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Palestinian
Authority: Combatants Against Peace
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By
disbanding the Palestinian branch of Combatants for Peace, the
Palestinian Authority leadership is encouraging radicals to fight against
any Palestinian who works toward peace and tolerance with Israel.
Once again,
the actions and words of the Palestinian Authority demonstrate that it
has done anything but prepare its people for peace with Israel.
Palestinian peace activists have come under fire for attending a
Memorial Day Ceremony in Tel Aviv for Palestinian and Israeli victims of
violence. The ceremony was attended by some 2700 people.
The event was organized last week by Combatants For Peace, a movement
that (according to its website)
"was started jointly by Palestinians and Israelis who have taken an
active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers and
Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian
freedom."
Founded in 2005, Combatants For Peace states that it has three main
goals:
To raise the consciousness in both publics regarding the hopes and
suffering of the other side, and to create partners in dialogue.
To educate towards reconciliation and non-violent struggle in both the
Israeli and Palestinian societies.
To create political pressure on both Governments to stop the cycle of
violence, end the occupation and resume a constructive dialog.
Organizers have hailed the ceremony as a great success and
"another positive step toward peace and reconciliation" between
Israelis and Palestinians.
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An Israeli and a
Palestinian participant at the 2014 "Combatants For Peace"
Memorial Day Ceremony in Tel Aviv. (Image source: Facebook page of
Combatants For Peace)
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But the Palestinian Authority [PA] leadership and many Palestinians
obviously don't share this view. In fact, they see the participation of
Palestinians in an event commemorating Israeli victims of violence as an
act of treason.
The PA government in the West Bank -- who do not miss any opportunity
to tell Westerners that they remain committed to peace and coexistence
with Israel -- even went as far as disbanding
the Palestinian branch of Combatants For Peace in June 2013.
PA Interior Minister Saeed Abu Ali signed the order to disband the
movement after Palestinians accused it of "bias in favor of
Israel" and promoting normalization with Israelis.
The protests prompted some Palestinian activists to resign and accuse
the movement of "promoting the views of the occupation and lacking a
clear agenda in support of the Palestinians, especially with regards to
the right of return of refugees and the status of Jerusalem as the
capital of a Palestinian state."
Undoubtedly, the activists who quit did so because they were afraid of
being targeted by Palestinian extremists, particularly those belonging to
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] and
"Anti-Normalization" movements.
Last week, a Palestinian professor at Al-Quds University who led a
group of Palestinian students on an unprecedented trip to the Auschwitz
death camp was expelled
from a union at the university.
The union said in a letter that Professor Mohammed Dajani's membership
had been suspended for "behavior that contravenes the policies and
norms" of the group.
Now the Palestinian coordinator for Combatants For Peace, Yussre
Slameen, is facing a smear campaign and threats for attending the
ceremony in Tel Aviv together with other Palestinians, including bereaved
families.
Even Slameen's having spent time in an Israeli prison for
security-related offenses has not helped him escape a barrage of scathing
attacks and condemnations.
Comments published in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds have accused
Slameen of being a "traitor" and an "advocate of
normalization with the occupation."
One reader denounced the peace activist as "trash," while
another described him as being "morally and nationally
corrupt."
Another reader, Samar Shyoukhi, saluted those Palestinians who refused
to take part in an event honoring Israeli victims. She urged the
Palestinian Authority security forces to severely punish Slameen and his
friends. Others called on the PA to fire Slameen from his job at the
Ministry of Social Welfare.
By disbanding the Palestinian branch of Combatants For Peace, the
Palestinian Authority leadership is encouraging radicals to fight against
any Palestinian who works toward peace and tolerance with Israel.
The message that the PA is sending to its people is that it has become
a crime to sympathize with the grief of Israeli families over the loss of
their loved ones. With such an attitude, it is hard to see how the
Palestinian Authority will ever be able to convince Palestinians to make
peace with Israel.
Once again, the actions and words of the Palestinian Authority
leadership demonstrate that it has done anything but prepare its people
for peace with Israel.
France
Submits to Islam
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Polls show
that more than 70% of the French... expect that France will become a
country under submission to Islam.
Last month, between April 18-21, the Union of Islamic Organizations of
France [UOIF], the French branch of the European Council for Fatwa and
Research (presided over by Yusuf al Qaradawi) held its thirty-first
annual conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris. As usual, jihadist and
anti-Semitic books, which are banned in French bookstores but tolerated
there, were offered in several booths.
As usual also, speakers were invited to deliver fiery speeches. In
2012, the keynote speaker was supposed to be Qaradawi himself, but faced
with protests from the Jewish community, France denied Qaradawi a visa
to enter French territory, and he was replaced by Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim
Brotherhood operative who works with Qaradawi in Doha, Qatar, at the
Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics.
Tariq Ramadan was again the keynote speaker in 2013. This year, Tariq
gave way to his brother, Hani, Director of the Islamic Center of Geneva,
founded in 1961 by their father, Said Ramadan, son-in-law and senior
disciple of Hassan al Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood.
If Tariq Ramadan knows how to hide his extremism, his brother is more
explicit and direct. His speech was devoted to "global threats"
facing Islam; he described them as having a single source: "the Jews and Zionist
barbarism," an octopus "hiding in the shadows," a
"power that holds the global finance and the media." He called
on young French Muslims to "fight for Islam" and to go to
Syria, where several hundred French youths have already joined jihadist
groups.
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Hani Ramadan,
Director of the Islamic Center of Geneva, identified "the Jews and
Zionist barbarism" as the source of threats facing Islam, during
his keynote speech at this year's conference of the Union of Islamic
Organizations of France. (Image source: Screenshot of video by Mosquée
Al Imane de Lille)
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If UOIF had only a marginal influence, such statements would be
already worrying. But UOIF is the leading French Muslim organization, and
Hani Ramadan's speech, like Tariq Ramadan's speeches in 2012 and 2013,
was listened to by an audience of 150,000 enthusiastic people, and viewed
by hundred of thousands of others on UOIF-TV, the digital television
channel established by the UOIF.
More than 8,000,000 Muslims live in France, most of whom are French
citizens, and the Muslim population in France continues to grow. France
is now the main Muslim country in Europe. Successive French governments
can decide to expel a Muslim preacher or a recruiter of jihadist
fighters; they can deny visas, but they seem unable to do more.
Although the French government denies it, it seems clear that
substantial ransoms
were paid to Islamist groups for the release of French hostages:
$28,000,000 to al Qaeda in Niger in October 2013 and $18,000,000
to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Syria, on April 19.
The creation, on April 25, by French Interior Minister Bernard
Cazeneuve, of a counseling center, website and telephone hotline to "advise"
parents whose children are in the process of radicalization seems
almost ridiculous. Entire neighborhoods are controlled by Islamist
preachers and Bernard Cazeneuve knows it: officially, administrative
authorities call these neighborhoods "Sensitive Urban Zones,"
presumably because at any time they can explode. Unofficially, the police
call them "Sharia Zones", and have been ordered by the
Department of the Interior to keep out.
Political leaders of all parties know that most elections cannot be
won if the Muslim vote is neglected, and the leaders of the National
Front are no exception: Marine Le Pen has long ceased to incriminate
Islam and now attacks "crime" and "immigration"
without providing details. Sometimes she may denounce "calls to
jihad" and "fundamentalism", but takes care not to go
beyond that. Although she criticizes Qatar or Saudi Arabia, she says that
France should become an "ally" of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
and asks her "fellow Muslims" to join her fight against "American
globalism and its Islamist allies".
A "Collective Against
Islamophobia in France" is gaining ground: it handles complaints
against any critical remarks about Islam, and it can rely on the courts
to punish offenders. A "League
of Judicial Defense of Muslims" was also created in 2013 by
Karim Achoui, a lawyer disbarred because of his links with organized
crime. No anti-racist organization dares denounce Muslim anti-Semitism,
and none of them criticizes speeches such as the one given by Hani
Ramadan in Le Bourget.
Jewish institutions do not denounce Muslim anti-Semitism, either: they
speak of an "unhealthy climate". When, on April 28, during a
tribute ceremony to the Jews deported from France to Auschwitz, Arno
Klarsfeld, a member of the Council of State and son of Nazi hunters Serge
and Beate Klarsfeld, said that "some of the suburban youth are
anti-Semitic," he was immediately summoned
to appear before a judge.
NGOs fighting the Islamization of France are now marginalized. Their
leaders are persecuted by the justice system and severely punished. The
mainstream media demonize them. The main one, Riposte Laique, organized a
demonstration
on March 9. About four hundred people came. Three or four years ago,
Riposte Laique could gather several thousand people.
The anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic standup comedian Dieudonné continues
to give performances to packed theaters. On June 21, he will host a
ceremony to honor people who posed with the best "quenelles" --
the inverted Nazi salute he invented. More than ten thousand tickets have
already been sold. On his website, Dieudosphere.com, pictures of
"quenelles" are still present. Dieudosphere.com sells a comic
book called Yacht People. The cover
shows a fat rich man with a hooked nose rubbing his hands together and
flashing a greedy smile. The resemblance to the caricatures of Jews
published during the Nazi era is evident. Manuel Valls fought Dieudonné
when he was Interior minister. Since he became Prime Minister, fighting
Dieudonné is no longer one of his priorities.
During an interview with Alexandre Arcady, the director of Twenty
Four Days, a film about the assassination seven years ago of Ilan
Halimi, a young French Jew who was taken hostage and killed by young
Muslims from Paris suburbs, TV journalist Aymeric Caron tried to explain
that the growth
of anti-Jewish hatred in France was logical because "Israeli
soldiers kill Palestinian children." These remarks did not offend
anyone except a few Jewish journalists, so they were cut from the edited
version of the show. Aymeric Caron explained that he was not an
anti-Semite, but only "anti-Zionist." He has recently published
a book called, Incorrect: in which almost all his targets have one
thing in common: They are Jews. He is invited onto many talk shows to
speak about his book. Whoever looks for books about Israel will easily
find books called Israel, the New Apartheid or The Invention of
the Land of Israel, by Shlomo Sand. Books offering less-biased
viewpoints are unavailable. Dozens of books by Tariq Ramadan are on the
shelves of all main bookstores.
The number of Jews leaving France is steadily increasing. French
people who have the financial means also leave the country. Most others expect
the worst. Polls show that the French are now the most pessimistic
people in Europe. They also show that more than 70% of the French are afraid
of the rise of Islam in France: they expect that France will become a
country under submission to Islam.
Iran:
Letter from a Thief in Prison
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Without
giving me any painkillers or numbing agents, they cut off my fingers with
an electric wire-cutter.
I now had a
"sign" on me: my fingers were cut off. Not only would people
refuse to give me a job, they would point me out everywhere [as a thief].
So I had no job and no income.
Mitra Pourshajari, the daughter of an imprisoned blogger, acquired
this letter from Reza Safari. He was convicted of robbery and, as a
result, had amputations performed, as Islamic law requires for theft.
The exact number of amputations performed by the Islamic Republic is
unknown. The regime reports only a portion of them.
In 2008, Sayed Davoud Salehi, the Iranian ambassador to Spain at the
time, defended
to The
Telegraph his country's use of amputation by comparing the
chopping off of the thief's hand to "a surgeon amputating a limb to
prevent the spread of gangrene."
There have been many letters written by political prisoners in Iran to
human rights organizations; letters from common prisoners are rare.
The Boroumand Foundation has been documenting
amputation cases for years.
Article 278 of the Islamic Republic's penal code based strictly on 7th
century Islamic law is very specific about the punishment for theft:
(a) On the first occasion, amputation of the full length of four
fingers of the right hand of the thief in such a manner that the thumb
and palm of the hand remain.
(b) On the second occasion, amputation of the left foot from the end
of the knob [on the foot] in such a manner that half of the sole and part
of the place of anointing [during ablution] remain.
(c) On the third occasion, life imprisonment.
(d) On the fourth occasion, the death penalty even if the theft is
committed in prison.
When the judge first gave me the verdict, I thought it was to scare
me. But unfortunately ... at 10:30 in the morning, I was taken by the
guards to the yard where many other prisoners, also convicted of theft,
were gathered, so that I would set an example. Without giving any
painkillers or numbing agents, they cut off my fingers with an electric
wire-cutter. I could see bloodstains on the wire cutter: it had evidently
been used for this purpose many times before.
After the amputation, they took me to the hospital. When the doctor
saw my condition he was upset and started yelling and screaming at the
guards... that the amputation should have been done jointly with the
hospital. I was in shock. I had no idea what they had done to me. I was
taken back to the prison the same night. ... How I wished that instead of
cutting off my fingers they had executed me. At least I would have died
only once. ... I was released in 2000, but a much worse situation awaited
me outside prison. ...
I now had a "sign" on me: my fingers were cut off. I tried
for six months but could not find a job. Not only would people refuse to
give me a job, they would point me out everywhere [as a thief]. So I had
no job and no income, and due to my family's devastating poverty and
hunger, I had once again to resort to robbery. A year after my release I
was rearrested and convicted in Branch 1 of the Judiciary, where Judge
Ashurloo ordered the amputation of the toes of my left foot. ... After
eight years in prison to anticipate this horrifying punishment, they
amputated my toes with the same wire-cutter they had used to cut off my
fingers. ... It took a year before I learned to walk on my leg again. As
a result of the amputation I suffer from chronic pain ... physical and
psychological.
I wish to put forth a complaint against the Islamic Republic of Iran,
its leaders, officials and judiciary, for amputating body parts,
rendering me disabled, causing me chronic pain and, as a result of the
amputations, leaving me incapable of making a living. I ask all human
rights organizations and international law societies to help me in any
way possible.
Reza Safari
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