Iran : The Will Of The People

"Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of U.S. interests."

"The people of the United States should know that Trump began the adventurism."

"They should take care of their own soldiers." 

Ali Larijani, secretary, Supreme National Security Council, Tehran

 

"Any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut."

"The people of Iran properly know the experience of 'being rescued' by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza."

Ali Shakhani, adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Protests were also reported in several other provinces, including Kermanshah - AFP via Getty Images

 

As the street protests throughout Iran against the theocratic regime of the Islamic Republic grow ever more vehement in a chorus of declarations that Iranians will no longer tolerate being governed by a religious dictatorship that has made a misery of their lives for almost half a century, with widening public participation in rallies approaching two weeks of aggravated and totally fed up Iranians excoriating their rulers, officials lash out at external interference as the cause of the riots. Not the years of repression, persecution, forced sacrifice and risk of imprisonment under a version of Shi'ite Islam that exemplifies theocratic Fascism.

 

There was an attempted rebellion -- the Green Revolution in 2009 -- that failed to accomplish its goal, another in 2019-2020 of Bloody November when thousands were killed and yet another in 2022 spurred by the murder of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini, killed in police custody whose casual hijab insulted the strict dress code the morality custodians religiously police, none of them were quite the equal of these current street protests, in dedicated numbers, outright hostility to the regime and calls for the death of the Supreme Leader, as well as attacks by ordinary Iranians on members of the IRGC.

 

This time, Iranians were initially responding to the economic straits they face with rising prices and a failed currency. As the days went on repeating the protests on a wider scale, not only in major cities but smaller towns, country-wide with more agitated and angered citizens deciding it was now or never to express their rage against the government machinery that has turned their country into terror central, produced a strained internal economy while financially supporting the regime's terror proxies abroad, the regime struggles to contain the will of the people it thought it had completely broken.

 

MAHSA / Middle East Images / AFP / Getty

 

President Donald Trump has warned Iran that should it "violently kill peaceful protesters", the United States "will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go", he wrote on his social media site. Statements that enraged the regime, happy to attribute the chaos that now reigns and the resulting threat to the regime's stability to an outside source, in the hopes that they might persuade the population that there is an existential threat from the United States, in concert with Israel -- to produce cohesion and solidarity against their nation's enemies.  

 

Much too late for that, however; it is the regime itself that Iranians view as their enemy, and it is Israel and the United States toward which they look for assurances and empathetic support, despite this past summer's brief attacks by both against their government's nuclear and rocketry programs that have made Iran an outlier, supported by Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela. And now that Venezuela is out of the picture, Cuba's future is in doubt, and Russia's source of drones and China's source of oil for which they are both reliant on Iran, is in jeopardy

 

Israel's 12-day war on Iran to disrupt its nuclear program and the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites saw Iran attack the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar; Laranjani's reference to the event failed to stir a U.S. response, other than Mr. Trump's placing the country on notice, should a massacre of protesters take place. In a desperate move to bring the protests to a halt before complete destabilization rules the day, President Masoud Pezeshkian signalled his willingness to negotiate with protesters, but the protests have no leader, they are massive, spontaneous kinetic reactions to a half-century of repressive, violent governance.

 

And they are the voice of a people who will no longer tolerate conditions under which they have been forced to live. They want their lives returned to what can only be considered normal, and they want their country to shed itself of the forces that have demanded they enslave themselves to an ideological fundamentalist that is alien to their history and heritage. What the government can offer them is nothing at all that would appeal to reason, since it is an unreasonable expectation that they would now withdraw their demands for freedom, liberty from coercive dictatorship.  

 

In videos from Mashhad, protesters can be heard chanting "Long live the shah"  X

"Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government's own policies, they are likely to use President Trump's statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors."

"But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement [that] Trump has hinted at."

Naysan Rafati, analyst, International Crisis Group 

 

Canadian Justice for Criminal Acts Perpetrated by Indigenous People

"The offender repeatedly had sexual intercourse with her knowing that he held the power in the situation not only because of their age difference but also because he had inflicted physical harm on her and psychological terror to ensure that she would comply."

"But for his Gladue factors [leniency in sentences for those with Aboriginal backgrounds], I would have imposed the sentence sought by the Crown." 

"The offender's life has been directly influenced by many of the Gladue factors. He has existed for extended periods of time in his life in a state of severe poverty over homelessness, he is under-educated, he has struggled with severe addiction issues and as a child was taken from his family and placed in a foster care system where he was sexually abused and separated from his siblings."

"The racism he faced in his own family and in the outside world, no doubt impacted his views as to how others should be treated." 

Justice Jayne Williams 

A Calgary courthouse. Photo by Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

 

This Calgary judge, in her legal wisdom delivering justice saw fit to take two years from a  ten-year sentence given a man who repeatedly sexually assaulted a girl who was 12 years old when they met, while he was 25. He terrorized the girl into submission, yet because the man has an Indigenous background, of Cree heritage, he is deemed to qualify for a reduced sentence under Canadian law. Known to the court as RJM, the man met the young girl on  the social media site Instagram. 

 

He assaulted and threatened to kill his victim on many occasions in a period of time between spring and the fall of 2023. Before RJM was arrested in September 2023, he had led police on a wild vehicular chase. He had threatened the  girl and her mother even when he was securely locked into a prison cell. His lawyer saw fit to argue for a six-year sentence for her client, while the Crown recommended a ten-year prison term.

 

In Canadian law, the Supreme Court of Canada set out the Gladue principles requiring sentencing judges to consider what is called the 'unique circumstances' of criminal offenders with Indigenous backgrounds. This was meant to address the over-representation in Canada's courts and prisons of Indigenous people. The decision for reduced sentence was made despite that the court was aware of the gravity of the treatment the young girl was exposed to.

 

The girl was sexually assaulted multiple times, dragged by her hair, punched in the face. "On another occasion he drove her out of the city and left her on the side of the road to walk back. He eventually returned for her." He threatened to kill the girl's mother and her cat, "specifically telling A.B. she was a 'dead slut' and that her mother A.C. was 'going to get hit too'. He would put a bullet in her head, and there was a bomb to total A.B.'s mother's car." Indeed, a makeshift nail bomb was placed under A.C.'s car. She ran over it and it exploded.   

"He took no steps to substantiate her age initially, but on [Sept. 2, 3030] the offender took a photograph of A.B.'s passwords and accessed her Calgary Board of Education account. It was on this date that he learned she  was 13."

"They began to argue about infidelity. He brandished a knife pointing it at A.B. and telling her he was going to kill her He also searched her phone confirming she was not cheating."

"[Once he learned her true age, RJM] confronted her via  text message, about lying. His texts divulge his awareness that her actual age resulted in 'a whole new level of consequences'." 

"[He made a] conscious decision to continue the relationship despite his receipt of this new information. He speaks to A.B. in possessive terms stating, 'better or worse you belong to me', 'that p--sy is mine and that bulls--t sexy little attitude', 'delete every message I ever send to you at the end of the night'."

Justice Jayne Williams  

Soon after RJM and the girl met online, they agreed to meet in person. "Between this first meeting and his arrest in September they met almost every second day" and regularly had sexual intercourse. A.B. informed the man that she was 16 year of age. He admitted to the court that he was violent with her while the girl was still 12 years old, while they drove about in his car. After he learned her true age his texts "include a mix of disbelief that she is so young and a decision to sexually make the most of her age. There is a progression detailed in the [agreed statement of facts] from him being disturbed by her age to him being aroused by it".

 

Calgary police were called by one of the girl's friends, "as a result of aggressive text messages the offender sent to A.B. while her friend was present. These texts included the offender calling A.B. a 'f--king rat', f--king piece of s--t, and 'f-king whore'. He threatened to shoot up and burn down her mother's home and that of her friend. He threatened to kill her mother and her friend, sending a video of himself holding a blowtorch and a video showing he was outside A.B.'s mother's residence." When police located him, he turned and fled. 

 

When police searched his backpack during the arrest they found a manilla folder. "The folder had 'BOOM FOLDER' written on the front and 'Munitions Supply Folder, Burials, Advanced Techniques' written on its back. Documents found inside the folder held details for explosives production, modified ammunition, improvised firearms, and techniques on properly digging a grave." A butane torch, rifle cleaning kit, hatchet, pickaxe, sledgehammer and knife were found on a further search of RJM's car.

 

A Calgary police cruiser is pictured. Postmedia file

"The texts begin with the following sentiments; 'I'm in shock', 'I'm seriously disturbed right now like feel really scared', 'I can get labelled after a pedophile' and progress to 'I might as well earn these potential life-changing charges'." 

"[RJM] was involved in a sexual relationship with a teenager for over three months. He was aware she was 13 for ten days. His conduct was intentional over the course of that ten days and the sexual acts were continual."

"This was not a temporary lapse of judgment on his part. In fact, his arousal having learned that A.B. was 13 resulted in the sexual acts becoming more egregious over the course of that ten days."

Justice Jayne Williams 

Hezbollah Intransigence

"[The government's decision to remove] the defensive weapons of the resistance, its people and Lebanon during an aggression [facilitates the killing of] resistance fighters and their families and evict them from their land and homes."

"[The government should have instead] spread its authority and evicted Israel from Lebanon."

"The government is serving the Israeli project."

"The resistance will not hand over its weapons as the aggression continues and occupation remains." 

"The party will fight a [historic)]battle if necessary in the face of this Israeli-US project, whatever the cost."

"There will be no life in Lebanon if the government tries to confront the party."

"[The government in Beirut] bears full responsibility for any internal explosion and any destruction of Lebanon." 

Naim Kassem, leader, Hezbollah 

Hezbollah troops pledging fealty   Photo: AP

 

Lebanon's hostile factions continue to rent the country asunder, a country once peaceful and the centerpiece of the Middle East's manifold tribal, clan and sectarian heritage communities living tolerably amongst one another in their mostly separate geographic internal Lebanon locations, with a degree of respect for one another. That tolerance was not only social and cultural but political as well, with the government comprised at its elite levels of representatives of the majority groups; Christian, Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim.

 

Within society itself, the Maronite Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims dominated, the Shia Muslims relegated to a lower social tier mostly living in poverty and accorded less respect than its sectarian peers. In the 1980s Iran's al Quds division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as the Syrian Alawite government of Bashar al Assad were tweaking Lebanon's social and political system. The IRGC persuaded Lebanese Shiites that the revolutionary Islam they promoted would help them prosper.

 

Under the tutelage of the IRGC, Lebanon's Shiites received instructions as a non-state military group with an emphasis on jihad. Trained and supplied with weaponry they became a formidable guerrilla group for whom suicide bombing and threats against the presence of French and U.S. peacekeeping troops in Lebanon became a rehearsal for their budding role in the Middle East as a force to be reckoned with, squaring off against Israel during its invasion of Lebanon to oust the Palestine Liberation Organization from its cross-border raids into Israel.

 

Lebanon was transformed into a dysfunctional, violence-addicted state, with its multifarious tribal/sectarian groups at threateningly hostile odds against one another. As the civil war disrupted civic life and Lebanese factions bombed and strafed each other and Western attempts at intervention were attempted, kidnapping and hostage-taking for ransom purposes became world news. As Lebanon eventually attempted to restore itself to a vestige of its peaceful past, efforts at disarming Hezbollah failed and it remained an armed adversary even as it became part of the government in taking political office.

 

Its goal has primarily been the destruction of Israel, as a client of the Islamic Republic. With Hezbollah in Israel's north and Hamas in the south, Iran the ultimate threat to Israel's existence, manipulating its terrorist proxies saw all three engaged in the past several years in an ultimately failed effort to attack and destroy Israel. Hezbollah's decision to support the Hamas 7 October 2023 invasion of southern Israel when thousands of terrorists streamed from Gaza into Israel to slaughter Israeli civilians, and Israel responded by invading Gaza to rout and destroy Hamas, Hezbollah began sending rockets from Lebanon into Israel.

 

Supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group block the streets with burning tires as they rally in cars and motorbikes to protest the government’s endorsement of a plan to disarm it, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, August 8, 2025. (Ibrahim AMRO/AFP)

 

Lebanon has been in crisis mode for decades; coping with the sinister manipulation of Syria and Iran, along with Hezbollah. It has been facing, along with social disruptions, a dire economic situation; it has been limping along, a bare skeleton of survival of its former nationhood as a tolerant society. Latterly the national government has made a decision that Hezbollah must agree to their demand to surrender their weapons and rockets stockpiles, in favour of a tentative agreement with Israel, with the potential of a peace agreement brought into effect by the two nations.

 

The internal crisis is threatening once again to become an internal conflict, another destructive civil war. Hezbollah, aligned with the Shia Amal movement, one of the main armed groups in the 1975-1990 civil war, represented by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, threaten together to contest the government's decision. Protesters, warned Kassem, "will be all over Lebanon and head to the U.S. embassy". The groups within Lebanon that want a return to good government and peace between factions, are opposed to Hezbollah retaining its weapons, insisting only the state should carry arms.

 

Last week the Lebanon government voted for a U.S.-backed plan to disarm Hezbollah by year's end, and a ceasefire with Israel be implemented. International pressure applied on Lebanon to force Hezbollah to surrender its arms following the 14-month conflict with Israel until a U.S.[brokered ceasefire in November is behind the government's move and Hezbollah's resistance. 

 

Hezbollah insists it would only be prepared to discuss a national defence strategy relating to its weapons possession on the condition that Israel withdraw from Lebanon and halts its airstrikes that have killed Hezbollah members since the  end of the conflict. Hezbollah's political leadership and much of its military, along with many of its weapons caches were destroyed in its war with Israel. Just as it has been defanged, so too has its sponsor, Tehran, been weakened militarily. 

 

People raise their fists as Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem delivers a televised speech in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

 

 

 

Mass Murder, The Vile Unspeakable

Map of Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli sites

Something about this day. Was it a foreboding when we woke to a dark, heavily raining morning? And then we heard the news. Last night before I shut down my computer after posting my last blog of the night, I had a look at my Twitter feed. There was an announcement that heavy conflict had broken out after Hamas had launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. This has been a tough year for Israel, having to cope with countless terror assaults. Not only incited by the Palestinian Authority through its school curricula teaching children to hate Jews and Israel as 'occupiers' but through the emergence of new terror groups in Jenin launching attacks. As though Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad weren't enough to cope with.

Israel has been forced to balance the safety and security of its presence in the Middle East after reclaiming its ancestral territories and human rights in its re-establishment as a Jewish state, an authentic indigenous place of haven for Jews the world over as citizens while at the same time absorbing the presence of others, non-Jews ranging from Christians to Arabs, Druze, Kurds, Bedouins, Circassians, Baha'i and Africans who have migrated to the country from their war-ravaged countries. Arab Palestinians represent over 20% of the population, with equal citizenship rights enabling them to elect members of their own to the Knesset. 

 

But the very fact of Israel's existence -- on land that Palestinian Arabs who migrated from Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East into Israel to live amongst Jews who never left to become a part of the great Jewish diaspora when Jews were forcefully dispersed during the Roman occupation thousands of years ago -- continues to see Palestinians resentful, raging against Israel's presence, declaring the land rightfully theirs, not that of Jews historically indigenous to the land. Peace has never really settled over Israel. From its legal and United Nations-supported declaration of statehood returned in 1948, it has suffered a succession of military challenges by neighbouring Arab countries, all rebuffed.

In the last several years, a number of Arab countries; the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan; have joined Egypt and Jordan in signing peace agreements with Israel, under the Abraham Accords. It appears that Saudi Arabia is seriously considering joining them; in essence agreeing that Israel has a right to exist in its native geography. The Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran, the region's hot spot for aggression and violence, a major sponsor of terrorism, plans to destroy Israel, sponsoring and enlisting violently destructive actions of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Inciting violence against the state of Israel with a long-range plan of its destruction, Iran views the potential of Saudi Arabia signing a formal peace agreement with Israel as a legitimization of its presence, by the most influential of the Sunni-majority Arab states in the Middle East, an agreement that could pave the way of all further resistance to Israel's presence vanishing in an accord of like minds looking toward future security and mutual prosperity. What better way to shock Arab nations away from accepting Israel's presence than to incite a war where Jews are forced to defend themselves by killing those Arabs attacking them?

This morning came the news that Hamas had lobbed thousands of rockets yet again into Israel from Gaza. That Hamas terrorist operatives had infiltrated Israeli army bases by stealth overnight, as well as Israeli border towns, to attack and kill Jewish soldiers and civilians alike, some 50 Israelis from soldiers to women, elderly and children being taken as 'prisoners' into Gaza, to be used as collateral for prisoner exchanges. Terrorists entered homes in border towns to kill the inhabitants, people in the streets and in cars were summarily shot to death. Women were caught, raped and murdered. 

Hamas' own publicity arm took countless self-congratulatory videos of shocking assaults of civilians, of people being slaughtered, of Jewish women and girls abducted after being raped, of Palestinian terrorists wielding submachine guns stalking through the streets and houses of Israeli towns, shooting wildly, dead bodies lying everywhere on the streets. Documenting, in essence, their depraved atrocities, every one of which represents a crime against humanity, genuinely shocking war crimes.

Crimes that should being shame to any community whose members might be involved in such malevolently horrible actions, but which within the Palestinian community becomes a reason for joy and jubilation, a resounding success by those who portray themselves to the world community at large as hapless victims of Jewish imperialism, who deserve compassion and support against the existence of a Jewish state. An attack on human decency, on the very concept of people of different origins, tribal affiliations and religions being able to live in decent peace among one another.

A condition of which Israel is a shining example, and of which the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain a narrative of human depravity as they celebrate the deaths of those they have been inculcated with hatred toward by their leaders. For a Jew to appear in a West Bank city is to invite violence and death. Yet in Israel, over two million Arabs live in  peace and security among Jews in a Jewish state. 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1710617112094572907

Inciting To Terror, Succumbing To Terror

"Based on Edmonton Police Services' analysis, the situation is safe. The Alberta Cheerleading Association certainly would not be holding the event if there were real safety concerns for its participants."
Denise Fisher, executive director, Alberta Cheerleading Association

So the West Edmonton Mall is confirmed as the venue for the ACA Cheerleading Championships. Unfortunately three dozen cheerleading teams have chosen to withdraw themselves from the competition. This, in response to the public fear generated by a video several weeks ago from the terrorist Islamist group associated with al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab in Somalia, extolling the Islamist virtues of jihad and inciting Somalians living abroad to target Jewish-owned shopping malls in Europe and North America.

On the other hand, according to Ms. Fisher, 150 squads and 2,800 athletes are still expected to attend the competition at the Edmonton mall famous for its immense presence, admirable features and shopping opportunities of such appeal to the public that it has become world-famous. The February 21 video had mentioned the West Edmonton Mall by name, creating much discussion not only in Canada but France and the United Kingdom and the U.S. respecting the safety of malls there as well.

Police and security agencies have investigated and consider the threat not indicative of the reality of an attack actually being perpetrated. Yet it is obvious enough that people feel threatened through this intimidating tactic, given the reputation of those from whom the threats emanate and recent attacks on Canadian soil by Islamist jihadis heeding the call of Islamic State for recruits to attack members of the Canadian military.

"This decision was based on paranoia and not safety. It's sending a message to the kids that they should be afraid for their safety, despite the RCMP, the Edmonton police and CSIS stating that there's minimal risk, there are great security measures in effect, and to carry on with our daily lives", commented Jennifer Bernes, taking issue with the Lethbridge G.S. Lakie Middle School's pulling out of the competition leaving her cheerleading daughter upset over her lack of opportunity to compete.

In response, the Lethbridge School District No.51 which had pulled its team out of the championships claimed they had consulted with their insurance company which thought it "prudent" to issue a travel warning, advising the school and students to distance themselves from the mall. A mall which not only has its own security system well in place, and now extended, but which has been commended for the quality of its security by public security agencies.

"This is the highlight of their year. They have a seven-year unbeaten streak there. They'd like to defend their title and to have that opportunity taken away from them without any discussion is shocking" was the opinion of Sandra Randa with a daughter on the squad, and another daughter coaching, who spoke of her daughters' "heartbroken" reaction. "Whoever it was that posted that video has now won because we're making a decision not to go based on the surfacing of that video naming West Edmonton Mall", stated another upset mother.

Who are obviously aware of real dangers that present to society, like vehicular accidents that take more lives during the course of a year than accidents that harm and sometimes kill young athletes taking part in the sports activities they love most, but who will never be disallowed by their families to travel, to participate in sports, and see no reason to let themselves be spooked at the bellicose incitements to attack malls in their neighbourhood by Islamist jihadis.

The Humanity of a Terrorist

"They make a girlfriend and a boyfriend. Why don't you marry?" 
Chiheb Esseghaier, Tunisian jihadi

"Why not, right?"
FBI undercover agent

"Marriage is obtainable." Esseghaier
"Of course, and it's halal [permitted]." Agent

"And it's halal. Why would you leave marriage and go get a girlfriend and a boyfriend. Why? Why this crookedness." Esseghaier

Chiheb Esseghaier, left, and Raed Jaser, centre, each face multiple terrorism-related charges in an alleged plot to derail a Via train. (Pam Davies/CBC)

Puzzling over Western values, over the relaxed attitude toward the genders in their pairing, both within and outside marriage. These values are obviously despicable in the mind of a man who has assigned to himself the role of avenger, as a pious Muslim, detesting the interference of Western governments and their military machines in the world of Islam. Setting out to punish Canadian soldiers for their government sending them to Afghanistan to battle the Taliban.

In the opinion of many Muslims, and certainly those dedicated to jihad, Westerners and their armies are slaughtering innocent Muslims, raping their women, making orphans of those Muslim children that they don't kill in their hatred of Islam. Conveniently overlooked is the fact that their Islamist counterparts do most of the killing, of Muslim men, women and children. That the Taliban oppress and degrade civil life, consigning women to a life of servitude.

"Keep it a secret. It's very confidential", Chiheb Esseghaier cautioned the undercover agent as they travelled by car toward Montreal from New York, confiding comfortably in his newfound friend of the urgent plans that he and his colleague, Raed Jaser -- each standing trial now on terrorism charges -- are contemplating as terrorist acts. Speaking in Arabic, laughing and feeling very collegial, Mr. Esseghaier revealed his plan to cut a five-metre hole in a railway bridge.

"He [the train] will go through the hole and it will be a big accident. I warned our brother from Palestine, [Raed Jaser, his co-accused] I told him to be careful, be very careful that the bridge should not be over water. Because if it falls in the water, they'll survive." The goal being, of necessity, to kill as many innocent people -- who really are not innocent since they're non-Muslims and their government conspires to kill Muslims -- as their plans might lead them to successfully slaughter.

"It's personal", he finally said to the agent, broaching another subject. He was recently introduced to an unmarried woman from Jordan. "Sometimes, I feel I love her. Sometimes, when she disobeys Allah, I hate her." He couldn't figure the woman out, did she care for him or was she leading him on as women are wont to do. "What do you think about this girl? Is it playing girl, or She's serious?", he appealed to the sympathetic FBI agent.

"They call it in English, she's playing hard to get" was the response. "Go in straight and tell her, look, I swear by Allah this is the story and I'll say it to you straight, do you want me or not?" came the response.

"But I am afraid, afraid that she would refuse and I would be turned back", responded the despondent Mr. Esseghaier, a lonely man in a foreign country he plans to commit a mass murder within.

Please save Reyhaneh Jabbari From Execution In Iran

by Reyhaneh Jabbari
March 28, 2014 at 2:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4235/save-reyhaneh-jabbari

Translated by Banafsheh Zand

Note: Reyhaneh Jabbari is a 26-year-old woman who was convicted of murdering a man named Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi in Iran, and who has been in prison for the last seven years and is now awaiting imminent execution by hanging. Jabbari penned this letter to the mayor of Tehran several days before the Persian New Year Nowruz (March 20th). Jabbari still has no news about when the death sentence is to be carried out.

There are wounds in life than can eat away at a person like leprosy and one cannot display them. This is the house of regrets, in the Shahr'eh Ray area of Tehran. Rather, I should describe it as a mass grave. To offer treatment to the prisoners, City Hall set out to create a psychiatric area, large halls that are called Hijaria Mental Health Consultation and Psychotherapy.

They have built a wall in the middle of the main hall and they separate the cases who need therapy from the ones that do not. All the prison facilities they claim are meant to be for training -- such as clubs, libraries, cultural activities, amphitheater, co-op and a vocational training office (which adorns the logo of the department of prisons) -- are on the other side of the wall. These are only offered to people who are chosen for therapy and consulting, even if they do not really care for it. The number of people on this side of the wall fills two entire other halls. Now the social gap -- uptown vs. downtown -- is quite easily felt in prison. Uptown is pretty, green, clean and filled with places to enjoy oneself; downtown is barren, there is not even the most basic amenities. There is no space, no air, no order, no calm... no life.

Two hundred and thirty seven people are crammed in a ten meter by nineteen meter hovel. They sleep, eat and just endure there. Forget about the fact that the regulations of the department of prisons, whose article thirteen, item one clearly states that each person must have at the very least a seven square meter "roofed" physical space.

On the other side of the wall, the uptown side of the prison, three hundred people live in six huge halls, so why are those who are not in therapy not being moved to that section, when there is such overpopulation in this one?

Mr. Mayor, we have not seen many beautiful parts of Tehran designed with the a clean and proper atmosphere in mind. We urge you not to deprive the 'downtown' prisoners of culture, work and life. According to regulations, all prisoners should be permitted to use those facilities. As this is your concept, your word and your budget, we ask you at least to listen to us.

Mr. Mayor, you send eulogists to this facility for the observance of religious ceremonies, to familiarize us with the issues of chastity and religious purification and so that we can structure our lives for the future (if there is a future) on those canons so that we do not sin and do not commit any crime -- to have better lives. But are you aware that on this side of the wall, those who wish to pray in the mornings have no room to do so? Do you not consider this important for Muslims?

Mr. Mayor, you who are so enthusiastic, artistic and have the financial means, why don't you think about these conditions and solutions for everyone? Isn't it better to build a library, a well-equipped workroom, a gym or properly supplied infirmary? Although I am sure you are thinking to yourself that the person writing this letter thinks she is living in a luxury hotel, you should know that prison is our permanent home, that God has given all his creatures great or small the right to live in decent conditions, and that and no one has the right to trample on that.

I offer you greetings for Nowruz and the arrival of the New Year and hope for your change of mind with regard.
Rayhaneh Jabbari
March 2014

---

Background

Reyhaneh Jabbari, an interior designer, was in a coffee shop speaking on the phone about her work, a conversation which was coincidentally overheard by Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, who approached her for professional advice about renovating his office. They then set a date to meet at his office in order to see and discuss Sarbandi's renovation project.

On the day of the meeting, Sarbandi picked up Jabbari in his car. On the way to his office, Sarbandi stopped at a pharmacy, purchased an item (while Jabbari waited in the car), got into the car again and drove to his office. After arriving at their destination, Jabbari realized that the place did not look like a work place at all as it was a rundown house. Inside the house, Jabbari saw two drinks on the table, Morteza went inside and quickly locked the door from inside, put his arms around Jabbari's waist and told her that "she had no way of escaping". A struggle soon ensued. Jabbari trying to defend herself stabbed Sarbandi in the shoulder and escaped. Sarbandi died from bleeding.

Lab analysis showed the drinks Jabbari intended to serve to Jabbari contained sedatives. Regardless, Jabbari was arrested. There she was told by the authorities that the murder had been set up [by them] and was "politically motivated". Nevertheless, Jabbari was tortured until she confessed to the murder, after she was given the death penalty which was upheld by the Supreme Court. As a result she is to be executed at any moment. The Campaign to Save Reyhaneh asks that all individuals and organizations help support us in any way possible to save Jabbari. If you have any contacts or connections with media, human rights organizations, women's rights advocates or government agencies, please support Jabbari's campaign by writing to them.

Please help us save her life by signing this petition.
Nazanin Afshin-Jam
Shabnam Assadollahi
Shadi Paveh
Mina Ahadi

Author, Author -- Beware Deadly Critics

"Our investigation ... indicates that the militants had grievances against her for something she had written or told in the past, which was then turned into a film."
Afghan provincial police chief Gen. Dawlat Khan Zadran

A photo of Indian author Sushmita Banerjee, writer of the novel 'Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife', at a press conference in Mumbai. Getty Images

The fatwa issued by the Grand Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeine for the death of Salmon Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses, on the basis that they were insulting to the Prophet Mohammad and therefore a death sentence was appropriate punishment, led the free world to mount a defence for the Indian writer; living in Britain, he was given protection from possible assassination, living in hiding for years, until the situation became less inflamed.

It would seem that Indian author Sushmita Banerjee's offence against Islam by writing of her experience married to an Afghan Muslim and living in Afghanistan under the Taliban, was an unpardonable sin. One which merited the punishment of death at the hands of merciless assailants.
According to the provincial chief of police, suspected Taliban terrorists tied up her husband while they dragged the author outside to shoot her to death.

And then they dumped her body close by a religious school; a madrassa, of course, a school funded by Saudi Wahhabi oil money, a school meant to turn out religious fanatics whose view of Islam would make them natural conscripts for the Taliban. The message clear enough; those who take the name and the purpose of Islam in vain must pay with their lives. Those who kill perform their duties to Islam.

Ms. Banerjee's sin was to write a memoir, A Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife. In which she wrote of her life in Afghanistan with her husband, and of her escape from the Taliban in 1995. A Bollywood film was produced from a screenplay of the memoir, Escape from Taliban. "The Taliban threatened to teach me a lesson" she wrote in an article for Outlook magazine, describing the Taliban ordering her to close a dispensary she was operating, branding her a "woman of poor morals."

She escaped from them by burrowing through the mud walls of a building where she was kept under house arrest, and then fleeing home to India. But she did return to Afghanistan to be reunited with her husband when the country was invaded by NATO troops and the Taliban dispersed. They are, however, on their way back, to resume their totalitarian theistic rule with the departure of NATO troops in 2014.

In the interim they have been busy. Targeting women. Two women holding positions of authority were killed in eastern Afghanistan last year. Najia Sediqi, acting head of women's affairs was shot to death; her predecessor, Hanifa Safi, killed with a car bomb. Quite obviously there is no discernible need for anyone in authority to represent the welfare of women in Afghanistan.

Another lawmaker representing Kandahar province, Fariba Ahmadi Kakar, was kidnapped by the Taliban last month. For her freedom they are demanding an exchange; the release of some of their members from incarceration.

Quite the challenging choice, that.

Courage and Compassion

"I took his arm to feel his pulse. There was blood on the pavement where he had been dragged and blood was pouring out of him. Suddenly this excited black man came up to me and said, 'Get away from the body; don't touch it'. I looked up and I could see red hands, a bloodied revolver, bloodied meat cleaver and a butcher's knife. OK, I thought, this is bad."
"There were 50 to 60 people. They were watching; filming on their phones. I pushed one back because he was too close. I told them if they want to do something, come and help. It made me sad. They were thinking of themselves, not about this poor guy."
Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, London, England

This straightforward, non-nonsense woman, middle-aged, confronted by the spectacle of an murderous atrocity that had just occurred, remained cool and collected as she made every effort to make sense of the senseless, aid someone beyond human intervention, and cope with the situation facing her of a seemingly demented killer ordering her to take her distance from the body of a young man he had just transformed horribly into a mutilated corpse.

The single mother, formerly a cub scout leader, and a teacher, has most likely, throughout her life of 48 years, been exposed to just about any startling situation that required her level head to immediately take steps to ameliorate. She was obviously capable of separating her emotions in this situation; compelling herself not to panic, guiding herself to meeting a situation that required a clear mind and an ample response.

Before her stood two men holding butcher's knives, meat cleavers and a revolver. Their aggressive attitudes embellished by the residue of a man's life colouring their hands, their arms, their clothing. "Would you like to give me what you have in your hands?" she asked, just as she would attempt to disarm the poor behaviour of a tantrum in a child under her care, threatening to throw pottery around. "We want to start a war. I will shoot the police when they come. I want to kill them", one man said.

"That's not going to happen", she said calmly, confronting the two. Whom, despite having run down an innocent man with their vehicle, then slashing him countless times, attempting disembowelment and decapitation, all the while encouraging bystanders to take pictures, videos of their bravura performance, are being spoken of by the news media as "suspects", not the murderers they clearly are. "I am here and I am going to listen to you", said Ms. Loyau-Kennett, and she did, until the arrival of the police.

^{Ingrid Loyau-Kennett confronts one of the attackers (@dannymckiernan)}
 
Assured her presence was no longer required she simply left. She had calmed the two terrorists, kept them engaged until the arrival of the police, and was prepared to continue on her way. There were others who exhibited compassion and spirit, a Caribbean women who attempted to aid Drummer Lee Rigby, the 25-year-old who had been selected by the two terrorists as their ideological-statement target.

It was she who informed Ms. Loyau-Kennett that there was nothing that could be done for Lee Rigby.

Memoriam

"Good night mum, I hope you had a fantastic day today because you are the most fantastic and one in a million mum that anyone could ever wish for. Thank you for supporting me all these years, you're not just my mum, you're my best friend. So good night, love you loads."
Ian Rigby, London, England

Isn't that just the most inspired message of love and appreciation a mother could receive from a grown son? Well, the memory of how her son felt about her, and his appreciation of her as his mother may help Ian Rigby's mother in the long run to adjust to the fact that her son died a truly atrocious death right after sending her that message.

Whatever might have inspired that message at that very time, shortly before the end of his life? At the present time, raw with the pain of having lost him at 25 years of age, despite his daunting experience as a British soldier who had seen more than his share of conflict, it will without doubt be of little help.

Ian Rigby's family is in deep shock, despair and mourning. How might it be possible that their son, a soldier of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers won't be coming back to them, to share all the joys of having a loving family, to help raise his  two-year-old son, to grow old with his wife, as a normal person would?

He fought in Afghanistan and survived that mission in a foreign land rife with attacks against both civilians and foreign troops.

It was in his home country that he was sacrificed to a pathology of hatred and revenge. The very people whom his country sent him abroad to help protect from a savage insurgency that used murder of civilians as a way of reasserting its authority viewed him back home in Britain, as an interloper whose activities were inimical to the welfare of Afghan Muslims.

Two London fanatics had conspired to slaughter Drummer Lee Rigby, and they succeeded.

One of his assailants shouted "Allahu akbar", meat cleaver in hand, as the two attempted to decapitate their victim after having run him over with a car. And then they busied themselves hacking his body, and inviting horrified onlookers to take pictures. Until one middle-aged woman, a mother and a teacher, attempted to resuscitate an already-dead Lee Rigby, confronting the two lunatics with her common-sense practicality.

Informing them, before the arrival of police with arms, that their mission would not succeed; the larger mission, that is, of destroying faith in a democratic country, replacing it with a Sharia-led Islamic tyranny.

These transplants from another continent, worshipping a religion its faithful claim to be one of peace, even while it is a religion whose call to jihad has been claimed by those like Lee Rigby's killers, have succeeded in one signal manner: inspiring in others abhorrence, dread, rage.

Heralds of Atrocity and Shame

From the national dilemma of a country reminded yet again that it hosts among its refugee and immigration population miserable discontents who find it difficult to derive comfort in being able to live in an advanced and free society, and choose instead to cast their grievance with the United States in a terror mould of violent Islamism, to the personal dilemma of family seeking to bury their dead in honour of religion and custom, when the deceased just happens to be a jihadist with blood on his hands, society is afflicted with dissonances difficult to comprehend.

How can a normal mind digest the unpalatable reality of a country opening its welcome to people fleeing oppression and misery, conflict and homelessness, that can result in the following generation spewing forth a handful of individuals blighted with the ardour of mass murder as a solution to alienation? That families, even while living in comfort and liberty, taking advantage of the generosity of a political system that provides welfare and higher education to all those who seek it, still begrudge the fount from which it spills?

Suspect No. 1 of the Boston Bombings is dead, and his choices cannot be questioned, nor can those whom his malevolence murdered, nor the hundreds injured be restored to the wholeness they were before Tamerlan Tsarnaev began his rampage of revenge against America. From their distant position in Russia, his parents both deny their son ever harboured terrorist tendencies, and cast the blame on America, which they claim converted him to fanaticism.

His young brother whose innocent appearance and seeming integration into the American way of life seemed so at odds with the casual, harm-oblivious persona captured on video, appears to have been infected with as viral a diseased apprehension of truth and reality as his older brother. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev suffered no difficulty in quipping lightly to his friends over the terrorist bombing that cast such a dreadful pall over the city in which he lived and thrived.

A video frame from surveillance footage showing two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings investigation. The suspects were later identified as brothers Tamerlan (left) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Yet it was Dzhokhar, in the melee that resulted when police confronted the brothers in a stolen vehicle as they searched for the plot perpetrators, whose actions in all likelihood took the life of his brother. Police did shoot Tamerlan, in response to the knowledge of who he was, and what he did, and the evidence before their very eyes of homemade bombs tossed from the SUV, and the subsequent shoot-out.

The coroner's report indicated that Tamerlan died of blunt force trauma to his head and torso, and gunshot wounds. The blunt force trauma represented the mortal injuries he sustained while grappling with police who leaped to safety when Dzhokhar drove the SUV directly toward them, and in the process driving directly over his brother, killing him.  All of that describes the days of disaster and diligence.

Now, Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the two young men, is attempting to arrange his nephew's funeral in alignment with the traditions of their religion, but is finding difficulty in making those arrangements, since "no one wants to associate their names with such evil acts. We take an oath to do this. Can I pick and choose? No. Can I separate the sins from the sinners? No. We are burying a dead body. That's what we do."

If at all possible.  Worcester funeral home director Peter Stefan is sympathetic; he has been unable himself to locate a cemetery in Massachusetts that would accept the body for burial. Offers to aid have come in from other states. "They just want to get it over with. They want to get him buried", said Mr. Stefan, referring to Ruslan Tsarni who was unequivocal in stating his nephew brought shame to the family and the Chechen community.

It is true that the evil men do lives on long after they expire.

Terroristic Evidence

For all the nastiness that emanates from social media and the ubiquity of cellphones being implicated in the dissemination of rude, abusive and obsessively sex-related photographs, occasionally even those that directly implicate those who have them in their possession guilty of the rape of under-age girls who are then hounded by their peers, shamed and pressured into depression and suicide, there is the opposite.

There are those amateur photographs taken on the spur of the moment when natural disasters strike, or something awesome and mysterious appears in the sky, or when an accident occurs and some person at the right place at the right time can give evidence. And aside from the fond family mementos taken of loved ones at special times and then routed in pride to distant family members and friends there are other photos that take on significance of high-value.

These were the spontaneous and often deliberate photographs taken by cellphones from among the tens of thousands of people assembled in Boston this past Monday, intent on enjoying a splendid spring day in the sun and mild temperatures, competing in the Boston Marathon or cheering on loved ones and friends. These were the photographs that public security agents pleaded with the public to provide to them.

Photo courtesy of FBI

And the photographs and the potential clues that they represented to the origins and perpetrators of a dreadful atrocity that killed three innocent people, and injured and maimed almost two hundred others were pored over and parsed and investigated by scores of security professionals to soon surface with a number of pictures that would prove, finally, to result in the identification that they required to solve a horrendous mystery.

Who was it who planned and executed that atrocity? Designing and building two explosive devices stuffed with shrapnel, nails, ball bearings, geared specifically to tear into soft human flesh and extract the most damage possible by sundering and severing limbs, killing, tearing people into fragments of what they originally represented before the attack, when everyone was excited, smiling and glad to be alive on that glorious day.

The resulting photos and video that were released meant that two men who went about their usual routine after inflicting terror on Boston, would eventually be detected, recognized, named, identified and pursued. Before they were able to complete their self-assigned task of further terrorist attacks, utilizing the explosives and arms that they had stored in their residence. Their residence; residents of the United States.

Young men who had the privilege of living in the United States and personally benefiting from all the opportunities open and available to them, from a superior education to a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle, and, in fact, anything else they might aspire to become part of, to augment the quality of their lives.

They chose to aspire instead to jihad. Their choice resulted in the second terrorist attack on American civilians, on U.S. soil after the grotesquely vicious tragedy of 9/11.

One dead, one to interrogate. The angelic looking one, the sweet-natured, pleasant teen, unlike his morose and disagreeable brother.

Painted In Blood

 

Charles Krupa

 

People on the scene were aghast, frightened out of their wits, the peace of the day and the event of the Boston Marathon violated beyond comprehension. They were panic-stricken, and the first-responders who wasted no time appearing on the scene of unimaginable carnage seemed themselves incapable of mustering the internal resources to command the day and instruct people how to proceed.

The first-responders were, in fact, so concentrated on their first order of business, to carry away the wounded for emergency treatment to try to save the lives of those most seriously maimed, they were focused on that priority. Everyone found it impossible not to be shocked by what they saw; the numbers of those injured and the overwhelming numbers who had lost limbs.

David L. Ryan

The bombs that were set with a measure of precision to explode within minutes of each other seemed to come out of nowhere; the massive detonations just appeared, the atmosphere was full of sound, and fury and destruction. Shrapnel, metal pieces whose inclusion in the explosive devices were there for one purpose only, to cause as much damage to human flesh as possible, did their work.

"We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn't jump to conclusions before we have all the facts. But make no mistake. We will get to the bottom of this.... Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice", promised President Barack Obama. And, as today progressed he admitted; this was a terrorist attack.

And the twin pejoratives of Western neuroses that so plagues the world of left-social-justice -- Islamophobia and ethnic-profiling have raised their ugly heads. Ethnic profiling, of necessity, being the foster child of Islamophobia. And the rampant injustice of jumping to conclusions before all the facts are adequately known has kicked in. Aided and abetted by reality, needless to say.

Members of Boston's Joint Terrorist Task Force were interviewing a wounded man seen running from the scene of the two blasts. The FBI has joined the Boston task force in its investigation. Three people dead, well over a hundred people wounded, seventeen of them seriously enough to have their survival threatened. Does a wounded person run from aid in the person of first-responders?

Bruce Mendelsohn

A wounded Saudi national, living in Boston with two other young men, all members of a prominent Saudi family, known for their orthodox version of Islam, in a region suspected to be highly supportive of al-Qaeda. A video exists showing a swarthy man of hefty build with a large backpack, his head hooded, attempting to enter a restricted area of the Boston run, being turned away.

The bombs have turned out to be improvised explosive devices, using materials found in "your mother's kitchen", fitting right in with instructions found among other places on the online al-Qaeda instruction manual. Two pressure cookers stuffed with metal pieces. Set to go off in an area crowded with tens of thousands, competing and viewing the Boston Marathon. What an inspired venue.

"I started running toward the blast. And there were people all over the floor. We started grabbing tourniquets and started tying legs. A lot of people amputated.  ...At least 24 to 30 people have at least one leg missing, or an ankle missing, or two legs missing", stated 35-year-old Roupen Bastajian, a state trooper from Rhode Island, himself a race contestant.

Bomb-sniffing dogs swept the area with the emergency response on the scene as Boston was propelled into full-scale terror alert. Sad that alert did not go off before the bombs were detonated. Police ordered cell service shut down in the area to ensure no remote detonations could take place, in the event that other bombs might yet explode.

A bystander shot a video showing civilians and uniformed soldiers dashing through the haze of the explosion to tear down fencing and flags lining the street so a path could be cleared for ambulances and medical personnel. The sidewalk where the blasts occurred were painted in blood.

Human Nature/The Lessons of History

"Silently, with no lights on, cars kept coming, one after the other, full to bursting with baggage and furniture, prams and birdcages, packing cases and baskets of clothes, each with a mattress tied firmly to the roof. They looked like mountains of fragile scaffolding and they seemed to move without the aid of a motor, propelled by their own weight down the sloping streets to the town square. Cars filled all the roads into the square. People were jammed together like fish caught in a net, and one good tug on that net would have picked them all up and thrown them down on to some terrifying river bank."

"They look so tired, so hot!" everyone kept saying, but not one of them thought to open their doors, to invite one of these wretches inside, to welcome them into the shady bits of heaven that the refugees could glimpse behind the houses, where wooden benches nestled in arbours amid currant bushes and roses. There were just to many of them, too many weary, pale faces, dripping with sweat, too many wailing children, too many trembling lips asking "D you know where we could get a room? A bed?"... "Would you tell us where we could find a restaurant, please Madame?" It prevented the townspeople from being charitable. There was nothing human left in this miserable mob; they were like a herd of frightened animals. Their crumpled clothes, crazed faces, hoarse voices, everything bout them made them look peculiarly alike, so you couldn't tell them apart. They all made the same gestures, said the same words."

"They hadn't yet been shelled. When it happened, they didn't know what was going on at first. They heard the sound of an explosion, then another, then shouting: "Run for it! Get down! Get down on the ground!" They immediately threw themselves face down."

"The people arriving off trains would ask, "Is it an air raid?" and be told, "No, it's over", only for the faint bell to be heard again five minutes later. There was laughter. Shops were open, little girls played hopscotch on the pavement and dogs ran through the dust near the old cathedral. The Italian and German planes were ignored as they glided calmly overhead. People were used to them. Suddenly, one broke loose and swooped down at the crowd. He's going to crash, no he's going to fire, he's firing, we're finished.. The bombs had fallen on the train station and, a bit further along, on the railway tracks. The glass roof shattered and exploded outwards, wounding and killing the people in the square. Panic-stricken, some of the women threw down their babies as if they were cumbersome packages and ran. Others grabbed their children and held them so tightly they seemed to want to force them back into the womb, as if that were the only truly safe place."
Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise

Jewish refugees board the SS Mouzinho for the voyage to the United States. Among these refugees is a group of Jewish children recently rescued from internment camps in France. Lisbon, Portugal, ca. June 10, 1941.

An old manuscript, never published, was unearthed, its contents digested by a relative, then finally published seventy years after it was written painstakingly by hand, under a dire and constant threat, during the Second World War by an emigrant whose Jewish family from Ukraine had sought haven in France during the Russian Revolution, but whom the Nazi juggernaut caught up with, when the writer was deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942.

Irene Nemirovsky, a Sorbonne graduate, had attained some measure of fame as a novelist with her succession of novels in France. The world knows her now as the author of Suite Francaise, a moving account of the panic and fear that enveloped the French when they were forced to understand that the impossible had occurred; their defending French military had been defeated by the advance of the Axis military.

She described the suffering of ordinary civilians fleeing their fears of occupation and death, and meeting it when German and Italian warplanes flew over congested highways packed with terrified migrants, bombing and strafing, or awaiting the arrival of trains to take them further into the countryside and imagined safety, only to have them bombed, and they within the rail stations.

Reading her novelistic account of the history of the time during the Nazi invasion of France, turns the reader's mind to the dreadful suffering of the Syrian people at the present time, caught between an armed insurrection comprised of rebel forces contesting the legitimacy of the Alawite Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Assad whose war machine answers the challenge of those they describe as "terrorists" by aiming their deadly artillery at their own civilian populations.

That there are indeed within the forces of the rebels, jihadists whose deadly pursuit of extreme violence to be committed against all those whose brand of Islam does not match their own, and who victimize people indiscriminately for the sheer love of vicious bloodshed in the commission of their fanaticism to uphold the vision of pure Islam, is undeniable.

Humanitarian aid agencies and United Nations observers give testimony to the plight of fleeing men, women, children and the elderly and the injured from the deliberate fog of war. One million estimated to be internally displaced, and two million become refugees in bordering countries themselves fearing the overlap of hostilities that might succeed in sucking them into the vortex of war through tribal antipathies and sectarian reactions.

Syrian refugees arrive at the Turkish town of Yayladagi, where two camps have been set up   Picture: David Rose

The Stranger Among Them

In freeing themselves from their traditional tyrants who kept them from each others' throats because a functioning society thrives on order, the vacuum resulting from the Arab Spring swiftly fell to the Islamists to whom freedom equates with fanatical religiosity.  Disorder has arisen in popular protest as the people viewed the failure of their original campaign. Their popular protests brought them not liberation from tyranny and oppression as they hoped, but the arrival of yet another tyranny, this one flavoured with extremism.

The existence of Israel within this social-political-religious turmoil represents the calm in the eye of the storm that is the dysfunctional Middle East. Whereas the dysfunctional elements of the Middle East are fond of pointing to the presence of the State of Israel as representing the agitating factor, the source of the disturbances in the Middle East, simply manifested by its presence, a nation of Jews among a geography of Muslims.

Israel's order, liberty and functional pluralism is decidedly not to blame for Islamic failure. It stands as a beacon of possibilities and conversely as it happens, this serves to enrage her Arab/Muslim detractors from Qatar to Iran, Syria to Turkey, Lebanon to Libya, Afghanistan to Pakistan, Algeria to Somalia, Iraq to Mali. A lot of disparate but connected-through-Islam countries arrayed in rage against one tiny nation, to be sure.

How is it even remotely possible that Muslim nations are able to evade or to overlook the viciousness of the ruling Arab Muslim class against the black African Muslims of Sudan?  Why is it that Israel's purported unwillingness to see a Palestinian state beside its own is said to be the fulcrum that leverages Muslim anger, while in Iraq the disenfranchised Sunni demographic launch suicide attacks against the governing Shia?

The liberation of Iraq from the murderous tyrant that -- like his neighbour Iran, like Saudi Arabia and like Libya, funded and encouraged terrorism, and incited violence against Israel -- turned the political tables from Saddam Hussein's Baath Party led by Sunni Muslims oppressing the majority Shia Muslims, enabling the once-oppressed to become the new oppressors. Is there no lesson to be learned from any of this?

The world is witness to the ghastly tribal and sectarian violence unleashed within Syria, and in its lethal destructiveness holding the potential to let loose a wider conflict, spreading from Syria into Lebanon where Hezbollah holds that country on bondage to terror and fights alongside the Syrian regime and Quds forces from Iran to defeat majority Syrian Sunnis who have aligned themselves with fiercely fanatical Sunni jihadists.

If ever a more bitter struggle going for the collective jugular by a people united by heritage as Bedouin tribes, sharing in the surrender to Islam could be imagined, it has not yet been heard from. As Muslims within Somalia, Mali, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan slaughter one another in the name of their faith. Countries like Bahrain, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan are managing to elude the virulent conflict for now.

If a geography comprised mostly of Arabs of various tribal extractions and clan loyalties, rent asunder by versions of pure Islam cannot gather itself into a cohesive whole with a common background, heritage and religion to unite them, when so much is at stake, and so much in human values sacrificed to the ill-will and violence that is constantly unleashed, why blame the presence of a different tribe, religion, ethos for shortcomings not of their making?

Egypt, which once aspired to lead the Arab world, the most populous of the Arab countries, with the history of a fabled early civilization that was the wonder of the world, has declined in human values, the spirit that once led it to its exalted status as an advanced society long lost to a reality of social dysfunction, symbolizes the backwardness of the region.

Non-Arab Turkey has returned to its Islamist roots. Its rediscovery of fundamental Islam has renewed its allegiance to its view of itself as the former caliphate of the geography. It chose Syria, Qatar and Iran, rejecting its long-time Western-oriented partner Israel. Its own history of atrocities against the Armenians, its cruel oppression of Kurds, and its rejection of Attaturk's separation of church and state has conceived a new Turkey, a bad-tempered, cranky one groping about for new alliances.

Aryan Iran, upon whom Nazi Germany showered praise and found much in common with, found its Western influence inimical to its Islamic traditions and wildly clasped its Islamic revolution to bring it back to its beginnings in Shia Islam, eager to take on the mantle of regional power from Saudi Arabia, wrested at one time from Egypt. They have much in common, and much deadly enmity that sets them apart from one another.

The sole country in the geography that has overcome all adversities, both from within and without, to emerge as an immense success in coming to terms with its past and asserting itself toward its abundant future, could be both an inspiration and an aspirational aid to those of its neighbours whose education, science, agriculture, manufacture, social structure and security and justice systems could use instruction.

Yet the battering ram of virulent anti-Israel sentiment as the Zionist usurper and interloper in an Islamic environment continues the threat of ultimate annihilation of the country whose success its neighbours should all be inspired by and aspire to achieve for themselves.