Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that Hamas is conducting a double war crime in firing rockets at Israeli citizens while at the same time using innocent Palestinian citizens as human shields.
The prime minister spoke to reporters this morning taking questions about the ongoing Israeli response to Hamas’ continual terrorist attacks.
“Israel will continue to do what it needs to do to defend itself until peace and quiet are restored,” Netanyahu said. “[The] most important step for the international community to insist on is the demilitarization of Gaza.”
Hamas said today they rejected the peace proposal that Israel had accepted from Egypt because “Egypt has too many interests within Israel” to be impartial.
Hamas fired over 60 rockets Wednesday, 37 of which made it through the Iron Dome defense system. Two Israeli citizens were slightly injured when a rocket destroyed by Iron Dome fell to the ground.
Air strikes against Hamas rocket launching positions resumed after Hamas flatly rejected a peace proposal from Egypt that would end the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Israel had approved the peace deal and had de-escalated their forces as per the outline set up by Egypt; however Hamas completely rejected the deal and immediately fired up to 50 rockets into Israel. Israeli officials then announced they would resume their offensive against Hamas because of the terrorist’s ongoing rocket campaign.
Israeli officials say that no one was hurt during the six-hour window that the IDF had scaled back and Hamas fired rockets into Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would likely intensify their campaign against Hamas because of their rejection of the cease-fire.
“If Hamas rejects the Egyptian proposal and the rocket fire from Gaza does not cease, and that appears to be the case, we are prepared to continue and intensify our operation,” he said in a statement.
While President Obama told a group of Muslim leaders that Israel had the right to defend itself from Hamas’ attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry announced he would skip visiting the region on his way home from talks with Iran in Geneva.
New details are emerging in the case of an Egyptian Coptic Christian who has been sentenced to six years in prison for an online posting deemed offensive to Islam.
Initial reports said that Kerolos Attallah, 29, had posted a photo on Facebook that several people considered insulting to Islam. Those who were offended reported the posting to authorities who arrested Attallah near his home in a village near Luxor.
Now, information has come out that Attallah did not post the picture, he only clicked the “like” button for a page where someone else had posted the picture. Attallah did not post the picture himself, did not “like” the actual picture and even removed his “like” of the page when he discovered some Islamic friends were offended.
Safwat Samaan, chairman of Egyptian human rights group Nation Without Borders, said that Attallah had not even posted a single comment on the disputed page.
“The sentence today was a shock not just to Kerolos but to everyone who uses Facebook in Egypt,” Samaan said. “Any person who uses Facebook in Egypt and presses ‘Like’ on any page … can be put into prison for six years.”
The page was called “Knights of the Cross” and is written in Arabic for Christians who convert from Islam. The page provides encouragement, prayer and Bible Scriptures.
A Coptic Christian in Egypt has seen sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted on charges of blasphemy and contempt of religion.
Kerolos Ghattas, 30, was arrested earlier this month after he posted pictures on a Facebook page that some Islamists said defamed the religion. Ghattas’ legal team will appeal the verdict of the court.
Local authorities increased their presence in Ghattas’ home village out of fears of sectarian violence. When he was arrested, Islamists hurled Molotov cocktails into shops that were owned by Christians.
Ghattas was not the only Christian to be sentenced to prison on Tuesday. A Christian journalist was given six years in prison for reporting on sectarian strife and highlighting the abuses of Christians by Egyptian Islamists.
Christians have been the subject of abuse due to their support of new President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and the movement that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood. Christians are hoping to get protection to worship freely under the new government.
A group of Middle Eastern activists is speaking out about girls in Egypt being forced into marriage with Islamic men and ordered to convert from Christianity.
The group is pointing out while the world is enraged over 270 Christian girls kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, over 550 Christian girls in Egypt have been kidnapped or forced into marriages with Islamic men over the last three years.
The Association of Victims of Abduction and Forced Disappearance reported that in addition to the marriages, the girls who are Coptic Christians have crosses tattooed on their body burned off with acid.
“Before the revolution there would be five or six girls disappear each month,” AVAFD founder Ebram Louis told the Christian Post. “Now the average is 15 [each month].”
The AVAFD says that the Islamists in government and on police forces are complicit in the kidnapping, rape and forced conversions of the girls. They cite the case of Nadia Makram, kidnapped at age 14 in 2011. Her parents knew the 48-year-old Muslim man who took their daughter and went to police who said they wouldn’t do anything to rescue the kidnapped girl.
AVAFD says if police do get involved, they meet with the girls when they are surrounded by the Muslims who kidnapped her and tell her what to say to the police.
Egyptian officials confirm a group of Islamic extremists attacked the businesses of Christians today in the town of Luxor.
Many of the shops owned by Coptic Christians were burned to the ground.
Authorities investigating the attack said that Islamists marched into the shops in the village of el-Mahmeed and threw gasoline bombs into shop windows. Police say that they have not made any arrested and currently have no persons of interest because of a lack of witnesses coming forward to identify who threw the bombs.
The Islamists are launching attacks ahead of the blasphemy trial of a young Coptic Christian who Islamists claim posted disparaging remarks about Islam on the internet. The trial had been scheduled to begin today.
The young Christian, Kerolos Ghattas, is facing the death penalty if convicted.
Young Christian women in Egypt are being abducted, tortured, raped and forced to convert to Islam in record numbers.
The report from International Christian Concern says that since the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, it has been open season on Christian girls by the Muslim population of the country. At least 500 confirmed cases of kidnapped Christian girls being forced into Islamic marriages have been reported and many other incidents have not been confirmed.
The ICC reports that Christian girls who resist and refuse to convert to Islam are then brutally killed including being thrown off buildings by their captors.
An ICC spokesman told Fox News that the government is doing more than turning a blind eye.
“Not only are they turning a blind eye, they are often compliant,” Issac Six said. “It’s pervasive; police at the local level are not stopping the abductions. There needs to be more pressure from the top. We have seen cases before where we’ve seen victims returned when the police put pressure on the kidnappers. We know it’s possible, unfortunately, the police are often complacent.”
The actions are reportedly being taken by radical Islamists connected to the Muslim Brotherhood who are angry they have been thrown out of power in the country.
An Egyptian court has shocked many in Egypt by passing down a death sentence to over 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Legal experts say the death sentences are likely to be overturned on appeal, but the initial ruling by the Egyptian court shows the government is serious in their crackdown on the Islamic extremist organization.
Part of the reason for the belief the sentences will be overturned is that all death sentences have to be approved by the government’s official interpreter of Islamic law. If they are upheld, they can be appealed to the Court of Cassation, which would likely ask for a new trial.
Defense lawyers pointed out that the judge issued many of the death sentences without the defendants even in the courtroom.
A second group of 700 defendants are due in the courtroom on Tuesday, including Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Gaza militants continued firing at Israel on Thursday despite a supposed truce that had been formed.
According to Islamic Jihad’s leader in Gaza, Egypt had helped the militants resume a ceasefire agreement from 2012. Israel did not confirm this.
Eight more rockets were fired into Israel on Thursday. Israel retaliated by striking seven “terror sites” in Gaza.
No Israeli casualties were reported Thursday. Witnesses stated that three Palestinians were wounded, but did not confirm if they were civilians or militants.
The Muslim Brotherhood is now a terrorist organization in another major Middle Eastern country.
The group, already a terrorist organization in Egypt, is now officially a terrorist organization in Saudi Arabia.
The move is seen as a response by the Kingdom to the possibility that Muslim Brotherhood extremists from Syria will attempt to return to Saudi Arabia after the civil war ends.
In addition to the Brotherhood, Saudi officials also listed the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as terror groups. The two groups are affiliated with al-Qaeda and have been proven to conduct terrorist attacks in Syria and Iraq.
The new Saudi declaration would make adopting their ideaology or promoting them in any way within the Kingdom would result in significant prison terms.
Amnesty International opposed the designation, saying that Saudi Arabia was trying to silence dissent, not stop terrorist groups from conducting actions in their nation.
