This week, Irving Roth, a Holocaust survivor and educator featured in
CUFI's new documentary film

**Never Again?**, penned an op-ed for Newsweek

where he discusses his experiences in 1940's Europe to make the point
that hatred, which begins with words, ends in horrific action. Despite
the efforts to educate about the horrors of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism
continues to find minds to infect. And in Europe, they are forgetting
the lessons of their own history. No, this isn't a missive about a
couple of bigots beating up a Jew in Paris (though that did happen
recently and warrants being aware of). Rather, the point of today's
Update comes from Irving's piece: we can no more ignore the words or
actions of evil today, than Europe could 80 years ago.

The EU and Hezbollah

Despite the fact that Hezbollah has stockpiled ammonium nitrate in the
United Kingdom, and EU member states Cyprus and Germany, and despite the
fact that the Arab league, Israel, the UK, the US, and other western
nations have proscribed Hezbollah in its entirety, the European Union
continues its fanciful distinction between Hezbollah's military and
political wings - which the terror group itself denies exists.

Hezbollah is a terrorist-army. Yes, they use all of the tools at their
disposal, including that of the Lebanese government, to further their
violent imperialist aims. No, that doesn't mean that governments
should close their eyes to an Iranian armed and funded cancer that
continues to take the lives of innocent Lebanese citizens and in
addition threatens the lives of millions of Israelis.

The EU leads the western world in wrongheaded policy in Lebanon. But the
US is not blameless either. We continue to fund

Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces despite their being infected by
Hezbollah.

The EU and Iran

Speaking of the EU screwing up foreign policy, Europe continues to
compete with Russia and China in the race to see who will best serve as
Iran's enabler. Right now, the race is too close to call, and we have
to acknowledge Russia's recent pledge to sell weapons to the Islamic
Republic. However, had France, Britain and Germany not gone along with
Russia and China in seeing the UN arms embargo against Iran expire this
month, it's likely the world's totalitarians and kleptocrats would
have a more challenging time selling weapons to Tehran's totalitarian
and kleptocratic regime.

Again, the US is not blameless here. The Iran nuclear accord was the
greatest failure of President Barack Obama's administration. It put
billions of dollars in the hands of the Islamic Republic and paved the
way for Tehran to - by President Obama's own admission - develop a
nuclear weapons capability over the course of a little over a decade.
President Obama hoped the Iranians would change their behavior during
that time period, but even before President Trump pulled the US out of
that deal, all evidence pointed to the contrary. The Iran nuclear accord
enabled, rather moderated, Tehran.

Here's hoping that whoever wins in November will not repeat the mistakes
of the not so distant past.

Turkey's Tentacles

The cartoon below was recently featured in a newspaper allied with
Turkey's strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It portrays the
former Ottoman state as having its tentacles spread throughout the
region. It also presents the country's moderate Republican People's
Party (CHP) as stabbing the heart of the Turkish nation.  On the first
issue, the cartoon is, well, accurate.

Credit: Erdogan's lackies in the Turkish "press"

Turkey is playing a game of international chicken with Cyprus and
Greece, backing Azerbaijan against Armenia (because apparently
slaughtering a million Armenian Christians wasn't enough), supporting
Hamas, conducting operations in Libya, and waging an under the radar war
in northern Iraq.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by Congress. Several letters from a host of
Senators from both sides of the aisle have drawn attention to Turkey's
malicious activities and called on the Trump administration to treat
Ankara according to its actions, not words - which aren't
particularly nice either.

Through his rhetoric and actions, President Erdogan is showing himself
to be reminiscent of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And
in Iran the violent spread of the Islamic Revolution remains priority
one. We're going to continue to be focused on these issues in the
months to come and are very grateful for your continued support of our
efforts.

Sincerely,
CUFI Action Fund Team

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