Canada - European View of the Great Canadian Experiment in Madness

..

"The predatory psychopath has been able to figure out how to cloak himself in the guise of compassion" 

- Dr. Jordan Peterson

Canada’s woke nightmare is a vision of Britain’s future

Drug decriminalisation, gender ideology, legal euthanasia – the country seems to

have adopted every policy on the progressive wish list

29 August 2023 • 2:47pm

Steven Edginton, Telegraph

video 38:05

Under Justin Trudeau, Canada has sought to position itself as the global bastion of progressive politics. In my latest Telegraph documentary, seen above, I went to the former British colony to find out how Canadians are dealing with Trudeau’s radical reforms; from the promotion of gender ideology in schools and the mass legalisation of drugs, to his extreme new suicide laws and clamp downs on freedom of speech.

I began my investigation in one of the country’s most liberal cities, Vancouver. Possession of up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs, including heroin, cocaine and fentanyl, has been legalised in the city as part of a three year experiment which began in January of this year. If the aim was to combat the opioid crisis that already beset the city then it appears there is still much to be done as vast tent sites line the streets, patrolled by roaming zombie-like drug addicts.

As we filmed on Hastings Street, infamous as the epicentre of Vancouver’s homelessness crisis, I witnessed a topless man shoot a needle into his arm five feet from me. Though it wasn’t quite as bad as San Francisco, where my cameraman and I came under attack from angry vagrants, the scenes were still shocking.

It’s not just the homeless who patrol the streets of Vancouver. Chris Elston, better known online as Billboard Chris, campaigns against the imposition of gender ideology on children, whether through Canada’s education system or via dangerous operations to “transition” children. As his nickname suggests, Chris walks around Vancouver wearing signs protesting gender ideology, encouraging lively debates with passers-by which he puts on X, formerly Twitter.

Chris kindly allowed our crew to join him on a walkabout, where we found many Canadians horrified by the use of puberty blockers in children and the promotion of biological men in women’s sports.  

We did encounter some opposition of course, mostly through the odd shout or flicking of the finger. So much for Canadian politeness.

One aggressive gentleman, tall, ageing and angry, began a tirade against Chris with the rather bizarre singular message that he is “queer”.

For those who do question gender ideology there can be severe consequences. We spoke to a nurse, Amy Hamm, who faces losing her licence to practise after two members of the public complained about a poster she was involved in pledging support for the gender-critical author J K Rowling.  

The promotion of transgenderism in Canadian schools has led to a fierce backlash from some parents, not least from some of the country’s ethnic minority communities. While multiculturalism has become a key pillar of Justin Trudeau’s vision of Canadian identity, not everyone fits in with his mould of the enlightened immigrant.

In Toronto, I caught up with a family originally from India to discuss their experiences of modern Canada. Neerunjun, a social worker fired by his company for refusing to take the Covid vaccine, discussed how his eight-year-old son was asked to wear the opposite sex’s clothes for a school day promoting cross-dressing. He let his child have a day off instead of submitting to such woke indulgence.

Part of Canada’s social revolution can also be witnessed in its extreme new euthanasia laws. In 2016, the ruling Liberal Party passed legislation enabling assisted suicide for terminally ill Canadians. Next year the legislation will be expanded to include those with mental health problems. As Christianity declines across Canada, and the liberal obsession with “bodily autonomy” and “personal freedom” reaches its logical conclusion, a new dystopia is forming. As Dr Konia Trouton, a euthanasia advocate, told me, “we are an organised society but within that organisation we have to allow some freedoms and opportunities, this is not a communist system where we can try and reign that in”. The campaign group Euthanasia Prevention Coalition estimates that 13,500 people chose state-assisted suicide last year.

For a nation to be truly woke, it must have its own narrative of oppression. In America, activists focus on the country’s history of slavery and racist laws. In Britain, they focus on the Empire. In Canada, where historically there were very few black people, the nation’s story of guilt centres on a so-called genocide against its indigenous population. Supporters of this narrative point to the discovery of hundreds of disturbances in the earth around an Indian residential school in Kamloops, which is supposedly evidence of a mass grave site. 

However, no bodies have ever been found and many question the idea of a genocide as being at best an exaggeration and at worst a total fabrication. We interviewed a man who questioned the genocide story, and was fired from his job as a teacher as a result. Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti has said he is open to punishing those who deny the indigenous genocide narrative, similar to bans on Holocaust denialism.

To prevent wokeism from spreading it is important to have a strong opposition party. Canada’s Conservatives have been historically weak in pushing back against Trudeau, however, their recently elected leader, Pierre Poilievre, has injected fresh energy into the party. Whilst there are some who still question Poillievre’s conservative credentials, his strategy seems to be working; one recent poll gave his party a twelve point lead over Trudeau’s Liberals.

However, the most successful opponents to Canada’s social revolution have so far not been politicians but members of the public. Our film highlights some of these brave individuals, including Dr Jordan Peterson, perhaps the most high-profile Canadian in the world other than the country’s leader.

During my travels I found ordinary people appalled at Canada’s surrender to drug dealers, its contempt for freedom of speech, its enforcement of gender ideology on children and a breezy willingness to terminate the lives of its own citizens. However, for all the depressing stories of people losing their jobs, or being hounded by the government, these cases were equally inspirational. Whilst Canada is a warning to the West, there are also individual messages of hope from those brave individuals fighting for their freedom.

How has Canada changed in recent years? Have you noticed the impact of progressive politics? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section at the Telegraph.

Islam - Africa > Muslim Jihad doubles territory in Mali in One year; Shabaab Terrorizing Kenya; African Gov'ts Deny Jihadist Elephant in the Room

 

Islamic State group nearly doubled its Mali territory

in under a year, UN says

Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement, United Nations experts said in a new report.

Issued on: 26/08/2023 - 11:18Modified: 26/08/2023 - 11:22

2 min

File photo: Malian women look on in Gao, December 4, 2021. © Thomas Coex, AFP

By:NEWS WIRES

The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said.

That’s when a military coup took place in March and rebels in the north formed an Islamic state two months later. The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.

The panel of experts said in the report that the impasse in implementing the agreement — especially the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of combatants into society — is empowering al-Qaida-linked Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin known as JNIM to vie for leadership in northern Mali.

Sustained violence and attacks mostly by IS fighters in the Greater Sahara have also made the signatories to the peace deal “appear to be weak and unreliable security providers” for communities targeted by the extremists, the experts said.

JNIM is taking advantage of this weakening “and is now positioning itself as the sole actor capable of protecting populations against Islamic State in the Greater Sahara," they said.

The panel added that Mali’s military rulers are watching the confrontation between the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates from a distance.

The experts cited some sources as saying the government believes that over time the confrontation in the north will benefit Malian authorities, but other sources believe time favors the terrorists “whose military capacities and community penetration grow each day.”

In June, Mali's junta ordered the U.N. peacekeeping force and its 15,000 international troops to leave after a decade of working on stemming the jihadi insurgency The Security Council terminated the mission’s mandate on June 30.

The panel said the armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement expressed concern that the peace deal could potentially fall apart without U.N. mediation, “thereby exposing the northern regions to the risk of another uprising.”

The U.N. force, or MINUSMA, “played a crucial role” in facilitating talks between the parties, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the agreement, and investigating alleged violations, the panel said.

The 104-page report painted a grim picture of other turmoil and abuses in the country.

The panel said terrorist groups, armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement, and transnational organized crime rings are competing for control over trade and trafficking routes transiting through the northern regions of Gao and Kidal.

“Mali remains a hotspot for drug trafficking in West Africa and between coastal countries in the Gulf of Guinea and North Africa, in both directions,” the experts said, adding that many of the main drug dealers are reported to be based in the capital Bamako.

The panel said it remains particularly concerned with persistent conflict-related sexual violence in the eastern Menaka and central Mopti regions, “especially those involving the foreign security partners of the Malian Armed Force” – the Wagner Group.

“The panel believes that violence against women, and other forms of grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law are being used, specifically by the foreign security partners, to spread terror among populations,” the report said.

(AP)

Kenya: Muslims slit throats of two truck drivers,

torch eight houses and a church

AUG 29, 2023 11:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4)

Two killed in latest Shabaab attack in Lamu

by Kalume Kazungu, Nation.Africa, August 22, 2023 

A lorry driver and his co-driver were killed on Tuesday morning following an ambush by suspected al-Shabaab militants near Lango La Simba area on the Lamu-Witu-Garsen road.

Lamu West Deputy County Commissioner Gabriel Kioni said the vehicle was waylaid by the heavily armed militants between 6.30am and 7am.

After stopping them, the attackers slit their throats, killing them on the spot.

Mr Kioni said the terrorists had earlier torched eight houses and a church at Salama village in Lamu West at night.

The militants, believed to be between 30 and 60, raided the villages between 8.30 pm and 11pm on Monday night and stole household items including television sets, solar panels, lamps, maize flour and goats….

Salama Redeemed Gospel Church Pastor Peter Muthengi said, “I had speakers, chairs and many other items inside my church, all of which have been reduced to ashes. I lost property worth Sh300,000 (About $2,000 USD). I appeal to the government to find a permanent solution to the insecurity incidents in this place. We’re tired of these recurrent attacks.”

This is a rare report of jihadist terror from Kenya, but obviously, they are a lot more numerous than we are hearing about.  It also appears that these jihadists support themselves and their cause by stealing what they need.

Governments blame Africa massacres on economic factors,

but ‘victims were Christians, targeted for that reason’

AUG 29, 2023 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The governmental and media elites in the West have decided there is no jihad. Meanwhile, the jihad advances, particularly in Africa.

Report: Islamist Massacres of Christians a ‘Regular Occurrence’ in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, August 26, 2023:

The slaughter of Christians has become a regular occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa, the Barnabas Fund reports on Saturday, and the “cause is Islamism.”

Hotspots of Islamic terrorist activity include the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), northern Mozambique, and northern and Middle Belt Nigeria, the Christian aid and persecution watchdog group asserts, and the perpetrators “are not just rebels or militants, but jihadists.”

The report notes that Islamic terrorists from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) are affiliated with the Islamic State and together with Islamic State Mozambique, they form the Islamic State Central Africa Province.

The violence in Nigeria and across West Africa “is carried out by the Islamic State West Africa Province, jihadi group Boko Haram, and other Islamist extremists,” the document states.

Terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda “have proliferated across sub-Saharan Africa,” the group observes, leading some observers to make “sobering predictions of an African caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.”

Many secular governments and international bodies have condemned violence such as the recent atrocious massacre of Christian schoolchildren in Uganda but downplay the vital religious element in these attacks.

Massacres like that in Uganda are often blamed on “economic downturns, marginalization and lack of opportunity, corrupt or authoritarian government, or environmental problems that reduce the supply of arable and pastoral land,” but the simple fact is: “the victims were Christians who were targeted for that very reason,” the report points out….

For its part, the Islamic State has called its slaughter of Christians and the burning of church buildings across Africa a “Harvest of African Christians.”

Islam - Current Day > Turkey still trying to convert Christian buildings to Muslim; Muslims destroy church-build in Indonesia; Radical French Muslim; Abayas outlawed in French schools; Libyan minister fired for talking to Israeli

..

Cyprus: Turkish Islamic groups plan to turn historic

12th-century monastery into a mosque

AUG 27, 2023 9:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The practice of appropriating the sacred sites of other religious traditions and converting them to mosques, or destroying the non-Muslim buildings and constructing a mosque on the same site, has abundant precedent worldwide. Consider Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Church of St. John the Baptist/Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, thousands of mosques built over destroyed Hindu temples in India, and the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The idea in every case, including this one, is to declare the victory and supremacy of Islam, and to show how Islam has prevailed over other religions.

In the link above (Hagia Sophia),  I propose the possibility that Turkey's Erdogan might be the Abomination of Desolation after he prayed Islamic prayers in the longest-standing Christian church in history. 

Cyprus: Outrage Over Turkish Plans To Turn Historic Monastery Into Mosque

by Thomas O’Reilly, The European Conservative, August 20, 2023:

Plans to partially convert a historic Cypriot monastery into a mosque have incurred the wrath of ecclesiastical authorities and Cypriot nationalists, as authorities in the Turkish-occupied north of the country temporarily shelved the idea following a very public backlash.

An announcement late last month of a proposal by local Islamic groups to build a Muslim prayer centre (masjid) on the grounds of the Apostolos Andreas Monastery sparked national outrage as officials in the south of the island said it was “unthinkable” that the plans could go ahead.

The twelfth-century Apostolos Andreas Monastery—associated with St. Andrew the Apostle, despite being located in the Turkish-occupied north-eastern quadrant of the island—has been compared to the “Lourdes of Cyprus” by many historians and is a site of paramount religious importance to the island’s Orthodox Christian community….

A local bishop has condemned plans to build a permanent Islamic prayer centre on the grounds of the monastery, which is currently undergoing restoration work. According to the bishop, Turkish officials have already moved Islamic prayer mats into the monastery without consulting with monks and are preparing for the long-term construction of a mosque on site.

The move has stirred up very recent historical memories on the island, where an estimated 550 Greek Orthodox monasteries, churches, and chapels were desecrated following the Turkish invasion, with many Christians forced to flee the northern half of the island for fear of persecution….

The matter of Apostolos Andreas Monastery was raised in the European Parliament by socialist MEPs Giorgos Georgiou and Niyazi Kizilyürek, who linked the move to direct Turkish financial backing and asked the Commission what steps it would take to protect Cyprus’s Christian heritage….

Why would they expect the European Parliament to do anything when they have done their best to destroy Christianity in Europe in favour of Islam?

Indonesia: Muslim mob destroys church constructed in Muslim-majority area

AUG 27, 2023 1:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Islamic law forbids the construction of new churches. Christians are “forbidden to ring church bells or display crosses, recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals and feastdays, and are forbidden to build new churches” – Reliance of the Traveller o.11.5 (6,7)

Mob Damages Church Building in Indonesia

International Christian Concern, August 24, 2023:

08//24/2023 Indonesia (International Christian Concern) – The Pentecostal Missionary Church in Kabil Village, Indonesia, was recently destroyed by a radical mob that was protesting its construction in a majority-Muslim area.

Church Pastor Jacksean Napitupulu estimated that a mob of about 30 people caused considerable damage to the newly constructed building. Local residents had complained about the church and questioned the legality of its building permit over the past three years.

In Muslim-majority Indonesia, it is common for non-Muslims to face obstacles as they seek church building permits from the local government. Even if pastors succeed in getting permits, authorities often give in to hardline groups’ protests and demands that stops construction….

Kabil Village, Indonesia

France: Man converts to Islam, praises jihad and Sharia,

plots jihad attack, ‘God called me to bring people to him’

AUG 27, 2023 12:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Yet another convert to Islam somehow gets the idea that his new, peaceful religion calls for him to do violence to those outside the fold. No authority on earth has ever shown any interest in studying this recurring phenomenon, or considering its implications.

===========================

Yvelines: the worker wanted to commit an attack on July 24

Translated from “Yvelines : l’ouvrier voulait commettre un attentat le 24 juillet,” 

by François Desserre, Actu, August 25, 2023

His long, light brown hair falls over his black polo shirt. Often, he tweaks his little goatee with his fingers. In the box of the Versailles judicial court, this Friday August 25, 2023, Mézian has more the look of a surfer than a terrorist.

And yet, this 25-year-old resident of Noisy-le-Roi (Yvelines) must be tried for justifying an act of terrorism and an attempt to acquire a handgun. According to the investigation, he even planned to carry out “a project.”

Mézian, who converted to Islam at a young age, was targeted by the Versailles criminal investigation department following his postings on Snapchat and Tik Tok. Videos in which he praises jihad and takes very extreme positions. In them, he praises the values of Sharia law as “a necessity.” In them, he describes his idea of an infidel, “a human being who rejects the truth.”

In Noisy-le-Roi, a community of 7,600 inhabitants, Mézian is no stranger. He walks around in a djellaba. He also attracts young people to him. In exchange for sweets or money, he teaches them prayers and the codes of Islam. In the woods, he confirms to them that they will be “the next generation of fighters.”

On July 11, he goes on the Darknet, where he tries to buy his first handgun, a Colt 45. He gets scammed out of 500 euros. He returned there quickly, on July 15, to acquire another, a 7.65 pistol.” Must wait. There was “a lot of demand during the riots,” his contact tells him.

At the same time, the investigators learn from his former fellow prisoner from Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne – dep. 61) that he has already spoken of a criminal “project.” The man has never hidden his radicalism, which has become more powerful after seven years in prison. Seven years for gang rape committed when he was a minor.

No doubt, he felt justified since Mohammed approved of such behaviour in the Quran.

He went through the Radicalization Support District (QPR). He read a lot of history, astrophysics and religious books.

The profile of the man is disturbing. The criminal brigade of the judicial police of Versailles decides to arrest him. Especially since Mézian spoke of a date: July 24. But not of a place. Because, according to him, “it is a key date when the Freemasons were against the armies of the Prophet.”

Before being remanded in custody, he wrote a 6-page letter to the judge. The fine, tight, slanted writing is very calligraphic. It begins with a large drop cap.

In his sentences, he explains his vision of “radicality which is not dangerousness. It allows me to channel myself. He also explains that jihad is a purification and that “the only master I serve is God and his messenger.”

Proselytism? “I don’t do more than that. God called me to bring people to him.”

Faced with his judges, Mézian contests any planned attack. He confirms his withdrawal and a “certain confinement,” after his passage in QPR, where he could be fully searched seven times an hour.

“When I was released, I felt confused, attacked from the outside, by the influx of information.”

To the accusations of an attack, he responds with the madness of his informer. “Me, I just want to make my life, to work. There, I am a temporary worker on a construction site at the King’s Stables, in Versailles.”

For the public prosecutor, all this takes on a more than unpleasant hue.

“The explanations he gives, he is the only one to understand them. Me, I see that he publishes videos where he shows the fighters as heroes. He says these videos fuel his faith. He says he was vaccinated against yellow fever to go on a spiritual retreat in Mali. It is not a trivial destination. One of his friends says he is a diehard, ready to fall as a martyr. Without forgetting the writings found at his home, the attempts to buy a weapon… He is a lone and dangerous wolf.”

And the magistrate continued: “In a country like ours and a department like Yvelines, hard hit by terrorism (Magnanville in 2016, Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in 2020 and Rambouillet in 2021), it is not understandable, nor acceptable.”

In this context, the prosecution pronounces heavy requisitions, up to 7 years of detention, a socio-judicial follow-up for 10 years, a ban on going to the Yvelines for 10 years and to hold a weapon for the same period.

For his last words of defense, Mézian puts it in his own words.

“Pragmatism would like me to be released because the reintegration is there. The radicalism with which you characterize me is something that stabilizes me, which generates satisfaction. I do this with good intentions. I have faith in the Lord you have denied. But I want the best for people like you. I call people to the truth for their good. I am not someone who wants to shed blood.”

The sentence was pronounced, following to the letter the requests of the public prosecutor.

Without a word, Mézian was handcuffed and taken back to jail.

He has ten days to appeal the decision.

French education minister announces ban on Islamic abayas in schools

French authorities are to ban the wearing in school of abaya dresses worn by some Muslim women, the education minister said Sunday, arguing the garment violated France's strict secular laws in education.

Issued on: 27/08/2023 - 22:20Modified: 28/08/2023 - 18:28

2 min


NEWS WIRES

France's Education and Youth Minister Gabriel Attal delivers a speech during a meeting of rectors at the Sorbonne University in Paris on August 24, 2023. © Emmanuel Dunand, AFP

"It will no longer be possible to wear an abaya at school," Education Minister Gabriel Attal told TF1 television, saying he would give "clear rules at the national level" to school heads ahead of the return to classes nationwide from September 4.

The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools, where women have long been banned from wearing the Islamic headscarf.

The right and far-right had pushed for the ban, which the left argued would encroach on civil liberties. 

There have been reports of abayas being increasingly worn in schools and tensions within school over the issue between teachers and parents.

"Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school," Attal said, describing the abaya as "a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute.

"You enter a classroom, you must not be able to identify the religion of the students by looking at them," he said.

A law of March 2004 banned "the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation" in schools.

This includes large crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, abayas -- a long, baggy garment worn to comply with Islamic beliefs on modest dress -- occupied a grey area and had faced no outright ban until now.

But the education ministry had already issued a circular on the issue in November last year.

It described the abaya as one of a group of items of clothing whose wearing could be banned if they were "worn in a manner as to openly display a religious affiliation". The circular put bandannas and long skirts in the same category.

Mixed reaction 

Approached by head teachers' unions about the issue, Attal's predecessor as education minister Pap Ndiaye replied that he did not want "to publish endless catalogues to specify the lengths of dresses".

At least one union leader, Bruno Bobkiewicz, welcomed Attal's announcement Sunday.

"The instructions were not clear, now they are and we welcome it," said Bobkiewicz, general secretary of the NPDEN-UNSA, which represents head teachers.

Eric Ciotto, head of the opposition right-wing Republicans party, also welcomed the news. 

"We called for the ban on abayas in our schools several times," he said. 

But Clementine Autain of the left-wing opposition France Unbowed party denounced what she described as the "policing of clothing".

Attal's announcement was "unconstitutional" and against the founding principles of France's secular values, she argued -- and symptomatic of the government's "obsessive rejection of Muslims".

Barely back from the summer break, she said, President Emmanuel Macron's administration was already trying to compete with Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally. 

 suburb in 2020.

The CFCM, a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has said items of clothing alone are not "a religious sign".

The announcement is the first major move by Attal, 34, since he was promoted this summer to handle the hugely contentious education portfolio.

Along with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, 40, he is seen as a rising star who could potentially play an important role after Macron steps down in 2027.

(AFP)

Libya sacks foreign minister over ‘unofficial encounter’

with Israeli counterpart

Libya's internationally recognised prime minister has sacked his top diplomat after she met her Israeli counterpart, with news of the encounter triggering protests in a country that does not recognise Israel.

Modified: 28/08/2023 - 21:54, 3 min

Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush speaks during a press conference with her Turkish counterpart at the ministry of foreign affairs in Ankara on February 13, 2023. © Adem Altan, AFP

By:NEWS WIRES

Oil-rich Libya, which plunged into chaos after dictator Moamer Kadhafi was toppled and killed in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising, has been divided since 2014 between the UN-supported government of Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah in Tripoli and a rival administration based in the country's east.

Analysts who spoke to AFP appeared to agree that Najla al-Mangoush was the "fall person" for decisions made by Libya's rival leaders, and linked the meeting with United States efforts to pressure more Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel.

Al-Ahrar private news channel, citing a government source, said Mangoush had been fired following a meeting last week in Rome with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.

The Palestinian embassy in Tripoli also reported her dismissal, saying it had been announced by Dbeibah during a visit Monday to the mission. Dbeibah also declared "his rejection of normalisation with Israel" and Libya's total support for the Palestinian people, the embassy said.

In the east, Libyan lawmakers demanded an investigation into the meeting at a special session during which they wore the chequered black-and-white Palestinian scarf.

The Mangoush-Cohen meeting sparked protests Sunday night in Tripoli and other cities, when demonstrators blocked roads with burning tyres and waved Palestinian flags.

Before visiting the Palestinian embassy, Dbeibah's government said Mangoush had been "provisionally suspended and subject to an 'administrative investigation'", while in Israel Cohen confirmed the meeting took place.

Mangoush's whereabouts were uncertain on Monday, following social media reports she had flown to Turkey as protests flared.

Libya's Internal Security Agency (ISA) said she had not been authorised to leave the country and was on a "travel ban list" awaiting investigation.

Turkey's Anadolu news agency, citing security sources, said Mangoush had already left for Istanbul following the diplomatic furore.

The Libyan foreign ministry, in a statement, defended the meeting with Cohen as a "chance and unofficial encounter".

Mangoush had reiterated "in a clear and unambiguous manner Libya's position regarding the Palestinian cause", it said, accusing Israel of trying to "present this incident" as a "meeting or talks".

'Scapegoating'

Libya expert Anas El Gomati of the Sadeq Institute said that Dbeibah, his rival military strongman Khalifa Haftar and the eastern-based parliament that backs him, all knew about the meeting.

They "have used Libya's first female foreign minister as the fall person for decisions they all partook in," Gomati said.

"It's not about politics. It's blatant scapegoating," he told AFP.

Fellow analyst Jalel Harchaoui agreed Dbeibah's survival is at stake and the meeting was spurred by "pressure" on Libya from both the United Nations and the United States to push ahead with much-delayed presidential and legislative elections.

According to Harchaoui, Dbeibah "tried to play at diplomacy but failed because he did not evaluate correctly" the response of Libyans opposed to ties with Israel.

"There are talks to create a new interim government between the Dbeibah and Haftar families brokered in Abu Dhabi instead of holding elections," said Gomati.

"There has been pressure to join the Abraham Accords and begin the process as a gesture to bolster the deal, which would increase US support," he said, adding: "Tel Aviv's backing of Haftar is no secret."

Israel has normalised ties with some Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, under US-backed deals reached in 2020 and known as the Abraham Accords.