'It's Genocide,' Europe Says of Christian Slaughter by ISIS - George Thomas CBN NEWS

'It's Genocide,' Europe Says of Christian Slaughter by ISIS

02-06-2016

  CBN NEWS George Thomas

The European Parliament has declared the wanton slaughter of Christians and other religious minorities by ISIS is tantamount to genocide.

In a historic move, members of Parliament passed a resolution this week calling the atrocities by the Islamic terror group "crimes against humanity" and calling for an investigation of their human rights abuses.

Members of the European Parliament say that what the Islamic terror group ISIS is doing to Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq amounts to "war crimes" and "genocide."

"It is very important to call it genocide, it's important because it is the truth," Nina Shea, with Freedom House, said. Freedom House has been documenting ISIS atrocities.

Click below to watch the entire interview with Shea.

"In the ISIS controlled territory, there is no evidence right now of any Christian life, all the Christians have either been killed or driven out. The Yazidis, thousands of them, their women are now sex slaves," Shea said.

The resolution by the European Parliament says those who intentionally commit atrocities for religious or ethnic reasons must be charged with crimes against humanity.

"If we take the solemn vow of 'never again' as we have since the Jewish Holocaust under the Nazis, we have to call it as such for the Christians," Shea said.

Former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who has for decades given voice to persecuted Christians around the world, welcomed the unanimous vote, saying it finally recognizes the pain and suffering of those living under constant ISIS threat.

"To call it 'genocide' would honor those who've been subject to genocide so we remember," Wolf said.

The plight of Middle East Christians is sobering. In Syria, the number of believers has plummeted from 1.2 million to less than 500,000.

In neighboring Iraq, roughly two-thirds of that country's 1.5 million Christians have either been killed or have been forced to flee ISIS.

Shea is now calling on the White House to follow the European Parliament's example and label what's happening to Christians in the Middle East as "genocide."

"There's a reluctance on the part of the administration to call it genocide against Christians," she said. "They have told us privately that they will call it genocide against Yazidis but not Christians."

On the other hand, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has already said that ISIS is committing genocide. 

During a New Hampshire town hall in later December, Clinton said she was initially reluctant to use the word since it requires countries to take specific action to stop the genocide. Now, she's convinced otherwise.

"I'm sure now we have enough evidence that what is happening is genocide, deliberately aimed at destroying, not only the lives but wiping out the existence of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in the Middle East in territory controlled by ISIS," she said.

The European Parliament resolution calls on the International Criminal Court to begin investigating violations by ISIS against Christians, Yazidis, and religious minorities.

Watch here: Genocide in the Middle East

Netanyahu Accuses Europe of 'Appeasing Terrorists'

By Julie Stahl and Chris Mitchell

CBN News Middle East Bureau

Thursday, December 18, 2014

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JERUSALEM, Israel -  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Europe is falling into the trap of appeasing terrorists by pressuring Israel.

"Today we witnessed a series of examples of European naivety, and may I add, hypocrisy," the Israeli leader said.

Those examples include the following:

• The European court removed Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations. 
• The European parliament voted in principle to recognize a Palestinian state.
• And some parties to a fourth Geneva Convention called to investigate Israel for war crimes.

"Now all these point in the same direction," Netanyahu said. "They point to a spirit of appeasement in Europe of the very forces that threaten Europe itself."

"Too many in Europe are calling on Israel to make concessions that would endanger not only the security of Israel, but also paradoxically, the security of Europe itself because Israel is the forward position of European civilization," he charged.

The European actions came on the same day Jordan submitted a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council, calling for peace between Israel and the Palestinians within a year and an Israeli withdrawal from biblical Judea and Samaria within three years.

Speaking to foreign journalists at the annual New Year's toast, Netanyahu described Israel as an "embattled democracy" in a region plagued by tyranny and Islamist terrorism.

"Israel is forced to defend itself against terrorists who time and again try to target our civilians," the prime minister said. "This summer they fired thousands of rockets on our cities, and they used their civilians as human shields. That's a second war crime."

Netanyahu said peace won't last in the Middle East unless it can be defended, and European declarations against Israel only reinforce Palestinian intransigence and push peace away.

"Peace will only come when the Palestinians are willing to confront their own extremists," he challenged. "And instead of rewarding Palestinian intransigence, the European democracies should support the one and only democracy in the Middle East and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the State of Israel.

The increased pressure comes at a time when Israel is preparing for national elections. Some believe the European moves are intended to weaken Netanyahu because he's an Israeli leader who resists the move to appease Islamic terrorism.

The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels - Israel Today magazine

The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels

Wednesday, February 26, 2014 |  Israel Today Staff  

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Water

Earlier this month, the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, sparked a political and media brouhaha when, from the Knesset podium, he suggested that Israel severely limits the Palestinians’ access to clean water.

Israelis from across the political spectrum were incredulous that Schulz would repeat blatant Palestinian propaganda without bothering to check the facts, which he admitted to not doing prior to addressing the Israeli lawmakers.

The facts, as they relate to this issue, are readily available to anyone interested in the truth.

But, just in case others engaged in commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict similarly don’t have the time for checking facts on their own, Prof. Haim Gvirtzman of the Israeli think tank Begin-Sadan Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) has published a thorough review of the situation titled “The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels.”

The executive summary of Prof. Gvirtzman’s survey reads:

"Water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology. The Palestinians refuse to develop their own significant underground water resources, build a seawater desalination plant, fix massive leakage from their municipal water pipes, build sewage treatment plants, irrigate land with treated sewage effluents or modern water-saving devices, or bill their own citizens for consumer water usage, leading to enormous waste.

“At the same time, they drill illegally into Israel’s water resources, and send their sewage flowing into the valleys and streams of central Israel. In short, the Palestinian Authority is using water as a weapon against the State of Israel. It is not interested in practical solutions to solve the Palestinian people’s water shortages, but rather perpetuation of the shortages and the besmirching of Israel.”

This is the same tactic that we have seen with the so-called “Palestinian refugees.” While Israel has fully integrated the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries (and while their descendants would never dream of considering themselves refugees), the Arabs have purposely kept Palestinian Arabs and their descendants living as refugees for nearly 70 years.

Click here to read the full text of “The Truth Behind Palestinian Water Libels.”

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Crisis of Conscience: Anti-Semite Learns He's a Jew - CBN News

Crisis of Conscience: Anti-Semite Learns He's a Jew

By Dale Hurd

CBN News Sr. Reporter

Thursday, August 08, 2013

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BUDAPEST, Hungary -- What do you do when you learn you are not the person you thought you were, when you learn you are the very thing you hated?

It was a question Csanad Szegedi was confronted with -- one that led to a remarkable transformation.

Szegedi was once a rising star in Hungary's third largest and most controversial political parties, Jobbik. Jobbik has been labeled fascist and anti-Semitic. 

Its leader once asked for a list of all the Jews in Hungarian government. And Szegedi, still in his 20s, was on a trajectory to lead the party someday.  

"I joined Jobbik in 2003, when the party foundations were being built," he told CBN News. "I was a member for 9 years. I was vice president for 6 years and I have served in the European parliament since 2009."

Szegedi was also branded an anti-Semite, although he told CBN News that when he joined Jobbik, "I was kind of indifferent toward Jews."

"I didn't care about Jews," he said. "I didn't care about the Holocaust. I didn't consider the Holocaust as a tragedy for the Hungarian people."

Szegedi's Damascus Road

But still, Szegedi was a leader in a major anti-Semitic party, and his public statements showed that, at the very least, he didn't like Jews and was suspicious of them.

But that would all change when Szegedi learned something about himself that would turn his world upside down: Szegedi discovered he was a Jew.

When rumors of his Jewish ancestry started swirling on the Internet, Szegedi went to talk to his 94-year-old grandmother, who he never knew was Jewish.

"She opened up and she talked about her life and how she was sent to Auschwitz and how our family was annihilated," he recalled. "I was shocked. First of all because I realized the Holocaust really happened."

At first, Szegedi tried to hide his Jewishness and act like nothing had happened. But he realized he couldn't stay in Jobbik. 

"It started such a crisis in my consciousness," he told CBN News. "I realized I can't take part in any organization that has anything to do with anti-Semitism. And after my Jewish origins were disclosed, they really didn't want to see me in the party anymore."

A Spiritual 'Leper'

So what do you do when you discover you are one of the very things you hated? Szegedi decided to change.

He contacted local Rabbi Schlomo Koves, who first thought it was a joke.

"When I first met with Csanad, I had very, very mixed feelings because on one hand I was sitting across from a member of the Jobbik party, which has extreme anti-Semitic views," Rabbi Koves told CBN News.

"But on the other hand, I was sitting across from a broken person who has realized what he has done and has come to a situation where he figured he had to change but he didn't know how to change," he said.

Szegedi started attending synagogue and jokes that he was treated by some members "like a leper."

"It was very interesting to see how other people viewed it and some stepped back," Rabbi Koves said. "They were shocked."

But Szegedi started taking classes at the synagogue, learning Hebrew and the meaning of kosher and Shabbat. He said his life has completely changed.

"It's changed everything. It's like being re-born, and the changes in my life are still happening," he said. "I had this set value system that I had to change completely. I had had this value system until I was 30 and I had to admit that it was all wrong and to find the will to change."

Visiting Israel

He also became a politician without a party and has continued to serve in the European parliament as an independent.

"As a politician, now I want to defend human rights for everyone," Szegedi explained. "I am aware of my responsibility and I know I will have to make it right in the future."

One of the high points of his new life was visiting Israel with his wife and visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Western Wall.

"When I landed in Israel, airport security asked me a lot of questions, and when the guard asked me, 'Are you a Jew?' Then for the first time in my life, I could say, 'Yes,'" Szegedi recalled.

"Just to feel like you are on the right way spiritually, and you can get closer to God," he continued. "It's a whole new feeling for me, that I am doing the right thing."

"Since then, my life has been full of incredible miracles," he said. "But I believe everyone who chooses the way of God sees miracles."