The Death Cult of Palestinian Terror

 

"After Hamas terrorists pulled her clothes off, they started to rape her. After one raped her, he took a knife and killed her."

"After he did it, he continued to rape the dead body. They were laughing. They always laughed."

Raz Cohen, October 7 survivor

 

"We fought all through the years for social justice, for peace."

"To my sorrow, we were hit by a terrible blow by those we helped on the other side."

"I stand here staggered to see the number of graves, and the terrible destruction of our community that was completely abandoned on October 7."

Yocheved Lifshitz at funeral of husband Oded

 

The residents of the kibbutzim that became targets when thousands of Palestinian terrorists flooded across the border from Gaza to southern Israel, were known for their activism on behalf of alleviating the lives of Palestinian civilians living in Gaza. The farming communities employed Palestinians as farm labourers, giving them jobs when employment was scarce in Gaza, and giving them wages that jobs in Gaza, if available, could not match. Relations between the kibbutz residents and the Palestinians were civil; they broke bread together in the kibbutz dining halls. 

When the kibbutzim were raided by armed Hamas, PLFP and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists on that dreadful day of savage infamy on October 7, among the terrorists were ordinary Palestinian, teens and men, some of whom knew those kibbutz environs intimately. People who had drawn helpful maps for the terrorists showing them where the security buildings were so those tasked to protecting the kibbutz could be dispatched first to enable the raiders to get on with their business of slaughter and rape unimpeded.

 

The years spent driving Gazans to medical appoints within Israel, taking children for cancer treatments, did not result in reciprocal care from the Palestinians to the Israelis who succoured them. Israelis who believed that they and the Palestinians could live in peace, trust one another, even if their leaders vowed otherwise. Israelis who passionately supported the idea of a 'two-state solution' despite the never-ending terrorist attacks; that once Palestinians had a state of their own they would accept the presence of Israel.

 

That dream is dead, as dead as the 1,200 Israelis who were slaughtered that day. As dead as the hostages who suffered through 500 impossibly evil incarceration days, as valuable possessions to be traded for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for committing violent acts against Israelis -- those hostages who were returned to Israel in those mocking, jeering exchanges, who had died or had been killed during their  brutal internment.

 

Age and gender made no difference. Torment and anguish was perpetrated against the helpless in the clutches of those whose fuming hatred for Jews knew no bounds. Hatred so intense that entire families died in their torched homes on that fateful day of marauding terrorism. Children abducted with their parents or separated from their fathers and taken with their terrified mothers to Gaza, as were elderly and ill men and women. An infant of ten months and his four-year-old brother strangled to death with bare hands, both bodies mutilated for the fiction of having been killed in an Israeli bombing over Gaza.

 

A mourner at the grave of hostages Shiri Bibas, Kfir Bibas and Ariel Bibas after their funeral on February 26, 2025, in Tzohar, Israel.  2025 Amir Levy/Getty Images

 When the hostages were released by Hamas to the Red Cross for transfer to Israel they were first surrounded by squads of masked, heavily armed Hamas terrorists, the route along which they travelled packed with cheering Palestinians. The staged events on the release of the hostages were celebratory events of victory by terrorists over the state of Israel; the death of Jews marking the superiority of a death cult over respect for human life.

 

Men who were released spoke of being held in the vast underground tunnel network in Gaza, legs shackled, the irons cutting into their flesh, and maddening hunger. The Bibas family had taken shelter in the safe room of their house hearing the shouts of 'Allahu akbar!' all around them. Parents Yarden and Shiri in desperate consultation decided they would fight. Yarden took his pistol and tried to protect his family. He was placed in a cage in a tunnel.

 

Yarden, Shiri, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months

Shiri Bibas, left with her infant boys could hear the terrorists trying break down the door of the safe room where she huddled with infant Ariel and baby Kfir. With the use of a hand drill they forced the handle open and the three were taken to Gaza. They lived for a month in captivity before being murdered. Yarden, the children's father was informed his family died in an Israeli airstrike. Finally released in an exchange, he believed his wife and children were alive and would soon join him in freedom.

 

There are still more hostages to be freed, both alive and dead. Hamas's mockery of the gaunt, starving hostages, in emotional upheaval, their minds traumatized, their bodies in various stages of shutting down, mark the terrorists' passionate commitment to death, revelling in the violence their savage atrocities identify their mission of destruction by. And these are the death-dealers that hordes of supporters in the West glorify.

 

/23

Release of Israeli Hostages

"Dear President Trump, first of all we want to say thank you for the happy moments we felt this week. But we want to tell you we still have 94 hostages, we need them all at home."

"Please do not stop. Please continue to press and do everything so that all the 94 hostages will come home immediately."

Ayelet Samerano, Israeli mother of hostage Yonatan Samerano

Israeli female soldier hostages Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev and Liri Albag seen on a stage set up by Hamas in front of a Palestinian crowd before being handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza City, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Abed Hajjar)

On Saturday, four members of the Israeli military, taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023 during a horrific orgy of mass rape, mutilations,and mass murder, were released finally from their ordeal as captive prisoners held in Gaza by Hamas operatives. They were all four female soldiers: Karina Ariev, 20; Danielia Gilboa,20; Naama Levy, 20; and Liri Albag, 19. 

 

Naama Levy captured the world's attention, her plight seen through photographs and video footage taken by bodycams worn by Hamas operatives as they documented their horrific abuse of Israeli citizens in border farming communities by thousands of Palestinian terrorists prowling through villages killing and raping and looting, laying waste to the villages, burning entire families alive in their homes, hunting down youthful revellers at a nearby music festival, and taking hundreds of children, women, elderly and soldiers hostage into Gaza.

 

One of those soldiers was Naana Levy, seen in the trunk of a car and ordered into another one, her pants bloodied, hands tied behind her back, ankles bleeding, deliberately slashed to keep her from attempting to flee her captors who had raped and mutilated her. Seven female members of the Israel Defense Forces had been taken prisoner that day, from the Nahal Oz military base. Their duty there was to serve as lookouts.

 

Ori Megidish, one of the seven, was rescued on October 30, 2023 in a raid conducted by the IDF. Noa Marciano, 19, killed in Gaza, her body repatriated on November 17, 2023. Among the 33 hostages named by the Israeli government for release during the first phase of the temporary ceasefire is the fifth female soldier, Agam Berger. Israel agreed to free dozens of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for terrorist activities in exchange for the hostages.

Hamas terrirusts stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds

In Israel's estimation, a third of the 94 Israeli hostages remaining in Hamas hands in Gaza, are dead although Hamas has failed to release agreed upon definitive information detailing how many of the Israelis held captive remain alive, or listing the names of those who have died. The initial phase of the ceasefire deal is to see 33 of the hostages released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held prisoner in Israel.

 

It took 90 Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of the first three Israeli hostages a week ago Sunday. Some 100 of the hostages had been released through a brief ceasefire in November of 2023. Since then, the bodies of around three dozen hostages have been recovered, and eight hostages were rescued. "We cannot continue living in uncertainty. All hostages must return, and none of them has time left", cautioned Ayelet Samerano. 

Naama Levy (L) is seen with her hands bound and with a bloodied face in the newly released video footage, which was filmed by Hamas terrorists  Hostages and Missing Families Forum

Palestinian Terrorists Feeling Entitled to Control the Outcome of their Savagery

"I want to remind the citizens of Israel that every time you eat something or drink something, remember us, the hostages, who don’t have the opportunity to enjoy food or water."

"My fear for my life is daily. The military efforts to release me that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is selling you is what will end up leading to my death."

"I can tell you I have become scared of the army. I am really afraid of the moment the army might get to me, or blow up the place I am located."

Alexander Troufanov

 

"[With winter approaching], these hostages, who have been subjected to horrific conditions of abuse, starvation and darkness for over a year, face an increasing risk of losing their lives."

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum 

"I am relieved to see my son alive, but I am very worried to hear what he is saying."

"I urge that every effort be made to secure his immediate release and that of all other hostages."

"They have no time left."  

Yelena Troufanov

Russian-Israeli captive Alexander “Sasha” Trufanov seen in an undated video released by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Source: Screenshot/X.

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There were originally 254 Israeli infants, girls, women, men civilians, IDF soldiers, migrant farm workers captured by Palestinian terrorists who invaded southern Israel from Gaza with the specific purpose of looting, mass rape, mutilations and murder on a grand scale. These terrified people were taken hostage for the purpose of being used as 'trades' for Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons, found guilty of crimes of terror. The hostages have been deprived of liberty, daylight, hygiene, adequate food provisions and have experienced humiliation and torture, young women constantly raped. Many have died of privation, ill health and others have been murdered.

Those that are left, both dead and alive, are still viewed as prized caches of human trade. Palestinians know well the penchant of Israelis to try to move heaven and earth to secure the release of their people from the tender claws of their enemies. It is not enough for the Palestinians who in the greater majority  fully support their terrorist groups, and specifically Hamas that had governed Gaza in their exploits of murder, rape and abduction of innocent children, the elderly, vulnerable women and others to satisfy their own sense of implacable victimhood.

Those holding the Israeli hostages enjoy the psychological warfare they indulge in, a sadistic exercise in savagery outlawed by civilized people, but perpetrated by those whose seething hatred is unappeasable and do their utmost to cause suffering and anguish to the families, friends, colleagues of those helpless victims by staging scenarios where their prisoners read from scripts given them in an obvious ploy to manipulate those affected -- which to all effects, is every Israeli citizen -- to spur efforts to demand of their government the acceptance of Hamas's conditions for the release of the hostages.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas and ordinary Palestinian civilians had taken part in the massacre of October 7, and the hostage-taking, released a video meant as proof that the hostage being featured is not yet dead. In the videos released by Hamas and PIJ, drawn and haggard victims plead with their families, with their government to use all means to secure their release. The terrorists hope that the end effect of these heartstring-pulling exercises in pain for Israel, it can turn the population against its government intent on destroying Palestinian terror groups.

This latest video featured Russian-Israeli hostage Alexander 'Sasha' Troufanov, abducted during the terrorist attack of 2023 from his family home, held captive for 404 days, in the Gaza Strip. This third video of Sasha Troufanov has him stating that he and the other captives remaining -- a hundred in number, but many no longer living -- and receiving inadequate food, much less basic hygiene products, pleading for the Israeli public to call for a hostage agreement. He expressed his fear of being accidentally killed by Israeli Defense Forces on cue; not very subtle, but quite effective.

The 29-year-old Troufanov was taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz, as was his mother, Yelena Trouifanov; his grandmother Irena Tati, and his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen. His father, Vitaly Troufanov was murdered during the Nir Oz onslaught by Hamas as were 40 other residents of the Kibbutz. Since the abduction his mother and grandmother were freed in November of 2023, as requested by Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Sapir Cohen was released in a ceasefire agreement the same month.

Hamas's Excruciating Game of Death and Sadistic Torture

"[Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh learned from personal imprisonment and subsequent release that] hostage diplomacy works."

"[Haniyeh's strategy is to] leverage hostages to extort concessions from Israel."

He's employing ISIS tactics in releasing videos and implicitly threatening to execute hostages if his demands are not met."

"Thus far, hostages have been a massive miscalculation by Hamas, as Israel has not relented and adheres to the common practice of not giving in to hostage diplomacy, because that ends up putting more citizens at risk of being kidnapped."

Canadian military academic Christian Leuprecht 

"[The Hamas video releases represent] psychological warfare."

"It testifies to Hamas cruelty toward innocent, very elderly civilians who are in need of medical care."

"The world must act in order to deliver medical aid and check on the state of the hostages."

IDF spokesperson

The world watched in horror as a video emerged of Noa Argamani, 26, sitting on the back of a motorbike as she screamed 'Don't kill me' to the men surrounding her during Hamas's attacks on Israel on October 7 killing 340 Israelis at the Nova Music Festival

 

The world has concerned itself over the welfare of Palestinians in Gaza resulting from Israel's response to the barbarism enacted by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and ordinary Palestinian citizens who flooded by their thousands into southern Israel, breaching the separation wall, destroying outpost lookouts, killing the female detachment on duty, and going on to slaughter over 1,400 civilian Israeli children, women, the elderly and others. The Red Cross is usually tasked with delivering humanitarian and medical aid, but its focus has been Palestinian civilians not the Israeli hostages.

 

Hamas continues to demonstrate its proficiency in achieving new lows in savagely vile actions. Its video release of a "teaser" showing three of the Israelis among the 136 still held by them and by PIJ and ordinary Palestinian civilians was a deliberate act of sadism. In the video were Noa Argamani, 26, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, the first visions of the three their families have seen since they were abducted on October 7. The three  hostages are shown in the video speaking to the camera. 

 

Hamas released a video showing hostage Noa Argamani explaining how Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirski were killed in captivity

 

Urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war and bring them home, it's clear they are all under duress, suffering and fearful, repeating a script given to them by their captors, with no option but to behave as instructed. They also state the conditions they are living through are difficult. They lack food and water and state that they are being held in places vulnerable to Israeli air strikes against Hamas assets; their interminable tunnel system, control centers, commandeered civilian structures.

When the agonized video finally concludes there is a display of two lifeless bodies, that of Sharabi and Svirsky. Argamani speaks to the camera, that separate airstrikes killed her two companions, and she was herself injured on her head and body by shrapnel, pleading for Israel to bring all the hostages home. The first video was released Sunday evening with the promise that Hamas was prepared to deliver a follow-up the next day.

 

Itai Svirski killed while being held captive by Hamas

 

The Hamas chief Haniyeh is chairman of the political bureau of Hamas. His safe place of residence is Qatar; he has amassed a personal fortune of over $4 billion. From his safe distance he instructs  his lieutenants how to proceed in their dedication to destroying Israel. Hostage videos are favourite vehicles for both ISIS and Hamas to draw attention, create fear and to exert pressure on authorities. Hostage videos are  used for the purpose of threatening, demanding ransoms, or making political statements.

 

According to the latest exchanges between Hamas and Israeli officials, the number of hostages still held in Gaza is unacknowledged because Hamas claims it has lost track, adding that many of the hostages had been victimized by Israeli air strikes, to account for the dead that Hamas might never wish to reveal its responsibility for. The Sunday video release coincided with the 100th day of the invasion of Gaza. The Hamas flair for drama and death displays is second to none.

 

Yossi Sharabi allegedly killed after the building the hostages were housed in was hit by an Israeli airstrike

Israel, Unprepared and Vulnerable

"This war will take time. It will be difficult."

"All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins."

"Get out of there now."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

"[The U.S.] stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop."

"There's never a justification for terrorist attacks and my administration's support for Israel's security is rock solid and unwavering."

"This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage. The world is watching."

U.S. President Joe Biden

Israeli police officers evacuate a family from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

 

Hamas terrorists stormed out of Gaza into nearby Israel towns, just over the border, backed by a surprise barrage of rockets. They wantonly killed hundreds of people, abducting many others. This is the second time in Israel's history that an enemy bent on its destruction used the occasion of a major Jewish holiday to launch a deadly attack. Israeli intelligence is aware that the country is always on the brink of an attack, a generalized perception born of experience. Yet it had no advance warning, not a scintilla of a suspicion that a well-coordinated, long-planned attack was immediately imminent.

And the result was butchery on a grand scale, as residents of border towns and soldiers at military posts were surprised and overwhelmed by hordes of terrorists brandishing automatic rifles and shooting to kill. Killing people in the streets, in their homes, in their cars, and ushering others to waiting vehicles to drive them to Gaza as hostages. The elderly were murdered and so were their grandchildren. Women and girls were raped and tortured and many taken hostage as sex slaves.

Children still in their infancy were separated from their parents and in Gaza were harassed and bullied by older Palestinian children. The confused and frightened babies were placed in stacked animal cages. Hamas's media groups videoed all manner of scenes of gross abuse of Israelis, young and old. Filming streets piled with  the dead. Filming girls and women who had been raped shoved into waiting cars. Filming elderly Jews being directed to hold weapons as they were forced to pose. Filming the bloody battering of people to death in ghastly footage.

And filming the beheading of Israeli soldiers. Since an estimated 100 people, both military and civilian were abducted to be used as prisoner-exchange collateral, it seems that some among them were expendable for entertainment purposes to be tortured and mutilated and slaughtered. Women gang-raped and butchered, their bodies mutilated. Reminiscent of the publicity exploits of Islamic State when that Islamo-terrorist group terrified the world in cruel barbarism.

 

Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian, center, from Kibbutz Kfar Azza into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

 

Some 22 locations just outside the Gaza Strip across the border in Israel; towns and other communities were assaulted by Hamas terrorists up to 24 kilometers from the border. The while, Israel's military desperately scrambled to respond. Well after nightfall on Saturday the gun battles between the IDF and Hamas continued. In two towns the terrorists held hostages in standoffs with the military. In another town a police station was occupied, taking until Sunday morning for the building to be reclaimed.

Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian from Kibbutz Kfar Azza into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

 

Thousands of Israelis were wounded, and the last count of the dead stood at 700 and rising. Despite return bombing by the IDF in Gaza, fewer Palestinians died in the heat of the conflict. In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes intensified after nightfall with giant explosions taking down buildings including Hamas offices in central Gaza City. As is the IDF's habit, warnings to evacuate buildings went out before their destruction. 

 

A ball of fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of Hamas terrorists infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land, and sea and catching the country off-guard on a major holiday. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

 

A rocket barrage into Israel hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a suburb nearby. Hamas fired over 5,000 rockets. Terrorists made use of explosives to break through the border fence separating Gaza from Israel, enabling the terrorists to cross into Israel with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and coastal speed boats. In some Israeli towns, bodies lay wherever people had encountered the swiftly advancing terrorists. Clusters of dead lay at bus shelters.

A video was released showing hundreds of terrified young men and women fleeing for their lives from a rave where they were listening to music and dancing until Hamas terrorists entered the area and began firing. Dozens of young Israelis were instantly killed. Photos by Associated Press show an elderly woman brought into Gaze on a golf cart by Hamas terrorists; another woman squeezed between two others on a motorcycle. AP journalists watched as four people were abducted from a kibbutz, including two women.

In Gaza, a jeep rear door opened and a young Israeli woman stumbled out bleeding from her head, her hands tied behind her back while a terrorist waving a gun grabbed her by the hair and shoved her into the back seat. Workers from Thailand and the Philippines were among the captives taken by the terrorists. The expectation is that a ground assault will be launched into Gaza. An eventuality that the Hamas terror is anticipating. 

The greater the civilian casualties in Gaza among the civilian population, the more publicity for Hamas claiming brutality and intention to murder innocent Palestinians on the part of Israel. Claims that have never yet failed them in arousing indignation among sympathizers to the Palestinian 'cause' who believe the PA and Hamas's messages of Israeli brutality against simple Palestinians who want nothing better than to live their lives in peace and harmony with their neighbours.

An aerial view shows vehicles on fire as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon. Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters 

The Eternally Apoplectic Erdogan's Unhinged Ire

"We really don’t know what happened. Anything is possible, the militants might have panicked and shot the hostages dead, or they might have died during the aerial bombings."
"But the main point is not who killed them but rather why the Turkish military carried out this operation to bring the hostages back alive in a manner that led to their deaths."

Human Rights Association’s president, Ozturk Turkdogan

 

"If we are together with you [the United States] in NATO, if we are to continue our unity, then you will act sincerely toward us. Then, you will stand with us, not with the terrorists."

"The US statement on the PKK’s execution of Turkish citizens in northern Iraq is ridiculous. They claim they do not support the PKK, but they certainly do."

If you want to continue our alliance globally and within NATO, then you must stop siding with terrorists."  

"We kept trying to figure out how we can rescue our brothers from the hands of the terrorists. We tried very hard, but we failed." 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

 

"If the reports of the death of Turkish civilians at the hands of the PKK, a designated terrorist organization, are confirmed, we condemn this action in the strongest possible terms."

"The secretary expressed condolences for the deaths and affirmed our view that PKK terrorists bear responsibility." 

United States State Department

 

The funeral of three Turkish military personnel killed in action at the Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque in Ankara on 12 February 2021 (AFP)

 

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a guerrilla militia which established itself in the 1980s to represent the heritage rights of the tens of millions of Kurds, the world's largest minority ethnic group without an established homeland of their own. Their native territory was divided between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey when two world powers, Britain and France, occupied that vast area during World War I after the dissolution of Ottoman Turkey the deposed hegemonic power. 

Although Kurds were promised in the boundaries of the Middle East territories their claim would be honoured, it was not.

 

Ever since, ethnic Kurds have dreamed bitterly of the betrayal and have agitated for their own recognized sovereign homeland reflecting their historical presence in the geography. Any attempt made to achieve sovereignty earned them physical violence to tamp down their enthusiasm for leaving their state of enforced occupation under which their 'separatist' notions were regarded as criminal, leaving them to live as a people under merciless disciplinary duress.

 

Iraqi Kurds fear Turkey's drones in PKK mtn.war

A state of being that brings to mind China's crushing of Tibet and Xinjiang and its aspirations toward absorbing Taiwan and shutting down democracy in Hong Kong. Recep Tayyip Erdogan rails against the very concept of a Kurdish nation desirous of and deserving of recognition of their authenticity as the original territorial indigenous peoples. He sneers at the very concept of Jews returning to their ancestral geography from a forced historical diaspora, championing Arab migrants who began to populate Jewish Palestine in search of economic and settler opportunities. The Turks themselves were migrants into the Mesopotamian plain and the mountainous regions beyond, the historical Kurdish homeland.

 

Kurds living in south-eastern Turkey have had their villages bombed on the pretense that they harbour members of the PKK. The PKK expanded their presence into Iraq as an operational base, with the Turkish military following them, accusing another Iraqi Kurdish group, the YPG of being their allies. Among the various Kurdish groups there are manifestly different attitudes toward occupation with some choosing diplomacy others violence to achieve eventual aims of freedom from persecution and occupation.

 

The hunted PKK have taken Turkish members of the military captive from time to time to use as leverage in prisoner exchanges. A group of such Turkish hostages were being kept in Kurdistan, a mountainous area of northern Iraq bordering Turkey, in a cave in the Gara region. There, the Kurdistan YPG the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, are accused by Erdogan of aiding and abetting the PKK, calling them both terrorist groups. The Turkish military under Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, despite knowing that Turkish hostages were being held there, bombed the area repeatedly in a four-day operation.

 

And after heavily bombing the Gara area for days, the Turkish forces entered the cave complex on day four to discover, they claim, the corpses of thirteen Turks, most members of the Turkish military, several Turkish diplomats and three of them civilians. The PKK had made a public statement on February 11 that Turkish war planes were hitting the camp directly where the hostages were being held. It was this known fact that the U.S. State Department referred to when they originally voiced skepticism over Turkey's claim the PKK had shot the hostages dead.

 

The large number of Kurds in Turkey have elected their own to parliament, the largest Kurdish-sympathizing parliamentary group called the HDP had called upon Ankara to negotiate with the PKK for release of the hostages. They had themselves in the past acted in that same role to negotiate for the release of prisoners. President Erdogan spits rage at the very thought of negotiating with "terrorists" though it had bargained with the Islamic State for release of 49 hostages when the Turkish Consulate had been overrun. Turkey freed a number of IS prisoners in exchange for Turkish hostages.

 

This time Turkey chose to arrest hundreds of people it has identified as linked to the PKK, a revenge move against the killing of the 13 hostages, ostensibly. Likelier, the Turkish military bombing of the area around the cave complex led to the deaths of the hostages, which Turkey pretends to hold the PKK responsible for; the event giving Erdogan the opportunity to arrest and imprison those he considers his enemies. Among them hundreds of members of the HDP. Fully 718 people were detained in 40 cities across Turkey, accused of links to the PKK.

One HDP member of Parliament stated that roughly 150 members of his party were detained overnight. City and district heads belonging to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) (Democratic Party of the People} supporting Turkey's minorities were also arrested. President Erdogan uses arrest and incarceration as a control mechanism of those Turks who oppose his Islamist agenda and his oppressive authority. Any he believes support the Gulenist movement after an aborted coup in 2016 languish in prison.

These included high-ranking members of the military, journalists, teachers, lawyers in their thousands as well as police and members of the judiciary. Erdogan had a bitter dispute with the United States when he insisted that Fethullah Gulen -- a popular and respected imam, once an ally, more latterly a political adversary with a huge following in Turkey, living in self-exile in the United States but remaining hugely influential in Turkey and whom Erdogan blames for the attempted coup -- be extradited to Turkey to stand trial on charges of treason, a 'terrorist' meriting the death penalty.

Ibrahim Kalin

@ikalin1

PKK executes 13 civilian captives in a cave in #Gara, Iraq. It attacks Turkish & Iraqi security forces & civilians. It continues its terrorist attacks in northern Syria. The world is silent. This silence is a shameful act of complicity. But we will not remain silent.

1:28 AM · Feb 14, 2021

 

 

 

The Beijing Specialty of Hostage Diplomacy

Michael Spavor, pictured in 2017  | AP

"When you have multiple countries' citizens detained, all of whom have one thing in common, which is that they have tense relations with China, it suggests a pattern. Certainly there is a pattern of China relying on hostage diplomacy."                                     "One obvious avenue is -- and this will be highly controversial -- that China relies heavily on food imports from around the world to feed its population. That includes Canadian corn and grain and so if there's a collective effort by countries such as Australia and Canada that supply a disproportionate amount of basic foodstuffs to China it would send a clear signal that if you're going to play like that, we have ways of causing pain."                                                                                                                          "If this is the way the Chinese do business, then maybe we need to do business with the Chinese on their terms."   Christian Leuprecht, political science professor, Royal Military College, Queen's University

Michael Spavor, a Canadian diplomat on leave, and working in China for a Canadian non-profit has spent 18 months in a Chinese prison in an arrest and a year later, charges of espionage for the purpose of harming China, widely recognized as retaliation for the detaining in Canada of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. This event also began the diplomatic and trade erosion between the two countries that has produced a stalemate. 

Ms. Weng, wanted on a U.S. extradition warrant will be turned over to U.S. authorities to stand trial on the charges brought against her by the U.S., which has Canada honouring its extradition treaty with its southern neighbour. And Mr. Spavor, along with another Canadian, entrepreneur Michael Kovrig, arrested on the same specious charges, will continue to languish in the Chinese prison system with the threat of a long prison sentence before them following a mock trial.

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, in September 2016. | REUTERS

 Before becoming prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau was once asked which country he most admired. Canada was not his candidate, China was as he professed  his admiration for a 'basic dictatorship, capable of turning a country's authority around on a dime, as it were. Mr. Trudeau appeared besotted by China, and harboured an ambition to forge robust trade ties with the communist country, an ambition he had in common with Canadian big business all of whom wanted an opportunity to reach into the promise of doing business with the trading behemoth.

More latterly, an Australian news anchor working out of Beijing was placed under house arrest, linked to the escalation of tensions between Australia and China. She too may eventually be charged with 'espionage' on the basis of having written something unfavourable about China for her home audience of Australia. Detained since mid-August, Cheng Lei, born in China, now a citizen of Australia, is being "held under residential surveillance". 

Australia is guilty of having pushed for an enquiry over China's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the early days of COVID-19. Ever since that breach of confidence in Beijing's sterling behaviour on the world scene, the Chinese Communist Party leaders have expressed contempt for the Australian government, embarking on a trade war,  just as was done with Canada, when China embargoed canola products and meat claiming they had been infected and were substandard, refusing to accept them, as a trade pressure-point.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a new report finding that China has been more involved in the use of this typically coercive diplomacy, tracing incidents occurring across 28 countries. Included are the United Kingdom, Australia and other Asian countries severely displeasing Beijing. Predictably, in all such cases, Beijing views those nations that have dispeased it as having taken 'wrong action', recommending that they admit their guilt, apologize, reverse the wrong action, otherwise there is guaranteed deterioration in country-to-country relations.

According to the Australian report, offensive diplomatic incidents leading to hostage diplomacy arose in 2018, with "divide and conquer" tactics emanating from the Chinese Politboro. The rest of the world, it was suggested could take action, countering the situation through multilateral institutions acting in concert. There were 152 instances of coercive measures made use of by the Chinese regime, with 34 of those taking place in the first eight months of 2020. "Unless states can come up with a better strategy to resist coercive diplomacy, we can expect this trend to continue", noted Fergus Hanson, Emilia Currey and Tracy Beattie, the ASPI report authors.

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India and China dispute the border in the Ladakh region, both claiming part of the area as their own.

An increasing number of countries are beginning to recognize and speak out on the Chinese government's behaviour. Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and India among them. In the U.K. the treatment of the Turkic minority Uighurs in Xinjiang province being placed in reeducation camps by the hundreds of thousands; the mistreatment of  Tibetan Buddhists and Kazahks; while Beijing's bullying in the East China Sea over a disputed island claimed by Japan, and violently claiming disputed rights over India's Himalayan borders all mark Beijing's growing aggression.

Abduction ... Rescue ... Lawsuit

"We have waited since 2012 for somebody to understand our problems, the Kafkaesque nightmare in which we find ourselves."
"Our children have seen their mother defiled."
"God has given me and my family unparalleled resilience and determination."
"[His captors] did not even make a pretense of being Muslim [were guided] by their own agendas." "The criminals who held us, they were not good Muslims, they were not even bad Muslims, they were pagans." 
Joshua Boyle, 34, Canadian misadventurer, proto-humanist,

"Taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place, to me, and the kind of person I am, is unconscionable."
Jim Coleman, Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, father of Caitlan Coleman, 31

"It was amazing. He [son Joshua Boyle] told me how much his children were looking forward to meeting their grandparents and that he would see me in a couple of days."
"They kept themselves strong for so long, for each other and for the kids."
"I think it's going to catch up with them, and they're probably going to have some real crashes, I expect, but we're here for them."
Linda Boyle, mother of Joshua

Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman were hiking in Afghanistan when they were captured in 2012. (Coleman Family/Associated Press)

Joshua Boyle, formerly of Smiths Falls, Ontario, more latterly resident with his wife in Afghanistan, distinguished himself some years ago by deciding to marry Zaynab Khadr, knowing her father was a financier of al-Qaeda and an intimate of Osama bin Laden, that in fact the family, including the woman he married was fierce in their public protestations of the justness of the al-Qaeda cause. This man seems to relish gravitating toward sympathetic support of ideologies and their supporters who dedicate themselves to mass brutality, threatening the stability of the Western world by terrorism.

But this is not, evidently, how he visualizes what is abundantly clear to intelligent minds, rather he sees a misinterpreted 'cause' to which the West is hostile, because of racism and he is averse to racism, while forgiving violent jihad because he can understand why tribal peoples who are made to suffer under the imperialist designs of the West will assert their humanity by resorting to inhumanity. For reasons not divulged publicly his original marriage was dissolved, and this simpleton married another woman who shared his delight in Star Wars.

With her he embarked on a backpacking trip, while his wife was very obviously pregnant. And while they were moseying about, why not enter Afghanistan and give aid to impoverished villagers? Leading to hospitality extended to them for a prolonged stay, courtesy of the Taliban who have a penchant for abducting people and demanding ransom. And though his daddy, as a federal court tax judge must have ample income, no word reached the public that a ransom was demanded for the release of the two adventurers over their five-year stay in Afghanistan.

This man now claims to view his abductors with contempt, accusing them of killing a child and of raping his wife. Over their five years of captivity, which in essence this man engineered when he decided to travel there with a woman heavily pregnant, he lived as tribal Afghans do; his wife held from public view as he impregnated her continually so that over that five-year period she gave birth four times. In Islam it is a man's 'right' to have intercourse with his wife; in a just world recognizing the situation they were in a caring man would abstain.

In accusing the Taliban, fierce Islamists jihadis for whom life is incidental to the obligation to Islam as well as their wholesale dedication to tribe and clan, women are disposable adjuncts to male existence, favoured by Allah -- Joshua Boyle behaved no differently than the Taliban did; oblivious to his wife's need to be respected by him, to be less favouring of his own entitlements in view of the situation to which he alone was responsible for placing them in. Concern for the welfare of any children that might result, living in such inconspicuously unhealthy circumstances?

His "problem" is well understood. It is one of warped sympathies and personal entitlements that transcend all measures of human decency. Three children have been taken out of a primitive enclave that nourished their infancy, and evidently withheld sufficient nourishment for a third, while a fourth was sacrificed to the vagaries of life among savages. His problem was one he foisted upon four innocent children who had the misfortune to become his offspring.

He does not appear to have any manner of experience in earning a living. But, given the vicarious experience he will have been indulged in through his previous marriage, the millions that the Trudeau government lavished on his former brother-in-law might inspire Joshua Boyle to launch a law suit against the Liberal government for having failed to initiate a rescue of the Boyle family from Afghanistan, so that due compensation would be paid in honour of which multiple millions would be helpful.

"Today, we join the Boyle family in rejoicing over the long-awaited return to Canada of their loved ones."
"Canada has been actively engaged on Mr. Boyle's case at all levels, and we will continue to support him and his family now that they have returned."
Global Affairs Canada statement