Turkey Fumes Over Armenian Genocide Recognition, Which Comes Amid Damaged Relationship
(CNSNews.com) – As anticipated, Turkey’s government reacted angrily to President Joe Biden’s decision to recognize the mass killings of Armenian Christians a century ago as “genocide,” summoning the U.S. ambassador for a reprimand and accusing the U.S. of having bowed to the Armenian American lobby for opportunistic reasons.
For decades, Armenians have accused U.S. presidents of shying away from the politically sensitive term out of deference for Turkey, a strategically-located NATO ally.
But Biden’s move comes amid a slow, steady deterioration in the relationship under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a touchy and autocratic leader whose foreign and domestic policies have set off alarm bells in the West.
In a statement marking the April 24, 1915 beginning of the mass atrocities that occurred amid the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, Biden said, “we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.”
After paying tribute to Armenian survivors who rebuilt their lives in the United States and have enriched the nation “in countless ways,” he offered some broader comments about building a world “unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance,” and with a “shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world.”
In an apparent attempt to soften the blow for Ankara, Biden said, “We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.” He also pointedly did not use the word “Turkey,” placing the atrocities in the historical context of “the Ottoman era.”
“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” the statement concluded.
“It jumped out of the page to me that the administration emphasized that this was something that happened during the Ottoman era,” Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Steven Cook told the Turkey-focused news site Ahval.
Despite the evident attempts to try to “avoid doing more damage to the bilateral relationship,” however, he wondered whether those “nuances” had been lost in Ankara, given the political sensitivities about this issue.
Indeed, the reaction from the Turkish state suggested that it did not see the wording as mitigating.
“Words cannot change or rewrite history,” said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusolgu. “We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice. We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism.”
The foreign ministry said Biden’s statement “has hurt the Turkish people, opening a wound that’s hard to fix in our relations.”
An alliance?
In the same discussion program, Merve Tahiroglu, the Turkey program coordinator at the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington, said the statement crossed a threshold after decades of Turkish lobbying to try to prevent genocide recognition.
It was also a reflection of “how much the Turkey-U.S. relationship has changed,” she said.
Because of the importance the U.S. attached to the alliance, there used to be greater tolerance of Turkey’s nationalist positions that clashed with international norms, “but right now we’re in a very different place than that. We’re no longer really talking about an alliance.”
Before issuing the statement Biden spoke by phone with Erdogan, their first conversation since the inauguration. A White House readout said Biden had conveyed “his interest in a constructive bilateral relationship with expanded areas of cooperation and effective management of disagreements.”
Tahiroglu saw that wording as significant, saying past statements would normally have reaffirmed the importance of the relationship, rather than express U.S. “interest” in having one.
Cook also put the genocide statement in context of the problems in the relationship.
“In ten years the Turks haven’t given anybody a reason not to recognize the Armenian genocide,” he said. “Previously the argument was, you know, Turkey’s too important, too important a partner, we don’t want to push them – but the way in which the Turks have conducted their foreign policy, the way in which they’ve undermined the United States at critical moments, hasn’t given anybody a reason not to do this.”
Under Erdogan, religious freedom has declined in Turkey, and among those praising Biden’s decision was International Christian Concern and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent statutory watchdog.
Turkey, meanwhile, won the support of Pakistan, whose foreign ministry spokesman said, “we believe that one-sided approaches and political categorization of historical events could undermine trust and lead to polarization between nations.”
Inside Turkey, major opposition parties backed the government stance, although the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) issued a statement calling on the nation to face its history and recognize the genocide. (The HDP, which Ankara accuses of links to the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, is already facing threats of being outlawed.)
The U.N. Convention on Genocide defines genocide as actions, including killing and seriously harming people, “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”
Scholars say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed at the hands of Turks in 1915 and the ensuing years.
Turkey acknowledges that war, disease and famine costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of people – both Armenian Christians and Muslim Turks – during that period, but argues that the killings of Armenians were not systematic.
Armenians Hopeful Biden Will Acknowledge ‘Genocide’; Turks Warn of Fraying Alliance
(Update: President Biden on Friday spoke by phone with President Erdogan, their first conversation since the inauguration. The White House said Biden conveyed "his interest in a constructive bilateral relationship with expanded areas of cooperation and effective management of disagreements. The leaders agreed to hold a bilateral meeting on the margins of the NATO Summit in June to discuss the full range of bilateral and regional issues.")
(CNSNews.com) – The Armenian community in the United States is cautiously optimistic following reports that President Joe Biden plans to recognize Ottoman Turkey’s mass killings of Armenians a century ago as “genocide.”
The Turkish government is warning that the move will worsen ties between the NATO allies, and the Turkish American lobby says it will stoke “Turkophobic” sentiment.
Saturday is the anniversary of the day Armenians mark as the beginning of the atrocities on April 24, 2015. Over the following years, some 1.5 million Armenians were killed as the Ottoman Empire fractured amid and in the aftermath of World War I.
With the exception of President Ronald Reagan, no sitting U.S. president has used the term “genocide” in relation with the killings. Armenian activists refer to their reluctance to do so as submission to Turkey’s “gag rule.”
Biden, whose relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not warm, is reported to be preparing to issue a statement that will refer to “genocide.” It would be the first April 24 statement to do so; Reagan used the word in a Holocaust Days of Remembrance proclamation in 1981.
“We are cautiously optimistic about media reports that President Biden is going to reset U.S. policy by properly recognizing the Armenian Genocide, effectively ending the longest lasting foreign gag-rule in American history,” said Armenian National Committee of America executive director Aram Hamparian. “This principled stand represents a powerful setback to Turkey’s century-long obstruction of justice for this crime, and its ongoing hostility and aggression against the Armenian people.”
Ankara denies that what it calls “the events of 2015” constituted genocide, and has reacted angrily as governments or parliaments in a number of European countries, as well as Pope Francis, have recognized the killings as genocide. For the U.S. to do so would be a severe setback for its campaign, given its leadership internationally and within NATO.
“Statements that have no legal binding will have no benefit, but they will harm ties,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the broadcaster Haberturk this week. “If the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs.”
The American-Turkish Association appealed to Biden to reconsider, saying that calling the killings genocide “feeds into Turkophobic views.”
Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) president Mazlum Kosma urged Biden in an open letter to “consider the Turkish American perspective” while formulating his April 24 message. “Turkish Americans and Turks all over the world are offended by these efforts that misconstrue and manipulate history and stain their nation,” he wrote.
The issue has supporters on both sides of aisle in the U.S. Congress. After pressing for an Armenian genocide recognition for decades, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in late 2019.
Last month 36 senators, ranging from conservative Republicans to leftwing Democrats, urged Biden to keep a campaign pledge “to support a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide.”
Although Biden during his Senate career co-sponsored Armenia genocide resolutions at least seven times between 1984 and 2008, during the Obama-Biden administration no such recognition came – despite an unequivocal promise by then-Sen. Barack Obama while campaigning for the White House.
Amid reports that Biden will now keep his own pledge, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) thanked him “for honestly facing history and heeding our calls to recognize the genocide’s factual reality; something that should have never been denied, diminished, or mischaracterized by any U.S. administration.”
Under Erdogan’s often controversial leadership ties with the U.S. have been marked by periods of ill will since the George W. Bush administration.
While vice president, Biden visited Turkey four times between 2011 and 2016.
In an Oct. 2014 speech at Harvard University, Biden called Turkey (and other Sunni allies) “our largest problem” in fueling extremism in Syria, but apologized after a furious Turkish reaction.
During his presidential campaign, Biden caused an uproar in Turkey over a New York Times interview in which he called Erdogan an “autocrat” and expressed support for opposition parties to unseat him in elections scheduled for 2023.
About 350,000 Americans of Turkish descent living in the U.S., according to the Turkish Coalition of America, while the AATA puts the number at 500,000.
An American Community Survey in 2017 estimated around 486,000 Americans will Armenian ancestry, although an Armenian government department dealing with diaspora affairs puts the number at above 1.6 million.
Muslim Migrant Who Stabbed Gay Couple Has No Regrets, Court Hears
A Syrian Muslim migrant who attacked a homosexual couple with knives, killing one, has no regrets, a German court has heard.
Abdullah al HH, as the migrant is referred to in the press, wanted “to live according to the strict interpretation of the Qur’an” and turned to the Islamic State, a psychologist told the Dresden Higher Regional Court, according to a Der Spiegel court report.
The Syrian revealed his thoughts to the psychologist, such as his belief that it was legitimate to kill “unbelievers”, while serving the short sentence he received in 2018 for obtaining instructions on how to build a suicide bomb vest.
The psychologist said Abdullah did not appear to have any real appreciation for why he was in prison, telling the court he “had the feeling [the migrant] was trivializing the whole thing” and “didn’t see [what he had done] as a criminal offense”.
Nevertheless, he was released back among the public on September 29th 2020 — just six months after his comments about killing “unbelievers”, and despite the psychologist concluding he was very dangerous and the State Criminal Police Office and Office for the Protection of the Constitution acknowledging that he was a threat.
Just five days later he launched a frenzied knife attack on two gay men, Thomas L and Oliver L, near Dresden’s Frauenkirche Dresden (Church of Our Lady), stabbing them in the back and leaving Thomas dead and Oliver severely wounded.
He was able to leave the scene of the crime undetected and remained at large for some two weeks before being arrested.
He is said to have said he had no regrets about the attack, except that he failed to succeed in ending both of their lives, as they were unbelievers.
Asked by presiding judge Hans Schlueter-Staats why Abdullah had radicalised further during his short spell in prison, the psychologist said that her guess was that “he realized then that he would be deported and that he had no [future prospects] in Germany .”
Islamic State Executes Another Christian on Video
And warns all Western Christians of retribution.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
In a video released last Saturday, April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State executed a Coptic Christian man in Sinai, Egypt.
The slain was identified as 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama. In the video, Salama appears on his knees, with three masked men holding rifles stand behind him. The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe:
“All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” — this latter part is said while the terrorist contemptuously points at the bound and kneeling man before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.”
The middle speaker continues by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.”
The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head — even as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him.
It is unclear when the video was made — Salama was abducted over five months earlier — and the timing of its release appears to have been meant to coincide with Easter, which for Copts and other Orthodox communities is just beginning. (As discussed here, Muslim terrorists have a penchant for killing and terrorizing Christians and bombing their churches during their holiest days, especially Easter, most recently in Indonesia.)
According to the original report, on November 8, 2020, Salem had gone out
at 8pm to buy something from a nearby store, when three armed unmasked men stopped him by force in the middle of the busy street. They forced a passing pickup truck to stop, threatened its driver and forced him out at gunpoint. They shoved the senior Salem into the truck and quickly drove away while firing bullets in the air…. Peter Salem [his son] directly notified the police and filed a report. He sent an urgent plea to President Sisi to interfere in order to find his father, lest he meets the same fate of Bekhit Aziz Lamei [another Christian] who was kidnapped last August from al-Abtal village in South Sinai, and to date has not been found.
“He kept the faith till the moment he was killed,” the group Sinai Province said of the slain Copt in a statement. Several Egyptian activists have also blamed the authorities of indifference or worse in not being able to locate and secure the release of the 62-year-old Christian, which they say could easily have been done.
Prior to the clip depicting his execution, Salama appears in the same video offering a “confession,” saying he was responsible for building St. Mary Coptic Orthodox church in Beir al-Abd in Sinai, and that his “church is cooperating with the Egyptian army and intelligence’s war on the Islamic State.”
This is one of the oldest and patently false accusations Muslim terrorists make against the Coptic Church in Egypt, which itself is often victim to the government. The claim is meant to put a veneer of “justice” on the random killing of Coptic Christians.
Moreover, the “confession” was clearly derived through torture as several of Salama’s teeth appeared broken in the video, though they were fine before he was abducted, as confirmed by his son and by comparing before and after pictures. As the “confessional” was taped before his execution, his tormentors may have falsely promised his release if he only read their script. Also, when he was first abducted, the Muslim terrorists contacted his son demanding a five-million–Egyptian pound (about USD 318,000) ransom for his release.
The Sinai has been a hotbed of jihadi activity and terrorism, particularly after the Egyptian army, in response to popular uprisings, ousted President Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Christians have especially been targeted for abduction, slaughter, immolation, and mass displacement.
CAIR and US Islamists Have a #MeToo Problem
Rape, sexual harassment, and child abuse in the Sharia states-within-a-state.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
First, Ahmad Saleem, a community organizer for CAIR in Florida, was busted after showing up to molest what he thought was a 12-year-old girl he had met over the internet. When Ahmad showed up in a car with a plate, "Invest in Children", the cops were waiting for him instead.
The son of Pakistani immigrants had headed up the local Muslim Students Association at the University of Central Florida before moving up the ranks at CAIR. Then it was off to prison.
Now it’s Hassan Shibly’s turn. The Syrian immigrant who headed up CAIR Florida was accused of assaulting his wife, threatening to kill her, and sexually harassing CAIR employees. Shibly was also accused of threatening some of his accusers, and trying to pay them off.
An NPR article noted that CAIR leaders had been aware of the accusations as far back as 2016 and that no action was taken. "CAIR National has a history of turning a blind eye to many incidents over the years, and the information is coming out. No NDA will save them from what's to come," a former CAIR employee tweeted.
A forum for CAIR victims on Instagram quickly filled up with stories of a CAIR chapter head who "was found to be sexually harassing a member of staff and other women also complained about his behavior" only to be protected by the local CAIR governing board, a CAIR leader grooming an employee into a sexual relationship, a CAIR leader using "his religious belief that men can have 4 wives to manipulate women into having affairs with him behind his legal wife's back", and a "lawsuit with an imam and a little girl."
This kind of thing happens a lot.
When the various Islamist groups set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar networks operate in this country, they use the laws of Sharia that they intend to impose on Americans.
Two years ago, Zia ul-Haque Sheikh, a former ISNA board member, and the Imam at the Islamic Center of Irving, was accused of sexually exploiting a 13-year-old girl. He allegedly tried to marry the girl, when she came of age, even though he already had two wives at the time.
Also at the Islamic Center of Irving, a security guard was accused of molesting a third-grader, and there was an incident of a foreign man kissing minors at the mosque.
Sheikh's accuser claimed that she had reported this to the president of the Islamic Center of Irving board, Nouman Ali Khan, who “discouraged her from sharing what she experienced because it would harm Sheikh’s reputation.”
Khan, an Islamic preacher and a Pakistani immigrant, had headed up the Bayyinah Academy before being accused of latching on to troubled women at Islamic events and then exploiting them. The Islamist cleric had frequently appeared at ISNA and other Islamist events, and had previously defended the Sharia practice of lashing those accused of immoral behavior.
Sheikh Usama Canon, the Islamic cleric who founded the Ta'leef Collective, had been a frequent speaker at CAIR and ISNA events, an instructor at the Islamist Zaytuna Institute, and an advisor to the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN).
Canon, a black convert to Islam turned preacher, was ousted after allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior that included grooming women. He still remains involved in various Islamic institutions and organizations including the Downtown Islamic Center of Chicago.
Muslim feminist activists insist that the answer is more female leadership, but Linda Sarsour, probably the most prominent female Muslim activist in America, was herself accused of enabling sexual harassment back when she was working at the Arab American Association.
“She oversaw an environment unsafe and abusive to women,” a former employee, who claimed to have been repeatedly groped, alleged.
The Islamist apples rarely fall far from the tree.
Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and probably the leading Islamist figure in the West, has been accused of raping a series of women.
Ramadan's alleged assaults took place in Washington D.C., in Paris, London, and major cities around the world. The victims who have come forward included a disabled convert to Islam and former teenage students: including one as young as 14 years old.
The disabled woman described meeting Ramadan after a conference on Islamophobia and Palestine before he beat her, raped her, and then urinated on her.
Abuses happen in all religions and among secular intellectuals, but Islam is unique in that its theology provides a license for sexual abuse. A number of the Muslim leaders caught in the #MeToo moment employed the toolbox of Sharia law to perpetrate their abuses. They used the legal fiction of “temporary marriages” to force women into illicit affairs and the codes of a religion whose founder married a 7-year-old girl and where children are married off well before they hit puberty to justify abusing underage girls. And the Islamist infrastructure around them, tapping into the Sharia demand for multiple witnesses to a rape charge, ignored their accusers.
Rape and sexual abuses can happen in a variety of settings, but Islam is uniquely built to justify and protect behaviors that are crimes in the United States, but normative in the Muslim world.
The #MeToo scandals of Islamism are just symptoms of the fundamental divide between two civilizations and their accompanying value systems. The Islamists had always intended to build a state within a state. And within their organizations and communities, the state within a state operates under Sharia law, with legal, but no moral accountability, to the United States.
After 9/11, America’s Islamists increasingly came to align with the Left. The unspoken conflict between Sharia and feminism has yet to explode out into the open because there is too much at stake for both sides. But the #MeToo scandals at CAIR and other Islamist groups are a fracture point between two ideologies that are hostile to America, but also to each other’s values.
The miniature clash of civilizations within the political infrastructure of multiculturalism is coming.
Islamists have injected their policy priorities, support for the Muslim Brotherhood, hostility to Israel, hijabization, and opposition to fighting terrorism, into the Left. But the Left has also injected its own values, including feminism, into the Islamist political infrastructure.
Leftists and Islamists allied in Egypt, Algeria and Iran, among many other places, to overthrow establishment governments, only to have those alliances come apart in blood and tyranny.
The American alliance between Islam and the Left may meet the same end.
Jihad Murderer Barghouti is Running for Palestinian Authority President
Welcome to Israel's 'Partner for Peace'.
Mahmoud Abbas must be kicking himself. Why did he ever think it would be a good idea to call for parliamentary and presidential elections? He had, after all, gotten along quite well without them. The Palestinian President-for-Life is now entering the 16th year of his four-year term. But he wanted to show the Biden people that he was, in truth, deeply democratic, and what better way – indeed, the only way – to show that was to insist upon elections. Besides, he figured everything would go according to plan. His handpicked list of Fatah candidates would win a majority in the Parliament. And he would not face any serious opposition in the Presidential race. Abbas would make sure, with carrots and sticks, that Hamas would not field a presidential candidate. The carrots were “jobs for the boys” – Hamas leaders’ relatives suddenly offered employment with the PA, or other financial inducements (including bribes); the sticks would be visits by Fatah enforcers to Hamas leaders, telling them not even to think of running; both worked, and Hamas announced it would not put up a candidate for the presidency. And Mahmoud Abbas figured that both of his most dangerous, because much more popular, rivals — Mohammed Dahlan and Marwan Barghouti — would for different reasons not be able to run.
Mohammed Dahlan, who for the past decade has lived in the United Arab Emirates, where he became a counsellor to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and is now known as “the Emirates’ favorite Palestinian.” Dahlan once headed a small army of Fatah members in Gaza; at the time some called Gaza Dahlanistan, until Hamas came to power in 2007 and drove the Fatah men out. In the West Bank, Dahlan soon became a rival of Mahmoud Abbas who, to get rid of him arranged to. have him arrested, put on trial, and convicted of “embezzlement” – a charge that took a good deal of chutzpah for Abbas to make, given that he has himself acquired a fortune of $400 million, largely by helping himself to aid meant for ordinary Palestinians. The conviction was important for Abbas, because it made Dahlan ineligible to ever run for office. And now that’s particularly important, given that in opinion polls, Dahlan consistently wins 60% of the vote against Abbas.
The second possible candidate for PA president is Marwan Barghouti. Like Dahlan, in a face-off with Abbas he would win 60% of the vote. He’s a member of one of the largest and most powerful clans in the West Bank; there are Barghoutis everywhere. Marwan Barghouti has only one handicap – it’s the very thing that makes him so popular. He’s currently serving five life sentences (plus 40 years) for being involved in murdering five Israelis. Abbas may try to disqualify him, insisting that if Barghouti won, he could not govern from an Israeli prison. But that’s not necessarily the case. Politicians have been known to govern from jail. Americans may remember James Michael Curley, who served as Mayor of Boston for two years from his prison cell. Barghouti has made sure that his wife is running for the Palestinian Legislative Council. He could govern by employing her, and a group of male Barghoutis, along with Nasser al-Kidwa, as his proxies. They could be sent directives from his prison cell. He could even use the Internet to broadcast his messages to his people. It’s not crazy — Marwan Barghouti would be “working from home.” Barghouti, it turns out, much to the chagrin of Mahmoud Abbas, has decided to run.
There is another possible way for Abbas to remain as president, aside from cancelling the elections. That is to declare that “because of his genuine remorse for his long-past defalcation, and because he has earned gratitude for persuading the UAE to deliver 50,000 dose of coronavirus vaccine to the Palestinian people, Mohammad Dahlan is hereby declared eligible to run for president of the Palestinian Authority.” Then Abbas can hope that his two rivals will split almost evenly the 60% of the electorate that is against him, while he wins with a plurality of 40%. It’s not impossible, when you’re dealing with Mahmoud Abbas, President-For-Life.
A report on this new challenge to Mahmoud Abbas is here: “Marwan Barghouti to run in PA presidential election,” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, April 15, 2021:
Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti will run in the Palestinian Authority presidential election slated for July 31, Nasser al-Kidwa, a former PA foreign minister, declared on Wednesday {April 14].
Kidwa made the announcement shortly after arriving in the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
A nephew of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Kidwa has joined forces with Barghouti to support a list of candidates for the May 22 Palestinian parliamentary election as well.
When Nasser al-Kidwa informed Mahmoud Abbas that he would not be running on Abbas’ Fatah list, as expected, but had chosen a list of candidates he would instead by supporting for seats in the parliament, an enraged Abbas promptly fired him from his sinecure as the head of the Yasser Arafat Foundation. Kidwa then got in touch with Barghouti, and they have now presented a joint list of their chosen candidates for parliament. And what’s more, they’ve announced their candidate for president:
“Our candidate for the presidential election is Marwan Barghouti,” al-Kidwa told Palestinian reporters. “On the 20th anniversary [sic] of his incarceration, we send Barghouti a message of solidarity and wish him success.”
Barghouti was arrested by the IDF in Ramallah on April 15, 2002. Two years later, he was convicted on five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, as well as membership in a terrorist organization. He was sentenced to five cumulative life sentences and an additional 40 years….
Public opinion polls have shown that Barghouti is expected to defeat PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other candidates in a presidential election.
It is not clear at this stage whether Abbas, 85, will run again for office. Abbas was elected as PA president in 2005 for a four-year term.
Kidwa was recently expelled from Fatah after he formed his own party, National Democratic Forum, to run in the parliamentary election.
He later announced that he and Barghouti have agreed to form an electoral list called Al-Hurriya (Freedom).
Barghouti himself is not part of the Al-Hurriya list. Instead, his wife, Fadwa, is running together with Kidwa in the election for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)….
All the opinion polls show Barghouti as soundly defeating Abbas, with 60% of the vote. What a victory for his party in parliament could do is drive his percentage of that vote still higher, and convince the electorate that, one way or another, a President Barghouti will be able to rule, even from an Israeli prison.
In his statements in Gaza, Kidwa said that his list has been facing “harassment and pressure” since its formation. He did not provide further details.
Abbas not only removed Kidwa from his sinecure, a very well-paid low-show job that will be hard for Kidwa to replace, but likely sent his enforcers to warn other Fatah members not to join Kidwa’s party, lest they find themselves or their relatives also losing their own jobs, or worse.
“The elections reflect the desire of the Palestinian people to bring about a radical change in the Palestinian political system,” he added.
During his visit to Gaza, Kidwa is expected to meet with representatives of several Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Abbas, meanwhile, urged Germany and other countries to exert pressure on Israel to agree to holding the Palestinian elections in Jerusalem.
His appeal came during a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday night.
“President Abbas briefed Merkel on the Palestinian elections, stressing that they are going to be held in all the Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem,” the PA’s official news agency Wafa reported….
That phone call to Merkel asking her to “pressure Israel” is pure theatre of the absurd. Abbas clearly wants Israel to turn down the request to let Palestinians in east Jerusalem take part in the elections. If Israel refuses, this hands Abbas the excuse he needs to cancel the elections – while still pretending he wanted so much to hold those elections. But, alas, the Israelis left him no choice but to cancel. Don’t blame Abbas. Blame – as always, and for everything – Israel.
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