Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Lawrence Kadish • July 4, 2020 at 4:00 am
(Image source: Architect of the Capitol/Flickr)
As we encounter days of darkness;
Virus tyranny from abroad;
Criminality and
Insurrectionists at home; With inner strength, and Light
from above, we shall endure and
prevail above adversities
As we honorably salute America's Founding Fathers and our legacy of heroic Patriots! Lawrence Kadish is a real estate developer, entrepreneur, and founder and president of the Museum of American Armor.
by Guy Millière • July 3, 2020 at 6:00 am
The statement "Black Lives Matter" assumes from the start that, for the police, the judicial system and everyone else, black lives do not matter. What is so conspicuous and tragic is that black lives only seem to matter if they were taken by a white person.... Sadly, when it comes to black-on-black violence, no one seems to care. Are the politicians who claim to want help distressed communities the very ones keeping the distressed communities distressed -- and in a perpetual state of reaching out to those same politicians for dangled promises of help? The mob's destruction or removal of statues appears an attempt to erase the history of the United States... What they are doing looks like just an old-fashioned power-grab. The first law of power-grabbers is that if no one stops them, they keep on going -- often with catastrophic consequences. The recent damage inflicted on thousands of people who lost their possessions and businesses -- as well as the many murders and assaults -- shows what happens to a society with fewer police or no police. That the name Black Lives Matter is present everywhere, and that everyone seems to ignore or forget what the organization Black Lives Matter really is, shows that a violent, anti-democratic organization, which calls for the murder of police officers and accepts anti-Semitism and anti-White racism, can use threats, intimidation and destruction -- and find public acceptance. "Their disruptive and violent behavior is happening because governors, mayors, and police chiefs have over the last decade sent the message that they will not respond with mind-concentrating force in order to restore order and hold rioters accountable...." — Bruce Thornton, Professor of Classics and Humanities at California State University and research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, June 19, 2020.
The mob's destruction or removal of statues appears an attempt to erase the history of the United States... What they are doing looks like just an old-fashioned power-grab. The first law of power-grabbers is that if no one stops them, they keep on going -- often with catastrophic consequences. Pictured: Protesters pull down a fence surrounding the statue of Andrew Jackson, in an attempt to topple the statue in Lafayette Square, near Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC, on June 22, 2020. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
On May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a police officer, Derek Chauvin, who already had 18 complaints lodged against him, killed a black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Angry protests in Minneapolis quickly turned into riots that ravaged the city. The police did not intervene; the mayor had ordered them to withdraw and do nothing. More protests soon broke out in major cities throughout the country and rapidly led to widespread disorder. In the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1,500 buildings were vandalized, looted or destroyed. Again, the police did little to intervene: the mayors of most of the cities had asked the police to act with restraint. The rioters attacked churches and synagogues, and looted stores, often belonging to minority owners in distressed neighborhoods.
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by Soeren Kern • July 2, 2020 at 5:00 am
Black Lives Matter is a Marxist revolutionary movement aimed at transforming the United States into a communist dystopia. BLM states that it wants to abolish the nuclear family, police, prisons and capitalism. BLM leaders have threatened to "burn down the system" if their demands are not met. They are also training militias. "Cutting the LAPD budget means longer responses to 911 emergency calls, officers calling for backup won't get it, and rape, murder and assault investigations won't occur or will take forever to initiate, let alone complete." — Los Angeles Police Protective League, the city's police union. "White people are so confused in America.... If there is systematic racism today it is a racism against white people, in the sense that white people are told that they are responsible for all the evils in the world...." — Dr. Carol M. Swain, university professor and advisory board member of Black Voices for Trump. "We are all human beings in God's image. Black Lives Matter and Antifa and organizations like that will not help us transcend racism and classism and the 'isms' that they are concerned with. There are things that can be done in the black community, but the most important thing is helping people realize to how important their own attitudes are..." — Dr. Carol M. Swain.
Black Lives Matter is a Marxist revolutionary movement aimed at transforming the United States into a communist dystopia. BLM states that it wants to abolish the nuclear family, police, prisons and capitalism. BLM leaders have threatened to "burn down the system" if their demands are not met. They are also training militias. Pictured: A man carries and upside-down US flag with "BLM" written on it, at a protest march in Boston, Massachusetts on June 22, 2020. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than two-thirds of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement. The high level of backing raises the question of how much the public knows about BLM. On the surface, BLM presents itself as a grassroots movement dedicated to the noble tasks of fighting racism and police brutality. A deeper dive shows that BLM is a Marxist revolutionary movement aimed at transforming the United States — and the entire world — into a communist dystopia. This is the first of a two-part series, which reveals:
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by Jagdish N. Singh • July 2, 2020 at 4:00 am
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom apparently based its India report on the versions of evidently hostile non-governmental organizations and media outlets. If US President Donald J. Trump is determined to promote religious freedom the world over, he also needs to call upon other nations vastly more abusive than India is to "end religious persecution.'"
Pictured: Burned vehicles and buildings in New Delhi on February 26, 2020, following intercommunal rioting. (Photo by Prakash Singh/AFP via Getty Images)
It is astonishing to note that the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Report, released by the US Department of State on June 10, 2020, ranks India on its lowest grade, "Countries of Particular Concern (CPC)." The report recommends that the US State Department meet people from India's "religiously persecuted" communities and slap sanctions on the agencies and officials responsible for the predicament of the affected. The report also groups India with countries, such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, which have long been notorious for their religious freedom rights violations. It says that India's newly passed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) makes the Muslims in the country "bear the indignities and consequences of potential statelessness." It also claims that the Narendra Modi government allows "campaigns of harassment and violence" against Muslims and other religious minorities.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • July 1, 2020 at 5:00 am
It is easy to understand why Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now furious with the European Union. Recently, the EU and its member countries have had the audacity to demand that EU taxpayer money not end up in the hands of terrorists or terrorist organizations. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, Western donors are not entitled to demand that their taxpayer money not go to EU-designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). There are signs, however, that the EU is about to surrender to Palestinian pressure and threats. This opaque language means that even if a Palestinian NGO applying for EU grants is an affiliate of terrorist groups, or employs individuals from those groups, the EU will, after all, provide it with taxpayer funding --whether designated for emergency responses to COVID-19 or for regular programs, according to NGO Monitor....
(Image source: iStock)
For many years, Palestinians have received unconditional funding from Western donors. Here is how it worked: Palestinian organizations would submit an application for funding, and the donors would automatically sign the check or approve the wire transfer of millions of dollars or euros to the Palestinians' bank accounts. In a nutshell, the Palestinian attitude regarding Western funding has always been along the following lines: "You Westerners owe us this money because you contributed to the establishment of Israel after World War II. Thus, you have no right to set any conditions for the funding. Just give us the money and shut up. Any refusal to comply with our demands will result in our rage, and possibly terrorism and other forms of violence, not only against Israel, but also against you [non-Muslim] 'infidels' in the West."
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by Denis MacEoin • July 1, 2020 at 4:00 am
This is where the plan for extending Israeli law over more territory becomes simpler to resolve both legally and morally. However many times the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state, they have chosen to turn it down, rejecting generous peace offers. They have preferred to use terrorism and three wars launched from Gaza in pursuit of their fantasy of destroying Israel. By 2017, they had rejected no fewer than seven peace offers, and this year Mahmoud Abbas turned down the new US-Israeli peace plan.
Fortunately, if Israel were to extend Israeli law to more land, the move could present a great opportunity to end the conflict. The decisive end by Israel to a Palestinian fantasy that should never have been humoured in the first place might finally enable Palestinian leaders finally to start their citizens on a constructive -- rather than a destructive -- path.
However many times the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state, they have chosen to turn it down, rejecting generous peace offers. They have preferred to use terrorism and three wars launched from Gaza in pursuit of their fantasy of destroying Israel. Pictured: Palestinian members of the Fatah faction march in Al-Ain, near Nablus, to protest Israel's annexation plans. (Photo by Jaffar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)
In part one, we identified several ways in which international bodies, states, and individuals interpret the US-Israeli plan for Israel to extend Israeli law in the ancient Jewish homeland of Judaea and Samaria. There is widespread, and misguided, agreement that such a move would be illegal under international law, which regards occupation and "annexation of territory" in a negative sense. However, as we have seen, much of this interpretation is based on confusion about the history of the region, the origins of the state of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian rejection of a state for their own people. It is also a contradiction between Western-inspired international law and earlier Islamic law.
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by Judith Bergman • June 30, 2020 at 5:00 am
Sweden has been steeped in political correctness for decades; its failed immigration policies, which have had multiple negative consequences, as reported by Gatestone Institute, have long been taboo. The idea that free speech is not a fundamental liberty that must be defended at all costs runs deep in Sweden. Radio personality and NBA announcer Grant Napear was fired from his radio show at KHTK radio and resigned as the Sacramento Kings play-by-play TV announcer after tweeting on June 1, "All Lives Matter... every single one!", in reference to protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. A young Democrat data scientist, David Shor, was fired by the research firm for which he was working, Civis Analytics, after tweeting about the electoral effectiveness of peaceful protest as opposed to violent protest.
Corporate America has appointed itself the thought police over employees who do not adhere strictly to the "rules" of current orthodoxy. It administers ruthless justice -- Cultural Revolution style -- through the destruction of employee livelihoods and careers. (Image source: iStock)
Our corporate thought police have been working overtime, and from the look of it, they are only beginning. Mats Skogkär, a journalist and editorial writer at one of Sweden's largest regional newspapers, Sydsvenskan, was recently demoted from editorial writer to a non-writing position for tweeting the following: "When you see the Left's almost sexual excitement over the riots in the United States, over the looting, fires and violence, it also becomes easier to understand its desire to create similar conditions here with a large... segregated underclass of migrants".
"A tweet way over the line," wrote Jonas Kanje, editor in chief at Sydsvenskan, after receiving backlash on Twitter. "A way to express yourself that Sydsvenskan can never support. I dissociate myself from it."
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by Denis MacEoin • June 30, 2020 at 4:00 am
Today's Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews and glorify -- and handsomely profit from -- violence against them. It is common today to find references to Palestine as a mainly Muslim Arab state that has supposedly been "stolen" by Jews, or promised but not given to those people who describe themselves as Palestinians. That is an immense misconception, albeit one that seems to influence political and legal thinking internationally, especially among people who would like to believe it. In a clearer understanding [of international law], Israel's planned move appears to be legal. "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.... [T]he moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." — PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen, the Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 31, 1977.
The rejection of President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan by the UN Human Rights Council and others ignores the reality that it is one of the most balanced documents drawn up in favour of peace and the creation of a viable State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza. Pictured: Trump announces his peace plan in the White House in Washington, DC on January 28, 2020. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
In general, taking territory from another country is treated under international law as illegal. Much of our sense that such illegality is as much morally wrong as it is legally prohibited comes from historical realities in modern history. The Nazi German takeovers of numerous countries across Europe between 1938 and 1945, together with the brutality with which they were carried out, stand even today as notorious examples of unacceptable behaviour in an attempt to dominate other peoples without the least pretence of legality of purpose or practice. More recently, the Russian Federation's 2014 invasion of Crimea has caused unnecessary conflict with Ukraine and damaged Russia's own international reputation. Article 2 of the first chapter of the United Nations Charter declares:
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by Bassam Tawil • June 29, 2020 at 5:00 am
The two fatal incidents -- the killing of the terrorist by the IDF and the killing of the unarmed, handcuffed civilian by the Palestinian security forces -- are a perfect demonstration of how the Palestinians twist truth until it is utterly unrecognizable to the international media while hiding their own crimes against their own people. The same Palestinian officials who are accusing Israel of carrying out "extrajudicial executions" are facing the same charge by Palestinian human rights organizations. That, however, is an inconvenient truth that the leaders of the Palestinians are striving to conceal from the eyes of the world. The real problem, however, lies far beyond the con artists Erekat and Ashrawi: it lies instead with the attitude of the international media and community towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Why are foreign media outlets who are reporting about the killing of a terrorist by Israeli troops ignoring the real "extrajudicial executions" -- the ones that are carried out by the Palestinians who are again trying to conceal their crime by diverting attention (and outrage) against Israel? If Palestinian officials, so called human rights organizations and international reporters are worried about "extrajudicial killings,"... they should talk to the family of Al-Amouri, human rights organizations and eyewitnesses -- who can describe in detail how Palestinian security forces shot dead a handcuffed man in front of his elderly mother.
Two recent fatal incidents -- the killing of the terrorist by the IDF and the killing of the unarmed, handcuffed civilian by the Palestinian security forces -- are a perfect demonstration of how the Palestinians twist truth until it is utterly unrecognizable to the international media while hiding their crimes against their own people. Pictured: The Abu Dis checkpoint on June 23, 2020, as Israeli police and soldiers review the scene of the terror attack. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Two Palestinians were shot dead near Jerusalem on June 23 -- one by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) near the village of Abu Dis and the other by the Palestinian Authority security forces in the town of Al-Eizariya. The man killed by the IDF, 28-year-old Ahmed Erekat, was fatally shot after he attempted to carry out a terror attack against Israeli soldiers with his car. A female soldier was lightly wounded in the attack. Palestinian officials were quick to condemn the "cold-blooded murder of Ahmed Erekat by Israeli occupation forces." They claimed the terrorist was on his way to pick up his mother and sister who were preparing for his sister's wedding later that day." PLO officials Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi described his death as an "extrajudicial execution by trigger happy soldiers."
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by Raymond Ibrahim • June 28, 2020 at 5:00 am
"The atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked and risen to alarming apogee with the country's security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists." — The Nigerian Voice, May 14, 2020 Earlier this year, Christian Solidarity International issued a "Genocide Warning for Christians in Nigeria." "This [using a church as a personal toilet] is only the latest incident ... [I]t has become extremely common for Greek Orthodox Churches to be vandalised and attacked by illegal immigrants on Lesvos.... As a deeply religious society, these attacks on churches are shocking to the Greek people and calls to question whether these illegal immigrants seeking a new life in Europe are willing to integrate and conform to the norms and values of their new countries." — Greek City Times, May 16, 2020.
On May 8, 2020, a man tried to torch the Surp Asdvadzadzin Armenian Church in Istanbul, which in previous years was repeatedly attacked with hate-filled graffiti, among other desecrations. (Image source: Vmenkov/Wikimedia Commons)
The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of May 2020: The Slaughter of Christians Nigeria: From January 2020 to mid-May 2020, Muslim terrorists massacred at least 620 Christians (470 by Fulani herdsmen and 150 by Boko Haram). According to a May 14 report: "Militant Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram ... have intensified their anti-Christian violence ... with hacking to death in the past four months and half of 2020 of no fewer than 620 defenseless Christians, and wanton burning or destruction of their centers of worship and learning. The atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked and risen to alarming apogee with the country's security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists. Houses burnt or destroyed during the period are in their hundreds; likewise dozens of Christian worship and learning centers."
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by Uzay Bulut • June 28, 2020 at 4:30 am
"On June 20, they even bombed the safe spot where the other villagers could go." — Athra Kado, Assyrian rights advocate in Alqosh, Iraq, to Gatestone. "We have been informed by the Turkish forces that 'we'll bomb whenever we want to'... But nobody seems to be concerned about our struggles or wants to help us." — Younan Youkhanna, Assyrian journalist in Challik, Iraq, which is affected by Turkish bombings.
Turkish airstrikes in Iraq's Sinjar Mountains this month are endangering the safety of the Yazidis and Christian Assyrians, Iraq's indigenous people. These ethnic minorities were targeted for genocide by ISIS beginning in 2014. Pictured: Battle-damaged buildings in the town of Sinjar, Iraq photographed on February 5, 2019. (Photo by Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP via Getty Images)
Turkey's Defense Ministry announced on June 17 that the country had "launched a military operation against the PKK" (Kurdistan Workers' Party) in northern Iraq after carrying out a series of airstrikes. Turkey has named its assaults "Operation Claw-Eagle" and "Operation Claw-Tiger," the Turkish government-funded Anadolu Agency reported. The Yazidi and Assyrian Christian communities in the area had already been terrorized when they were targeted in a genocidal attack by the Islamic State (ISIS) beginning in 2014. The Yazidi and Assyrian natives of the area have expressed their condemnation of the bombings.
On June 16, the Free Yezidi Foundation (FYF) issued a statement, in which it "condemns in strongest terms the Turkish airstrikes conducted in Sinjar, Iraq."
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by Amir Taheri • June 28, 2020 at 4:00 am
[Jesse] Jackson, [Sadiq] Khan and Mrs. Obama are simply wrong. Let's start with Mrs. Obama's claim [that she was in "a house built by slaves"], the easiest to dismiss. The White House she lived in for eight years was first rebuilt in 1902 and achieved its present shape in the 1950s, long after the US abolished slavery in 1865 and granted former slaves citizenship in 1869. There may have been some blacks, later to be dubbed African-Americans, among the builders; but they were no longer slaves. Slaves, most of whom in history were white and not black, were not the only victims. Even people who were neither slaves nor slave-owners paid a heavy price in slow economic development and poverty. When it comes to slavery, no one has a monopoly of suffering.
In 2016, Michelle Obama said she woke up every morning in the White House thinking that it was "a house built by slaves." However, the White House was first rebuilt in 1902 and achieved its present shape in the 1950s, long after the US abolished slavery in 1865 and granted former slaves citizenship in 1869. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Do Western nations, notably the United States and Britain, owe their wealth to black slaves from Africa? This, and related questions, in circulation for years, acquired a new life in recent weeks thanks to protest marches in the US and Europe. In 2009, at an international seminar hosted by then French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Evian, we listened with amazement as the American Reverend Jesse Jackson told the audience that African slaves built America as a home that turned out to be a prison. In 2016, then US First Lady Michelle Obama told TV audiences how she woke up every morning in the White House thinking that it was "a house built by slaves." Last week, London Mayor Sadiq Khan brought his own water to the mill. He said: "It is a sad truth that much of our wealth derived from the slave trade." There are at least two problems with that discourse.
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by Judith Bergman • June 27, 2020 at 5:00 am
There are an estimated 136,000 people living in modern slavery just in Britain. Slavery in the UK takes the form of forced labor, and domestic and sexual exploitation. Albanians and Vietnamese are among the groups that constitute the majority of slaves. — Global Slavery Index, 2018. There are currently an estimated 9.2 million black slaves in Africa. Slavery, according to the index, includes forced labor, forced sexual exploitation and forced marriage. — Global Slavery Index, 2018. "According to the U.N.'s International Labor Organization (ILO), there are more than three times as many people in forced servitude today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade", Time Magazine March 14, 2019. Modern slavery earns criminal networks an estimated $150 billion a year, just slightly less than drug smuggling and weapons trafficking. "G-20 countries import some $354 billion worth of products at risk of being produced by modern slavery every year". — Global Slavery Index, 2018. One Malian slave, Raichatou, told the Guardian in 2013 that she became a slave at the age of seven when her mother, also a slave, died. "My father could only watch on helplessly as my mother's master came to claim me and my brothers," she said. She worked as a servant for the family without pay for nearly 20 years, and was forced into a marriage with another slave whom she didn't know, so that she could supply her master with more slaves.
While Black Lives Matter (BLM) and its sycophants endlessly debate changing the names of streets and removing statues, they ignore the staggering 40 million victims of actual slavery in the world today, including an estimated 9.2 million men, women and children currently enslaved in Africa. Pictured: Vandals attempt to pull down the statue of US President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square, on June 22, 2020, near the White House in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
The news has been filled with reports about Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters vandalizing and tearing down statues of slave traders, slave owners, and anyone who they perceive as having been historically involved with slavery. In Bristol, England, a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down and thrown into the harbor. In Belgium, statues of King Leopold were defaced. The actions have caused some local authorities to consider whether all statues perceived as offending current sensibilities should be removed. The London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a commission to examine the future of landmarks, such as statues and street names, in the UK capital.
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by Vijeta Uniyal • June 26, 2020 at 5:00 am
China's artificial islands in the South China Sea -- equipped with military bases, naval ports and airfields -- pose a strategic threat to neighboring countries. In 2018, China landed nuclear strike-capable bombers on these artificial islands, sending an alarming message to the U.S. and regional powers. Some commentators ascribe China's stepped-up predations -- on Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia -- to a hope that the world is too distracted by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it unleashed to bother confronting China, let alone stop it. While the U.S. has decreased its nuclear stockpile, China is boosting its arsenal, according to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute on June 15. The Free World, if it wishes to remain free, seriously needs to stand with the world's largest democracy. If China is allowed to succeed in its aggression, it will only embolden the Communists in Beijing to redraw borders, dictate terms to other countries in the region, and press on with its plan to dominate the world.
India has been facing its toughest military challenge in nearly six decades after 20 Indian soldiers were reported beaten to death by Chinese troops in a border clash. Pictured: An Indian army convoy drives towards Leh, on a highway bordering China, on June 19, 2020 in Gagangir, India. (Photo by Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)
India has been facing its toughest military challenge in nearly six decades after 20 Indian soldiers were reported killed by Chinese troops in a border clash. The soldiers were beaten to death with "sticks, fists, rocks and wooden clubs" during a confrontation in the Himalayan region of eastern Ladakh, Indian sources said. In keeping with a 1996 bilateral border agreement between India and China, soldiers are forbidden from firing weapons in the area where the clash occurred. Chinese troops carried out a "premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties", Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on June 17. "Based on what I know, Chinese side also suffered casualties," tweeted the editor-in-chief of the Chinese newspaper Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • June 25, 2020 at 5:00 am
It is dead wrong to assume that if Israel abandons its plan, most Muslims would give up their desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an extremist Iran-style Islamic state. [Islamic officials] are now calling on Palestinians to launch terror attacks against Israel, not because of the "annexation" plan, but in order to drive the Jews out of the "Palestinian Arab Islamic lands." Those who are pressuring Israel not to proceed with the "annexation" plan need to hear what Islamic leaders are saying, day and night: that the conflict is not about Jewish settlements or the Jordan Valley, but the "big settlement" called Israel.
Islamic officials in the Gaza Strip are now calling on Palestinians to launch terror attacks against Israel, not because of the "annexation" plan, but in order to drive the Jews out of the "Palestinian Arab Islamic lands." Pictured: Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
As far as Palestinian Islamic religious clerics are concerned, Israel's intention to extend its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, particularly Jewish settlements and the strategic Jordan Valley, means very little: to them Jews "have no right to Palestinian, Arab and Islamic land." The position of the Islamic figures contradicts the Palestinian Authority's claim that the annexation plan would "destroy the two-state solution and any chance of a peace process with Israel." The picture Palestinian Authority officials are painting is that the Israeli annexation of any part of the West Bank is the one and only obstacle to regional peace, security and stability. According to these officials, the Israeli plan would deprive the Palestinians of their right to establish an independent and sovereign state on the pre-1967 armistice lines.
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