https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/14/morning-greatness-trump-declines-to-commit-to-two-state-solution-after-historic-gaza-peace-deal/
https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-no-female-israeli-hostages-are-coming-home/
The media won’t say it, but here is the truth.
Some of the male Israeli hostages are finally coming home. All were tortured. Most were murdered.
And the women… they were ALL slaughtered every last one of them. I can not even begin to comprehend the horror they endured. Yet the media refuses to explain why Hamas terrorists act this way.
Because the answer leads straight to Muhammad himself — Islam’s founder and the model for jihad.
Historical fact: After the Battle of Badr, Muhammad’s followers slaughtered defenseless prisoners — fathers and sons hacked to pieces. Muhammad personally ordered the beheading of captives, mocked the dying, and even celebrated their deaths. He “revealed” Quran 8:67, declaring: “It is not for any prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land.”
From the 800 men and boys executed at Qurayza, to women like Umm Qirfa torn apart by camels… This is not a distortion of Islam.
This is Islam’s origin story. So when Hamas tortures, rapes, and executes hostages, they are not betraying Muhammad’s example. They are imitating it.
And that’s why the media stays silent. Because telling the truth would expose the ideological root of Islamic terror.
Pro-Tip: Expose Islam like your life depends on it…
https://www.frontpagemag.com/dont-beat-your-swords-into-ploughshares-just-yet/
Monday was a festive day, with the whole world seemingly celebrating the dawn of peace in the Middle East and hailing President Trump for bringing it about. The president himself, while speaking about the release of the hostages in his speech to the Knesset, promised a bright new world unencumbered by past hatred and animosities: “After two harrowing years in darkness and captivity, 20 courageous hostages are returning to the glorious embrace of their families. Twenty-eight more precious loved ones are coming home at last to rest in this sacred soil for all of time. And after so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace.”
Trump proclaimed not just the end of the present war between Israel and Hamas, but of an entire era of war: “This is not only the end of a war. This is the end of an age of terror and death, the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God.” He said that the cessation of hostilities heralded ” a very exciting time for Israel and for the entire Middle East,” and added that “the forces of chaos, terror and ruin that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated, and totally defeated.”
Swept up in the excitement of the occasion, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said: “You, President Trump, are a colossus who will be enshrined in the pantheon of history. Thousands of years from now the Jewish people will remember you. We are a nation that remembers.”
It is likely that President Trump will indeed be remembered thousands of years from now, for he is a transformative figure who has reshaped national and international politics. Whether he will be remembered, however, as the man who brought about “the end of an age of terror and death” and “the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God,” however, is another question altogether.
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/10/14/checking-in-on-the-climate-here-are-a-few-facts/
Global warming hysteria has been cooling off. But it’s not cold-on-the-slab dead yet. So it’s important to continue to roll out the reality. If we don’t, the zealots will rearm and flood the zone with their mendacious narrative.
From various sources, here is an update on the facts and the fiction:
Summers are still summer in America – hot, but not as hot as the climatistas want us to believe they are. University of Alabama in Huntsville climate researcher Roy Spencer, who keeps up with this sort of thing, tells us summer’s hottest days in the U.S. “Have Barely Warmed in the Last 40 Years.” He continues: “Of course, you would never know this based upon media reports … in fact, most people are probably under the impression that our hottest days are rapidly getting hotter.”
A month ago, the New York Times reported, citing “scientists,” that “Severe heat this summer killed three times as many people in European cities as would have died had humans not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels.” Is that right? No, it’s not, says a fact-check service provided by a consortium of policy groups.
These are not real mortality figures.” The Times “admits that these figures from Dr. Malcolm Mistry, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, are derived from the modeling of mortality trends in 854 European cities, not observational data, which the Times says ‘[a]re not yet widely available.’ Thus, they are attempting to pass a claim off as established fact without supporting evidence.”
The claims that man-made global warming is causing island nations to sink into the sea won’t go away. They should. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute notes that even with “modest sea level rise,” the island nations that are supposedly drowning “have increased in size, population, and prosperity amid modest climate change.” There’s simply “no real data (that) shows that the oceans are about to swamp these countries.”
The alarmists have warned for decades that global warming was going to cause bigger and badder storms, including, according to federal functionaries, an “above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.” Except – “no hurricanes made landfall in the United States” in September, says meteorologist Anthony Watts. It was “the first time that’s happened in a decade.”
Solar farms are supposed to be keys to saving us from global warming, yet they raise nighttime air temperatures from 5 to 7 degrees (3 to 4 Celsius) Fahrenheit. Shouldn’t someone say something about this?
Here’s a point we’ve been making for decades from Substacker Ignominious: “In 1875 very few sensors were placed in very few areas. We have extremely limited data for the first 100 years (1850-1950) so temperature comparisons are unreliable.” He also mentions that “temperature is local and changes acre to acre and block to block due to elevation, wind, rain, and land type. Precise worldwide temperature cannot be known.”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21981/pedro-sanchez-spain-israel
Before the extraordinary success of “Phase One” of US President Donald J. Trump’s peace plan yesterday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his regret recently that Spain, due to its lack of nuclear weapons, could not end the war in Gaza – meaning nuke Israel.
“Spain is the only democratic country where it is the government that fuels violent protests.” — Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Spanish opposition leader, September 15, 2025.
What of Qatar, which sponsors Al Qaeda? Spain and Qatar enjoy excellent relations, and entered into a strategic partnership in 2022 to deepen their economic and political ties. The country that most likely helped finance the biggest terrorist attack on Spanish soil is respected and rewarded by Spain, while Israel, which is fighting that very same terrorism, is denigrated and its citizens hounded.
Already, Spain has prohibited any trade in military equipment with Israel, banned the use of Spanish ports and airspace to transport fuel or weapons to the Israeli military, and is introducing an additional 9 measures against Israel, while throwing many more millions of euros after the terrorist UNRWA.
At the end of the day, other than his hatred of Jews, Sánchez is doing what all corrupt leaders have always done: blaming the Jews to deflect attention from his own problems. Sánchez finds himself in the midst of several corruption scandals and is struggling to stay in power amidst demands for him to be held accountable and resign.
Perhaps it is time for Sánchez and those who voted for him to reconsider.
Before the extraordinary success of “Phase One” of US President Donald J. Trump’s peace plan yesterday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his regret recently that Spain, due to its lack of nuclear weapons, could not end the war in Gaza – meaning nuke Israel.
“Spain, as you know, doesn’t have nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, or large oil reserves,” Sánchez lamented. “We alone can’t stop the Israeli offensive. But that doesn’t mean we won’t stop trying. Because there are causes worth fighting for, even if winning them isn’t in our sole power.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/13/we-must-never-forget-the-progressive-betrayal-of-the-israeli-hostages/
They’re home. After 738 days in hellish captivity, the last living Israeli hostages are free. After more than two years in the cruel bondage of that army of anti-Semites, they have tasted liberty again. Twenty souls returned to their families, and to a nation that prayed for their release. When they are ready they will tell of the horrors they endured in Hamas’s tunnels, those dank lairs of Jew hatred. But for now, in Israel and those parts of the civilised world not yet lost to Israelophobia, the emotion people will be feeling is joy.
There are 20 of them, all men. They include twin brothers: Gali and Ziv Berman, 28, taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. And brothers Ariel and David Cunio, 28 and 35, abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Ariel’s partner, Arbel Yehud, was also kidnapped, then released in January this year. In a chilling testament to the barbarous cruelty of Hamas’s pogrom, David’s wife and three-year-old twin daughters were kidnapped, too. Like their Nazi forebears, Hamas targeted even Jewish children for ritualistic persecution. After 52 days in captivity, David’s wife and daughters were released in November 2023. The image of the armed neo-fascists of Hamas marching two shattered toddlers to freedom should be seared into humanity’s conscience. Alas, it is not.
Then there is Eitan Mor, 25, who was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival on 7 October. He helped to save dozens of people before himself falling victim to Hamas’s captors. And Bar Kupershtein, 23, who told his grandmother by phone that he was tending to the wounded of Nova and would be home soon. They heard no more from him until he was seen in a Hamas propaganda video in April this year.
And Rom Braslavski, just 21, held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In August, they released a video in which the camera panned Rom’s emaciated frame as he sobbed and writhed in famished agony – Jew-torture porn for the world’s anti-Semites. And there is Evyatar David, 24, who in August was filmed by Hamas digging in the dirt of the lair where he was being held captive. ‘This is the grave where I think I’m going to be buried’, said the bag of bones as he feebly scooped up the soil. It was 2025 and fascists were once more making Jews dig their own graves.
That these men and the others have staggered back into the sunlight of liberty ought to be a cause of global celebration. There will be injuries and ailments and trauma, but it is a wonderful day for Israel and for humanity that 20 men have been liberated from the ruthless grip of a neo-fascist militia. The joy is flecked with sorrow, of course. Alongside these men, we expect to see the release of the remains of 28 hostages who did not survive the ordeal of savagery inflicted on them by Hamas. Their families have secured a freedom they would rather not have: the freedom to grieve.
And yet even as we give thanks for this emancipation of the Jews, we need to reflect on the entire hostage crisis. And in particular on what it says about us. For where the Jewish nation stood by the hostages, we in the West did not. On the contrary, these men, women and children – children – rarely troubled the consciences of those who pose as progressive. They did not trend. No footballers took the knee for them. No Instagram squares were painted yellow for them. There was no viral cry of ‘Bring back the Israelis’, like the cry of ‘Bring back our girls’ following the abduction of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Nigeria in 2014.
For me, the ‘progressive’ silence on the stolen Israelis was one of the most sobering and illuminating moments of the 21st century so far. Cause-hungry celebrities studiously ignored this cause. Anti-fascists were spectacularly unmoved by this abduction of Jews by fascists. Feminists seemed utterly unstirred by the dragging of young, bloodied women into the misogynist hell of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Even when Ariel Cunio’s partner, Arbel Yehud, was released after 482 days in captivity, feminist influencers were disgustingly silent. There she was, emaciated, hollow-eyed, surrounded by text a feral mob of Islamists barking slogans in her face, her only crime that she is a Jew, and yet her ‘sisters’ in the West said fuck all. They were too busy campaigning for their own right to sup Merlot in the opulent surrounds of London’s Garrick Club.
We need a reckoning with this ‘progressive’ betrayal of Jews brutalised by Islamofascists. Here in London, there has been one surefire way to know you’re in a Jewish part of town: you will see yellow ribbons. Jews were left almost entirely alone to rally for their co-religionists who were being tyrannised by genocidal gunmen – something I thought we had promised they would ‘never again’ have to do.
The silence on the hostages wasn’t even the worst of it. The hatred for them was. Do you remember – there was a blind, demented loathing for these men, women and children on the streets of the West. In New York, London, Paris and Sydney, posters of the hostages were attacked and destroyed. Feral Jew-haters clawed at them with a burning animosity until the faces of the Jews were reduced to tatters. People scrawled ‘coloniser’ across their faces. In New York City, faeces were smeared on the poster of Yagil Jacob. Yagil was just 12 years old when he was kidnapped by Hamas. He was held captive for more than 50 days. A society fully loses the right to call itself civilised if it fails to reflect on how such a grotesque desecration of an image of a Jewish child could occur in the 21st century.
To see the true depths of moral dishonour to which the West sank after 7 October, think about David Cunio. He was released today. He is 35. He is a former actor. In 2013, he starred with his twin brother, Eitan, in a film called Youth. It premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival in Germany. And yet 11 years later, as he languished in the captivity of violent Jew-haters, not one person at the 2024 Berlinale saw fit to mention his name, far less call for his release. (Berlinale tried to make up for this sick ‘oversight’ by showing a film about David at this year’s festival.) Worse, when a poster of his three-year-old twin daughters was put up in London, someone daubed Hitler moustaches on them. Jewish infants reimagined as Nazis – such was the gleeful sadism that tore through the West after 7 October.
Tell me: what did David Cunio do to deserve 738 days in captivity? What did he do to deserve the snubbing of his film-world colleagues in the darkest hour of his life? What did he do to deserve having his infant daughters be treated as legitimate targets for the most sickening bigoted invective? We all know the answer: he was born a Jew. That is it. That is the sole reason for his abduction and for the defiling of the likeness of his lovely girls. In both Gaza and the West, his Jewishness marked him out as an unperson, ripe for humiliation.
It is incumbent on those of us who still value reason and decency to confront the West’s moral treachery over the hostages. What we have seen these past two years is the twin savageries of the modern era. The savagery of violent Islamism, and the savagery of identity politics. The barbarous contempt for Jews that motors Hamas, and the barbarous dearth of sympathy for Jews that is a core feature of wokeness. The former see Jews as the arrogant, marauding ‘white colonisers’ of the Holy Land, and so do the latter. ‘Progressives’ in the West were all but complicit in Hamas’s abduction of the Jews, either by ignoring it, or by making excuses for it, or by outright doing Hamas’s bidding and destroying the hostages’ posters. Today we celebrate the liberation of 20 men from the hell of fascistic persecution – tomorrow we ask why so many in our own societies took the side of their persecutors.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
Exactly 736 days ago, Hamas invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 people in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and took 251 people, 30 of them children, back to Gaza. In all that has happened since then—in the Gaza Strip, in Israel, across the region, and here in the West—those innocent hostages have remained at the strategic and moral core of the conflict. Their safe return has been both one of Israel’s two objectives in the conflict (the other is the destruction of Hamas) and the subject of a national and international rallying cry: “Bring them home.” Now, finally, the remaining hostages—living and dead—are set to come home as part of a plan to end the war after these two long years.
Their release will mark the end of a dark chapter in Israeli history—and they are returning to a country forever changed by the horrors of October 7, 2023, and the war that followed. Here at The Free Press, we have covered the hostage story relentlessly ever since the early hours of October 7, and we have gathered some of the coverage of which we are proudest in one place.
—The Editors
October 8, 2023
War in Israel: Michael Oren Explains How ‘Evil’ Infiltrated the Country
Just hours after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Michael Oren joined Bari on Honestly to make sense of what had happened.
October 9, 2023
‘All I’m Asking Is to Have My Babies Back Home’
The day after Hamas’s invasion, Bari interviewed a mother whose two children, aged 12 and 16, were taken hostage by Hamas.
October 18, 2023
The Stories—and Stakes—of War in Israel
A pregnant woman named Shaked told us about 11 family members who were taken hostage, including her 3- and 8-year-old niece and nephew. Amit and Chen, survivors of the Nova music festival, watched the murder of their friends. We talked to a mother whose daughter was killed at the music festival. We talked to a grandmother who hid in her safe room for hours with her 10-day-old grandson as terrorists shot at the door. And we spoke to a father named Jon Polin whose son, Hersh, was kidnapped. Little did we know that the entire world would soon know his name.
October 25, 2023
My Old Friend Is Ripping Down Posters of Kidnapped Children
Around the world, young people are tearing down photographs of innocent Israelis abducted by Hamas. One of them is Sarah.
November 30, 2023
Douglas Murray: Wartime Diary
“As the helicopters carrying the released hostages landed, traffic stopped. People got out of their cars and broke into song.”
December 8, 2023
The Woman in the Hamas Video Is My Daughter
“There are 17 young females still being held hostage. One of them is my girl, Naama. And time is running out.” This plea, from a mother to the terrorists, was one of our most-read stories of the year.
January 14, 2024
The Silence of the Feminists (Honestly)
When Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Malala Yousafzai, Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian, and the rest of the civilized world saw the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram in April 2014, they took to Twitter within days and demanded “Bring Back Our Girls.” Why isn’t the world demanding the same now?
January 16, 2024
The Girls I Met in the Tunnels
Seventeen-year-old Agam Goldstein-Almog saw Hamas murder her father and sister before her eyes. Then she was taken to Gaza.
February 3, 2024
Taken by Hamas: ‘Every Second of Our Lives Is Trauma’
Bari speaks to family members of those taken by Hamas, including Rachel Goldberg, the mother of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who has since perished in the tunnels under Gaza.
June 9, 2024
When Hostages Come Home
“I was at the beach in Tel Aviv when the lifeguard broke the news. We cheered and wept for the liberation of strangers that feel like family.”
September 1, 2024
Dark Tunnels and Moral Beacons
The names of the six murdered Israeli hostages—and the evil ideology of their executioners—should be seared into the minds of all who wish to live in civilization.
September 1, 2024
Among the Mourners of Zion and Jerusalem
“Here in Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s neighborhood, the bewildering events of the past year were reduced to one human face.”
October 3, 2024
A Letter to My Israeli Neighbors
“I cried for the hostages just as deeply as I do for innocent Palestinians whose lives have been destroyed by this war.”
October 7, 2024
A Year Ago Today, Terrorists Stole My Son
“My oldest child went to a music festival. Then Hamas murdered his friends—and dragged Alon into Gaza.”
January 17, 2025
Israel’s Prisoner’s Dilemma
To free its people, Israel negotiates with terrorists and releases murderers. Is that a strength or a weakness?
February 2, 2025
The Terrorist Who Murdered My Cousin Now Walks Free
“I weep with happiness as the hostages return home. But how can this be the price of their liberation?”
February 18, 2025
The Meaning of Kfir Bibas
The Israeli baby is the answer to every relevant question about this conflict. He is the war boiled down to its essence.
February 20, 2025
The Family That Never Came Home
The deaths of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were too unbearable to believe. Israelis couldn’t accept it until we had no other choice.
February 25, 2025
The Life and Death of the Oldest Hostage in Gaza
Shlomo Mantzur fled Iraq as a child. He tried to never look back. Then came October 7, 2023.
September 1, 2025
Deal or No Deal? Hostage Families Divided.
Some hostage families call for negotiation and a ceasefire. Others demand “total victory.” Coleman Hughes discusses it with the families who have it all on the line.
October 7, 2025
I Was a Hostage in Gaza. This Is How I Survived.
“I was dragged barefoot from my home, bound and starved in Gaza, and forced to face the men who worship terrorists,” Eli Sharabi writes. “This is how I made it home.”
Eli Sharabi also appeared on Honestly. Watch his interview with Bari here.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/10/are-violent-plots-against-judges-worth-covering-for-the-press-it-depends-on-the-judge/
The press was eager to cover a mysterious South Carolina house fire but neglected an obvious plot against conservative Supreme Court justices.
Something peculiar happened recently.
There were two incidents a week ago of potentially politically motivated attacks on judges, one in Washington, D.C., and one in South Carolina.
The story from the nation’s capital involved a bomb maker with a stash of hundreds of “fully functioning” explosive devices. The story from South Carolina involved a house fire.
Curiously, only the story out of South Carolina has captured the full attention of the press, which has treated the matter as a deadly serious reminder of the dangers of political rhetoric. In contrast, the D.C. story has not been presented as a cautionary tale about the consequences of political demonization. In fact, the D.C. story has barely been covered at all.
It’s as if to say: All (potential) violence against judges is bad, but some is worse than others.
In South Carolina, Judge Diane Schafer Goodstein’s house burned down last weekend. Goodstein was out walking her dogs at the time of the fire. Her husband reportedly broke his legs jumping to safety. Investigators have not yet determined whether the fire was accidental or intentional.
That same weekend, in Washington, D.C., law enforcement officials arrested a New Jersey man who had set up camp outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral as it was preparing to celebrate a Mass traditionally attended by Supreme Court justices. At the time of his arrest, Louis Geri reportedly had 200 “fully functional” homemade explosive devices, whose compounds included a key ingredient used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, according to police records. He also had a manifesto in which he expressed hatred for Catholics, Jews, ICE, and the Supreme Court justices.
Luckily, none of the justices were in attendance at the Mass. They had been advised to forgo the occasion this year precisely because of recent attacks against the Court.
That Goodstein ruled against the Trump administration last month in a voter registration case, and that the White House has publicly criticized her, has led to widespread speculation that she is the victim of a politically motivated attack. There’s no evidence to support this, but members of the news and entertainment industries are making the connection all the same.
“When you’re starting to attack judges because of their rulings,” said NBC News legal analyst Mary McCord, “we’re in a very, very dangerous position in this country, and it makes judges fearful. . . . [Trump] needs to know the power of his voice and how people respond to that.”
https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/13/the-pieces-of-trumps-peace/
What did Donald Trump do differently to obtain at least temporary calm in the Middle East compared to the failed efforts of past administrations, foreign powers, and the United Nations? Let us count ten different approaches.
1. Trump curtailed a considerable amount of Iranian oil income and its dispersal. He stopped, for the near future, the Iranian effort to build a bomb. Trump also allowed Israel to destroy Tehran’s air defenses, humiliate it militarily, and eliminate many of its top military officers and nuclear physicists. Thus, Israel’s half-century-long worries about Iranian nukes were addressed. At the same time, its stature as a military power soared to an all-time high—even if it became more isolated politically. Israel became more confident but also more sensitive to past, current, and future American military and political support—or pressure.
2. Trump allowed Netanyahu to destroy Hamas, cripple Hezbollah, and retaliate at will against the Houthis. That liberation led to general dejection among Israel’s enemies and a resurgence in Netanyahu’s own political fortunes. And that rise of Israel and the collapse of the Iranian terrorist network—the “ring of fire”— explain the greater chances for a ceasefire and possibly a peace. Trump allowed no daylight between Israel and the U.S., which, under the Biden administration, may have sent the wrong signals to Hamas prior to October 7.
So there is now no terrorist Palestinian leader, such as a Yasser Arafat or an all-powerful Hamas killer, to sandbag negotiations. Instead, Trump involved a number of self-interested surrogate Arab officials who have the money and influence to rebuild Gaza and restore calm on their own terms. Trump and Israel are not just negotiating from positions of historic strength, but they have also empowered the reasonable Arab nations to have honor and clout in Middle East negotiations in an unprecedented fashion.
3. Trump also leveraged all his benefactions to Israel by pressuring it to agree to a ceasefire. Even the optics of a strong Israeli leader conceding to Trump that there would be no annexation of the West Bank gave the U.S. credibility in the Arab world as an honest broker and yet paradoxically helped Israel’s global reputation—as well as Netanyahu’s—as a more flexible negotiator.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21980/eu-enablles-pakistan-eligious-persecution
Pakistan has for years been seriously repressing its minorities, political dissidents, human right advocates and journalists – even transnationally. Nevertheless, Pakistan continues to enjoy the benefits of the European Union’s special incentive arrangement under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP+).
Journalists in Pakistan (and even the family members of exiled journalists) are subject to enforced disappearances. Journalist Asif Karim Khehtran and the brothers of U.S.-based exiled Pakistani journalist Ahmad Noorani were abducted in March 2025 and remain missing.
A 2025 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom documented that more than 700 individuals in 2025 were imprisoned on charges of “blasphemy.” This figure represented a 300% increase from the previous year.
These acts are not isolated incidents but part of a broader campaign of religious “cleansing,” driven by radical Islamist groups such as the TLP and facilitated by a legal system that criminalizes Ahmadi identity.
Pakistan’s fierce blasphemy laws continue to target religious minorities. The HRCP report documents that increasingly, minority individuals accused of blasphemy are lynched by mobs or murdered while seeking police protection…. The rise in hate speech, threats against judicial figures, and the politicization of bar associations only propel a dangerous tilt toward Islamic radicalism within state institutions.
The police appear more interested in appeasing local Islamic strongmen and keeping things calm than in implementing the law and protecting minorities.
The European Union should stand for the principles and ideals on which its Generalized System of Preferences was based. At present, it is simply furthering intolerable behavior and embarrassing itself.
Pakistan has for years been seriously repressing its minorities, political dissidents, human right advocates and journalists. Nevertheless, Pakistan continues to enjoy the benefits of the European Union’s special incentive arrangement under its Generalized System of Preferences.
Pakistan is engulfed in a deepening crisis of religious intolerance and systemic persecution. This year has witnessed a disturbing surge of violence, discrimination and institutional complicity. Christian, Ahmadiyya and Hindu communities have particularly been targeted.
Despite repeated calls for reform and international condemnation, Pakistan’s failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens has left a trail of shattered lives, desecrated places of worship, and a society increasingly fractured by hate.
