Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will step up and be a part of the international coalition to destroy the Islamic terrorist group Islamic State.
Netanyahu addressed the statements of President Obama in an address where he also warned Iran against acquiring nuclear weapons. Netanyahu said that Islamic State is no different than terror groups like Hamas, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and al-Shabab.
“These groups must be fought. They must be rolled back and they must ultimately be defeated. That’s why Israel fully supports President Obama’s call for united actions against ISIS,” Netanyahu said.
“All civilized countries should stand together in the fight against the radical terrorism currently sweeping the Middle East, Netanyahu added. “And we are playing our part in this continued effort. Some of the things are known; some of the things are less known.”
Netanyahu said to the Muslims around the world they need to realize that Israel is an ally against Islamic extremism and that perhaps some Arab nations need to re-evaluate their relationships with Israel.
“They understand Israel is not their enemy but their ally in the fight against this common enemy. I believe that presents an opportunity for cooperation and perhaps an opportunity for peace.”
Pope Francis said that more Christians are being persecuted today than at any time in human history.
“There are many martyrs today, in the Church, many persecuted Christians,” the Pope said during mass. “Think of the Middle East where Christians must flee persecution, where Christians are killed. Even those Christians who are forced away in an ‘elegant’ way, with ‘white gloves:’ that too is persecution. There are more witnesses, more martyrs in the Church today than there were in the first centuries.”
The Pope’s statements are seen as commentary on the current situation in Iraq where Islamic extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is slaughtering Christians. Iraq’s Christian population traces their roots to the earliest days of Christianity.
The Pope said that the persecution could bring a great opportunity for Christians to be a witness to the world over faith in Christ.
“When historical situations require a strong witness, there are martyrs, the greatest witnesses. And the Church grows thanks to the blood of the martyrs. This is the beauty of martyrdom. It begins with witness, day after day, and it can end like Jesus, the first martyr, the first witness, the faithful witness: with blood,” the Pope said.
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.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has told the State Department they need to add eight countries to the list of “countries of particular concern” where severe violations of religious freedom are taking place.
The group is calling for Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam to be added to the list that already includes Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.
“With religious freedom abuses occurring daily around the world,” USCIRF Chairman Robert George wrote, “the United States must by words and deeds stand in solidarity with the persecuted.”
The announcement is the 15th from the group since they were founded in 1998. The commission often travels to foreign nations to study the levels of religious freedom in countries and to determine levels of persecution.
Christian persecution advocacy group Open Doors said that all of the countries on the proposed list are in their top 50 worldwide for Christian persecution and 11 were in the top 15.
The deadly MERS virus, originally found in Saudi Arabia and only in a few cases outside that nation, is now considered as having spread across the entire Middle East.
Egypt has issued a travel warning to Saudi Arabia after an Egyptian man has been found to have the fatal virus. Over 100 people have died after contracting the killer disease with a mortality rate over 45%.
The news of the travel warning comes ahead of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca by millions of Muslims around the world.
Egypt’s warning also includes the rare step of telling those with children under 15, adults over 65, pregnant women and anyone who suffers from respiratory diseases to not make the pilgrimage to Mecca this year.
Dr. Ala Alwan of the World Health Organization said the most concerning thing is that most of the cases now have been confirmed as human-to-human transmission rather than from bats or camels.
“Approximately 75 per cent of the recently reported cases are secondary cases, meaning that they are considered to have acquired the infection from another case through human-to-human transmission,” Dr Ala Alwan wrote in a statement.
Saudi Arabia fired Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabiah in the mist of the largest outbreak of the killer MERS virus since its discovery two years ago.
The news comes as two more people were confirmed to have died from the virus. A 73-year-old Saudi man died in Riyadh and a 54-year-old man in Jeddah died on Monday.
Saudi Arabia has been dealing with a major outbreak of the virus with over 20 infections discovered in the last week. The country’s death toll climbed to 83 and the total number of cases jumped to 261. The outbreak of the last week was more than ten percent of the total cases.
The now-former Health Minister had said on Monday he didn’t know why there was a sudden rise in the virus other than noting there was a small increase the previous April.
The World Health Organization confirmed the first cases of the virus in Southeast Asia. There is no vaccine for MERS.
Military officials are now releasing radar information that shows the missing Malaysia Airlines flight likely was flown hundreds of miles off course leading investigators to believe foul play was the cause of the disappearance.
The military track shows the plane turned west after leaving Malaysia on a corridor that is usually seen for flights that would be heading to the Middle East.
Aviation experts say the path of the flight was carrying it between navigational waypoints leaving it undetected to most of the current systems in place to track aircraft. The flight was tracked by military radar off the country’s northwest coast, hundreds of miles from the scheduled flight path.
Military investigators say that shows the pilots of the craft had knowledge of the navigational waypoints.
A senior Malaysian police official said sabotage or hijack are now being considered as the likely reasons for the plane’s sudden change in course.
Fox News is reporting that Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the Vatican’s observer to the United Nations, will be testifying before Congress on the level of Christian persecution in the Middle East and around the world.
Chuillikatt is expected to focus on the Middle East according to prepared testimony.
“No Christian is exempt,” the text reads, “whether or not he or she is Arab.”
The hearing before a House subcommittee will be focusing on the underreporting of assaults on Christians, the targeting of Christian communities and areas in major cities along with the need to protect human rights for Christians.
The hearing will receive information on kidnappings of women and children by Islamic militants in Syria as well as beheadings of Christians who refuse to convert to Islam at the demand of the terrorists.
A member of the Muslim Brotherhood, considered a terrorist group by many Middle Eastern nations including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, had a senior member of their organization hosted by President Obama at a White House meeting.
Anas Altikriti is a British lobbyist for the Muslim Brotherhood and his father heads Iraq’s Muslim Brotherhood party. He joined the President and Vice President Joe Biden in a meeting with Iraqi officials to discuss ongoing security problems in the country.
Altikriti can be seen in official White House photos standing next to Iraqi Parliament Speaker Usama al-Nujaifi as he shook hands with President Obama.
A White House spokesman confirmed Altikriti’s presence at the meeting, claiming the Muslim Brotherhood leader was a translator for the Iraqi Speaker.
Altikriti has publicly backed the terrorist group Hamas and supported a 2007 boycott by Britain’s Muslim Council of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Out of the top ten countries for oppression against Christians, nine of them are because of Islamic Extremism.
The annual World Watch List was released yesterday showing that Islamic extremism is a threat worldwide. Of the top ten, only North Korea, which was ranked number one for the 12th straight year, does not have Islamic extremism driving its persecution of Christians.
The rest of the top ten: Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen.
The overall list shows the top 50 nations worldwide that contain levels of persecution against Christians. 27 of the 50 listed have what is considered “severe” levels of prosecution according to Open Doors, which conducts the survey.
Only one nation in the top 50 is located outside of Asia and Africa. Colombia is ranked 25th on the list despite Christianity being the main religion in the nation. The nation routinely has Christians attacked by FARC rebels and drug cartels who oppose acts of Christian charity.
