Iraqi terror victims confront terrorists

France 24 has released a video news report about the Iraqi police bringing terrorists to the scene of their crime for the purpose of understanding how the attack is carried out.

You will see what happens when a victim confronts the terrorist.

Here's the link: http://www.france24.com/en/focus/20140930-2014-09-30-0746-focus/

What do you think?

Stephen M. Flatow

More Christian casualities in Iraq

We previously posted a story about the plight of a dwindling Christian community in Iraq and other countries in the Middle East.

Last night, the Times reports, 10 bomb attacks targeting Christians took place in Baghdad.

For some Christians here, the latest attacks represented the last straw. “We will love Iraq forever, but we have to leave it immediately to survive,” said Noor Isam, 30. “I would ask the government, ‘Where is the promised security for Christians?’”

Well, the answer is there is no security for minority religions in Muslim lands.

Read the full story.

Palestinians and their Arab brothers

For a fellow with a PhD. in history, Abu Mazen, can't seem to get his facts (or sentiments) straight. While in Kuwait to build support for the Palestinian Authority's decision to avoid negotiations with Israel, he said,

"Kuwaiti-Palestinian relations are historical and excellent. It is a great honor for us that the Fatah movement was launched in Kuwait."

Does he have amnesia?  Where was he when Kuwait expelled thousands upon thousands of Palestinian Arabs from the country following the Gulf War.  (That was the war when missile attacks by Iraq against Israel were greeted by parties in the streets of Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank.)

Author Hassan A El-Najjar writes

Following the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians in Kuwait were reduced from a thriving immigrant community of more than 400,000 to less than 30,000 in 1998. Kuwaitis forced them out of the country using a systematic and violent campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian official support for Iraq during the crisis was used as an excuse for that campaign.

So, with friends like the Kuwaitis who needs enemies. Rather than tour the Middle East gathering support for his policy of delaying negotiations, he should be sitting down with the people who can resolve his problems for once and all time--the Israelis.

Well, that's what I think.

The Palestine Peace Distraction

Richard N. Haass writes in the Wall Street Journal about "how easy [it is] to exaggerate how central the Israel-Palestinian issue is and how much the U.S. pays for the current state of affairs." This runs contrary to President Obama's comments that resolution of the Middle East conflict is a national security interest and General David Petraeus's Congressional testimony that the conflict challenges America's ability "to advance our interests."

Haass writes,

"There are times one could be forgiven for thinking that solving the Palestinian problem would take care of every global challenge from climate change to the flu. But would it? The short answer is no. It matters, but both less and in a different way than people tend to think."

Why? Let's look at Iraq. The

"Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are divided over the composition of the new government, how to share oil revenues, and where to draw the border between the Kurdish and Arab areas. The emergence of a Palestinian state would not affect any of these power struggles."

Don't forget Afghanistan. "Here the U.S. finds itself working against, as much as with, a weak and corrupt president who frustrates American efforts to build up a government that is both willing and able to take on the Taliban. Again, the emergence of a Palestinian state would have no effect on prospects for U.S. policy in Afghanistan or on Afghanistan itself."

And as for the main player itself, "any Palestinian state would materialize only amidst compromise." No return to the 1967 borders; a token right of return for Palestinians to Israel; Jerusalem will remain undivided and at most shared.

Not so cut and dry is it?

Read the full article here.

Not all tidings are of great joy - Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby writes about the life of Egypt's Coptic Christians and Christians in Muslim countries.

On May 31, 2008, a band of Bedouin Muslims armed with automatic weapons stormed Abu Fana [an ancient monastery], destroying a small church and burning the monastery's farm. Nine monks and monastery employees were wounded, and four others were abducted.

What is most tragic about the plight of the Copts, however, is that they comprise only a fraction of the estimated 200 million Christians in 60 countries worldwide who face persecution because of their religion.

From Egypt to Iraq it's hard to be a Christian.

Read the full column.