Israel

Whatever Israel's sins, and there are many, they cannot excuse this butchery. This was a modern-day pogrom and should be so labeled. Hamas and the Nazis are differentiated only in minor details. The former being motivated by religious fanaticism and hatred, the latter by bizarre ideals of racialism. But they both share the same objective, the extermination of all Jews within their reach. And they need to handled the same way. 

There can be no negotiation with Hamas. No matter the cost, they must be crushed. 

Stalin’s 5 Year Plan for Economic Mass Murder

Barack Obama breaks promise to call Armenian killings ‘genocide’

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama declined Friday to call the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide, breaking a key campaign promise as his presidency nears an end.

Obama, marking the upcoming Armenian Remembrance Day, called the massacre the first mass atrocity of the 20th century and a tragedy that must not be repeated. Yet he stopped short of using the word "genocide," a phrase he applied to the killings before he became president in 2009.

 "I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view has not changed," Obama said.

Armenian-American leaders have urged Obama each year to make good on a pledge he made as a candidate in 2008, when he said the U.S. government had a responsibility to recognize the attacks as genocide and vowed to do so if elected. Obama's failure to fulfill that pledge in his final annual statement on the massacre infuriated advocates and lawmakers who accused the president of outsourcing America's moral voice to Turkey, which staunchly opposes the genocide label.

"It's a Turkish government veto over U.S. policy on the Armenian genocide," Aram Hamparian, head of the Armenian National Committee of America, said in an interview. "It's like Erdogan imposing a gag rule very publicly and an American president enforcing that gag rule." He was referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Read the rest here.

Solzhenitsyn Mourned Bastille Day - So Should All Christians

Tuesday, July 14 probably passes without much fanfare in your home, but the date, Bastille Day, marks the beginning of the greatest organized persecution of Christians since the Emperor Diocletian. This day, the beginning of the French Revolution, also planted the seeds for the murderous ideologies of socialism and nationalism that would poison the next two centuries, murdering millions of believers and other innocent civilians. Between them, those two political movements racked up quite a body count: In Death By Government, scholar R. J. Rummel pointed out that

during the first 88 years of this century, almost 170,000,000 men, women and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens or foreigners.

But the first such modern genocide in the West took place in France, beginning in 1793. It was undertaken by modern, progressive apostles of Enlightenment and aimed at pious peasants in the Vendée region of France. By its end up to 300,000 civilians had been killed by the armies of the Republic.

This story is little discussed in France. Indeed, a devout historian who teaches at a French university once told me, “We are not to mention the Vendée. Anyone who brings up what was done there has no prospect of an academic career. So we keep silent.”

It is mostly in the Vendée itself that memories linger, which may explain why that part of France to this day remains more religious and more conservative than any other region. The local government opened a museum marking these atrocities on their 200th anniversary in 1993 — with a visit by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who noted during his eloquent address that the mass murders of Christians in Russia were directly inspired by those in the Vendée. The Bolsheviks, he said, modeled themselves on the French revolutionaries, and Lenin himself pointed to the Vendée massacres as the right way to deal with Christian resistance.

Read the rest here.

100 Years Ago: The Armenian Genocide

ISIS Destroys Memorial & Church of Armenian Genocide in Der Zor, Syria

Fighters from the Islamic State (ISIS) reportedly desecrated and blew up the Armenian Genocide memorial complex in the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, near the site where vast numbers of Armenian refugees were forced to march to their deaths in the early 20th century. 

The Church, located in al-Rashidyeh neighborhood, was built in 1989-1990, and consecrated a year later. 

The Armenian Genocide Memorial Church contains the remains of victims of the Armenian Genocide collected from the Syrian desert and has served as a pilgrimage site for Armenians worldwide, and every year, on April 24, special commemoration ceremonies attended by thousands of people would be held at the site. 

Read the rest here.

Armenian Church to Glorify Martyrs of 1915 Genocide

“In a move that has surprised Turkey, the Armenian Church is going to proceed with the canonization of the victims of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Turkish State in 1915, using Kurdish labourers for the massacres. The scientifically perpetrated genocide by, is described by the Turkish historian Taner Akcam as "A shameful act" (the title of his book ) . But the Ankara government has never recognized it and rejects the definition of "genocide”,” missionary news agency AsiaNews reports.

“Sources quoted by Turkish newspapers say the canonization will take place in 2015, the centenary of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians killed in Asia Minor.”

Read the rest here.

Egypt: Islamic fundamentalists urge killing of Christians

According to today's issue of El Fegr, "Elements of terrorist, jihadi organizations distributed leaflets today inciting for the killing of Copts in Suez, Ismailia, and Upper Egypt, promising them [Copts] a tragic end if they do not return to the truth."

An image of a copy of the letter appears on El Fegr's website. Titled "An Urgent and Important Notice," it begins by calling on "all brothers and sisters" to "kill or physically attack the enemies of the religion of Allah—the Christians in all of Egypt's provinces, the slaves of the Cross, Allah's curse upon them…" It proceeds to promise a monetary reward for whoever helps "achieve Allah's rights against his enemies."

As a testimony to how safe the jihadi organizations of today's Egypt feel under the new president, the Muslim Brotherhood's Muhammad Morsi, the usual cryptic language is dropped, as the letter names contact points and even a mosque, Sheikh Ahmed Mosque in Kasfrit, where those interested should rally "after Friday prayers where new members to the organization will be welcomed."

Read the rest here.
See also this related story.

HT: T-19

Vatican reveals unpublished Armenian genocide documents from its secret Archives

In the Secret Vatican Archives are stored documents that testify to the unprecedented and shocking genocide by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians after the First World War, documents that will be published soon in a book co-edited by the same Vatican Archives.

The advanced news arrived, a little by surprise, during the presentation in the Vatican of the exhibit "Lux Arcana", which - from next February - will open to the public, for the first time, the treasures of one of the oldest and most extensive archives in the world.

The testimonials, explained the prefect of the Secret Archives, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, describe "in detail" the "procedures of torture that the Turks used towards the Armenians". For example, he said, there is evidence of how the soldiers of the Sublime Porte would bet "on the sex of fetuses in the wombs of pregnant women before they quartered them and with the same knife killed the babies".

These episodes, said the Vatican archivist, who "make me ashamed to be a man, and if it were not for faith, I would see only darkness".

It is easy to imagine that the publication of these documents reignite the tension between the Holy See and Turkey, at a time when the memory of the killing of Monsignor Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, a year ago June 3rd, is still alive.

Read the rest here.