UNESCO Has Cast Out Christianity: Paul Merkley, Bayview Review, Oct. 31, 2016 — The official website of UNESCO…
Hungary Opens Office for Persecuted Christians: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage, Oct. 14, 2016 — The nation of Hungary recently did something that is as unprecedented as it is commonsensical and humanitarian: it “has become the first government to open an office specifically to address the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Europe.”
Securing a Future for Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Ben Cohen, JNS, Oct. 7, 2016 — You have to wonder if the barbarians fighting under the flag of the Islamic State still believe that 72 virgins will be waiting for them in paradise once they become "martyrs."
The Palestinians’ War on the Balfour Declaration: Ruthie Blum, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 30, 2016 — Encouraged and empowered by the recent UNESCO resolution that rejects Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall…
Why was Pope Francis AWOL at UNESCO vote?: Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein, Jewish Journal, Nov. 1, 2016
Embattled Christians Push for Homeland in Middle East: Perry Chiaramonte, Fox News, Sept. 13, 2016
US Must Support Safe Haven for Persecuted Christians in the Middle East: Mario Bramnick, JNS, Oct. 17, 2016
A Rabbi's Warning to U.S. Christians: Rabbi Daniel Lapin, CERC, 2007
UNESCO HAS CAST OUT CHRISTIANITY
Paul Merkley
Bayview Review, Oct. 31, 2016
The official website of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) explains that the body “was created in order to respond to the firm belief of nations, forged by two world wars in less than a generation that political and economic agreements are not enough to build a lasting peace. Peace must be established on the basis of humanity’s moral and intellectual solidarity.”
Over the last few days, serving in the cause of humanity’s moral and intellectual solidarity, UNESCO has ground out several resolutions condemning Israel for “aggressions” throughout Jerusalem and for “illegal measures” against the freedom of worship of Muslims. In the latest of these declarations, the sites upon and around the Temple mount are referred only by their Muslim names – which has the intended effect of erasing memory of the Temple and of any belonging of Israel and the Jews.
While the attention of most of the world was on the mindless subversion of the right of Jews to belong in Jerusalem, few have noticed that these declarations – not incidentally, but frontally — eradicate the grounds for acceptance of the Gospel.
The hope of the gang of dictators and Muslim absolutist that run UNESCO is that they have damaged Israel by damaging Judaism. However that may be, there can be no doubt that their greater mandate is to cast Christianity out into utter darkness – by decree of the Parliament of Nations.
As expected, the historic churches of the Western world … have so far ignored these resolutions altogether – on the assumption that they are intended to weaken the Jews, who, after all, have this coming. The only writers I have discovered who have noticed the larger threat that it presents to Christian are Jews. These are Shimon Koffler Fogel (National Post, October 19, 2016,) and Jonathan S. Tobin (Commentary, Oct. 2016.) What does this tell us about the theological alertness of Christian theologians?
Fogel notes: “The Christian Gospels explicitly record how Jesus, a practising Jew, preached in synagogues and visited the Temple in Jerusalem. To deny the presence of a Jewish Temple, a matter confirmed by independent scholarship, is to tell Christians that their Bible — and their understanding of the life of Jesus — is based on false history…From the heart of one brother to another, I urge my Christian friends: don’t be silent when those motivated by the politics of hate attempt to erase your Bible and our shared heritage.”…
In the immediate wake of World War, there went up a great sigh of surge of relief. Civilization had been rescued from barbarism, all the deep-thinkers said; democracy had passed its ultimate test. A spasm of idealism took hold among the intellectuals. Most of the world was still well outside the sphere of democracy and liberalism, but all would soon be inducted into a global fraternity of democracies. Champions of imperialism fell silent. Within two years, the British colonies of India and Pakistan were released to form independent nations –to be followed before long by all the other peoples that had made up the British, the French, the Italian and the Dutch empires. The universal hope was that our civilization would set the example for the great community of self-governing community of free nations — ribs out of the side of European civilization…
The founding of the United Nations in 1945 was the earliest fruit of the new age of universal cooperation. But in fact over the next several years, every major issue that came before the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly immediately occasioned bitter confrontation between the two Super Powers — the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The only exception was the decision to Partition the Palestine Mandate. A vote of two-thirds was required: 33 voted in favor 13 against. All 11 of the Muslim states were among those who voted against. Britain abstained – not her finest hour.
This action could not have happened except at this moment when the level of idealism was high in Western politics, following the overthrow of the Axis powers. This would not happen again until the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1990. But there was a large and ugly worm in this apple: all Arab nations and all Muslim nations opposed the Partition decision on theological grounds. Any lands once ruled by Muslims, they screamed, can never be yielded to non-Muslims. In the case of Palestine, this general dictum was fortified by the circumstance that the world was asking Muslims to yield to Jews!
The Jewish people accepted and supported the Partition – which called for the creation of an Arab (not “a Palestinian” state.) The entire Arab world, abetted by the entire Muslim world, refused—and resorted to the God of War. The decision of the Jewish people in 1947 to comply with the UN decision with regard to Partition of Palestine and the refusal of the Muslim world to do the same has brought us today to Israel’s condemnation and the triumph of the non-compliant states. Because of the total solidarity in action of all Muslim nations within the UN and the consistent collaboration with them of that minority of the others who see advantage in trading favours with the UN’s largest bloc, UNESCO has become a patient partisan of Islam.
A similar sad history belongs to UNESCO, founded in 1945. A shiny product of this mood of liberal optimism, it was intended as a device for accomplishing civilization, as understood by Western people, of putting scientific discovery at service of mankind to achieve global peace and good will among men. Muslim contempt for historical fact has become absolute during the last half-century or so. Back when the British ruled over Muslims and Jews within the Mandate that it held from the League of Nations, the Supreme Moslem Council published “A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif, wherein we read: “The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”
But somewhere along the way Muslims everywhere have lost the little interest that they ever had in historical fact. The current head of the Supreme Moslem Council, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, now proclaims: “The Al-Buraq Wall [Western Wall] and its plaza are a Muslim religious property, and the Israeli government’s decisions do not affect it…The Al-Buraq Wall is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Jews have no relation to it. (Al Ayam, Nov. 22, 1997) In the same spirit this imam calls for erasure of the myth of the Holocaust: “Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity…” (Interview in La Republica, March 24, 2000, translated by MEMRI)…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
HUNGARY OPENS OFFICE FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS
Raymond Ibrahim
Frontpage, Oct. 14, 2016
The nation of Hungary recently did something that is as unprecedented as it is commonsensical and humanitarian: it “has become the first government to open an office specifically to address the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Europe.” Zoltan Balog, Hungary’s Minister for Human Resources, explained: “Today, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion, where out of five people killed [for] religious reasons, four of them are Christians. In 81 countries around the world, Christians are persecuted, and 200 million Christians live in areas where they are discriminated against. Millions of Christian lives are threatened by followers of radical religious ideologies.” “Followers of radical religious ideologies” is of course code for Muslims—they who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of Christian persecution in the world.
This move comes “after Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Victor Orban, drew criticism in the EU by saying Europe should focus on helping Christians before helping millions of Muslims coming into Europe.”
Orban explained: “If we really want to help, we should help where the real problem is.… We should first help the Christian people before Islamic people.” But do Western governments “really want to help” those suffering true persecution? For if they did, not only would taking in “Christian people before Islamic people” be the most humane thing to do; it would also benefit Western nations as well.
Consider some facts: Unlike Muslims, Christian minorities are being singled out and persecuted simply because of their despised religious identity. From a humanitarian point of view, then—and humanitarianism is the reason being cited for accepting millions of refugees—Christian refugees should receive greater priority over Muslim migrants. Even before the Islamic State was formed, Christians were and continue to be targeted by Muslims—Muslim individuals, Muslim mobs, Muslim regimes, and Muslim terrorists, from Muslim countries of all races (Arab, African, Asian)—and for the same reason: they are infidel number one. (See Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians for hundreds of anecdotes before the rise of ISIS as well as the Muslim doctrines that create such hate and contempt for Christians.)
Conversely, Muslim refugees—as opposed to the many ISIS and other jihadi sympathizers posing as “refugees”—are not fleeing religious persecution (most Muslim migrants are, like ISIS, Sunnis), but chaos created by the violent and supremacist teachings of their own religion. Hence why when large numbers of Muslims enter Western nations—in Germany, Sweden, France, the UK—tension, crimes, rapes, and terrorism soar. And hence why Hungarian minister Balog also said: “Our interest not only lies in the Middle East but in forms of discrimination and persecution of Christians all over the world. It is therefore to be expected that we will keep a vigilant eye on the more subtle forms of persecutions within European borders.”
Indeed, what more is needed than the fact that so-called Muslim “refugees” are throwing Christians overboard during their boat voyages across the Mediterranean to Europe? Or that Muslim majority refugee centers in Europe are essentially microcosms of Muslim majority nations: there, Christian minorities continue to be persecuted.
Most recently a report found that 88% of the 231 Christian refugees interviewed in Germany have suffered religiously motivated persecution in the form of insults, death threats, and sexual assaults. Some were pressured to convert to Islam. “I really didn’t know that after coming to Germany I would be harassed because of my faith in the very same way as back in Iran,” one Christian refugee said. “These are not isolated cases. I don’t know of any refugee shelter from Garmisch to Hamburg where we have not found such cases,” said a German authority. Is persecuting religious minorities the behavior of people who are in need of a sympathetic welcome by Europeans and Americans? Or is this behavior yet another reminder that it is non-Muslims from the Middle East who are truly in need of sanctuary?
Western nations should further accept Christian refugees because Western foreign policies are directly responsible for exacerbating their persecution. Christians did not flee from Bashar Assad’s Syria, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Muamar Gaddafi’s Libya. Their systematic persecution—to the point of genocide—began only after the U.S. and other European nations interfered in those nations under the pretext of “democracy.” All they did is unleash the jihadi forces that the dictators had long kept suppressed. Now the Islamic State is deeply embedded in all three nations, enslaving, raping, and slaughtering countless Christian “infidels” and other minorities.
Surely if the West is responsible for unleashing the full-blown jihad on Christians, the least it can do is put Christians on the top of its refugee list—that is, if it “really cares” about helping? In fact, it’s the opposite: report after report has shown that in Western nations persecuted Christians are “at the bottom of the heap” of refugees to be granted asylum. Despite the U.S. government’s acknowledgement that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians in Syria, the Obama administration has taken in 5,435 Muslims, but only 28 Christians—even though Christians are approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population; in other words, to be on the same ratio with Muslims, at least 500 Christians should’ve been granted asylum, not 28.
There are even some benefits in taking in Mideast Christians instead of Muslims. Christians are easily assimilated in Western countries, due to the shared Christian heritage. Muslims follow a completely different blueprint, Islamic law, or Sharia—which condemns and calls for constant war (jihad) against all non-Muslims, and advocates any number of distinctly anti-Western practices (female subjugation and sex slavery, death for blasphemers and apostates, etc.). Hence it’s no surprise that many Muslim asylum seekers are anti-Western at heart—or, as the German police union chief recently said, Muslim migrants “despise our country and laugh at our justice.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
SECURING A FUTURE FOR RELIGIOUS MINORITIES
Ben Cohen
JNS, Oct. 7, 2016
You have to wonder if the barbarians fighting under the flag of the Islamic State still believe that 72 virgins will be waiting for them in paradise once they become "martyrs." I say this not because the leaders and foot soldiers of ISIS have suddenly woken up to the possibility that this belief is based, according to several scholars, on a mistranslation of the relevant verse of the Qu'ran; that would be expecting too much of them. I say this because they have already had a taste of that paradise here on earth, as a result of their campaign of genocide against the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq and Syria. One aspect of this horrific slaughter has been the kidnapping of thousands of Yazidi women and girls to serve as sexual slaves to these savages.
A recent report from the U.N. Human Rights Council – a body that spends most of its time condemning Israel for alleged human rights violations – sheds some light on both the scale and the nature of the genocide, which was ignored by the international community for far too long. The campaign against the Yazidis was launched by ISIS over two years ago, in Aug. 2014, when its forces began an assault upon the Yazidi villages in Sinjar, a district in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh. At least 5,000 Yazidis have been killed during the genocide, while 3,200 women and children remain in ISIS captivity. About 70,000, estimated to make up 15 percent of the overall Yazidi population, are reported to have fled Iraq.
The stories related by the U.N. report will be depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied genocide over the last century. Men and boys are either executed or forcibly converted, while women and girls exist solely for the use and pleasure of ISIS terrorists. The manner of the persecution is gruesome. "After we were captured, ISIS forced us to watch them beheading some of our Yazidi men," said one 16-year-old girl. "They made the men kneel in a line in the street, with their hands tied behind their backs. The ISIS fighters took knives and cut their throats."
Despite this reign of terror, the Yazidis have not been destroyed as a distinctive group. Before the ISIS attacks began, around 700,000 Yazidis are said to have lived in Iraq, the largest single concentration of the religion's followers. Kurdish in terms of their ethnicity, the Yazidi faith is described by scholars as syncretic, which means it combines elements of other religions, including Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Based on that, it's worth noting that ISIS isn't the only Islamist group that regards the Yazidis as infidels. The theology of more mainstream Islamist groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, assigns them a similar status.
Presently, the main focus for the Yazidis is the rescue of their women and girls from the clutches of ISIS. Often this is done through ransom payments, involving middlemen who collect huge sums from their families – one recently reunited family paid a total of $34,000 for their two daughters – which are then paid to ISIS. After their release, both girls said they didn't expect that they would see each other again, describing their captors as "dirty and abusive," who subjected them to regular beatings. What this illustrates is the need for greater physical security for the Yazidis, as well as for other religious minorities in the region, if and when ISIS is defeated. Without that concrete measure, continued religious and ethnic conflict in the Middle East will target vulnerable minorities first and foremost…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE PALESTINIANS’ WAR ON THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
Ruthie Blum
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 30, 2016
Encouraged and empowered by the recent UNESCO resolution that rejects Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the Palestinian Authority is boasting about plans to hold a series of global events throughout the coming year to decry the establishment of the State of Israel. The purpose of the campaign, described by the Qudsnet News Agency as “massive,” is to “make the international community, and especially Britain, confront their historical responsibilities and call on them to atone for this major crime committed, and raise the issue of the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people.”
The “major crime” in question is the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration, sent by the UK foreign secretary to Jewish community leader Walter Rothschild, to be delivered to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country,” it stated.
Though this was well before the term “Palestinians” – or people calling themselves “Palestinians” – even existed – distorting history is part and parcel of their effort to delegitimize Israel in any and every way possible. The UNESCO vote is but one tiny example of this practice, which is gaining momentum with the help of Western leftists. Another is the incessant cacophony about Israeli settlements constituting an “obstacle to peace.” Ironically, the very fact that all PA factions make no bones about considering the Jewish state a catastrophe worthy of annual mourning – and deserving of the slaughter of innocent Jews – does not serve to dissuade proponents of a two-state solution from their claim that new apartments in the West Bank are unnecessarily provocative.
On the contrary, though PA President Mahmoud Abbas said clearly that no Jews would be welcome in PA-controlled territory under any circumstances, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called attention to this blatant antisemitism, it was he who was mercilessly berated far and wide, especially by the White House and State Department. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief “peace” negotiator, took the opportunity, as he always does, to use US criticism of Israel as a way to prove that the Jewish state was born and lives in sin. In a Washington Post op-ed last Tuesday, Erekat did this in the context of the Balfour Declaration, which he called the “symbolic beginning of the denial of our rights.” Chastising the world for not taking significant steps to end the travesty of Israel’s existence, he spewed customary lies about how the Jewish state came into being.
“The Palestinian people were violently dispossessed from their homes and exiled from their homeland in 1948, endured the occupation in 1967, only to be forced into the historic compromise recognizing the 1967 border as the borders of the state of Palestine,” he wrote, conveniently omitting the true story of Israel’s War of Independence and the Six Day War 19 years later – the assault of surrounding Arab armies on a tiny fledgling country that spent much of its time trying to come to an arrangement with those bent on its annihilation.
Erekat’s piece was in keeping with Abbas’ announcement in July that the PA was going to file a lawsuit against Britain for the Balfour Declaration. This was conveyed in July by PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki to the Arab League Summit in Mauritania, which Abbas was unable to attend due to the death of his brother. In spite of the fact that Omar Abbas had been treated for cancer at a Tel Aviv hospital – along with the family members of many top figures in Fatah and Hamas – the PA leader was going ahead with his litigation against the UK over the 100-year-old document, “after which hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived from Europe and other places in Palestine at the expense of our people.” With such a blatant admission of its actual position on Jewish statehood – going so far as to wage war on the Balfour Declaration – the PA should be treated with the disdain and derision it deserves.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Why was Pope Francis AWOL at UNESCO vote?: Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein, Jewish Journal, Nov. 1, 2016—The actions of the Arab-led coalition that pushed through the UNESCO resolution on the Temple Mount were despicable but expected. The silence of the Catholic Church was cowardly, unpredictable, and disappointing.
Embattled Christians Push for Homeland in Middle East: Perry Chiaramonte, Fox News, Sept. 13, 2016—Christians driven from their ancestral homelands and persecuted by Islamist terrorists are pressing for an autonomous region of their own if the dust of Middle East violence ever settles.
US Must Support Safe Haven for Persecuted Christians in the Middle East: Mario Bramnick, JNS, Oct. 17, 2016 —Great suffering is occurring in Iraq and Syria. The region is ravaged by terror. Millions have been forced from their homes. Christians and other ethno-religious minorities have suffered genocide at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS). The shutting down of U.S. military operations in Iraq created political instability that left a power vacuum filled by terror groups bent on destroying Western civilization. ISIS has forced millions of Iraqis and Syrians from their homes destabilizing the surrounding nations and exporting the problems of the Middle East to Europe.
A Rabbi's Warning to U.S. Christians: Rabbi Daniel Lapin, CERC, 2007—During the 1930s, Winston Churchill desperately tried to persuade the English people and their government to see that Hitler meant to end their way of life. The British ignored Churchill, which gave Hitler nearly 10 years to build up his military forces. It wasn't until Hitler actually drew blood that the British realized they had a war on their hands. It turned out to be a far longer and more destructive war than it needed to be had Churchill's early warning been heeded.
