Iran's average annual contribution to UNRWA in recent years has been $2,000.

Iran does spend billions of dollars a year outside its borders in the Middle East. Iran provides weapons and cash to terrorist groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanon's Hezbollah. Iran helps these groups because they want to destroy the "Zionist entity." Iran is now devoting huge resources in Syria to help dictator Bashar Assad in his fight against the rebels, as well as substantial sums of money helping Houthi militias in Yemen.

Lebanon's laws treat Palestinians as a special group of foreigners, even denying them the same rights granted to other foreigners. Palestinians in Lebanon are not only denied basic rights enjoyed by Lebanese citizens and other foreigners, but also denied rights as refugees under international conventions.

Arab and Muslim states could start to think of ways to help Palestinians achieve a better life and improve their children's future instead of sitting in refugee camps and waiting for handouts from the UN and other Western countries. Or is continuing to beg non-Arabs and non-Muslims for money the better deal?

Ambassador John Bolton was prescient in his 1998 warning, when the formation of body was first being debated in Rome, that it would be ineffective, unaccountable and overly political.

The reconciliation commissions of South Africa and Morocco aimed to rehabilitate victims, and pay compensation for state outrages against them. That method would be a better model for Africa than a court funded and run from Europe.

The International Criminal Court is a noble ideal but a flawed institution. Far better to encourage nations to develop courts that are accountable to the victims and free from charges of selective enforcement or foreign intervention.

In 2017, Turkey stopped teaching evolution at secondary school: for extremists, Darwinism remains a taboo subject. Instead, school textbooks started teaching Turkish pupils "jihad."

A good school, according to extremists, is not where science is taught at universal standards; it is where pious students grow.

Turkey's Higher Education Board in 2016 asked 1,577 university deans (reportedly every dean in the country) to resign "for the sake of democracy."

Swedish police received more than 2,300 reports of potential crimes linked to this year's election, including voter intimidation and threats of violence against property or persons. An international team of observers found irregularities in 46% of the polling stations visited. The team expressed particular concern over the lack of secrecy in voting. Swedish authorities allow more than one voter (normally from the same family) to enter the polling booth together, ostensibly to ensure that the more literate family member can assist the less literate ones to correctly fill in the ballot paper.

"We are concerned about the significant level of family voting where women, older voters and the infirm can be guided or even instructed how to vote by another family member... We feel this may be a way of suppressing some voters from freely choosing their own choice." — Statement on the Swedish election from Democracy Volunteers, election observers.

With tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of migrants receiving welfare payments without having made any contributions, Sweden's current welfare system seems destined to collapse, according to Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson.

Martin Heidegger, who was Hannah Arendt's teacher and lover, was anything but banal. Nor were Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Hitler and the numerous doctors and lawyers who were tried at Nuremberg. Neither were the university students who began by burning Jewish books and ended by burning Jewish children. Adolf Eichmann was also anything but banal, as a perusal of the trial transcript reveals.

Although the film Operation Finale partakes of Hollywood liberties, Ben Kingsley's fictional portrayal of Eichmann is far more realistic than the allegedly non-fiction account by Arendt.

That mendacious and dangerous phrase, "the banality of evil," should be struck from the historical vocabulary of the Holocaust and the trial of Eichmann, lest we look in the future for banality and miss the brilliance of those who would repeat Eichmann's crimes.

According to Palestinian terrorist groups, the terrorist, Khalil Jabarin, decided to murder a Jew in response to Israeli "crimes" against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular and Islamic holy sites in general. Needless to say, there is no Israeli plan to allow Jews to pray inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The statements made by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirm that there is a direct link between Abbas's false charge against Israel and the murder of the Israeli-American citizen.

Abbas's latest fabrication is directly responsible for the murder of Ari Fuld, stabbed to death by a terrorist who actually believed Abbas's lies about a purported Israeli scheme to split the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews.

On the surface, for those who wanted to reform Islam, the only place to do so appeared to be the West. We all assumed that here in the West, it would be safe to question and criticize. Instead, so many institutions utilize a far more subtle method of silencing criticism.

The more you conceal or disregard constructive criticism of Islam, the harder you are making it for reforms to occur in the religion and the easier you are making it for Muslim radicals to prevail.

The reason I criticize the radical elements of my religion is not because I have hatred in my heart, but because I desire to protect those who have been abused and abandoned by their leaders.

Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) describes itself as a "Greek nonprofit organization that provides emergency response and humanitarian aid in times of crisis...." It has reportedly abetted the illegal entry into Greece of 70,000 immigrants since 2015, providing the "nonprofit" with half a billion euros per year.

ECRI evidently received 2,000 euros from each illegal immigrant it helped to enter Greece. In addition, its members created a business for "integrating refugees" into Greek society, granting it 5,000 euros per immigrant per year from various government programs (in education, housing and nutrition).

With the government of Greece seemingly at a loss as to how to handle its refugee crisis and safeguard the security of its citizens, it is particularly dismaying to discover that the major NGO whose mandate is to provide humanitarian aid to immigrants is instead profiting from smuggling them.

Twenty-five years after Oslo, the balance sheet is more like what in 2003 the historian Efraim Karsh called the start of the "Oslo war". In this war, he wrote, Israel had conceded from the beginning a major victory to its worst enemies by giving them a respectability they did not deserve, and thus placed itself in a losing position from which it never fully recovered.

"Contrary to Rabin's slogan, one does not 'make [peace] with very unsavory enemies' but rather with former very unsavory enemies. That is, enemies that have been defeated... Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted its will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume." — Daniel Pipes, Commentary, January 2017.

"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." — PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen , interview in Trouw, March, 1977.

"We need a new European Commission that is committed to the defense of Europe's borders." — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"A few months ago ... there was an election in Hungary. The Hungarian people decided what should happen, and during the election campaign we discussed all of the issues — including CEU, the NGOs, and all of the important political issues. And the people decided on these issues. And now the European Parliament is taking upon itself the task of overruling the decision made by the people of Hungary and forcing the Hungarian government to implement what they are attempting to impose on us in place of the people's decision." — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"Hungary and the Hungarian people have been convicted because we have proven that migration is not needed and that it can be stopped." — Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó.

"Hungary's decisions are made by the voters in parliamentary elections. What you are claiming is no less than saying that the Hungarian people are not sufficiently capable of being trusted to judge what is in their own interests. You think that you know the needs of the Hungarian people better than the Hungarian people themselves.... This report applies double standards, it is an abuse of power, it oversteps the limits on spheres of competence, and the method of its adoption is a treaty violation." — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, BfV, has dismissed claims that right-wing gangs chased non-Germans during the late August demonstrations in Chemnitz after the fatal stabbing of a German by a group of migrants. That news flew in the face of Chancellor Merkel's repeated use of the charge of a "hunt on foreigners" in describing the incidents.

According to the domestic affairs spokesperson for Merkel's Christian Democratic party, Maassen "would answer parliamentarians' questions about his comments at special meetings next week. In these "hearings," politicians are expected to bring more pressure to bear on the intelligence chief, in an apparent attempt to make him recant his statements.

Maassen is not the only one in the crosshairs of the mainstream politicians. Rattled by the recent wave of protests against country's open-door immigration policy, establishment parties across the political spectrum are calling for the populist anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD) to be placed under police surveillance.

In early September, authorities in the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen placed their regional chapters of Young Alternative, the AfD's youth wing, under surveillance citing "suspected ties to extremists."

China's "social credit" system, which will assign every person a constantly updated score based on observed behaviors, is designed to control conduct by giving the ruling Communist Party the ability to administer punishments and hand out rewards. The former deputy director of the State Council's development research center says the system should be administered so that "discredited people become bankrupt".

Officials prevented Liu Hu, a journalist, from taking a flight because he had a low score. According to the Communist Party-controlled Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

Chinese officials are using the lists for determining more than just access to planes and trains. "I can't buy property. My child can't go to a private school," Liu said. "You feel you're being controlled by the list all the time."

Chinese leaders have long been obsessed with what Jiang Zemin in 1995 called "informatization, automation, and intelligentization," and they are only getting started Given the capabilities they are amassing, they could, the argument goes, make defiance virtually impossible. The question now is whether the increasingly defiant Chinese people will accept President Xi's all-encompassing vision.

The possibility of a Turkish naval base on Cyprus does not bode well for the chances of a Cyprus reunification deal, particularly after the breakdown of the July 2017 peace talks, which were suspended when "Turkey had refused to relinquish its intervention rights on Cyprus or the presence of troops on the island." Turkey has 30,000 soldiers stationed on Cyprus, the northern part of which it has illegally occupied since 1974.

"If Greek-Turkish tensions escalate, the possibility of another ill-timed military provocation could escalate with them... Moreover, such a conflict might open up an even greater opportunity for Russian interference." — Lawrence A. Franklin.

In a move that raised eyebrows both in Pakistan and abroad, the government succumbed to the pressure of Islamists by asking renowned economist Atif Mian to step down from membership of the prime minister's Economic Advisory Council, solely because he is a member of the persecuted minority Ahmadi community.

Mohammad Abdus Salam was the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize in science, and the second person from an Islamic country, after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, ever to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in any field.

Mohammad Safdar, a prominent legislator, launched a verbal attack on Ahmadis, calling them a "threat to this country, its Constitution and ideology... Because their's is a false religion, in which there is no concept of jihad for Allah."

Let us hope that the Pakistani leadership's abandonment of Mian is the last such incident.

Instead of being angry at the perpetrators of 9/11, some people are angry at those who waterboarded three (only three) terrorists, including one of the chief planners of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As a result of information he revealed, a plot to crash a plane into the Los Angeles Library Tower was broken up, saving thousands of lives.

The attack of 9/11 was not only an act of war. It was also a horribly costly lesson. Let's not waste it....This does not mean that we should involve ourselves in every conflict in the Middle East. But if it is, we should use not a "light footprint" but a size-14 boot stomp. Our object should be to encourage our friends and frighten our enemies, not the opposite....

Some argue that the terrorists are trying to goad us into getting involved more deeply, so we should do nothing. These people forget the long series of terrorist attacks that led up to 9/11....In fact, by doing nothing, we are goading the terrorists into escalating.

The purpose of remembering 9/11 is not merely a history lesson. Like remembering the Holocaust, the purpose is never again.