At U.N., Palestinian head Abbas demands end to
Israeli 'apartheid' occupation
By Clyde Hughes
at the U.N. General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York City. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
Sept. 24 (UPI) -- In his address Friday to the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" by removing Palestinians from their homes and taking their land.
Abbas spoke on the fourth day of the General Debate, a week-long session during which dozens of world leaders speak at the assembly and touch on important matters within their home country.
In his remarks, Abbas echoed a recent United Nations report that found that Israeli authorities demolished or seized about 300 Palestinian-owned structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the first three months of 2021 -- a 121% increase over the same period a year earlier.
"If Israeli occupation authorities continue to entrench the reality of one apartheid state, as is happening today, our people and the entire world will not tolerate such a situation," he said.
"Circumstances on the ground will inevitably impose equal and full political rights for all on the land of historical Palestine."
Some of the demolitions, which have gone on for years, occur when Palestinians cannot obtain or maintain certain permits, or when the homes are deemed to be too close to Israeli military facilities.
Palestinians have long complained they have little recourse to oppose the Israelis on the issue, and the demolitions happen with little if any warning and abruptly make them homeless.
Abbas on Friday gave Israel one year to end its occupation of territories that Palestinian authorities want for a future state -- which were seized following the 1967 Six Day War. Failing that, he said, the PA will cease its formal recognition of Israel and seek recourse in the International Court of Justice.
"We have not been able to recover our property [from homes before demolition] due to Israeli laws that disregard international law and violate United Nations resolutions," Abbas said in his address. "It is the right for Palestinian refugees to return to their home and recover their property and receive just compensation."
He added that forcing Palestinians out of their homes, and sometimes their neighborhoods, can only be described under international law as "ethnic cleansing" that he said is "rejected by our people and the international community as ... a crime under international law."
Abbas said he remains hopeful for peace via a "two-state solution," which U.S. President Joe Biden said in his address on Tuesday that he supports.
"We have extended our hand time and time again," Abbas added. "We cannot find a partner in Israel who believes in and accepts the 'two-state solution.'
"Today, no one in Israel feels any shame when they arrogantly dismiss this solution."
Could it be because there never was a Palestinian state? Is that why they were not given statehood in 1948 when Israel was reborn?
Several other leaders from the Middle East region have spoken at the General Assembly this week, including Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
Mali PM accuses France of ‘abandoning’ country ‘mid-flight’
as Bamako reaches out to Russian mercenaries
25 Sep, 2021 23:46
© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Mali was blindsided by France’s decision to withdraw its troops from the country and had to enlist help from others to “fill the gap”, PM Choguel Kokalla Maiga said amid criticism over inviting Russian contractors.
“The new situation resulting from the end of Operation Barkhane puts Mali before a fait accompli - abandoning us, mid flight to a certain extent,” Maiga said as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday.
Operation Barkhane, a France-led military campaign against Islamist insurgents in Mali that started in 2014 is set to wrap up early next year. Announcing the end of the operation back in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said that it would draw to a close “in an orderly fashion.”
Maiga indicated that this was far from the case, however. Speaking on Saturday, the Malian PM claimed that France kept Bamako in the dark about its intentions, and made the decision without any prior consultation with the Malian authorities.
“The unilateral aspect of withdrawal of Barkhane and [its] transformation did not take into account the tripartite link between us, that is between the UN and Mali as partners with France in combating elements of destabilization,” Maiga said.
Noting that the security situation in Mali has “scarcely improved” since the 2012 miliary coup, despite the presence of the UN peacekeepers and international forces, including the French troops, Maiga said that the country had to resort to third parties for assistance.
It [the situation] leads us to explore pathways and means to better ensure our security autonomously, or with other partners to fill the gap, which will certainly result from the withdrawal of Barkhane from the north of the country
While Maiga has not addressed the controversy surrounding Mali’s reported intention to hire as many as 1,000 mercenaries from the Russian Wagner Group, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed earlier on Saturday that Bamako indeed was negotiating a deal with a Russia-based private security company.
At the same time, Lavrov dismissed accusations that Moscow was behind the talks, insisting that the Russian government had “nothing to do” with the arrangement.
The news that Mali had reached out to the Russian mercenaries, notorious for their involvement in Syria and Africa, sparked backlash from several European countries, threatening to reconsider their deployment. Responding to a question by RT’s Caleb Maupin, Lavrov revealed that the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, told him to stay out of Africa, calling the continent “our place.” Describing the thinly-veiled warning as “deeply insulting,” the Russian minister argued that Moscow and Europe should mount a concerted effort to help the Sahel region out of the turmoil instead.
What a silly idea. That might bring an end to the war. Who wants that?
American Islamic spokesman defends wife-beating as a right
on the basis of Islamic law
SEP 25, 2021 5:00 PM
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Jihad Watch
A Houston-born lecturer on Islam, Daniel Haqiqatjou, brazenly defends the right to wife-beating in Islam. Watch as he attempts to make an absurd moral equivalence on the basis of the fact that there are also penalties and consequences for breaking laws in democracies.
Beating one’s wife is a criminal act in the West because women are equals under the law, and they are protected from abuse; yet Haqiqatjou counsels the committal of this crime, which is based on Qur’an 4:34, without consequence. He should be investigated for defending spousal abuse.
In March 2020, the Muslim Student Association at York University in Toronto, Canada invited Haqiqathjou as a featured guest speaker for Islamic Awareness Week. It should come as no surprise that Haqiqatjou is also antisemitic, as antisemitism is a feature of Islamic teachings. Opposition to his antisemitism resulted in the cancelation of his engagement at York University.
The Jewish Defence League (JDL) was first out of the gate, publicizing an email letter to York University president Rhonda Lenton that called on her to cancel the event while noting, “Jewish students on campus have been victims of anti-Semitism for far too long.”
Outcry from other Jewish groups also contributed to the event’s cancelation. But Haqiqatjou continues to defend Sharia. He also defends slavery, including sex slavery, under Sharia, and he saluted Brunei for implementing the Sharia stoning of gays.
“Moral policing: Bengaluru man assaulted for giving lift to Muslim woman,”
by Chiranjeevi Kulkarni,
Deccan Herald,
September 19, 2021
Two persons waylaid and assaulted a Hindu man for giving a lift to his female Muslim colleague on Friday night. The accused abused the woman, forced her off the bike and also abused her husband over the phone.
Police took up the matter after the video clips of the incident went viral on social media. “Two youths from the Muslim community have been arrested and their mobile phones have been seized. Further investigation is ongoing,” a police officer said, refusing to divulge more information in view of a high court order.
Police registered a case under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including section 34 for the act done with common intention, promoting enmity on grounds of religion (153-A), outraging the modesty of a woman (IPC 354), assault (IPC 323) and criminal intimidation (IPC 596).
Police sources said the woman and the man work in a company near Richmond Circle and he was dropping her home after work. The accused chased them and waylaid their bike before assaulting the man.
One of the video clips shows the accused threatening the man. “If you ever take a woman clad in burqua [sic] on your bike again…,” the accused is heard saying before assaulting him repeatedly.
The accused force the woman to give the number of her husband and call him. The husband is overheard trying to explain that he knows that she was getting help from a friend to reach home. The accused then forced her to get off the bike and into an autorickshaw.
As the issue took a communal turn on social media, some pointed out that it hits at the heart of the cosmopolitan spirit of the city and a few noted the harassment of the woman. In some of the clips, the woman is seen trying to question the accused over their behaviour but is forced into silence with a warning against travelling with non-Muslim men.
“Telangana: As five Muslim men abduct a Dalit Hindu man
for travelling with a Muslim woman
Netizens share more videos of ‘Sharia Police’ from the state,”
OpIndia, September 16, 2021:
A case of assault and kidnapping of a Dalit Hindu man, identified as Vivek, by five Muslim men has come to light from Nizamabad district, Telangana. Notably, Nizamabad is a Muslim-majority region in the state. As per the reports, the incident took place on September 8 and came to the notice of the police on September 11. The police have registered the case under various sections and arrested four men, members of so-called ‘Sharia Police’. Two prime accused are still at large.
On September 8, a Hindu man was travelling with a Mulsim [sic] woman on a bike to Nizamabad Government Hospital located in Nizamabad town to collect some documents required to submit at IIIT Basara for their salaries. Both of them are reportedly employees of IIIT Basara located in district Nizamabad, also known as Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies.
A group of five men who were travelling in a car stopped them on the road. According to the video of the incident, they were seen brutally assaulting the Hindu man. The Muslim men also slammed the woman for roaming around with a Hindu man, accusing her of bringing a bad name for the Muslim community. One Muslim man was heard saying in the video, “kaum ka Naam badnaam ho Raha hai tumhari wajah se (The name of religion is getting discredited because of women like you).” While the woman kept asking them there was nothing going between her and the Hindu man, the mob slapped him. The Muslim man kept assaulting the Hindu man while saying, “Yeh saazish hai Musalmano ke khilaf? (Is this your conspiracy against Muslims?)”
He was later allegedly kidnapped and taken by the five Muslim men to a nearby locality and kept hostage for few hours.
The Hindu man was released only after the brother of the Muslim woman arrived at the spot and explained that he had sent her with the man to collect the documents. The accused are said to be residents of Telangana’s Bainsa town.
On September 11, the case came to the notice of the police, and a case was registered against the accused under Sections 295A, and 365 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of SC/ST ACT were added to the complaint as the victim belongs to Dalit community. So far, police have arrested four men who were sent to judicial custody. There are two more suspects in the case that are at large, and the police are looking for them.
While talking to Times Now, the victim said, “They said it does not matter if you belong to ST community. You are Hindu. How can you travel with a Muslim woman? They brutally assaulted me.” TRS leader Khaleeq UR Rehman while talking to Times Now claimed his party is against any such incidents and moral policing but he refused to call it a communal hate crime. When the anchor asked her that the victim is clearly saying he was assaulted for being Hindu, Rehman said, “You are actually trying to put words in my mouth.” he added, “It was a crime I agree” but he refused to consider it a communal crime.
Turkish paramilitary contractor Sadat praises Taliban for
asymmetrical warfare, cheers Sharia rule in Afghanistan
Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
September 16, 2021
Turkish private military contractor Sadat, a paramilitary unit loyal to the Islamist president of Turkey, has advocated the idea of Turkey supporting and helping the Taliban, a group it has called a resistance movement, establish a Sharia state in Afghanistan.
A research piece published on September 13, 2021 by Ali Coşar, a retired colonel and board member of Sadat, advocated that Turkey help the new Afghanistan run by the Taliban in cooperation with Pakistan, Qatar and Malaysia.
Dismissing the description that the Taliban is a terrorist organization, Coşar said, “They [the Taliban] are members of a resistance movement that fought against colonial America for 20 years to take over the government and establish a state that practices Sharia. …” He pointed out that the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks had also ruled under Sharia when they governed states in the past.
Recalling that Sadat has been advocating the Islamic Union, with a joint military force, Coşar disclosed that ASSAM, the Association of Justice Defenders Strategic Studies Center, an organization affiliated with Sadat, was about to complete a roadmap for realizing the Islamic Union.
“In the 21st century, religious warriors who once again prioritized asymmetrical warfare and embraced martyrdom and becoming veterans for their homeland prevailed over the conventional superpowers backed by special forces in the mountainous Central Asian terrain,” he wrote.
Concerned about the Taliban’s overtures to Western powers, Coşar urged the group not to yield to concessions demanded by the West and to carefully choose the states it will cooperate with.
Toronto men caught with bomb-making manuals,
al-Qaeda literature on phones, documents allege
By Stewart Bell Global News
Posted September 24, 2021 3:00 am
Six months after Kevin Omar Mohamed‘s prison sentence for terrorism came to an end, the RCMP’s Toronto O-INSET national security team decided to check up on him.
What they found set off alarms.
Not only was he violating his probation by using a smartphone, he’d downloaded al-Qaeda literature, manuals on bombs and poisons, and a tract justifying the killing of women and children, according to allegations filed in court.
He was also seen meeting with Daniel Khoshnood, another former inmate who had a history of violence and whose phone contained more than 200 Taliban, ISIS and al-Qaeda videos, as well as bomb-making guides, according to the allegations.
Both were arrested as potential national security threats.
Little was disclosed at the time, but details of the police investigations into Mohamed and Khoshnood were recently released by the Ontario court following a request by Global News.
Surveillance photo of two men identified by police as Daniel Khoshnood and Kevin Omar Mohamed
at Toronto’s Bloor-Yonge subway.
The two reports by the Ontario Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (O-INSET) provide the first look at why the alleged associates were arrested on the grounds they might commit terrorist offences.
Mohamed’s phone contained “a large amount of information that could be used to carry out a terrorist attack, including multiple bomb-making guides, and extremist ideological material”, the O-INSET reports alleged.
Similarly, a search of Khoshnood’s phone turned up many of the same how-to guides, they alleged.
O-INSET also wrote that Khoshnood seemed to align himself with the Taliban, using the terms “we” and “us” when he wrote about the militant group on YouTube.
“We will keep sending out suicide bombers,” he allegedly wrote. “Taliban is the true Islamic force.”
No doubt, Mohammed would be proud!
FBI Probes Allegations of Assault on Female Soldier at
Afghan Refugee Camp in New Mexico
BY TOM OZIMEK
September 25, 2021
The FBI has confirmed it is investigating an alleged assault on a female U.S. military service member at a facility in New Mexico that houses Afghan refugees.
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, the agency said its El Paso office is investigating the incident after receiving a referral from officials at Fort Bliss, Texas.
The alleged assault took place at the refugee camp on the New Mexico side of the Fort Bliss facility known as the Doña Ana Complex, which is being used to house Afghan evacuees.
A spokesperson for the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss told The Hill in a statement that a female service member reported being assaulted by “a small group of male evacuees” while at the Doña Ana facility on Sunday.
“The safety and well-being of our service members, as well as all of those on our installations, is paramount. We immediately provided appropriate care, counseling, and support to the service member,” the spokesperson said, according to the report.
Additional safety measures have also been implemented, including more lighting and additional health and safety patrols, according to the report. The Doña Ana Complex was converted into a camp for refugees evacuated from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country.
Evacuees walk to be processed during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 25, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps/Sgt. Isaiah Campbell/Handout via Reuters)
Earlier in September, Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) led over forty of her congressional colleagues in penning a letter to President Joe Biden (pdf) expressing “grave concern about the rushed and incomplete vetting of Afghan evacuees being brought to the United States.”
In a tweet reacting to Sunday’s incident, Herrell offered her sympathies to the female service member.
“My prayers are with the courageous soldier and her family. This is yet another tragic failure in the vetting process for Afghan nationals. The American people deserve answers,” Herrell said in the tweet.
In the earlier letter to Biden, Herrell called on him to provide details about the vetting process used to screen Afghan refugees coming into the United States.
“To be abundantly clear the United States should honor its promises to help Afghan nationals and their families who have risked their lives to support U.S. and Coalition forces, applied for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, and are now fleeing the Taliban,” the letter states.
“Nonetheless, there are substantial and concrete concerns that in the course of your calamitous withdrawal of troops and evacuation efforts in Afghanistan, some individuals may have made their way into the country who are terrorists or have terrorist intent, are convicted violent criminals, or are otherwise dangerous persons,” the letter continued.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told CBS News earlier in September that Afghan nationals were vetted before arriving in the United States.
“We screen and vet individuals before they board a plane to the United States. An individual who does not satisfy our screening and vetting protocols is not admitted to the United States. And, if in fact, we learn information subsequently, we place those individuals in removal proceedings, so that they are set to leave the United States as swiftly as possible,” Mayorkas said.
Asked if he can guarantee that the Taliban and those on terror watch lists were not making their way into the United States, Mayorkas said, “I can guarantee you that we are doing everything possible to make sure that they don’t. And we have no evidence that they have.”
News of the FBI investigation into the alleged assault at the Doña Ana Complex follows the recent arrests of two Afghan evacuees at Fort McCoy, a military base in Wisconsin. A federal grand jury in Wisconsin indicted the pair in unrelated cases.
Bahrullah Noori, 20, faces charges that include three counts of engaging in a sex act with a minor, with one count alleging the use of force.
Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, has been charged with assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her.
America needs more Muslims like this, for sure! And these are the good ones.
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