05/11 Links Pt1: PA honors terrorists who lynched Israelis; Venezuela: Israel trafficked babies in Nepal

From Ian:

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PMW: PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists

Last week, Palestinian Authority Member of Parliament and Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake visited the families of three of the terrorists who took part in the lynching and murder of two Israeli reservists in 2000. Karake honored these murderers by giving their families "plaques of honor." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2015]
Karake has stated that Palestinians have an unequivocal right to "resistance" and "struggle" - PA euphemisms for violence against Israel. He calls the murderers of Israelis "heroes."
On Oct. 12, 2000, a Palestinian mob brutally murdered and mutilated the bodies of two Israeli reservists who had accidentally entered Ramallah. A well-known picture from the gruesome murder showed a Palestinian raising his bloodied hands heroically, showing the crowd his hands covered in the blood of his victims. The bodies of the two Israelis were thrown out of the window, and the mob dragged them through the streets of Ramallah. (Photo credit: Agence France Presse)

Israeli aid to Nepal covered for baby trafficking, Spanish-language TV claims

Israel used its humanitarian aid mission to Nepal as a cover for trafficking 25 Nepalese babies, two Spanish-language networks reported.
Iranian HispanTV and Venezuela’s Telesur networks broadcast the reports. Telesur is the national public television channel in Venezuela, which is rebroadcast throughout Latin America on other public television networks.
HispanTV broadcast the original report, which quotes an unnamed NGO as stating that “Israel uses humanitarian help as a cover for trafficking of 25 babies in Nepal.” Telesur picked up the report last week.
The report stated, correctly, that of the 25 babies that were taken to Israel, “15 of them were born through Tammuz, an Israeli surrogacy company which provides services to Israeli couples unable to bear children, particularly homosexual couples.” The other babies also reportedly were born to surrogate mothers for Israeli parents.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the report.
“The ‘Tehran-Caracas axis’ even perverts humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters such as the Nepal earthquake, just as they had accused the Israeli medical mission of harvesting body parts in the Haiti catastrophe,” said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center. “Through these Spanish-language television satellites, Iran foments anti-Semitism across the Americas, just as it sponsors global terrorism, slanders the Holocaust and pursues its nuclear program.

Radical Offshoot of Human Rights Watch Sends Strike Team to Nepal to Assassinate Victims Saved by Israel (satire)

After Human Rights Watch’s head Kenneth Roth tweeted condemnation of Israel for constructing a 60 bed field hospital in Nepal, sources tell The Israeli Daily (TID) that a radical offshoot of the organization called ‘No Jewish Human Rights Watch’ has dispatched a strike team to hunt down those Nepalese who accepted Israel’s offer of life saving assistance.
“Defending human rights requires shedding blood,” wrote NJHRC’s leader, Sub Commander Fred. “Usually that’s Jewish blood, so nobody really cares, but this situation requires more direct action. We must make an example of those selfish Nepalese traitors who chose Zionist aid over death.”
While Roth did not defend NJHRC’s tactics, he understood their passion. “For some, it just isn’t enough that we focus so much of our attention on the tiny Jewish State, even while hundreds of thousands of Syrians are murdered and Iran jails reporters brave enough to criticize their regime. But could we focus even more on Israel? Probably. Fred’s methods may be wrong, but his heart is always in the right place.”
This is the first time NJHRC has threatened direction violent action. Israeli security officer, Major Chaim Shitz, however, voiced no concern. “Once those guys realize that they can’t get a soy latte in Nepal, we’re pretty sure they’ll scurry back to Berkeley.”

UK Election Results: Another Term for Israel-Friendly Conservative Government

Like the British electorate at large, British Jews likely overwhelmingly supported the Conservative Party, fulfilling the predictions of just one of many British election polls prior to May 7. The poll, conducted by London’s Jewish Chronicle newspaper last month, showed that 69 percent of Jewish voters planned to support the Conservative Party, compared to 22 percent for Labour.
While Miliband’s Jewish background might have created a sense of affinity for some Jewish voters, Miliband has also been heavily criticized for Labour’s stances on Israel, including introducing non-binding legislation last year calling on the U.K. to recognize Palestinian statehood. The British parliament then voted symbolically, 274-12, in favor of requesting that the U.K. recognize a unilaterally established Palestinian state. Miliband also said he would support the recognition of a Palestinian state.
“Ed Miliband is not generally felt to be a reliable supporter of Israel by Jewish British voters we (the Anglo-Jewish Association) have spoken to. In contrast, the Conservatives have been solid supporters of Israel, though not blindly,” Jonathan Walker, president of the U.K.-based Anglo-Jewish Association, recently told JNS.org.
In addition, some Jewish voters have felt that Miliband has not expressed himself as forcefully as Cameron on the issue of rising antisemitism in Britain, nor acknowledged the connection between antisemitism and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel—which Cameron, by contrast, has done.

Ex-MP George Galloway to challenge election results

Former MP George Galloway, leader of Britain’s left-wing socialist Respect party, is to challenge his defeat in Thursday’s election, which saw him lose his seat in parliament.
In a brief address on Sunday, Galloway claimed that there had been “widespread malpractice” in postal voting, which meant that the results must be “set aside.” Galloway lost to Labour’s candidate by the large margin of some 11,000 votes.
He also disputed a statement made on an Urdu-language television show that his opponent in the elections, Naz Shah, had been forcibly married to her cousin at the age of 15, claiming that he had obtained a marriage certificate from Pakistan showing that Shah had been married at 16.
“This is pathetic and without any foundation,” a Labour spokesman said of Galloway’s intent to challenge the election results. “George Galloway should accept he was booted out by the people of Bradford West. They saw through his divisive politics and made a positive choice, by a majority of well over 11,000, to elect a brilliant new MP, Naz Shah.”

Iran is Lying, and We Know It

The most frustrating part for a rational observer of the P5+1 negotiations with Iran is this: There is little doubt that Iran is lying, and will continue to lie, but that doesn’t seem to matter to those negotiating with it.
Rather than cause Tehran to capitulate by ratcheting up the pressure, the White House and its negotiating partners first eased the sanctions that had been compelling Tehran to negotiate and then effectively tabled the military option. Since then, they have made a seemingly unending catalog of tangible and irreversible concessions, to which the Iranians have responded with increased hostility. Yet, still the talks go on.
Last month, in just a week’s time, the P5+1 reportedly relented on three key demands: that Iran must come clean on its past nuclear-weapons work, that it must dismantle its plutonium-production plant, and that it must cease its uranium-enrichment activities. Not only has the White House folded on these important criteria, it is also employing an array of experts to cook up more schemes to keep the talks alive. The White House has signaled added flexibility by moving to offer sanctions relief immediately after a deal is signed, rather than waiting until Iran meets its obligations.

What the Persian Gulf states want: Iran kept at bay

This week, President Obama will gather kings, emirs and sheiks from the oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf at Camp David for a summit aimed at bolstering the U.S. alliance with their Sunni Muslim government.
It's an uncomfortable marriage of convenience, and both sides know it.
For decades, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim sheikdoms made a rough bargain with the United States: They provided a reliable supply of oil, and we provided weapons and troops to defend them. More recently, once the monarchs realized that Islamist terrorism was a threat to them as well as us, we also collaborated against Al Qaeda.
But these alliances have been fraying, mostly because of diverging views on Iran, the Arab states' historic rival, ruled by Shiite Muslims.
To Saudi Arabia and most of the other Sunni monarchies, Iran is the root of all evil. Saudi Arabia's late King Abdullah urged both President George W. Bush and Obama to launch a military attack on Iran to “cut off the head of the snake,” the king said.

Obama plans in tatters as Saudi king, most Gulf leaders to skip summit

It is not just the Saudi king who will be skipping this week’s Camp David summit of US and allied Arab leaders. Most Gulf heads of state won’t be there.
US President Barack Obama had invited six Gulf kings, emirs and sultans to the presidential retreat at Camp David, seeking to shore up wavering trust while Washington negotiates with regional power Tehran. Obama’s plans now lie in tatters, with only two heads of state slated to attend the Thursday meeting.
The absences will put a damper on talks that are designed to reassure key Arab allies, and almost certainly reflect dissatisfaction among leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council with Washington’s handling of Iran and what they expect to get out of the meeting.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced late on Sunday that newly installed King Salman will not be attending. The ostensible reason was because the upcoming summit on Thursday coincides with a humanitarian ceasefire in the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

Why the Snub? Saudis Know Obama’s Replaced Them With Iran

If the Obama administration thought it’s half-hearted efforts to make up with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states outraged by its Iran policies, it’s got another thing coming. On Sunday, the Saudis told the White House that King Salman would not be attending meetings there or at Camp David this week. Later, Bahrain said its King Hamad would skip the same meeting. The snubs are as pointed as President Obama’s recent signals that he has no intention of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anytime soon. But while the president has little interest in patching things up with America’s sole democratic ally in the Middle East, he was quite interested in making nice with the Saudi monarch. But the Saudis and Bahrain, like the Israelis, are deeply concerned by the U.S. effort to create a new détente with Iran. It’s not just that Salman apparently has better things to do than to schmooze with Obama. The president may have thought he could essentially replace the Saudis with Iran as the lynchpin of a new Middle East strategic vision without paying a price. But the Saudis understandably want no part of this. The result will be a region made even more dangerous by the Arabs, as well as the Israelis, coming to the realization that they can’t rely on Washington.
The conceit of Obama’s strategy rests on more than a weak deal that he hopes will be enough to postpone the question of an Iranian bomb even as it essentially anoints Tehran as a threshold nuclear power. Rather it is predicated on the notion that once Iran is allowed to, in the president’s phrase, “get right with the world” and reintegrated into the global economy, it can be counted on to keep peace in a region from which Obama wants to withdraw.

Beinart Hosts ‘Future of US-Iran Relations’ Debate in NYC

On Tuesday, May 12, Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism, will facilitate a panel called “The Future of US-Iran Relations” at The Graduate Center at CUNY, where he’s an associate professor. Beinart will host “two experts with decidedly different perspectives:” Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian American Council.
Here are links to three recent articles that discuss the context of the proposed nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Iran, written by each speaker:
Beinart in The Atlantic: The Real Achievement of the Iran Nuclear Deal
I think the details [of the nuclear deal framework] are far, far better than the alternative—which was a collapse of the diplomatic process, a collapse of international sanctions as Russia and China went back to business as usual with Tehran, and a collapse of the world’s ability to send inspectors into Iran. But ultimately, the details aren’t what matters. What matters is the potential end of America’s 36-year-long cold war with Iran.
For the United States, ending that cold war could bring three enormous benefits. First, it could reduce American dependence on Saudi Arabia. First, it could reduce American dependence on Saudi Arabia… What George W. Bush failed to achieve militarily, Barack Obama may now be achieving diplomatically.

MEMRI: Lebanese Journalist: Arabs Must Confront Iran's Powerful Lobby In U.S.

In a May 5, 2015 opinion piece in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat titled "The Threat of A Well-Oiled Iranian Lobby", the paper's managing editor, 'Eyad Abu Shakra, stated that today it is very important to build an effective Arab lobby in the U.S. This, because the Arabs are facing an increasingly ruthless media onslaught – not by the Israeli lobby but by the Iranian one.Iran, he says, has established a sophisticated lobby in the United States that can appeal to numerous segments of elite opinion – from business circles to those concerned with the suffering of the Iranian people under the sanctions regime – and is increasingly penetrating the mainstream media. He adds that this lobby paints itself as representing the Iranian people, though it is actually an arm of the regime. Having grown skillful and confident, it obscures Iran's expansionist ambitions and harmful interference in the region, and has even managed to plant the idea that terror is a purely Sunni phenomenon of which Iran is completely innocent.This is a challenge, he concludes, that the Arabs cannot afford to underestimate.

Iran claims its warships ‘shooed’ US, French forces in Gulf of Aden

Iran claimed Sunday that its warships had “shooed away” American and French military forces in the Gulf of Aden.
US and French “reconnaissance planes, helicopters and warships approached the Iranian warships in a provocative move” on Saturday night, the semi-official FARS news agency reported. “The vessels and aircraft then received a warning from Iranian Destroyer ‘Alborz,’ apologized and rapidly changed direction.”
The agency said the same thing happened last Monday, when “a US warship and military planes changed their direction as they were patrolling in the Gulf of Aden after they came close to an Iranian naval fleet and were warned to move away.”
The report said the Iranian Navy’s 34th fleet, comprising the Alborz destroyer and Bushehr helicopter-carrier warship, is conducting three months of “anti-piracy patrols” in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. It quoted the flotilla’s commander, Mostafa Tajeddini, saying, “Checking foreign warships in the international waters and surveillance of potential threats to Iran’s national interests is our essential responsibility.”

Israel and Germany sign deal for ships to guard gas rigs

Israel agreed Monday to purchase four warships from Germany to protect its offshore natural-gas drilling platforms, in a €430 million ($480 million) deal.
The deal was signed by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who is in Israel to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the countries.
Defense Ministry Director General Maj. Gen. (Res.) Dan Harel called the nearly $480 million deal “a dramatic leap upward in the navy’s ability to protect the State of Israel’s strategic natural gas sites.”
Under the contract, Germany will provide four advanced Sa’ar-class corvettes to the Israeli navy, to be delivered over the next five years, and will finance approximately one-third of the cost of the deal with a special grant of €115 million.
According to the Hebrew-language news site Ynet, once the vessels are delivered, they will be fitted with Israeli-made weapons systems in a process that will take about a year.

Strong Israeli Presence at Oil and Gas Conference in Texas

The largest oil and gas conference in the world, known as the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), was held in Texas last week – and 14 Israeli companies were present during the three-day event. Founded in 1969, the OTC serves as a major platform for the development of hydrocarbon resources in the area of drilling, environmental protection, exploration, production development, technology, and innovation.
Israel’s Economic Mission to the Southern United States brought the Israeli companies to exhibit innovative technologies at the conference, including Amiad Water Systems Ltd., BERMAD, HARBO Technologies, Strauss & Co., PCT- Protective Cooling Technology, among others.
In addition to the Israeli companies, this year’s conference featured 2,682 companies from 37 countries. More than 90,000 visitors attended from across the world.

IDF Commander: Hamas Transformed the Gazan Civilian Sector Into War Zone

Speaking last week at the International Ground Forces Ceremony in Latrun, IDF Col. Uri Gordin — who commanded the Nahal Brigade during Operation Protective Edge last summer — discussed the differences between how Israel and Hamas treat their civilians.
He said Israel “aims to protect its civilian population. The Israeli fighter endangers himself to protect civilians.” By contrast, Hamas “was not trying to stop us, but wanted us to harm civilians… This way, it can negatively impact Israel’s legitimacy to act against it.”
Another of Hamas’ goals was to “obtain victory photos. One particular way was to kidnap soldiers. In such a situation, the fear of having a soldier kidnapped made us act differently.”
The asymmetry between Hamas and Israel was not only tactical, he said, but also moral.
Gordin said, “there is also a difference in values between us and Hamas. The commitment of the commanders is one aspect of it.” He said Hamas commanders would flee after the IDF inflicted casualties on their fighters.

19-year-old stabbed in West Bank in suspected terrorist attack

A spokesman for Magen David Adom emergency medical services Monday said that a 19-year-old man was stabbed in Mishor Adumim, a neighborhood located near a West Bank settlement.
Paramedics arrived at the scene and provided medical treatment before evacuating the victim to nearby Shaare Zedek Medical Center, who was reported to be in moderate condition.
The attack was carried out by an Arab-Israeli resident of Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses claimed that the attacker ran towards bystanders at a hitchhiking spot and stabbed the 19-year-old in the back.
Police suspect the attack was motivated by nationalist sentiments. Israeli security forces have opened an investigation into the incident.

IDF indicts 3 Palestinian minors for alleged attempted gassing of bus, stabbing of soldier

The IDF announced on Sunday that its West Bank Prosecutor’s arm has filed an indictment with the Samaria Military Court against three Palestinians minors, all 17-years-old, for the attempted gassing of a bus and crimes related to the alleged stabbing of a soldier on April 2.
The three Palestinians initially planned to illegally cross the border into Israel and perpetrate a terrorist attack against a bus of civilians, said the IDF statement.
They allegedly acquired four knives, each of which was 20 centimeters long, two gas masks and Strychnine poison to try to gas passengers on a bus.
Further, they intended to stab the passengers while they were being gassed, and would then be “martyred” themselves, according to the statement.
All three participated in various preparatory and surveillance activities, but one of the three at the last moment, reneged on the terrorist attack, noted the statement, which led to him being charged merely for conspiracy to commit murder.

Soon: Armed IDF Soldier on Every Judea and Samaria Bus

Local authority heads in Judea and Samaria met Sunday with IDF Central Command head Roni Numa. The authority heads discussed a number of security issues that have been plaguing their communities.
Among the biggest problems is a lack of control at checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. Because of the laxity of enforcement at some checkpoints, Arabs who are not authorized to enter Area C are not prevented from driving on roads under Israeli civilian and military control. While the majority of these Arabs are simply trying to get to work or home, the officials fear that terrorists will take advantage of the situation to attack Israelis.
In addition, the officials said, there was a major problem with bus transportation with Arabs who have work permits to enter Israeli cities. Many Jewish passengers complain of harassment and intimidation on buses, with a large proportion of the passengers – many of them women and children – afraid to complain, and unable to get assistance from bus drivers.
Numah told the local authority heads that he planned to place a soldier on each bus traveling in Judea and Samaria in order to prevent such intimidation.

Rearrested Terrorist to Serve 20 Years in Prison

A military committee dealing with terrorists who were freed in the Gilad Shalit deal and later re-arrested determined on Sunday that Samer Issawi, a terrorist prisoner who went on a hunger strike in order to pressure Israel to release him, will be sent to 20 years in prison.
Issawi was first arrested in 2002 on terror charges and sentenced to 26 years for terrorist activity. He was released in the Shalit deal in October 2011, but rearrested in July of 2012 for violating the terms of the release agreement.
Once in jail, Issawi began an on and off hunger strike which lasted for more than eight months before he signed a deal with Israel which saw him released in December of 2013.
However, last June Issawi was rearrested and on Sunday, the military prosecutor told the committee that since his release, Issawi had resumed “full terrorist activities”.

Analysis: As Abbas Era Hits 10 Years, Palestinians Mired in Political and Economic Muck

May 8 marks what many consider an unceremonious 10-year anniversary of Mahmoud Abbas becoming the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), though his official term has been expired for more than six of those years. Since Abbas took over for Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, the political and economic situation in the West Bank has become as untenable as ever. With no clear successor to Abbas in the fold and reports of rampant corruption, nepotism, and cronyism, the PA faces an uncertain future.
“The state of affairs in the PA right now is paralysis,” Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, told JNS.org. “Abbas has a stranglehold on political power, and he appears to be intent on remaining in office for the foreseeable future. There is no vice president. There is no succession plan, and there is no oxygen for political challengers to articulate their vision for the future.”
Established by the Oslo Accords peace treaty in 1993 as an interim Palestinian government, the PA—which has been dominated by the Fatah political party and its parent organization, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), throughout its existence—has languished in political and economic limbo for the last several years under Abbas. Peace talks with Israel from 2013-14 crashed, and the Hamas terrorist group continues to grow its popularity among Palestinians.
Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and only maintains control in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas has had a tenuous relationship with Israel, maintaining close security ties with the Jewish state out of a shared fear of Hamas, but also seeing Israel repeatedly cut off tax transfers to the PA, mostly recently due to Abbas’s moves to gain unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state in international agencies.

PreOccupied Territory: Abbas Issues Peace Terms: Heads We Win, Tails You Lose (satire)

In an attempt to break an impasse of more than a year in Israeli-Palestinian final status talks, Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas departed from precedent and proposed his own settlement, under which the two sides would flip a coin to determine who must make concessions on a given point of contention. Under the terms, if the coin comes up heads, the Palestinian side wins, and Israel must make a concession, whereas if it comes up tails, the Israeli side loses, and the Palestinians may extract a concession from them.
Israel and the PLO remain far apart on such troublesome issues as a right of return for the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 conflict; the status of Jerusalem, especially the eastern section; the fate of existing Jewish settlements in what would eventually become the State of Palestine; borders; territorial contiguity; and the extent to which the emerging Palestinian state would have a military.
Under Abbas’s proposed negotiation framework, each of the aforementioned sticking points would be subject to a coin-toss, instead of the protracted, inconclusive, and acrimonious negotiations that have characterized Israeli-Palestinian talks for the last several years – when they have taken place at all. Negotiators for the two sides have not met in more than a year, with each blaming the other for the breakdown and continued intransigence.
The advantage of the coin-toss format, says expert Nathan Detroit, is that it offers a shortcut and a way to save face. “Once negotiators have staked out a position on something, softening or abandoning that position is basically an invitation to the opponent to make further demands, since it smacks of weakness. Abbas’s heads-we-win-tails-you-lose format has an element of genius in it, in that it allows the negotiators to blame the coin and not come off as having given away too much in an attempt to reach agreement.”

Palestinians seek ban on Israel at world soccer body

The Palestinian Soccer Association vowed Sunday to push ahead with efforts to have Israel suspended from FIFA following joint talks with the world soccer body’s president Sepp Blatter in Zurich.
But both sides agreed to continue talking with Blatter, who announced plans to visit the region for top-level talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the issue ahead of the upcoming FIFA Congress in Zurich on May 28-29.
News of the visit was announced by Blatter on Sunday as he met with Israel Soccer Association chief Ofer Eini and his Palestinian counterpart, Jibril Rajoub.
FIFA said the main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the Palestinian FA’s request to suspend their Israeli counterparts at the upcoming FIFA congress.
But the Palestinians said there had been no progress at the meeting, adding they would not be deterred from efforts to have Israel suspended.

Hamas Jails Gaza Man for 'Spying for Israel'

A military court in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Monday jailed a Palestinian convicted of "spying" for Israel to 15 years, judicial sources said.
In March two other men were given the same sentence for the same offence.
Under Hamas and Palestinian Authority law, those convicted of "collaboration" with Israel, murder and drug trafficking face the death penalty.
Execution orders must be approved by the Palestinian Authority president before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognizes the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas whose four-year term ended in 2009.

Hamas Denies ISIS Has Presence in Gaza

Khalil al-Haya, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, on Sunday denied reports of the presence of a branch of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Gaza.
His denial comes despite threats by a Salafist group in Gaza that is affiliated with ISIS to kill Hamas members “one by one” in retaliation for the arrests of its members.
Last Friday, those threats appeared to be edging to fruition, after an ISIS-affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula claimed it launched two "bombs" at Hamas posts in Gaza.
Speaking with the Palestine newspaper on Sunday, al-Haya claimed that the Hamas-controlled authorities in Gaza will not allow any entity to harm the security of the region and that anyone who violates the law will be severely punished.
"Hamas is not deterred by threats of any kind by ISIS or Israel," said al-Haya, who accused the Fatah organization and the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, of deliberately inflating reports of ISIS presence in Gaza.

Egyptian youths face trial for 'insulting Islam' by making fun of ISIS

Four Egyptian kids who dared make fun of ISIS in a harmless video are headed for trial along with their teacher on charges of "insulting Islam," after their Muslim neighbors got hold of the footage and went to police.
Aged between 15 and 16, the youths could face up to five years in a youth detention center – while the teacher would serve any sentence he receives in prison – if the court finds them guilty of violating Egypt’s blasphemy law, Egypt-focused activists say.
Egyptian Christian and civil rights groups are leading calls for their release, but the five – members of the Coptic community that descends from the non-Arab people whose Pharaohs ruled ancient Egypt – have already spent weeks in police holding cells.
“They are some kids who decided to have fun in a private place,” Mina Thabet, a Coptic activist and researcher at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, told FoxNews.com from Cairo.

Denying Reports of Heavy Losses, Hezbollah Claims Seizure of Syria Border Zone

Hezbollah’s media arm claimed on Saturday that the group along with Syrian troops had pushed out rebel fighters from a critical buffer near the Syrian-Lebanese border, but the reported repulse appears to have come at a high cost for the Lebanese terror group.
Opposition fighters in Syria said that Marwan Mughniyeh, a senior commander whose cousin Imad Mughniyeh was reportedly killed by Israel in 2008, was killed in fierce clashes between Hezbollah and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Syrian opposition groups.
While Hezbollah neither confirmed nor denied Mughniyeh’s death, the group refuted rebel claims that it had sustained major losses — some reports said up to 60 fighters. It said only three of its fighters had been killed.
Reports of Mughniyeh’s death came amid an extended campaign in the Qalamoun mountain region, just northeast of Lebanon in Syria, by Hezbollah and Assad’s troops to drive opposition forces from the area.

'Assad puts intelligence chief under house arrest for planning coup'

Syrian President Bashar Assad has placed his top intelligence official under house arrest for allegedly conspiring with the regime’s enemies to carry out a coup, the British daily Telegraph reported on Monday.
Ali Mamlouk, who heads the National Security Bureau, was reportedly detained after he was suspected of maintaining contact with governments backing the Syrian rebels as well as oppositionists from abroad.
According to the Telegraph report, key associates of the president, including those with access to him, “are increasingly turning on each other.”
The newspaper cites sources within the presidential palace as saying that there is great dissension within the various intelligence arms, some of whose commanders are growing wary of Iran’s burgeoning influence in Damascus.
Factions within Assad's "inner circle" are weary of the role the Islamic Republic is playing in Syria's domestic conflict and how much influence their officials are amassing in Damascus, while others are in support of Iranian patronage.

Rape and Torture: Iran's Political Weapons

The rape and torture of Kurdish and dissidents in Iran -- both women and men -- is now widespread and systematic.
Most recently, on May 4, Farinaz Khosrawani, 25, a Kurdish woman employed at the Hotel Tara in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan, plunged from a fourth-floor window of the Tara Hotel, Kurdish news media reported.
Khosrawani allegedly jumped to her death to avoid being raped by an Iranian government security agent; the circumstances surrounding her death have not yet been confirmed.
Apparently furious over Khosrawani's unexplained death, thousands of Kurds took to the streets, torching the hotel where she had worked. Police officers, according to news accounts, used tear gas to disperse the crowds.
"When Farina's body was found in front of the hotel and crowds started to gather; the government security employee involved was arrested and taken for questioning," according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). "The news then reached social media and information regarding this issue was widespread. This has caused increased tensions and sensitivity around any news regarding confirmation of Farinaz's cause of death."