Israel on Thursday was outraged to learn that the U.N.’s heritage body was planning to adopt a resolution declaring the Temple Mount sacred to “Muslims only.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) 21-member World Heritage Committee is set to vote on the resolution, a joint Palestinian-Jordanian initiative, during its annual meeting in Istanbul, which began on Sunday and runs through next week. The resolution calls for a return to the “historic status quo” on the Temple Mount, which it sees as favoring Muslims.
In June, UNESCO adopted a resolution deciding to refer to the holy Jerusalem site only by the name of the Muslim mosque on its grounds—Al-Aqsa—in all official documents. The current resolution is far more radical, and to Israel’s surprise, it has received the European Union’s blessing.
Political sources told Israel Hayom that Brussels’ decision to back the move most likely stems from the ongoing crisis between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the EU, which seems to be escalating into an actual rift.
“Israel is very concerned by the EU intent to propose a resolution negating the Jewish people’s link to the Temple Mount. This would be an alternative proposal to the Palestinian draft currently being discussed by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee during its meeting in Istanbul,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“The EU’s proposal continues to deny the Jewish people’s historic ties to Temple Mount, despite France’s apology in April, admitting it was wrong to support UNESCO’s decision to address the Temple Mount only as Al-Aqsa mosque
EU states, in an internal report drafted last year, have said the outbreak of Palestinian knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem is due, in large part, to Israel’s occupation.
They said the attacks began after right-wing Israeli politicians and religious groups began to question the status quo on Arab rights at the Temple Mount complex in the Old City.
But they added that living conditions for Palestinians and the loss of hope in a two-state solution formed the psychological “root” of the violence.
The report, drafted and endorsed in December 2015 by all the EU countries that have embassies in Jerusalem and Ramallah, said the Temple Mount developments were the “proximate cause” for the upsurge in violence that began after summer last year.
But it said the “heart of the matter” was “the Israeli occupation since 1967 and a long-standing policy of political, economic and social marginalisation of Palestinians in Jerusalem”.
Inside Palestinian communities, the occupation has prompted higher levels of “drug abuse, division and displacement of families, domestic violence, loss of cultural identity, and high levels of stress and depression,” the EU report said.
Having arrested those who were supposedly directly involved in the attempted coup, which at last count this morning amounted to over 6,000 individuals of which 3,000 members of the army (or less than 1% of Turkey's 315,000-strong forces) and the Turkish legal system, including judges and prosecutors. That Erdogan was so quick in assembling a list of enemies in the judicial branch, whose arrests started early on Saturday even before the coup was fully doused, is the clearest indication that Erdogan was not only prepared for the "coup", but its inevitable outcome.
However, it was the next step that was the critical one: the one where Erdogan - having cracked down on his immediate military and legal opponents - took his crusade against everyone else, including the press and the educational system.
The first inkling of the upcoming "witch hunt" took place earlier today, when the Turkish police asked "citizens" to report those who support terrorism and crime. In other words, McCarthyism reborn, only this time the bogeyman is not communism.
And then, just hours later, we found out that the first casualty of this expanded witch hunt was none other than a person who had absolutely no involvement in the coup: a former university record, whose only crime was being a government critic, who moments ago tweeted that he was being arrested.
What happens next: an acceleration of the counter-putsch of course, with many more arrested, whose only crime is being guilty of criticizing the government.
Online readers, who take false comfort in the belief that this weekend’s military coup is taking place not in the U.S. but in faraway Turkey, are only fooling themselves.
Erdogan is well on his way to force martial law on Turkey in advance of an orchestrated snap election.
If all of this sounds chillingly familiar, imposing martial law to change the set dates of elections is what power-crazed tyrants do to hold onto public office.
Tomorrow the Republican National Convention gets underway when protesters from the far left—who promise it won’t go down without violence—will be out in full force.
They are out to steal democracy, the one that will allow Donald Trump to face off Hillary Clinton for the presidency.
They’ll do everything humanly—and inhumanely—possible to stop that from happening.
There will be no bright tomorrows for America if Hillary Clinton gets elected as Obama’s long-coveted and thoroughly undeserved third term.
Take Warning America—Obama and his Soros-funded activists—are about to steal any hope of a democratic election.
Erdogan will come out and declare that it was “the people” who want him and who went against the coup. Erdogan will use the coup to establish full scale absolute tyranny and sharia law. The United States will allow Turkey to implement Islamism. If Donald Trump wins (and I believe he will), he will have an isolationist policy that will turn the other way (and will probably provide support in some indirect way) as Turkey controls the Muslim world. Mike Pence, Trump’s VP pick, is very pro-Turkey, so much so that he rejected — and encouraged other Republicans to do the same — a bill that would recognize the Armenian Genocide, in which millions of Christians were slaughtered by the Turkish Ottoman government. Genocide will be done by Turkey in the midst of Western silence; millions of Christians will be massacred. The horrors of the anti-Christian Genocide once done by Turkey will be conducted in the future.
What is happening in Turkey is a Reichstag Fire. I believe this was planned out by the Turkish government in order to enflame the zeal of the masses so that they can get behind Erdogan, and they will support his tyranny with embracing arms, as a madman feels justified in his madness.
Territorial disputes are a delicate thing… and potentially deadly as well.
That’s why the U.S. is backing up its positions with an ever-increasing presence of warships in the South China Sea.
China is very touchy about these territories, and unwilling to give up what they perceive as their waters, even as a UN tribunal just denied their claims and strengthened the U.S. hand.
Indeed, the entire situation is combustible and very dangerous.
In a congressional hearing on Wednesday, former Director of National Intelligence and retired Navy admiral Dennis Blair told the panel that the United States should be prepared to use military force to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.
“I think we need to have some specific lines and then encourage China to compromise on some of its objectives,” Blair, who headed the U.S. Pacific Command while in the Navy, said at the hearing.
The admiral’s recommendation came the day after a United Nations tribunal invalidated China’s claim of territorial rights to nearly all of the waters in the South China Sea.
It seems that the situation is being deliberately stoked into conflict, and that tensions are programmed to reach a boiling over point. If true, there is no indication of where the point of no return would be.
The U.S. has the excuse of protecting its ally, and former territory, the Philippines, and thus has a pretext to play policeman in the region.
But in turn, that is only a thinly-veiled ruse to amplify the military pressure, and let bloated speech and menacing saber-rattling episodes set the tone for ‘diplomacy’ with the Red Dragon.
Now, there is not only an escalation, but an acknowledgement on both sides of the Pacific that things are headed towards war – and it is being openly discussed in those stark terms:
Are we really to expect a looming world war from China, who has played the parts of villain, ally, trade partner and rival all at the same time?
No one can say, but there is plenty of worry that war could really happen. Even billionaire George Soros warned that the potential danger of WWIII breaking out with China was ‘not an exaggeration’:
The current posturing in the area has led to heightened tensions between the world’s preeminent military powers, and in May Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell told CNN that the confrontation indicates there is “absolutely” a risk of the U.S. and China going to war sometime in the future.
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