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In this mailing:
* Khaled Abu Toameh: How Palestinian Leaders Sabotage Palestinians' Interests
* Burak Bekdil: Turkey's Open Secret: Fake Secularism


** How Palestinian Leaders Sabotage Palestinians' Interests ([link removed])
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • December 3, 2019 at 6:00 am
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* The new field hospital in the Gaza Strip is currently being built with the help of Friendship, a US NGO, as well as partial funding from Qatar. The hospital, which is being constructed near the Gaza-Israel border, will provide medical services to thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
* Jamal Nasr, a representative of the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA) party went as far as claiming that the new hospital will serve as a center for spying on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. "This is a suspicious project," Nasr said. "It can't have any humanitarian purposes. It's actually a base for intelligence gathering."
* As with the hospital, the PA leadership has also come out against the proposed artificial island port, which aims to improve the situation in the Gaza Strip. This is the same PA that has been repeatedly condemning Israel for imposing a "blockade" on the Gaza Strip. Instead of welcoming the Israeli initiative, PA officials are denouncing it as another "conspiracy" against the Palestinians.
* Abbas and his senior officials are seeking to prolong the suffering of their people in the Gaza Strip so they can continue to blame Israel alone for the crisis there. By calling the hospital a "spying center," they are also endangering the lives of the volunteers and medical staff, whose sole "crime" is providing medical treatment to Palestinians.
* The next time anyone talks about the harsh conditions in the Gaza Strip, the world needs to realize that those who are trying to block aid to their people are the Palestinian leaders.

Leaders of the Palestinian Authority are opposed to the construction of a new hospital in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Why? Because the PA hates its rivals in Hamas to the point that it is prepared to punish the Palestinians in Gaza. Pictured: The Erez border crossing in Israel, at the border with the Gaza Strip, near which Israel, Hamas, the United Nations, Qatar and Egypt have agreed to establish the new hospital to treat Gazan patients. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

As Israel continues to study ways of improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) continue to sabotage the interests of their own people.

These leaders are opposed to the construction of a new hospital in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. They are also opposed to an Israeli initiative to construct an artificial port off the coast of the Gaza Strip. The PA, in other words, is opposed to any move aimed at alleviating the suffering of its people.

Why? Because the PA hates its rivals in Hamas to the point that it is prepared to punish the Palestinians by imposing economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip. These include cutting off payments to thousands of public employees and needy families.

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** Turkey's Open Secret: Fake Secularism ([link removed])
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by Burak Bekdil • December 3, 2019 at 4:00 am
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* "Everyone is equal before the law regardless of his language, race, sex, color, political opinion, philosophy, religious belief, sect..." — Turkish Constitution, Article 10.
* Why was the teacher suspended? Simple -- even though Turkish officials cannot officially say what got unmasked as an open secret. The Conscious Teachers Association stated: "It is unacceptable that a teacher of religious culture in a country where 90% of the people are Muslim is not Muslim herself".
* If a Muslim Turkish teacher were suspended in Christian-majority Germany because he is Muslim, they would turn the world upside down. They would rush to the European Court of Human Rights decrying religious discrimination. But in Turkey, religious discrimination against non-Muslims is fine because Turkey is 90% Muslim.
* A century ago, Christians made up 20% of Turkey's population. Today they are at just 0.2%. But the Turkish mindset is still fearful of a handful of fellow citizens belonging to a different religion.

Pictured: Turkey's strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (Photo by Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images)

In theory, Turkey has a secular regime. Its constitution dictates the state and its institutions to be at equal distance to every faith, including no faith. In theory, discrimination based on religious belief is a criminal offense. Turkey's Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said he is at equal distance to every faith, and that he is against "religious nationalism", and he told the media at the White House on November 13 that Turkey would restore damaged churches in Syria.

In reality, however, Erdoğan and his Islamist governance stand as an excellent example to illustrate how political Islam cannot be secular.

The 2019 annual report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) concluded that the Turkish government continues to discriminate against the minority Alevi community, and interfere in the affairs of what remains of the country's historic Armenian and Greek Orthodox populations.

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