nightmare for Western neo-colonialism. I explain it in my recent book: “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives”. China is deeply involved in this tremendous project which I often describe as the final stage of global de-colonialization. Russia is increasingly participating, too; in various cases even taking the lead.
The West cannot offer anything positive, optimistic. It is smearing China and Russia, and overthrowing or intimidating governments which do not want to sacrifice millions of their people on the altar of brutal extreme capitalism and Western imperialism. The Western mass media is warning writers not to use such “outdated terms”. Rubbish: they are not outdated; they are real! Imperialism never ended. Colonialism is still plundering and ruining dozens of countries on all continents.
China and Russia, as well as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Cuba and others, are fighting for the wretched of the world. As simple as that.
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The WUC and its ‘president’, Dolkun Isa, have clearly decided to take the money and accept the diktat of the West.
Simultaneously, by hosting the headquarters of the WUC on its territory, Germany, once again, has decided to play an extremely negative role in global politics. No wonder, German flags are now flying all over Hong Kong, alongside the U.S. and U.K. ones, whenever the rioters decide to hit the streets. Germany foolheartedly backs the Hong Kong rioters, as well as the WUC.
By now, both Germany and Turkey have made up their minds, by joining forces with Washington and London, against the People’s Republic of China and its right to live a safe existence. It is a very dangerous situation, but it is real, and there is no reason to hide the reality.
The Uyghur extremists were designated to detonate both China and the progressive part of the world.
China is trying to calm the situation down, to negotiate in good faith. It is not easy.
The West, Turkey and the extremist Muslim forces operating all over the world, are pressing the radical Uyghurs and their WUC into a horrendous and bloody confrontation with Beijing.
It is time to make the situation known. The West’s game, deadly and enormously dangerous, must be exposed.
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In the United Arab Emirates, U.S. finds an ally, and a headache
By Kareem Fahim and Missy Ryan, Washington Post, August 3, 2017
DUBAI--As a vicious civil war erupted in Yemen two years ago and triggered international alarm, the United States warned the combatants to step back. But its efforts were quietly undermined by one of the most trusted U.S. regional allies: the United Arab Emirates.
Hundreds of people had died in battles and airstrikes. But the UAE, part of a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition that is supported by the United States, encouraged its partners to resist then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s appeals for peace talks or a cease-fire.
“Yemenis should be firm, as the secretary is a persuasive speaker,” Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a senior Emirati leader, told Yemen’s prime minister as Kerry headed to the region in May 2015. The Gulf Arab states also should “stand firm,” the prince said, according to a meeting summary that was part of leaked Emirati diplomatic emails shared with The Washington Post.
The meeting hinted at the UAE’s drive for influence across the Middle East, using military power, diplomacy and covert means to bolster allies and counter rivals. Its role in Yemen and other recent actions has caused friction with the United States, complicating their decades-long military relationship.
Already, the UAE’s rise as a top-tier U.S. military ally had set it apart from other Arab nations, enhancing its outsize ambitions and regional clout. Now, the two nations appear poised to expand their partnership even further under President Trump, as his administration’s “America First” doctrine translates into a more aggressive stance against Iran and an expanded campaign against al-Qaeda militants on the Arabian Peninsula.
Admiring U.S. generals, including Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, refer to the UAE as “Little Sparta” and call it a model for how regional allies could reduce the counterterrorism burden on the United States.
But tensions in the alliance were brought to the fore last month when American intelligence officials said that the UAE had orchestrated the hacking of a Qatari government website--a move that inflamed a longtime rift between America’s Persian Gulf allies and thrust the White House into the uncomfortable role of mediator.
UAE and American interests have also diverged in Libya, where U.S. officials complained that the UAE was thwarting peace efforts. Yemen’s brutal conflict has exposed the United States to accusations of complicity in war crimes because of its support for the UAE and its gulf allies.
“The danger of creating an independent military capability is that you create an independent military capability,” a former senior U.S. official said. “It’s great that we have a partner in the Emiratis, but we don’t always see eye to eye.”
In 1981, just a decade after the UAE became independent, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who later would become the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, flew to Washington with grand ambitions of buying U.S. fighter jets that would bolster the military capabilities of the oil-rich monarchy and transform his country into a global power. Instead, he “felt that he was laughed out of town,” a former U.S. diplomat said. “No one knew about the UAE. Who was this kid?”
In the years that followed, the UAE began sending troops to Western-backed conflicts, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Somalia, the Balkans and Afghanistan. The Emirati government is building out a series of bases in Africa that will give it even greater military reach.
The Emiratis have also embarked on an extended spending spree. In addition to obtaining F-16s, they were the first U.S. ally to acquire a THAAD, a sophisticated missile defense system. They are now hoping to buy F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the Pentagon’s most advanced fighter aircraft, which cost $100 million apiece.
Andrew Exum, who served as the senior Pentagon official for Middle Eastern issues until this year, said sophisticated weaponry is not the UAE’s biggest military asset. “What distinguishes them is the diligence with which they have gone about investing in all of the unsexy things” needed to build a capable military, he said, including logistics and training.
Emirati officials say it was the perceived threat from Iran that jump-started their drive to build a modern military and test their forces beyond their borders. They also have seen the need to counter the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and any political or armed groups they see as an extension of that movement.
“It really has to do with geography and the threats we grew up with from day one,” said Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the United States and a central figure in the country’s successful U.S. lobbying efforts. Otaiba, a tireless promoter of the view that the UAE is a stabilizing force in the Middle East, has made inroads with key Trump administration officials, including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser.
But the Emirati view of stability, its critics say, has included a troubling embrace of autocratic leaders who share its antipathy to Iran or Islamists and its intolerance of any political dissent.
That stance has created headaches for the United States, including in Libya. While Emirati pilots played a central role in the 2011 intervention that toppled Moammar Gaddafi, U.S. officials grew frustrated in the years that followed as the UAE, along with Egypt, quietly provided military and financial support to Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a powerful figure who led a violent campaign against Islamist forces, including militants. That support violated a United Nations arms embargo.
U.S. officials also saw Hifter as an obstacle to a political solution. The last straw was a major shipment from the UAE of armored and other vehicles to Hifter that drew a stern response from the administration of Barack Obama.
Within days of his May 2015 visit, Kerry was able to secure a pause in the fighting in Yemen. But like other cease-fires since, it crumbled after a few days.
More than two years later, thousands have been killed by coalition airstrikes, artillery shelling and gunfights. Millions of Yemenis are threatened by starvation and disease, including a cholera epidemic.
Talk of a political solution has grown faint.
The UAE joined the Saudi-led coalition after a Shiite rebel group known as the Houthis ousted Yemen’s government. The UAE, like its Saudi partners, viewed the Houthis as an Iranian proxy force--a characterization that American officials at the outset of the war said was exaggerated.
Some in the Obama administration also warned their gulf allies that the intervention was ill-conceived, according to Robert Malley, the former White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the gulf. Eager to smooth things over with gulf nations angered by Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, administration officials decided to give the Saudi-led effort military support, but hoped to minimize U.S. involvement and accelerate a political settlement, he said.
“We feared that this was not a war that was destined to end quickly,” Malley said. “The region has had ample experience with nonstate actors like the Houthis--clearly inferior militarily, yet prepared to fight on and unwilling to give in.” The Saudi-led coalition risked getting “dragged in more and more, at great humanitarian cost,” he said.
Privately, Emirati officials seemed worried, too. With Western media coverage “primarily” focused on Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, the UAE was “losing the moral high ground fast,” Otaiba wrote to a colleague in July 2015, according to hacked emails distributed by a group apparently sympathetic to Qatar, the UAE’s rival.
The Trump administration, appearing to prioritize pushing back against Iran over reservations about the conflict, is now weighing deeper U.S. involvement.
The Yemen operation has illustrated the risks to the United States in backing, even indirectly, operations by foreign forces.
Reports by the Associated Press and Human Rights Watch in June alleged that the UAE or forces loyal to it maintained a network of secret prisons in southern Yemen. Witnesses told the AP that in at least one of the facilities, where detainees were being tortured, U.S. forces were present.
Emirati officials denied they maintained secret detention centers or tortured prisoners. U.S. officials told the AP that military leaders looked into the allegations and were satisfied that U.S. forces were not present when any abuses occurred.
Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon official who teaches law at New York University, co-authored a recent report that concluded that the United States, because of its support for UAE operations in Yemen, may hold legal responsibility for illegal detention practices.
“Is this really a productive way of achieving the long-term goal of combating AQAP or ensuring stability in Yemen?” Goodman wrote.
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**I'm sure the title alone will make many people enraged but just read the piece & try to be objective** What do you think of when you hear the word “terrorist”? Big beards and brown skins? Turban-wearing Muslim migrants from the Middle East? Refugees maybe? Yet according to a report from the New America Foundation, “every jihadist who conducted a lethal attack inside the United States since 9/11 was a citizen or legal resident.” A recent study in Britain, which last week endured its worst terrorist atrocity since 2005, revealed that more than two out of three “Islamism-inspired” terrorist offenses were carried out by individuals “who were either born or raised in the UK.” The common stereotype of the Middle Eastern, Muslim-born terrorist is not just lazy and inaccurate, but easy fodder for the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam far right. Consider the swift reaction of White House official Sebastian Gorka to the horrific terror attack in London last week. “The war is real,” he told Fox News while the bodies of the victims were still warm, “and that’s why executive orders like President Trump’s travel moratorium are so important.” Sorry, what? The 52-year-old perpetrator of the London attack, Khalid Masood, was born and brought up in the UK and would not have been affected in the slightest by a travel ban on Muslims from the Middle East. He was neither a refugee nor an immigrant. He was not of Middle Eastern origin either, and he was not even a Muslim for the vast majority of his life. Born to a white mother and black father as Adrian Elms, and raised as Adrian Ajao, he is believed to have converted to Islam in prison in 2003 and had a well-documented history of criminality prior to mowing down innocent pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, and stabbing a police officer outside the Houses of Parliament, last Thursday afternoon. Does it sound like I am trying to excuse or exculpate Islam and Muslims from responsibility for his heinous crime? You bet I am. And why shouldn’t I? After all, was the Islamic faith at fault for Ajao’s first conviction, for criminal damage, in 1983 when he was aged 18? Was it the Prophet Muhammad who instructed him to deal drugs in his teens? Was it the Quran that inspired the drunken Ajao to slash a man across the face in 2000, leaving him needing more than 20 stitches? Was Ajao engaged in jihad when he stabbed a man in the nose in 2003, leaving him in need of cosmetic surgery? No, no, no and no. Later, as Khalid Masood, he may have been radicalized by violent Islamists in a UK prison or by Salafi jihadists while visiting Saudi Arabia — we simply do not know and may never know — but what we can be sure of is that his violent tendencies and anti-social behavior long predated his conversion to Islam, “radical” or otherwise. As even the conservative British academic, and Christian blogger, Adrian Hilton conceded, “Adrian Elms was a violent Christian before he became Muslim terrorist Khalid Masood… Islam didn’t make him an evil bastard; he was already a nasty piece of work.” As with other Muslim converts who have turned to terror, such as Canadian Aaron Driver and Texan John Georgelas, as well as the born-again types, such as the Kouachi brothers in Paris and the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, a distorted, simplistic and politicized form of Islam may have provided Masood with a ready-made justification for his violence, but I doubt it was the main motivation. While politicians and pundits obsess over the role played by political ideology — Islamism — or religious faith — Islam — they conveniently if irresponsibly avert their gaze from other, perhaps more crucial factors. There is the role of social networks and family ties; issues of identity and belonging; a sense of persecution; mental illness; socio-economic grievances; moral outrage over conflict and torture; a craving for glory and purpose, action and adventure. These have proved to be much better predictors of terrorist tendencies than religion and, specifically, religiosity. Don’t take my (Muslim) word for it. In 2008, a leaked report by researchers for MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, found that “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly,” according to the Guardian’s Alan Travis, who obtained, revealed and reported on the classified document, which is based on “hundreds of case studies” by the security service. “They are mostly British nationals, not illegal immigrants and, far from being Islamist fundamentalists, most are religious novices,” wrote Travis, after reading the report, adding: “Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes.” Sound familiar? And the report had this as a kicker: “MI5 says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.” Over the past decade since the MI5 research was first leaked, more and more studies have challenged the conventional and lazy wisdom on the role of religion in the radicalization process. In recent years, I have spoken with a range of leading experts — anthropologist Scott Atran, psychiatrist Marc Sageman, historian Lydia Wilson — all of whom have interviewed “jihadi” terrorists, from the battlefields of Iraq to the prison cells of the United States, and all of whom agree that faith, Islamic or otherwise, is not the key driver of this latest wave of global terror. “Terrorism is really political violence, first and foremost,” Sageman told me last year. Atran, when I interviewed him for my Al Jazeera English show in 2015, said, “If you dialogue with these people, if you look at how they actually move into ‘jihad’ … there is very little discussion of religion.” Yet every major terrorist attack in the West is followed by a very public “discussion of religion.” How Islamic is ISIS? Does Islam require a reformation? Do Muslims pose a threat to liberal values? Should Western countries ban immigration from Muslim-majority countries? In fact, these days, members of the ‘Blame Islam’ crowd don’t even try and hide their evident glee when a terrorist attack occurs. They assume that the attacker’s Muslim name in and of itself is a vindication of their anti-Muslim bigotry. Their claim that “Islam is the problem” has now gone mainstream: it has a committed supporter in the White House, if not in Downing Street. The absence of clear and empirical evidence for their spurious theory of radicalization does not seem to bother them in the slightest. That most terrorists are “religious novices” and a “diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism,” to quote MI5, is ignored or downplayed. What was it Einstein once joked? “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” Or deploy “alternative” ones, maybe. Such an approach makes sense if your aim is to demonize Islam and Muslims, no matter the cost. But if your aim is to prevent the next attack, this excessive focus on faith, on belief, on ideology — in defiance of the evidence and the experts — is a dangerous distraction. The terrorists may want to try and legitimize their violence by cynically appealing to Islamic motifs or doctrines, but there is no reason the rest of us should help them do it.
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The ridiculous truth is that the imposition of a travel ban on Yemen – in addition to six other countries – has evoked more anguish than America’s major role in making that country unlivable. Here’s a very sad story about the plight of a young Yemeni girl who is being blocked from entering the US – but where is the outrage about what’s being done to her homeland with our tax dollars and in our name?
And make no mistake: the Saudi invasion of Yemen on behalf of a “government” that has no popular support and was kicked out of office by its disgusted citizens is one of the worst atrocities in recent history. More than 25,000 have died, many more have been grievously wounded, and the country is being swept by famine. The result has been the empowerment of America’s worst enemies – and by that I mean not just al-Qaeda.
Yemen has been in turmoil since the end of the cold war, with a many-sided civil war making normal life nearly impossible. Yet things have gotten much worse since the 2015 Saudi invasion, which aims at installing a puppet government and crushing the Houthi insurgency in the north. The Saudis and Yemeni government troops have generally ignored al-Qaeda, which controls a swathe of territory in the southeast, instead concentrating their efforts on bombing civilians in Houthi areas.
The Houthis are adherents of the Zaydi faith, a dissident sect of Islam, often likened to the Shi’ites – a facile comparison, since there are significant theological differences. They have long maintained their autonomy in the face of successive (and notoriously unstable) central governments, but were pushed to the brink when the Saudis sent in Sunni fundamentalist preachers who challenged the authority of local religious and tribal authorities. This led to the rise of the “Believing Youth,” a Zaydi revivalist group that eventually coalesced into a military force.
As the so-called Arab Awakening swept through the Middle East, destabilizing longstanding governments, Yemen was no exception: massive demonstrations eventually forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had reigned as undisputed despot for thirty years, to resign in favor of his Vice President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi – whose “election” in 2012 was made possible by the fact that he was the only candidate.
Yet this did not appease the various tribal and factional groups that had been unleashed by the end of Saleh’s rule: it only emboldened them. It wasn’t long before Hadi, too, was driven out of office, and forced to flee: the Houthis took over the capital, Sana’a, and declared the establishment of a “Revolutionary Committee.” Hadi fled to Aden, while the former President Saleh denounced him and demanded that he go into exile: troops still loyal to Saleh allied with the Houthis.
In 2015, the Saudis invaded, declaring their support for Hadi and bombing Sana’a and the Houthi strongholds in the north. Hadi and his Saudi masters say that the Houthis are being funded and trained by Iran and Hezbollah, but in the past US government officials have been dubious about this claim.
Hadi has received unconditional support from Washington in spite of his inability to either control the country or confront the growing influence of al-Qaeda. Last week, the US launched an attack on an al-Qaeda redoubt, killing a number of civilians – including the young daughter of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who was himself killed by the US along with his teenage son in 2011. One US soldier was killed, and three were injured.
The irony here is that the Houthis are militant opponents of the Sunni supremacist al-Qaeda, and are the only military formation indigenous to the country capable of confronting and defeating them. Yet the US is aiding the Saudis and the Hadi regime in their merciless war against the Houthis and allied tribes, while al-Qaeda continues to make gains.
All of which raises a larger issue: the US-Saudi relationship under President Donald Trump. Despite a recent conversation between the Saudi king and the President, Trump has never said a good word about the Kingdom or its rulers. He vocally supported the campaign to release the famous “28 pages” of a joint congressional report on the role of foreign governments in aiding the 9/11 hijackers, which exposed the part played by Saudi officials in facilitating the attack. Indeed, fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Highlighting the danger posed by “radical Islamic terrorism” was a major theme of Trump’s presidential campaign, and it continues to be the overarching theme of his administration. The Saudis have long been the main perpetrators of this ideology, funding radical mosques and their demagogic imams, and setting up madrassas that spread the doctrines that energize al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
In trying to imagine what Trump’s policy toward the Saudis will be, I’m reminded of a passage from a recent essay by Branko Milanovic, a visiting professor at City University of New York’s Graduate Center, in which he wrote:
“The Western elites treat Trump as they would treat a tiger with whom they are unwillingly locked in a cage: they try to be friendly to the tiger hoping to avoid being eaten, but they hope that the tiger would soon be taken out of the cage.”
This applies to the Middle Eastern elites as well. The Saudis hope to deploy Trump as a battering ram against their Iranian archrivals, but the fear is that they will also be battered in the process. Riyadh is quite justified in this fear. The Saudi foreign minister has decried the seven-nation travel ban as “very very dangerous,” in part because it applies to Sudan, one of their allies in the Yemen war, and in part because, if applied across the board, it could very well wind up being applied to them.
Trump’s foreign policy predilections are fraught with contradictions: on the one hand, he’s a critic of the decision by the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq, but on the other hand he claims we left “too soon.” He inveighs against the Obama administration’s efforts to overthrow Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, and his National Security advisor, Mike Flynn, was fired from his post as head of Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency for his criticism of our Syrian policy. And yet Flynn – and Trump – are also hot under the collar about the alleged growth of Iranian influence in the region, denouncing the Iran deal to limit their nuclear program as a “bad deal”(while saying they wouldn’t ditch it). Yet the Iranians have been fighting ISIS alongside the Iraqis, who are, in turn, our allies – at least they were our allies, until the Trump administration barred Iraqi nationals from the US for three months.
Another contradiction is Trump’s often-stated desire to repair relations with Russia, and even to enlist their help in eradicating ISIS. Yet the Russians are in cahoots with the Iranians in Syria, and have defended Tehran against American attempts to strong-arm them. The present balance of forces in the Middle East pits the Saudis and their Sunni allies against Iran, Syria, and, standing behind them, Russia, with Turkey (moving away from Washington) and Egypt standing on the sidelines.
A Trumpian rapprochement with Moscow would mean a seismic shift in the delicate balance of Middle Eastern forces – away from the Sunni-centric policy that motivated our support for Syria’s Islamist “rebels” and our appeasement of Riyadh.
As this shift takes place, a reconsideration of our policy in Yemen is an absolute necessity – on strategic and moral grounds. Washington’s support for the Saudi Kingdom’s vicious war in Yemen is unconscionable. The Saudis have been committing war crimes with impunity – and with our help. How is it in America’s interests to reduce Yemen, one of the poorest nations on earth, to a pile of rubble? How does it serve us to give unconditional support to Saudi Arabia, a country that has birthed more terrorists than any other in the Muslim world?
Is that putting “America first,” or is it putting the Saudis first?
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Trump's Cruel Ban on Refugees Sets a Chilling Precedent This self-serving move may only be the beginning from the new President. If he can stop refugees from coming in, who's to say he won't also kick them out – or worse? By Robert Fisk January 30, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - "The Independent" - So Donald Trump is going to f**k them all. No excuses for such filthy words today. I’m only quoting the man whose Pentagon offices he just used to disgrace himself – and America. For it was Secretary of Defence James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis who told Iraqis in 2003 that he came “in peace’ – he even urged his Marines to be compassionate – but said of those who might dare to resist America’s illegal invasion of their country: “If you f**k with me, I’ll kill you all.” There’s no getting round it. Call it Nazi, Fascist, racist, vicious, illiberal, immoral, cruel. More dangerously, what Trump has done is a wicked precedent. If you can stop them coming, you can chuck them out. If you can demand “extreme vetting” of Muslims from seven countries, you can also demand a “values test” for those Muslims who have already made it to the USA. Those on visas. Those with residency only. Those – if they are American citizens – with dual citizenship. Or full US citizens of Muslim origin. Or just Americans who are Muslims. Or Hispanics. Or Jews? Refugees one day. Citizens the next. Then refugees again. No, of course, Trump would never visit such obscene tests on Jewish immigrants – for they would be obscene, would they not? — and nor will he stop Christians from Muslim countries. America has always condemned sectarian states, but now Trump declares that he approves of sectarianism. Minorities will be welcome – the Alawites of Syria, to whom Bashar al-Assad belongs, will presumably not count, and I guess we can expect all US embassies to have three queues for visa applicants. One for Muslims, one for Christians, and a third marked ‘Other’. That’s where most of us will be standing in line. And by doing so, we will automatically give approval to this iniquitous system – and to Trump. There’s no point in wasting time over the obvious: that America has bombed, directly or indirectly, five of the seven nations on Trump’s banned list. Sudan just escapes, but the US blew a packed Iranian passenger airliner out of the sky in 1988 and has raised no objections to Israel’s bombing of Iranian personnel in Syria. So that makes six. There’s nothing to be gained by reiterating that the four countries whose citizens participated in the international crimes against humanity of 9/11 – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Emirates and Lebanon – do not feature on the list. For the Saudis must be loved, cosseted, fawned over, approved, even when they chop off heads and when their citizens funnel cash to the murderers of Isis. Egypt is ruled by Trump’s “fantastic guy” anti-‘terrorist’ president al-Sisi. The glisteningly wealthy Emirates won’t be touched. Nor will Lebanon, although its tens of thousands of dual-national Syrians may have a tough time in the future. But no, this vile piece of legislation is not aimed at nations. It’s targeting refugees, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The Muslim ones, that is, not the Christians. How can they ever withstand a “values test”? And what are America’s “values” anyway? It’s OK to attack sovereign states. It’s OK to use pilotless planes to assault men and women in other countries. It’s OK if your allies steal land from others for their own people, if you support Arab dictatorships that emasculate and execute and rape their prisoners, as long as they are “allies” of the USA. It’s OK to fast-track Saudi visas – as the Brits have been doing for years – even if they are members of the most inspirational Wahhabi cult in the world: membership includes the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Isis, you name it. There’s even no value in touting our own participation in this charade. Having just patted the killer governments of the Gulf on the head – and heading off to do the same to Turkey’s autocrat-in-chief – our poodlet prime minister, fresh out of Washington, hasn’t uttered a word about Trump’s wickedness. Wasn’t it Britain – and America, for heaven’s sake – that was weeping copious tears, buckets of the stuff, for the 250,000 (or 90,000) Muslim refugees of eastern Aleppo a couple of months ago? And now, so much do we care for them, that they are being well and truly f****d. They were almost all Muslims in eastern Aleppo, by the way. The Christians of Syria have, through no fault of their own, sought protection from Bashar. And what message did the Christian priests of northern Syria give when I interviewed them? They did not want their people to leave for the West, they said. Hard though it was, Christians should stay in the lands of their faith, the Middle East. In the West, they would merely be lost in a secular world. Trump is going to make sure they are. Thus America is henceforth going to “protect” itself from “radical Islamic extremists” – “Islamic” note, not “Islamist” – and we’ll all be able to follow him. Is non-EU Britain not going to be able to march along the same awful path? If America is our economic lifeline, will it not also be our moral lifeline for the political buffoons of the United Kingdom? Sure, it’s a long time since World War Two. But then, what did the US do before – or after – Hitler’s evil? It prevented Jewish refugees from coming to America. Yes, even Anne Frank. And now they’re at it again. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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Before ISIS berths in Nigeria
New Post has been published on https://www.thisdaynews.net/2018/07/06/before-isis-berths-in-nigeria/
Before ISIS berths in Nigeria
Before ISIS berths in Nigeria
A new report that the ferocious terror group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is infiltrating fighters into Nigeria has for once jolted officials into some action. According to The Sun (newspaper) of London, ISIS is sneaking battle-hardened jihadists from Syria into the country to train Boko Haram extremists and send them to Britain to stage attacks. This should be another wake-up call to our security services and President Muhammadu Buhari that, contrary to their assertions of victory, terrorism is still here and poses an existential threat to us and the rest of the world.
The Sun report comes in the wake of terrorist resurgence in Nigeria’s North-East region, featuring suicide bombings of churches and mosques, attacks on villages, markets and isolated military outposts. There is an ongoing “exchange programme” between Boko Haram and the ISIS, facilitating training trips to the Middle East for Nigerian terrorists and the embedding of ISIS experts in the border areas (bordering Chad, Niger Republic and Cameroon) under insurgent control to train and support local fanatics. The report quoted defence sources as confirming the presence of foreign fighters among insurgents engaged by Nigerian and multinational military forces in the region. In a welcome departure from past practice of reflexive denials and complacency, the government says it is stepping up security at the airports and dispatched an Assistant Inspector-General of Police to head its airport command.
Nigerians have reasons to fear the possibility of a determined ISIS infiltration. Buhari and the intelligence services should take effective steps to prevent it. They should stop living in denial: their repeated claim of having defeated Boko Haram is not only false; it reveals an alarming ignorance of the dynamics of Islamist terrorism. This is dangerous.
To grasp an idea of the deadliness of ISIS, consider its self-professed West African affiliate. Boko Haram had by early 2017 killed over 100,000 persons, according to Governor Ibrahim Shettima of Borno, who debunked the figure of 20,000 killed recycled over the past four years. Over 2.5 million have been displaced internally and in neighbouring countries. At a time, Boko Haram reportedly controlled 27 local government areas in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states and, from Gwoza, declared a “caliphate” in 2014. Its atrocities feature abattoir-style slaughter, burning of entire towns, rape and the mass kidnapping of girls, women and children, the capture of 276 Chibok schoolgirls and 110 Dapchi schoolgirls in 2014 and 2018 respectively.
Gory as the record is, however, it pales in comparison to the apocalyptic bloodletting, cruelty and technological prowess of ISIS. Since its mutation from an off-shoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2013, it has become the most deadly terrorist brand and raised a formidable army that once humiliated the Syrian and Iraqi armed forces. Until its eviction last year, it controlled a large swathe of territory in both countries, including Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, from where its elusive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a global caliphate in 2015. A CNN report said it controlled over 34,000 square miles of territory and vast oil deposits. Humanitarian agencies’ estimates of the casualties of ISIS since 2013 vary from 400,000 to 1.5 million deaths. Human Rights Watch in 2017 cited atrocities to include mass executions, beheadings, crucifixions, stoning to death, rapes, enslavement, burnings and razing of entire villages. A United Nations Commission of inquiry on Syria found in 2016 that ISIS used cluster bombs, chemical and biological weapons on civilians and armed forces and had committed “horrific crimes against humanity.” All churches, including some built in the first century, as well as ancient buildings and artefacts designated as world heritage sites, were destroyed. Iraqi and UN experts say it could take up to 30 years to rebuild Mosul, Fallujah, Raqqa and other Iraqi and Syrian cities destroyed by ISIS and the war to expel it.
ISIS has introduced high-tech into terror, recruiting and training tech-savvy fanatics worldwide, indoctrinating and unleashing them on the world. Its reach is global, striking or inspiring same on every continent.
For these reasons, the Nigerian state should not allow ISIS to berth here at all. The first task is to understand Islamist terrorism. It is driven by an apocalyptic ideology, sufism, that rejects all but its own narrow interpretation of Islam; it seeks to overthrow the current world order and replace it with a global caliphate. In this quest, terror, conquest and excessive cruelty are justified and its jihadists guaranteed a place in a pleasure-filled paradise if they die.
Terrorists are adaptable: defeating them on the battlefield only drives them underground and into the anonymity of humanity where they blend with the crowd, until they are able to detonate suicide vests, bombs, open gunfire on crowds, poison water sources, drive vehicles into people or hijack aircraft or ships. They never give up.
Only effective intelligence operations can combat such a foe. Since 9/11, according to Defence One, a global security consultancy, Western and Middle Eastern nations have tripled their intelligence budgets, overhauled their agencies and invested heavily in police and surveillance technology, all in response to the terrorist threat.
Boko Haram should be neutralised very quickly and denied the capability to hold any territory in Nigeria and in the countries on our borders. When driven from one, terrorists seek ungoverned territories, weak or failing states as new bases, especially where they can count on local sectarian sympathies. Taliban and al-Qaeda moved to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya when dislodged from Afghanistan; ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates moved to Mali, northern Burkina Faso and Somalia when chased out of Libya.
Nigeria is attractive to jihadists because of lax authority in the borderlands, state promotion of religion, rising extremism among northern youths and kid-gloves treatment of those who commit crimes in the name of religion. This must change.
We should overhaul the security apparatus: forge closer anti-terrorism relations with other countries, prosecute terror suspects and do everything possible to prevent an ISIS presence here.
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Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests
GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) – Thousands of Gaza residents turned out on Tuesday for the funerals of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops a day earlier, while on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli forces prepared to face the expected final day of a Palestinian protest campaign.
Monday’s violence on the border, which took place as the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, was the bloodiest for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.
The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas, Palestinian medics said.
Palestinian leaders have called Monday’s events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet to discuss the situation.
Israel has said it is acting in self-defense to defend its borders and communities. Its main ally the United States has backed that stance, with both saying that Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal enclave, instigated the violence.
On Tuesday morning, mourners marched through Gaza, waving Palestinian flags and calling for revenge.
“With souls and blood we redeem you martyrs,” they shouted.
There were fears of further bloodshed as a six-week protest campaign was due to reach its climax.
May 15 is traditionally the day Palestinians mark the “Nakba”, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in 1948.
The protests, dubbed “The Great March of Return,” began on March 30 and revived calls for refugees to have the right of return to their former lands, which now lie inside Israel.
Israel rejects any right of return, fearing that it would deprive the state of its Jewish majority.
Palestinian medical officials say 105 Gazans have now been killed since the start of the protests and nearly 11,000 people wounded, about 3,500 of them hit by live fire. Israeli officials dispute those numbers. No Israeli casualties have been reported.
More than 2 million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, more than two thirds of them refugees. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt maintain tight restrictions on the enclave, deepening economic hardship and raising humanitarian concerns.
SHARPSHOOTERS
On the Israeli side of the border, Israeli sharpshooters took up positions to stop any attempted breach of the fence should demonstrations break out again. Tanks were also deployed.
A senior Israeli commander said that of the 60 Gazans killed on Monday, 14 were carrying out attacks and 14 others were militants.
He also said Palestinians protesters were using hundreds of pipe bombs, grenades and fire-bombs. Militants had opened fire on Israeli troops and tried to set off bombs by the fence.
Many casualties were caused by Palestinians carrying out devices that went off prematurely,” he said.
“We approve every round fired before it is fired. Every target is spotted in advance. We know where the bullet lands and where it is aimed,” said the commander, who spoke on condition that he not be named, in accordance with Israeli regulations.
“However reality on the ground is such that unintended damage is caused,” he said.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office condemned what it called the “appalling deadly violence” by Israeli forces.
U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Israel had a right to defend its borders according to international law, but lethal force must only be used a last resort, and was not justified by Palestinians approaching the Gaza fence.
The U.N. rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, said Israel’s use of force may amount to a war crime.
YOUNG VICTIM
In Gaza City, hundreds marched in the funeral of eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour, whose body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The mother of 8-month-old Palestinian infant Laila al-Ghandour, who died after inhaling tear gas during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem at the Israel-Gaza border, mourns during her funeral in Gaza City May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
“Let her stay with me, It is too early for her to go,” her mother cried, pressing the baby’s body to her chest.
Speaking earlier, her grandmother said the child was at one of the tented protest camps and had inhaled tear gas.
“When we got back home, the baby stopped crying and I thought she was asleep. I took her to the children’s hospital and the doctor told me she was martyred (dead),” Heyam Omar said.
Many shops in East Jerusalem were shut throughout the day following a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a general strike across the Palestinian Territories. A 70-second siren was sounded in the occupied West Bank in commemoration of the Nakba.
HOLY CITY
Most Gaza protesters stay around tent camps but groups have ventured closer to the border fence, rolling burning tyres and throwing stones. Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that spread fires on the Israeli side.
Monday’s protests were fueled by the opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem following its relocation from Tel Aviv. The move fulfilled a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump, who in December recognized the contested city as the Israeli capital.
Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.
Most countries say the status of Jerusalem – a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians – should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.
Netanyahu praised Trump’s decisions but Palestinians have said the United States can no longer serve as an honest broker in any peace process. Talks aimed a finding a two-state solution to the conflict have been frozen since 2014.
Trump said on Monday he remained committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. His administration says it has nearly completed a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan but is undecided on how and when to roll it out.
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence. Hamas denied instigating it but the White House backed Netanyahu, saying Hamas “intentionally and cynically provoking this response”.
The United States on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted U.N. Security Council statement that would have expressed “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians” and called for an independent investigation, U.N. diplomats said.
In the British parliament, junior foreign office minister Alistair Burt said the United States needed to show more understanding about the causes of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Hamas’ role in the violence must be investigated, he added.
Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell, Writing by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Angus MacSwan
The post Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests appeared first on World The News.
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Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests
GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) – Thousands of Gaza residents turned out on Tuesday for the funerals of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops a day earlier, while on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli forces prepared to face the expected final day of a Palestinian protest campaign.
Monday’s violence on the border, which took place as the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, was the bloodiest for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.
The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas, Palestinian medics said.
Palestinian leaders have called Monday’s events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet to discuss the situation.
Israel has said it is acting in self-defense to defend its borders and communities. Its main ally the United States has backed that stance, with both saying that Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal enclave, instigated the violence.
On Tuesday morning, mourners marched through Gaza, waving Palestinian flags and calling for revenge.
“With souls and blood we redeem you martyrs,” they shouted.
There were fears of further bloodshed as a six-week protest campaign was due to reach its climax.
May 15 is traditionally the day Palestinians mark the “Nakba”, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in 1948.
The protests, dubbed “The Great March of Return,” began on March 30 and revived calls for refugees to have the right of return to their former lands, which now lie inside Israel.
Israel rejects any right of return, fearing that it would deprive the state of its Jewish majority.
Palestinian medical officials say 105 Gazans have now been killed since the start of the protests and nearly 11,000 people wounded, about 3,500 of them hit by live fire. Israeli officials dispute those numbers. No Israeli casualties have been reported.
More than 2 million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, more than two thirds of them refugees. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt maintain tight restrictions on the enclave, deepening economic hardship and raising humanitarian concerns.
SHARPSHOOTERS
On the Israeli side of the border, Israeli sharpshooters took up positions to stop any attempted breach of the fence should demonstrations break out again. Tanks were also deployed.
A senior Israeli commander said that of the 60 Gazans killed on Monday, 14 were carrying out attacks and 14 others were militants.
He also said Palestinians protesters were using hundreds of pipe bombs, grenades and fire-bombs. Militants had opened fire on Israeli troops and tried to set off bombs by the fence.
Many casualties were caused by Palestinians carrying out devices that went off prematurely,” he said.
“We approve every round fired before it is fired. Every target is spotted in advance. We know where the bullet lands and where it is aimed,” said the commander, who spoke on condition that he not be named, in accordance with Israeli regulations.
“However reality on the ground is such that unintended damage is caused,” he said.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office condemned what it called the “appalling deadly violence” by Israeli forces.
U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Israel had a right to defend its borders according to international law, but lethal force must only be used a last resort, and was not justified by Palestinians approaching the Gaza fence.
The U.N. rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, said Israel’s use of force may amount to a war crime.
YOUNG VICTIM
In Gaza City, hundreds marched in the funeral of eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour, whose body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The mother of 8-month-old Palestinian infant Laila al-Ghandour, who died after inhaling tear gas during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem at the Israel-Gaza border, mourns during her funeral in Gaza City May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
“Let her stay with me, It is too early for her to go,” her mother cried, pressing the baby’s body to her chest.
Speaking earlier, her grandmother said the child was at one of the tented protest camps and had inhaled tear gas.
“When we got back home, the baby stopped crying and I thought she was asleep. I took her to the children’s hospital and the doctor told me she was martyred (dead),” Heyam Omar said.
Many shops in East Jerusalem were shut throughout the day following a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a general strike across the Palestinian Territories. A 70-second siren was sounded in the occupied West Bank in commemoration of the Nakba.
HOLY CITY
Most Gaza protesters stay around tent camps but groups have ventured closer to the border fence, rolling burning tyres and throwing stones. Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that spread fires on the Israeli side.
Monday’s protests were fueled by the opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem following its relocation from Tel Aviv. The move fulfilled a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump, who in December recognized the contested city as the Israeli capital.
Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.
Most countries say the status of Jerusalem – a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians – should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.
Netanyahu praised Trump’s decisions but Palestinians have said the United States can no longer serve as an honest broker in any peace process. Talks aimed a finding a two-state solution to the conflict have been frozen since 2014.
Trump said on Monday he remained committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. His administration says it has nearly completed a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan but is undecided on how and when to roll it out.
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence. Hamas denied instigating it but the White House backed Netanyahu, saying Hamas “intentionally and cynically provoking this response”.
The United States on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted U.N. Security Council statement that would have expressed “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians” and called for an independent investigation, U.N. diplomats said.
In the British parliament, junior foreign office minister Alistair Burt said the United States needed to show more understanding about the causes of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Hamas’ role in the violence must be investigated, he added.
Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell, Writing by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Angus MacSwan
The post Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests appeared first on World The News.
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Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests
GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) – Thousands of Gaza residents turned out on Tuesday for the funerals of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops a day earlier, while on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli forces prepared to face the expected final day of a Palestinian protest campaign.
Monday’s violence on the border, which took place as the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, was the bloodiest for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.
The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas, Palestinian medics said.
Palestinian leaders have called Monday’s events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet to discuss the situation.
Israel has said it is acting in self-defense to defend its borders and communities. Its main ally the United States has backed that stance, with both saying that Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal enclave, instigated the violence.
On Tuesday morning, mourners marched through Gaza, waving Palestinian flags and calling for revenge.
“With souls and blood we redeem you martyrs,” they shouted.
There were fears of further bloodshed as a six-week protest campaign was due to reach its climax.
May 15 is traditionally the day Palestinians mark the “Nakba”, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in 1948.
The protests, dubbed “The Great March of Return,” began on March 30 and revived calls for refugees to have the right of return to their former lands, which now lie inside Israel.
Israel rejects any right of return, fearing that it would deprive the state of its Jewish majority.
Palestinian medical officials say 105 Gazans have now been killed since the start of the protests and nearly 11,000 people wounded, about 3,500 of them hit by live fire. Israeli officials dispute those numbers. No Israeli casualties have been reported.
More than 2 million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, more than two thirds of them refugees. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt maintain tight restrictions on the enclave, deepening economic hardship and raising humanitarian concerns.
SHARPSHOOTERS
On the Israeli side of the border, Israeli sharpshooters took up positions to stop any attempted breach of the fence should demonstrations break out again. Tanks were also deployed.
A senior Israeli commander said that of the 60 Gazans killed on Monday, 14 were carrying out attacks and 14 others were militants.
He also said Palestinians protesters were using hundreds of pipe bombs, grenades and fire-bombs. Militants had opened fire on Israeli troops and tried to set off bombs by the fence.
Many casualties were caused by Palestinians carrying out devices that went off prematurely,” he said.
“We approve every round fired before it is fired. Every target is spotted in advance. We know where the bullet lands and where it is aimed,” said the commander, who spoke on condition that he not be named, in accordance with Israeli regulations.
“However reality on the ground is such that unintended damage is caused,” he said.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office condemned what it called the “appalling deadly violence” by Israeli forces.
U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Israel had a right to defend its borders according to international law, but lethal force must only be used a last resort, and was not justified by Palestinians approaching the Gaza fence.
The U.N. rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, said Israel’s use of force may amount to a war crime.
YOUNG VICTIM
In Gaza City, hundreds marched in the funeral of eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour, whose body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The mother of 8-month-old Palestinian infant Laila al-Ghandour, who died after inhaling tear gas during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem at the Israel-Gaza border, mourns during her funeral in Gaza City May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
“Let her stay with me, It is too early for her to go,” her mother cried, pressing the baby’s body to her chest.
Speaking earlier, her grandmother said the child was at one of the tented protest camps and had inhaled tear gas.
“When we got back home, the baby stopped crying and I thought she was asleep. I took her to the children’s hospital and the doctor told me she was martyred (dead),” Heyam Omar said.
Many shops in East Jerusalem were shut throughout the day following a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a general strike across the Palestinian Territories. A 70-second siren was sounded in the occupied West Bank in commemoration of the Nakba.
HOLY CITY
Most Gaza protesters stay around tent camps but groups have ventured closer to the border fence, rolling burning tyres and throwing stones. Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that spread fires on the Israeli side.
Monday’s protests were fueled by the opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem following its relocation from Tel Aviv. The move fulfilled a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump, who in December recognized the contested city as the Israeli capital.
Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.
Most countries say the status of Jerusalem – a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians – should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.
Netanyahu praised Trump’s decisions but Palestinians have said the United States can no longer serve as an honest broker in any peace process. Talks aimed a finding a two-state solution to the conflict have been frozen since 2014.
Trump said on Monday he remained committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. His administration says it has nearly completed a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan but is undecided on how and when to roll it out.
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence. Hamas denied instigating it but the White House backed Netanyahu, saying Hamas “intentionally and cynically provoking this response”.
The United States on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted U.N. Security Council statement that would have expressed “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians” and called for an independent investigation, U.N. diplomats said.
In the British parliament, junior foreign office minister Alistair Burt said the United States needed to show more understanding about the causes of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Hamas’ role in the violence must be investigated, he added.
Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell, Writing by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Angus MacSwan
The post Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests appeared first on World The News.
from World The News https://ift.tt/2rL7omP
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Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests
GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) – Thousands of Gaza residents turned out on Tuesday for the funerals of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops a day earlier, while on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli forces prepared to face the expected final day of a Palestinian protest campaign.
Monday’s violence on the border, which took place as the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, was the bloodiest for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.
The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas, Palestinian medics said.
Palestinian leaders have called Monday’s events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.
The United Nations Security Council was due to meet to discuss the situation.
Israel has said it is acting in self-defense to defend its borders and communities. Its main ally the United States has backed that stance, with both saying that Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal enclave, instigated the violence.
On Tuesday morning, mourners marched through Gaza, waving Palestinian flags and calling for revenge.
“With souls and blood we redeem you martyrs,” they shouted.
There were fears of further bloodshed as a six-week protest campaign was due to reach its climax.
May 15 is traditionally the day Palestinians mark the “Nakba”, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in 1948.
The protests, dubbed “The Great March of Return,” began on March 30 and revived calls for refugees to have the right of return to their former lands, which now lie inside Israel.
Israel rejects any right of return, fearing that it would deprive the state of its Jewish majority.
Palestinian medical officials say 105 Gazans have now been killed since the start of the protests and nearly 11,000 people wounded, about 3,500 of them hit by live fire. Israeli officials dispute those numbers. No Israeli casualties have been reported.
More than 2 million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, more than two thirds of them refugees. Citing security concerns, Israel and Egypt maintain tight restrictions on the enclave, deepening economic hardship and raising humanitarian concerns.
SHARPSHOOTERS
On the Israeli side of the border, Israeli sharpshooters took up positions to stop any attempted breach of the fence should demonstrations break out again. Tanks were also deployed.
A senior Israeli commander said that of the 60 Gazans killed on Monday, 14 were carrying out attacks and 14 others were militants.
He also said Palestinians protesters were using hundreds of pipe bombs, grenades and fire-bombs. Militants had opened fire on Israeli troops and tried to set off bombs by the fence.
Many casualties were caused by Palestinians carrying out devices that went off prematurely,” he said.
“We approve every round fired before it is fired. Every target is spotted in advance. We know where the bullet lands and where it is aimed,” said the commander, who spoke on condition that he not be named, in accordance with Israeli regulations.
“However reality on the ground is such that unintended damage is caused,” he said.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office condemned what it called the “appalling deadly violence” by Israeli forces.
U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Israel had a right to defend its borders according to international law, but lethal force must only be used a last resort, and was not justified by Palestinians approaching the Gaza fence.
The U.N. rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, said Israel’s use of force may amount to a war crime.
YOUNG VICTIM
In Gaza City, hundreds marched in the funeral of eight-month-old Leila al-Ghandour, whose body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag.
The mother of 8-month-old Palestinian infant Laila al-Ghandour, who died after inhaling tear gas during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem at the Israel-Gaza border, mourns during her funeral in Gaza City May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
“Let her stay with me, It is too early for her to go,” her mother cried, pressing the baby’s body to her chest.
Speaking earlier, her grandmother said the child was at one of the tented protest camps and had inhaled tear gas.
“When we got back home, the baby stopped crying and I thought she was asleep. I took her to the children’s hospital and the doctor told me she was martyred (dead),” Heyam Omar said.
Many shops in East Jerusalem were shut throughout the day following a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for a general strike across the Palestinian Territories. A 70-second siren was sounded in the occupied West Bank in commemoration of the Nakba.
HOLY CITY
Most Gaza protesters stay around tent camps but groups have ventured closer to the border fence, rolling burning tyres and throwing stones. Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that spread fires on the Israeli side.
Monday’s protests were fueled by the opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem following its relocation from Tel Aviv. The move fulfilled a pledge by U.S. President Donald Trump, who in December recognized the contested city as the Israeli capital.
Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.
Most countries say the status of Jerusalem – a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians – should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.
Netanyahu praised Trump’s decisions but Palestinians have said the United States can no longer serve as an honest broker in any peace process. Talks aimed a finding a two-state solution to the conflict have been frozen since 2014.
Trump said on Monday he remained committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. His administration says it has nearly completed a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan but is undecided on how and when to roll it out.
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence. Hamas denied instigating it but the White House backed Netanyahu, saying Hamas “intentionally and cynically provoking this response”.
The United States on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted U.N. Security Council statement that would have expressed “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians” and called for an independent investigation, U.N. diplomats said.
In the British parliament, junior foreign office minister Alistair Burt said the United States needed to show more understanding about the causes of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Hamas’ role in the violence must be investigated, he added.
Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell, Writing by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Angus MacSwan
The post Gazans bury dead after bloodiest day of Israel border protests appeared first on World The News.
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New Post has been published on PatriotNewsDaily.com
New Post has been published on http://patriotnewsdaily.com/cue-liberal-outrage-trump-national-vetting-center-for-immigrants/
Cue Liberal Outrage: Trump Creates a National Vetting Center for Immigrants
President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week to create a new National Vetting Center that will improve the government’s ability to coordinate between various agencies and ensure that migrants and visitors to the U.S. are properly screened before coming into the country. The move, which will surely anger immigration activists and liberals who think we would be better off if we just threw the borders open and allowed every Islamic terrorist and welfare-leeching bum in the world to come to our shores, was announced in a statement on Tuesday.
“The NVC will better coordinate these activities in a central location, enabling officials to further leverage critical intelligence and law enforcement information to identify terrorists, criminals, and other nefarious actors trying to enter and remain within our country,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. “The NVC’s operations will adhere to America’s strong protections for individuals’ privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. The Administration’s top priority is the safety and security of the public, and the NVC will empower our frontline defenders to better fulfil that obligation.”
The Department of Homeland Security will work hand in hand with the State Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the director of national intelligence to develop the NVC.
“As part of the president’s efforts to raise the global bar for security and protect Americans, we’ve put in place tougher vetting and tighter screening for all individuals seeking to enter the United States,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement. “The National Vetting Center will support unprecedented work by DHS and the entire U.S. intelligence community to keep terrorists, violent criminals and other dangerous individuals from reaching our shores.”
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Speaking of Nielsen, she said in a Customs and Border Patrol Roundtable meeting last week that no fewer than 70 terrorists A DAY were trying to get into the United States, so the need for an impeccable (if not impenetrable) vetting process does not need to be explained in great detail. We’ve been extremely lucky since 9/11 to avoid outright disaster at the hands of foreign terrorists, but in the last few months we’ve seen questionable immigrants from Middle Eastern countries do their best to cause mayhem and bloodshed. It’s only a matter of time before one of them succeeds on a horrifying scale.
Here’s a thought: We don’t wait until something like that happens before doing something about it. This was the refrain we kept shouting during the Obama years, when it was virtually off-limits to even have a frank conversation about Islamists and their death cult. Now that those days are over, we have a president who understands the basic fact that not everyone wants to come to America for a “better life.” Many of them want to come here to wage jihad. And that’s not even getting into the thousands who come here with vague ideas about joining a gang, committing petty crime, or simply leeching off the welfare system.
Vet them, reject them, and let’s limit our immigration process to those people who will actually make this country stronger.
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Trump Gets Blowback for Exposing Muslim Crime
all kinds of cool jewelry and no shipping or getting mobbed t the mall
Tweet
by Jay Lorenz
Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump retweeted three videos of Muslims performing violent or anti-Christian acts. One shows a Middle Eastern man beating a handicapped Dutch man, one a Muslim smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the last a mob throwing people off of a rooftop in the Middle East.
The content of the tweets and their source, Jayda Fransen the Deputy Leader of Britain First, have been denounced by many in America and Britain. Fransen was arrested earlier this month while giving a speech in Belfast. She has been charged with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour,” and has been convicted for hate speech in the past. A CNN headline correctly referred to her as a “convicted racist.”
Those attacking Trump for the tweets are more concerned with the exposure of the heinous crimes of Muslims and the exposure for Britain First than the crimes themselves. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted, “I hope our Government will condemn far-right retweets by Donald Trump. They are abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society.” A spokesperson for Prime Minister Theresa May said it was “wrong for the president to have done this.” Notice that Corbyn and May refer to Trump’s retweets about the issue as the problem, not the actual hordes of Middle Eastern and African invaders pouring into the West.
In America, anti-Whites and cucks came out of the woodwork to bash Trump for exposing Muslim crime. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Trump’s retweets “bizarre and disturbing.” Congressional cuck Jeff Flake called the tweets “highly inappropriate” and “not helpful,” while Lindsey Graham whined that “We don’t want to take a fringe group and elevate their content.”
The most deranged response of all came from Texas Rep. Al Green, who, on the House floor, accused the president of inciting racial hatred and proclaimed that, “Impeachment will be voted on before Christmas.”
Trump has been unphased by the storm. Later in the day, he fired back at Theresa May on Twitter, tweeting, “Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!” Here, Trump points out that the focus should be on the actual acts of Muslims, not his tweets. At this point, “Radical Islamic Terrorism” has become a euphemism for all of the fallout from mass Muslim immigration to the West. The total of all non-terrorist crime and other detrimental impacts from mass Muslim migration is far worse than the effects of terrorism.
For his small action in defense of Western Civilization, many in Britain want to ban President Trump from the country. The Islamist Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, lashed out at Trump for criticizing his people, adding that it is “clear that any official visit from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed.” Other British politicians went even further than the Muslim extremist. Labour MP Ian Murray accused Trump of committing a crime:
Others echoed him. Labour MP Paul Flynn said, “If he’s allowed to come to this country now, he should be treated as anyone else who breaks the law and charged with inciting racial hatred.” Labour MP Chris Bryant said, “The Prime Minister, while she was Home Secretary, said homophobes and racists will be arrested in this country. That’s what should happen now.” These men are literally suggesting the British government arrest the president of the United States. That would be an act of war.
However, they are technically correct about the application of the law. The British government has labeled political opposition as “hate speech” and criminalized it. Britain, and especially London, is controlled by a cabal that suppresses any criticism of Muslims, among other protected groups. British nationalists are imprisoned, while Muslim enclaves operate with complete impunity from British law.
The reason they are freaking out so much is that Trump has violated their most sacred of rules: you cannot expose the crimes of Muslims or Jews. To do so is a criminal act. This is the most important law in Britain, and they have responded as such to the president breaking it.
They won’t win many supporters in America with these actions. Americans are largely perplexed by the idea that a tweet, which makes no threat of violence, can be criminal. Most Americans are probably not aware of the anti-free speech laws of Britain and Europe. Many are learning about them now for the first time.
The Dutch government could not help but jump in to show its ineptitude as well:
Jayda Fransen’s tweet had stated that the offender was a migrant. The Netherlands Embassy tweeter unwittingly revealed that the truth is actually much worse. Not only was the Middle Eastern perpetrator born in the Netherlands, he is again walking the streets. Given lax Dutch enforcement in these situations, one wonders if he even received jail time for the crime. Attacking the defenseless is, rightfully so, considered one of the most heinous of crimes. For Britain, the Netherlands, and the American establishment to be more outraged by the tweet than the crime is very telling of their morals and principles.
The rebuttal also gets at something deeper. It doesn’t matter that the man isn’t a migrant. He is not Dutch and he never will be. It would not matter if he came five minutes ago, five years ago, or if he was born there. He is a foreigner. No amount of paperwork or legislation can negate this fact.
Donald Trump is bringing this issue to the forefront of the public consciousness. Try as they might, there is nothing the political establishment on either continent can do about it.
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Statement to Parliament: Foreign Secretary's statement on Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and update on the campaign against Daesh
Mr Speaker, with your permission, I will make a statement updating the House on the campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
But I should like to begin by informing the House that I called the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mr Zarif, this morning to discuss the case of Mrs Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe. I expressed my anxiety about her suffering and the ordeal of her family and I repeated my hope for a swift solution.
I also voiced my concern at the suggestion emanating from one branch of the Iranian judiciary that my remarks to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee last week had some bearing on Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe’s case.
The UK government has no doubt that she was on holiday in Iran when she was arrested last year – and that was the sole purpose of her visit.
My point was that I disagreed with the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime, not that I wanted to lend any credence to Iranian allegations that Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe had been engaged in such activity. I accept that my remarks could have been clearer in that respect and I’m glad to provide this clarification.
I’m sure the House will join me in paying tribute to the tireless campaigning of Mr Ratcliffe on behalf of his wife and we will not relent in our efforts to help all our consular cases in Iran.
Mr Zarif told me that any recent developments in the case had no link to my testimony last week and he would continue to seek a solution on humanitarian grounds. I will visit Iran in the coming weeks where I will discuss all our consular cases.
I turn now to the campaign against Daesh.
In the summer of 2014, Daesh swept down the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, occupying thousands of square miles of Iraqi territory, pillaging cities, massacring and enslaving minorities, and seeking to impose by pitiless violence a demented vision of an Islamist utopia.
Daesh had gathered strength in eastern Syria, using the opportunity created by that country’s civil war to seize oilfields and carve out a base from which to launch their assault on Iraq. Today, I can tell the House that Daesh have been rolled back on every battlefront.
Thanks to the courage and resolve of Iraq’s Security Forces, our partners in Syria, and the steadfast action of the 73 members of the Global Coalition, including this country,
Daesh have lost 90% of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria – including Raqqa, their erstwhile capital – and 6 million people have been freed from their rule.
When my Rt Hon Friend the former Defence Secretary last updated the House in July, the biggest city in northern Iraq, Mosul, had just been liberated.
Since then, Iraqi forces have broken Daesh’s grip on the towns of Tal Afar and Hawija and cleared the terrorists from all but a relatively small area near the Syrian border, demonstrating how the false and failed ‘caliphate’ is crumbling before our eyes.
The House will join me in paying tribute to the men and women of the British armed forces, who have been vital to every step of the advance.
Over 600 British soldiers are in Iraq where they have helped to train 50,000 members of the Iraqi Security Forces and the RAF has delivered 1,352 air strikes against Daesh in Iraq and 263 in Syria – more than any other air force apart from the United States. I turn now to Syria where, on 20 October, the Global Coalition confirmed the fall of Raqqa after 3 years of brutal occupation.
The struggle was long and hard; I acknowledge the price that has been paid by the Coalition’s partner forces on the ground and, most especially, by the civilian population of Raqqa. Throughout the military operation, the Department for International Development has been working with partners in Raqqa Province to supply food, water, health care and shelter wherever possible.
On 22 October, my Rt Hon Friend the International Development Secretary announced another £10 million of UK aid, in order to clear the landmines sown by Daesh, restock hospitals and mobile surgical units with essential medicines, and provide clean water for 15,000 people.
The permanent defeat of Daesh in Syria – by which I mean removing the conditions that allowed them to seize large areas in the first place – will require a political settlement and that must include a transition away from the Asad regime that did so much to create the conditions for the rise of Daesh.
How such a settlement is reached is, of course, a matter for Syrians themselves and we will continue to support the work of the United Nations Special Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, and the Geneva process.
I am encouraged by how America and Russia have stayed in close contact over the future of Syria and we must continue to emphasise to the Kremlin that instead of blindly supporting a murderous regime – even after UN investigators have found its forces guilty of using sarin nerve gas, most recently at Khan Shaykoun in April – Russia should join the international community and support a negotiated settlement in Syria under the auspices of the UN.
Turning to Iraq, more than 2 million people have returned to their homes in areas liberated from Daesh, including 265,000 who have gone back to Mosul. Britain is providing over £200 million of practical life-saving assistance for Iraqi civilians.
We are helping to clear the explosives that were laid by Daesh, restore water supplies that the terrorists sabotaged, and give clean water to 200,000 people and health care to 115,000.
Now that Daesh is close to defeat in Iraq, the country’s leaders must resolve the political tensions that – in part – paved the way for its advance in 2014.
The Kurdistan Region held a unilateral referendum on independence on 25 September, a decision we did not support. Since then, Masoud Barzani has stepped down as President of the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraqi forces have reasserted federal control over disputed territory, including the city of Kirkuk.
We are working alongside our allies to reduce tensions in northern Iraq; rather than reopen old conflicts, the priority must be to restore the stability, prosperity and national unity that is the right of every Iraqi.
A general election will take place in Iraq next May, creating an opportunity for parties to set out their respective visions of a country that overcomes sectarianism and serves every citizen, including Kurds.
But national reconciliation will require justice, and justice demands that Daesh are held accountable for their atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. That is why I acted over a year ago – in concert with the Government of Iraq – to launch the global campaign to bring Daesh to justice.
In September, the Security Council unanimously adopted UN Resolution 2379, a British-drafted text – co-sponsored by 46 countries – that will establish a UN investigation to help gather and preserve the evidence of Daesh crimes in Iraq.
Every square mile of territory that Daesh have lost is 1 square mile less for them to exploit and tax and plunder, and the impending destruction of the so-called ‘caliphate’ will reduce their ability to fund terrorism abroad and attract new recruits.
Yet Daesh will still try to inspire attacks by spreading their hateful ideology in cyberspace even after they have lost every inch of their physical domain.
That’s why Britain leads the Global Coalition’s efforts to counter Daesh propaganda, through a Communications Cell based here in London, and Daesh’s total propaganda output has fallen by half since 2015.
But social media companies can and must do more, particularly to speed up the detection and removal of dangerous material and prevent it from being uploaded in the first place, hence my Rt Hon Friend the Prime Minister co-hosted an event at the UN General Assembly in September on how to stop terrorists from using the internet.
The government has always made clear that any British nationals who join Daesh have chosen to make themselves legitimate targets for the Coalition. We expect that most foreign fighters will die in the terrorist domain they opted to serve but some may surrender or try to come home, including to the UK.
As the government has previously said, anyone who returns to this country after taking part in the conflict in Syria or Iraq must expect to be investigated for reasons of national security. While foreign fighters face the consequences of their actions, the valour and sacrifice of the armed forces of many nations – including our own – has prevented a terrorist entity from taking root in the heart of the Middle East.
I commend this statement to the House.
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