In this mailing:
by Soeren Kern
• October 15, 2014 at 5:00 am
"We
are living in Hamburgistan." — Daniel Abdin, imam of Hamburg's
Al-Nour Mosque.
One
politician has been repeatedly threatened with beheading as the price to
pay for leading a fundraising campaign to provide food and water for
Kurds in northern Iraq.
"As
a society we must ask ourselves: how can it be that people who live in
Germany and... born and raised here, are supporters of a brutal, inhuman
and fundamentalist group such as the IS and attack peaceful protestors
with knives, sticks and machetes. Here in Germany, the IS threatens to
become a refuge for frustrated young people…." — Claudia
Roth, Vice-President, German Parliament.
"Under
no circumstances should [politicians who receive death threats] give in
and change their stance, otherwise the extremists will have achieved
their objectives." — Wolfgang Bosbach, CDU official.
German police in riot gear, accompanied by armored
vehicles and water cannons, charge into a street battle between Kurds
and radical Islamists in Hamburg, Oct. 8, 2014. (Image source: N24
video screenshot)
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Parts of downtown Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany,
resembled a war zone after hundreds of supporters of the jihadist group
Islamic State [IS] engaged in bloody street clashes with ethnic Kurds.
The violence—which police say was as ferocious as anything seen in
Germany in recent memory—is fuelling a sense of foreboding about the
spillover effects of the fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Some analysts believe that rival Muslim groups in Germany are
deliberately exploiting the ethnic and religious tensions in the Middle
East to stir up trouble on the streets of Europe.
The unrest began on the evening of October 7, when around 400 Kurds
gathered outside the Al-Nour mosque near the central train station in
Hamburg's St. George district to protest against IS attacks on the Syrian
Kurdish town of Kobani.
by Shoshana Bryen
• October 15, 2014 at 4:00 am
Kerry's
international party should be trying to aid the Kurds, our friends and
the mortal enemy of ISIS, instead of trying to lavish more international
funds on Hamas and Fatah -- two sides of a movement dedicated to
destruction.
Can anyone spare some change for the Kurds of Syria?
Above, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (front row, 5th from left) in
a group photo at the Gaza Donors Conference in Cairo, Oct. 12, 2014.
(Image source: U.S. State Department)
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For the moment and against the odds, Kobani stands. Kurdish men and
women, abandoned by the United States and watched but not aided by
Turkey, hold the line against the sweep of ISIS across Iraq and Syria;
one little point of heroism that may be gone by the time you read this.
ISIS, on the other hand -- well-financed, armed, vicious, and fighting on
toward Baghdad -- will assuredly not be gone.
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