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Palestinian Authorities' priorities should have them arrested by the world court. Are Palestinians waking up to the madness, or will they blame it all on Israel?
Should the PA pay monthly salaries to teachers or terrorists?
by Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch,
March 15, 2023:
The teachers in the Palestinian Authority are striking because the PA is not paying their full wages and has reneged on promises it made to them in 2022. As a result, according to different reports, over a million Palestinian children have not had school since the strike started on 5th of February, 2023.
Referring to the strike, Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily summarized the PA approach – Blame Israel!
According to Matar, the teachers’ strike is due to the implementation of the Israeli Anti Pay-for-Slay law, the law that penalizes the PA for paying huge monthly cash rewards to terrorists:
“The wheels of educational life are put on strike now and then, under the headline of ‘the right to strike’ or abstaining from providing services to the citizens for particular periods of time until the realization of material (monetary) demands [parentheses in source]. This is even though everyone knows that all the public sector ([PA] government) employees [parentheses in source] are suffering as a result of how the occupation authorities are stealing the Palestinian tax money, which is the backbone of the PA government employees’ salaries, and as a result of the deduction of hundreds of millions of [Israeli] shekels in order to dissuade the national Palestinian leadership from providing allowances to the prisoners and the Martyrs’ relatives.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 14, 2023]
Trying to present a positive spin, Matar then added that hardships were caused out of the Abbas’ “loyalty” to the terrorists:
“Out of loyalty to them, [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has promised that their allowances will be at the top of the table of allowances and salaries, until the last [Jordanian] dinar in the treasury of the PA and the PLO.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 14, 2023]
PA Ministry of Education Director-General of Measurement, Evaluation, and Examination, Muhammad Awad, accepted that the demands of the teachers are justified:
“All the teachers’ demands are correct and we have no reservations about them. On the contrary, we are fighting and defending the agreement that was signed [with the teachers] in all its aspects, especially everything concerning the monetary aspect.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 15, 2023]
Awad then explained that the non-payment of the teachers’ salaries is due to the general financial hardship of the PA:
“Awad emphasized that the monetary and financial blockade that the Palestinian [PA] government is in has prevented the implementation of the agreement until now, and added: ‘Therefore, the government is paying partial salaries to all the employees, and it cannot treat the teachers as exceptional.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 15, 2023]
For approximately 2 years, the PA has been punishing its law-abiding employees by paying them only partial salaries. To deflect the anger of the employees from the PA to Israel, the PA blames Israel for its alleged financial crisis….
EU urges members to deport more migrants ineligible to stay
Ekathermerini
14.03.2023 • 19:15
The European Union on Tuesday urged its member countries to deport more people who enter Europe without authorization and who are not eligible to stay, saying that only around one in five would-be migrants who should be sent home actually is.
“Last year, we had a return rate of only 21% of those who are not eligible to stay,” EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. “When we fail to return people, this hampers our system and erodes trust.”
In some countries, the return rate is more like one in 50.
Johansson said that 340,000 decisions were handed down in EU member nations last year to deport people, but that only in 60% of cases did European authorities try to contact the migrants’ home countries to get them accepted back in.
“To protect the right to apply for asylum we have to show that we are appropriately dealing with those who do not qualify for international protection,” she said. “We need migration, but it has to be in a legal and orderly way.”
How many years have we been saying this? 'We' meaning people with common sense.
The arrival of well over one million migrants in 2015 – mostly people fleeing war in Syria or Iraq – sparked one of the EU’s biggest political crises. Member countries bickered over who should take responsibility for the migrants who enter, and whether other members should be obliged to help.
The row continues today. Repeated attempts to reform the asylum system have been made, but there’s been little progress. Unable to resolve the core dispute, the EU has turned to paying the countries that people leave or transit to prevent them setting out in the first place.
Johansson said the EU’s border and coastguard agency “is well equipped” to organize deportation flights, and urged the bloc’s 27 member countries to take advantage of them.
“We have a good political agreement with Bangladesh,” the EU’s top migration official noted. She said a Frontex flight would depart for Bangladesh on Wednesday with 68 “returnees” aboard. “This is the way we should work together,” Johansson said. [AP]
Pastor Attacked after Invitation to Christian-Muslim Debate
Mosque leaders in Uganda invited church leaders to participate.
By Our East Africa Correspondent
Morning Star News
Rural Mbale, Uganda, near a Christian theological college. (Michael Shade, Creative Commons)
NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – A pastor invited to participate in a religion debate by mosque leaders in Uganda was attacked after his arguments ostensibly led to 37 Muslims accepting Christ, sources said.
Muslims who apparently converted to Christianity were among those who assaulted Pastor Arthur Asadi Babi, 42, on Feb. 10, he said. He was hospitalized for eight days in Mbale city’s Nakaloke ward with injuries to soft tissue in his neck, a broken leg, a bone fracture in his hand and swelling of his private parts, said Bishop Michael Okia of the area’s Living Stream Church of Christ.
“We received an invitation letter from the sheikh of Nakaloke mosque, who organized the debate in Nakaloke ward in Mbale city,” Okia told Morning Star News. “I decided to send Pastor Babi to debate with the Muslims because of his scholarship skills in the Koran and the Bible.”
Pastor Babi and a team of Christians began participating in the second week of the two-week debate, on Feb. 9, and on the second day he presented a defense of Christianity using the Koran with responses from the Bible on the uniqueness of Christ as the Son of God and the only way to God the Father, the bishop said.
“On Feb. 10, at the end of his defense, the pastor made an appeal for a response from the audience to believe in Christ,” Okia said. “Surprisingly, 29 adults and 8 children gave their lives to Christ Jesus, all Muslims.”
Pastor Babi said he was attacked immediately after apparently leading the Muslims to Christ.
“From nowhere, Muslims started throwing stones, and then with sticks and clubs attacked me by beating me, including the new Muslim converts who had embraced the Christian faith,” Pastor Babi told Morning Star News. “I was hit on my right hand and left leg while some tried to strangle me. One Muslim kicked me and injured my private parts, which is still in pain to date.”
A church member, Ben Yasiini, was able to rescue him and also suffered minor injuries, a tearful Pastor Babi said, adding that he was able to identify two of the assailants.
The pastor received treatment at Grace Medical Center in Mbale and was discharged on Feb.18.
Converting from Islam seven years ago, Pastor Babi is a married father of six children, ages 3 to 17.
As his church is only four kilometers from the mosque, Okia said leaders are still assessing whether to file a police report.
The assault was the latest of many instances of persecution of Christians in Uganda that Morning Star News has documented.
Uganda’s constitution and other laws provide for religious freedom, including the right to propagate one’s faith and convert from one faith to another. Muslims make up no more than 12 percent of Uganda’s population, with high concentrations in eastern areas of the country.
Muslims can't stand to lose, even though Islam is largely indefensible. They think Allah is real and on their side, and when God shows up for people like Pastor Babi, they just go hysterical.
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