Thursday, June 29, 2017
PMW: PA libel: Israel uses drugs in war against Palestinians
Discussing the war on drugs in Jerusalem, a Palestinian Authority TV host stated that Israel is deliberately targeting young Palestinians with drugs. The Palestinian coordinator of a UNDP-sponsored campaign against drugs, Isaam Jweihan, endorsed this PA libel, stating that Israel uses drugs as "an unconventional weapon" to "empty Jerusalem of Arabs:"PA TV spreads libel accusing Israel of spreading drugs among young Palestinians
PA TV host: “Jerusalem is probably the Palestinian district that suffers the most from drugs, [because] the occupation mainly targets young age groups in Jerusalem...”
Coordinator of the Project of the War on Drugs in Jerusalem, Issam Jweihan: “A war is being waged [by Israel] against Jerusalem. This is an unconventional war in which unconventional weapons are being used. The goal of the war is clear - to Judaize the city and empty it of its [Arab] residents. They are using unconventional weapons. The weapon that brings the best results for the Israelis is drugs.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, June 21, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented this drug libel numerous times, and it is even being voiced by close associates of PA Chairman Abbas. Imad Hamato, who Abbas recently appointed to head a system of Islamic schools and who is also the host of a weekly PA TV program teaching Islam, has similarly taught that “Israel’s... war against the Arabs and Muslims is through sex mania... drugs... to destroy... our children’s values”:
IsraellyCool: WATCH: Arab-Palestinian Leader Anwar Nusseibeh: Palestine Was Really Just Part of Syria
Arab-Palestinian Leader Anwar Nusseibeh was no friend of Israel, but in the documentary Pillar of Fire (which I posted about yesterday here), he admitted that right after World War I, there was no separate “palestinian” identity – they were just part of Syria.
Arab-Palestinian Leader Anwar Nusseibeh: Palestine Was Really Just Part of Syria
UK Government Coalition Partner Urges Parliamentary Vote to Congratulate Israel on 1967 War Victory
The parliamentary partner of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party has submitted a resolution to the House of Commons congratulating Israel on the 50th anniversary of its victory in the 1967 war.A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: May 2017
Members of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) submitted an “Early Day Motion” — a device which rarely leads to a parliamentary debate, but allows members of parliament to highlight their support for a particular cause — encouraging British legislators to celebrate Israel’s victory.
“This House commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the Six Day War when Israel stood against unprovoked attacks and won a stunning victory in just six days; congratulates the Israeli Defence Force and its ability to defeat its enemies and to safeguard peace; and urges all to keep the peace in the Middle East,” the motion reads.
"The whole system failed and that is what has been happening for the last 30 years. And it is PC. People are just too, too afraid to, you know, just too, too afraid to speak the truth." — Mohan Singh, founder of the Sikh Awareness Society.What Might be Missing in the Muslim World?
MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, revealed that it has identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the country.
Manchester bomber Salman Abedi used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, according to the Telegraph. Abedi is believed to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run-up to the attack even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. It also emerged that the chief imam of Abedi's mosque fought with militants in Libya. The mosque was also reported to have hosted hate preachers who called for British soldiers to be killed and non-believers to be stoned to death.
"It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root." — Tom Brake, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman.
Recently, Chinese, Japanese and other educators have found that rote learning and endless drills produce high achievers without creativity, originality, or the ability to think for themselves. Western academic standards of rationality and objectivity have been behind most of the West's achievements.Sexism and Disorder at Al Quds Day rally
"The campus has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore. No Pakistani university, including QAU, allowed Abdus Salam to set foot on its campus, although he had received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in formulating the standard model of particle physics." — Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, commenting on Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second-best university among the 57 Muslim states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The very thought that "Islamic science" has to be different from "Western science" suggests the need for a radically different way of thinking. Scientific method is scientific method and rationality is rationality, regardless of the religion practiced by individual scientists.
Last weekend, the anti-Israel Al Quds Day rallies were held across the world. I attended one in Toronto so I could learn more about the terrorist sympathizers who attend these anti-semitic demonstrations.
What I saw wasn't surprising at all:
Women and girls were segregated from the rest of the protesters, while ignorant white leftists promoting terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.
‘Israel has legal right to freeze Palestinian taxes that go to terrorists’
Israel can legally withhold tax fees from the Palestinian Authority to offset the money that it pays to Palestinian terrorists and their families, legal experts from the Justice and Defense Ministry told the Knesset.It’s official: Israelis love Trump
“We don’t see any legal impediment,” Justice Ministry attorney Anat Assif told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee which on Wednesday debated a bill that would prohibit the passage of such fees.
The legislation authored by MK Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid) is in the preparatory stage for its second and third reading, after which it would be passed into law.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken about the importance of halting such funding and the security cabinet last summer agreed to halt such payments, but in practice, Stern’s office said, the money is still being transferred.
Israelis have never hidden their love and admiration for President Trump, but now it's official — or at least proved scientifically.Under Trump, Israeli Victims of Terror at Least Get Genuine Condolences
An international survey carried out over the past few months by the Pew Research Center found that regard for the United States, its new leader and its policies has tumbled drastically around the world since Barack Obama left the presidency five months ago, except in two countries: Russia and Israel.
In Israel, there was little surprise at the poll’s results.
Trump, his family and his senior advisers visited here a month ago as part of his first international trip. During his 28-hour stay, he received a five-star welcome from Israeli leaders. And images of him; his wife, Melania; daughter Ivanka; and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, warmed Israeli and Jewish hearts.
There are other areas, too, where the Israelis seemed to view Trump favorably, according to Pew’s research.
When it comes to world affairs and some of his more prominent policy proposals, such as building a wall between the United States and Mexico and withdrawing from trade and climate agreements, more than half of Israelis (56 percent) said they had confidence in Trump to do the right thing.
His suggestion that the United States could withdraw from the Iranian nuclear agreement reached under Obama was welcomed by a majority of the public (67 percent) in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other government officials consistently opposed the deal Obama signed with Iran, seeing it as a betrayal of the Jewish state.
Although US President Donald Trump made a host of widely-publicized pledges to strengthen the US-Israeli relationship during his presidential campaign, his five-month old administration has shown few tangible signs of movement on any of them. It has passed on opportunities to move the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and to scrap the Iran nuclear deal. And it certainly doesn’t appear to be undertaking a major rethink about how to bring about Israeli-Palestinian peace.Haley on Trump’s Warning to Syria: It Saved Many Innocent Lives
But credit the White House with making one critically important, lower-profile change, evident in the reaction of Trump’s peace envoy to the June 16 killing of Border Police officer Hadas Malka by Palestinian terrorists outside of Jerusalem’s Old City.
“The United States stands with our ally Israel and condemns the savage terrorist attack in Jerusalem,” tweeted Trump’s lead international negotiator Jason Greenblatt as he was leaving on a trip to Israel. After visiting the family of the deceased on June 19, he released a prepared statement saying “[St.-] Sgt. Major [Hadas] Malka was murdered by terrorists,” with a bit at the end about Trump’s vision for a Middle East free from “threats of terrorism and extremism.”
If all that seems pretty typical of how an American envoy would react to a deadly terrorist attack against a longstanding US ally, that’s precisely the point. Under previous administrations, it had become standard practice in reacting to terrorist attacks against Israelis to urge Israel (or both sides) to “exercise restraint,” “not escalate tensions any further,” “avoid any kind of innocent civilian casualties,” “avoid... making provocative statements that can further inflame tensions,” and various other equivalents.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday that she believes President Donald Trump's warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad two days earlier not to use chemical weapons saved many innocent lives.UN HEADQUARTERS TO HOLD 2-DAY CONFERENCE TO JUSTIFY KILLING ISRAELIS
Haley was testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), the committee's chairman, asked if there has been any reaction to Trump's warning. Haley told Royce that the Trump administration has not observed an incident yet but said the president's statement was still necessary because the U.S. had seen similar preparations to what occurred before the Assad regime used chemical weapons on civilians on April 4.
After the April 4 chemical weapons attack, which killed dozens of people including children, the U.S. military launched cruise missiles at a Syrian government airfield.
Haley said Trump's message was also a warning to Iran and Russia, both of which support Assad in the Syrian conflcit, "that this was something we were not going to put up with."
"So I would like to think that the president saved many innocent men, women, and children," Haley said.
On June 29 and 30, 2017, a U.N. committee will hold a "Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation" aimed at demonizing Israel, encouraging violence and the hatred of Jews, and rewriting history. The forum has been organized by the U.N. "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People" (CEIRPP), which was created on the same day as the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution in 1975. Although the resolution was ultimately rescinded in 1991, the committee created to implement its antisemitic message was left in place and continues to operate.'The UN is colluding with terror supporters'
Among the invited speakers are a host individuals hand-picked by the U.N. Committee because of their known support for Palestinian terrorism, involvement in incitement to violence, and promotion of antisemitism. They include:
Saeb Erekat (Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organization): "We are protecting ourselves with the bodies of our sons and daughters, because Israel does not protect itself, but rather its crimes, occupation and settlement... Whoever wants to fight ISIS and terror in the region, must understand that this can't be done without drying up the quagmire of Israeli occupation in the region.'"
Mouin Rabbani (Institute for Palestine Studies): "...Netanyahu is the heir to that faction of the pre-state Zionist movement eventually known as revisionism, which was in fact inspired by fascism, albeit an Italian variant led by Mussolini. Um, and during World War II, in 1941, one faction of that movement, which was eventually led by Yitzhak Shamir, made an approach to Nazi Germany, during the Holocaust I should add, proposing an alliance with Berlin against the British, who then ruled Palestine. So, there's a long history here. Netanyahu today is the heir and the leader of that wing of the Zionist movement."
An anti-Israel event scheduled to be held at the United Nations this week will feature organizations allied with the Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror groups.UN chief distances himself from Palestinian summit on 50 years of occupation
The United Nations Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation, which is set to be held at the UN’s headquarters in New York this Thursday and Friday, is being organized by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and is unapologetic in its anti-Israel bent, with the first day being dedicated to talks under the headline of “Ending the Occupation: The Path to Independence, Justice, and Peace for Palestine”.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that a representative of the radical left-wing NGO B’Tselem was invited to address the event. The group’s participation in the event drew criticism from Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon.
“It's a complete disgrace that an Israeli group is helping the Palestinians harm Israel at the podium of the UN,” said Danon.
“B’Tselem is continuing its obsessive attempts to defame Israel in front of the world, and are taking advantage of their status as an Israeli organization in order to legitimize incitement against us.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres indicated that a summit organized by a pro-Palestinian UN group to mark five decades of Israeli control of the West Bank did not have the blessing of his office.Israel seeks secret ballot on Hebron inscription on World Heritage List
Israel’s envoy to the UN Danny Danon had earlier protested to Guterres against the “United Nations Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation” because, he said, some of the billed participants were from organizations with ties to Palestinian terror groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The two-day meeting, beginning Thursday at UN headquarters in New York, was organized by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
Answering questions about the forum, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for Guterres, said Wednesday that his office was “aware of the position of the Israeli Government.”
“They’ve communicated with the Secretary‑General’s Office,” he said. “This is a meeting that is being organized by a committee of the membership. It is not something that is being sponsored by the Secretariat. I think any questions as to the invitees and the way the meeting is organized should be directed to the members of the committee.”
Israel hopes to sway the World Heritage Committee to vote by secret ballot when it decides on July 7 whether to inscribe Hebron’s Old City and the Tomb of the Patriarchs on the List of World Heritage in Danger under the “State of Palestine.”Israel and India: A new strategic partnership
“There is no doubt that if there is a public ballot, we will lose,” Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris Carmel Shama-Hacohen told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
With only 10 days left until the committee’s 21 member states cast their votes, Israel is seeking every edge possible to ensure that the necessary twothirds majority of those present oppose the move.
It’s so close, Shama-Hacohen said, that one vote could make the difference.
It seems as though not a single week goes by without some head of state visiting us. The past several years have seen a sharp increase in the number of visits made by high-ranking foreign dignitaries to Israel, to the point that they are no longer considered special.Terror-Tied Qatari Think Tank Has Anti-Israel, Pro-BDS Stance
Having said that, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit next week is special, because it underscores the 180-degree turn the bilateral ties have undergone. For many decades, India was led by a staunchly anti-Israel socialist party that supported every diplomatic effort to attack the Jewish state. This was based on an ideological platform dating back to the founders of independent India, who saw the Zionist movement as an organ of Western colonialism. This twisted worldview had India stand by the Arabs as the victims of colonialism who experienced an ordeal similar to that of Indians.
India also thought it could reap benefits from its alliance with the Arabs and be able to tap the economic potential of Islamic states. India further hoped this affinity would give it prestige on the world stage and prevent unrest among its large Muslim minority. But these years of hostility are over. The old guard in India is no longer in power, and the ideological blindness is gone too. Modi and his party don't consider Zionism an imperialist power but as a positive national movement representing a people living in their homeland.
Earlier this month, major Arab nations — led by Saudi Arabia — severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing the country of financing and sheltering terrorists and maintaining cordial relations with Iran. Yet Doha’s pro-terror policies have not just made the Middle East more unstable; they also directly threaten Israel’s security.Shin Bet Chief: Israel Has Thwarted 2,000 Terror Attacks Since 2016 Due to Cyber Efforts
For the past decade, Qatar has provided financial and diplomatic support to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, by hosting its leaders and pledging millions of dollars to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Qatar has also sponsored the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is aimed at economically isolating Israel to end its alleged “oppression” of the Palestinians.
A new Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) investigation has found that senior academics tied to a Doha-based think tank believed to be financed by the Qatari government — and its Washington, DC, affiliate — routinely engage in anti-Israel rhetoric and are strong BDS supporters.
Osama Abu-Irshaid, a non-resident scholar at the Doha-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) was a featured speaker at a three-day international conference in Tunis in August, which was hosted by ACRPS to discuss using boycotts to combat “Israeli occupation.”
The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency revealed on Tuesday the Jewish state has prevented about 2,000 terror attacks since the beginning of 2016 due to cybersecurity efforts.Palestinian gunman opens fire on Israeli troops in Hebron, is shot dead
“The Shin Bet is dealing with considerable threats, from terrorist organizations to individual hackers,” Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman said at the 2017 Cyber Week conference in Tel Aviv. “In order to foil these threats, we have carried out dozens of sophisticated and successful operations. With the help of high-quality intelligence received through our cyber network, many terrorist attacks have been thwarted.”
“The Shin Bet, alongside its partners, has succeeded — through technological, intelligence and operational adjustments — in locating more than 2,000 potential lone terrorists since the beginning of 2016,” he continued.
According to Argaman, Israel has prevented these attacks thanks to coordination among the country’s top agencies, in what he described as a “cyber coalition.”
“In cyber, the name of the game is ‘jointness’ and it is the only way to go,” he said. “We counter our adversaries through a ‘cyber coalition’ that includes cooperation with the IDF, the Mossad, the Cyber Bureau, the Defense Ministry…as well as with intelligence organizations around the world.”
A Palestinian gunman opened fired on Israeli troops during a raid to uncover an arms cache in the West Bank town of Hebron on Wednesday night, the Israeli military said.Errant shell from Syria lands in Golan Heights as Netanyahu tours area
In response to the immediate threat, the forces fired towards the suspect resulting in his death, the military stated.
The IDF released a photo of a makeshift automatic weapon lying on the ground that it said belonged to the gunman.
The Palestinian health ministry confirmed the death of the man but did not immediately release details of his identity.
There were no casualties to the IDF soldiers.
A shell from fighting in Syria landed in the Golan Heights on Wednesday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was touring the strategic plateau. There were no injuries or damage caused and the PM was not in any danger.UN PEACEKEEPERS ARE COVERING UP HEZBOLLAH ACTIVITY NEAR ISRAELI BORDER
The IDF immediately struck a Syrian military position from which the mortar shell was fired, fulfilling Netanyahu’s vow that Israel “will not accept stray fire” from the Syrian civil war landing in its territory.
The incident came as Netanyahu spoke at an event marking the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the city of Katzrin, some 17 kilometers (10 miles) from the Quneitra area where the mortar struck.
“We are here celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Katzrin, the capital of the Golan Heights,” Netanyahu said. “I said that we will not tolerate spillover and that we will respond to every firing. During my speech shells from the Syrian side landed in our territory and the IDF has already struck back. Whoever attacks us – we will attack him. This is our policy and we will continue with it.”
Earlier, in the speech, Netanyahu referred to the uptick in incidents over the past week of stray fire from fighting in Syria landing in Israel, saying that Israel would “respond with decisiveness and strength” to any spillover from the civil war.
"More and more voices in Israel are saying that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has become a burden and its mission is no longer needed.Israel freezes visits to Hamas prisoners amid talks over troops’ remains
'UNIFIL was supposed to be the enforcement apparatus for Security Council Resolution 1701,' a high-placed Israeli military source said on condition of anonymity. 'But in actual fact, it has become only a fig leaf for that resolution. UNIFIL whitewashes Hezbollah activity on the 'Blue Line' [border], and serves as an excuse for Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to violate the UN resolution and ratchet up tensions along the border. We no longer need this force here any longer. Better to remain with only the coordination and liaison units, and that's all,' he added...
The confrontation between Israel and UNIFIL erupted at the beginning of the month, in the course of the June 7-9 visit of US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to Israel. Haley, who enjoys tremendous popularity in Israel, was taken for a patrol of the northern border line between Israel and Lebanon...
Security Council Resolution 1701 ... states that Hezbollah militants are not to be south of the Litani River. Then Haley was given intelligence information that Israel had collected in the recent year. In addition, via the special observation instruments brought there, Haley was able to discern observation points erected by Hezbollah along the length of the Lebanese border, camouflaged as a green environmental organization for nature protection. At exactly this stage, the UNIFIL commander, Irish Maj. Gen. Michael Beary, arrived. Haley asked the general for his response to the information she received, and explained to him that she saw with her own eyes how Hezbollah militants are clearly present south of the Litani - areas where the Security Council resolution forbids them to have a presence. And UNIFIL is the body that is supposed to enforce this resolution. The general denied the information...
Hamas on Thursday said that Israel had stopped allowing Gazan members of the terror group serving time in Israeli prisons to receive visits from family members, in a move intended to ramp up pressure amid negotiations for the return of three Israeli civilians and the bodies of two soldiers being held in the Strip.Hamas' Catch-22
Hamas leaders condemned the move as “the beginning of a war against the prisoners.”
“We will not allow this decision to stand, whatever the price may be,” they said in a statement.
An Israeli prison official refused to confirm the policy change.
Israel is holding some 150 Hamas security prisoners from Gaza. In the past, families of Palestinian inmates have been granted permits to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel to visit them.
The families of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two soldiers killed in Gaza during fighting in 2014, have urged Israel to disallow the visits as a means of pressuring Hamas to return the troops’ bodies and praised the reported move.
The voices rising from Gaza are not of war and certainly not of triumph, but of distress. It has been 10 years since its people took Gaza by force, and Hamas is not only looking at a dead end, but a Catch-22. Even as Qatar, its primary benefactor, is under a diplomatic barrage from its neighbors; the cries of despair are still emanating from Gaza, where residents are paying the price for Hamas' isolation in the Arab world.Hamas leader stuck in Gaza after Qatar slams doors shut
These are no longer the days of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt, when Turkey and Qatar did as they pleased across the Arab world, and when Hamas leaders freely globe-trotted from capital to capital. Now, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is caged in; forced to wait until his Egyptian guard feels like letting him out.
Cairo has its own grudge against Hamas. It wants to see action first and foremost, such as the buffer zone being built along Gaza's border with Egypt, intended to prevent terrorists from Islamic State's Sinai branch from finding shelter inside Gaza under Hamas' blind eye.
Thus, bereft of outside support and facing boiling distress at home, the Strip is convulsing from one crisis to the next. With so many people struggling to keep their heads barely above water (in the dark no less), Hamas is now even willing to consider waiving a white flag and handing over the keys to Mohammed Dahlan -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' detested political rival -- who could very well be the only one capable of turning things around in Gaza.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who in early May was elected to replace Khaled Mashaal as the terrorist organization's political chief, is stuck in Gaza. Israel Hayom has learned that officials from Hamas' political bureau, and mainly Haniyeh himself, cannot find a single Arab country to host them.Hamas begins work on buffer zone with Egypt to improve ties
The role of political chief requires a great deal of travel. In the past, Hamas' political bureau was based in Syria. However, with the outbreak of the civil war there in 2011, Hamas sided with the rebels, and Syrian President Bashar Assad banished Mashaal from the country.
After being expelled from Syria, the Hamas political bureau relocated to Qatar, with Mashaal operating from Doha.
When Haniyeh was chosen to succeed Mashaal and head the political bureau, Hamas began making preparations for his transfer from Gaza to Qatar, where he would have enjoyed an exclusive lifestyle and the ability to travel freely, as his position requires. But in a stroke of bad luck for Haniyeh, a few days before his relocation, the Qatari government told senior Hamas officials to leave the country immediately.
The Qatari decision came on the heels of an emerging diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf states, and Egypt over Qatar's support of Islamic terrorist groups and its warm relations with Iran. Now, the Hamas leadership is worried that Haniyeh will be targeted for assassination.
Hamas on Wednesday said they had begun constructing a security buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, as it attempts to improve ties with Cairo.How Trita Parsi and NIAC Used the White House to Advance Iran’s Agenda
The new area will be a closed-off military zone, and will stretch 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) along the southern border of the coastal Strip with the Sinai Peninsula, and will reach 100 meters (330 feet) into Gaza, the Hamas-run interior ministry said. It will include observation towers, cameras and lighting.
Tawfiq Abu Naim, a security chief of the Gaza-based terror group, said the new security zone was being constructed as part of a recent agreement between Cairo and Hamas.
“These continuing measures are for the sake of achieving control of the southern border and to completely prevent infiltration and smuggling,” Abu Naim said in the statement.
He added that the construction of the buffer zone “is a reassuring message directed at the Egyptian side that the national security of Egypt is the national security of Gaza.”
Yet contrary to NIAC’s claims, the Iranian regime has intensified its holocaust-denying and anti-Jewish hatred. In January 2016, as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Khamenei published a video titled “Are the Dark Ages Over” on his official website which included one of his speeches from two years ago in which he questions the reality of the Holocaust. In May 2016, Iran held another Holocaust cartoon festival inviting the usual despicable cast of characters from Europe and around the world with the supreme leader sending a message to the organizers of the event thanking and congratulating them.One woman fights Iran's modesty police with a hashtag
Regarding NIAC’s claim that the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions would moderate Iranian foreign policy, there is some consensus that Iran feels emboldened to pursue its radical and hegemonic policies in the region. As CENTCOM Commander General Joseph L. Votel testified before the House Armed Service Committee in March 2017, “We have not seen any improvement in Iran’s behavior since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), addressing Iran’s nuclear program, was finalized in July 2015. Iran aspires to be a regional hegemon and its forces and proxies oppose U.S. interests in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria, and seek to hinder achievement of U.S. objectives in Afghanistan and some Central Asian States.”
What is unquestionable here is that NIAC’s activities since 2002 and particularly during the Obama administration eased pressure on the Iranian regime and helped Tehran to advance its strategic goals.
Before she begins her Wednesday morning, Iranian activist Masih Alinejad spends hours sifting through scores of videos and photos sent to her of women in Iran wearing white headscarves or white clothing as part of a growing online protest.MEMRI: Syrian Opposition Website: Assad Visited New Long-Range Missile Facility Near Baniyas
To campaign against the Iran's obligatory headscarf (hijab) policy for women, Alinejad last month encouraged women to take videos or photos of themselves wearing white and upload them on social media with the hashtag #whitewednesdays.
"My goal is just empowering women and giving them a voice. If the government and the rest of the world hear the voice of these brave women then they have to recognize them," Alinejad told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
Under Iran's Islamic law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes for the sake of modesty. Violators are publicly admonished, fined or arrested.
Although no official records have been collected, a report by campaign group Justice for Iran in 2014 found over 10 years nearly half a million women were cautioned and more than 30,000 women arrested in cities across Iran over the hijab law.
The Syrian opposition website zamanalwsl.net reported on June 28, 2017 that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad recently visited a new facility for developing and manufacturing long-range missiles that is under direct Iranian supervision, and met there with Iranian and Syrian experts. According to the report, the construction of the facility, which is located in Wadi Jahannam near the coastal city of Baniyas, began about a year ago, and it will begin operating at the end of this year. The report was accompanied by an aerial photograph of the area (see below).Video Games ‘Resident Evil’ and ‘Call of Duty’ Spread Islamophobia, Says Turkey’s Government
It should be mentioned that, since the report appeared in an opposition website, its authenticity is uncertain.
The following are excerpts from it:
"Reliable sources knowledgeable about the regime's 'scientific research' activities reveal that Assad's open and documented visit to the homes of some of his supporters in the Hama area was merely a cover for a secret visit to one of the most sensitive military facilities of the regime and its ally Iran. According to the sources [he] visited a new secret research facility whose construction began last year in a fortified area east of Baniyas, in a rugged valley called Wadi Jahannam. This deep valley is in the Tartous governorate, close to several villages belonging to the Baniyas administrative district: Al-Annaza, Nahl, Al-Alayqa and Al-Ghansala.
Video games like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero provide entertainment to millions around the world.
But Turkey’s Youth and Sports Ministry says that many popular foreign-made games are responsible for intentionally spreading fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims—or Islamophobia—and desecrating Islamic symbols.
The head of the ministry’s Education, Culture and Research Commission, Huzeyfe Yilmaz, told the Turkish parliament that some 25 million people play videogames for a total of 39 million hours per day in the country, Turkish paper Hurriyet Daily News reported on Monday.
But Yilmaz said that many games included “harmful material”—such as explicit sexual content or violence—as well as Islamophobic themes and suggested there should be tougher restrictions on selling them in Turkey.
“The goal [of many games] is to give people a negative perception about Islam. Digital games are used as a tool to spread Islamophobia,” said Yilmaz, according to Hurriyet. “Often the player is put in the role of a soldier and they gain points by killing Muslims, who are shown to them as terrorists. The main goal is creating enmity towards Islam.”
On the government-run website, 19 games are already listed as containing content that is potentially Islamophobic. Several games in the Call of Duty franchise—which have sold over 250 million copies in total, making it one of the most popular franchises of all time—are blacklisted by the ministry.
