First there were bad words, then shots, then hundreds of refugees lost their homes in the sea of ​​flames.

After a dispute between camp residents and a local clan family, a camp for Syrian refugees in Lebanon was set on fire. According to the UN refugee organization UNHCR, a large fire broke out in the camp in the Minijeh region on Saturday evening and several residents were injured.

The flames had spread over all the tents in the camp, UNHCR spokesman Chaled Kabbara told the AFP news agency. The fire was preceded by a dispute between a local Lebanese clan and Syrian refugees in the camp, Lebanese authorities said according to local media On Sunday.

It was announced on Sunday evening that eight people had been arrested. The Lebanese army said on Sunday that there were two Lebanese and six Syrians. The arson was preceded by a dispute between locals and Syrian workers.

According to AFP, a member of the local “Mir” clan wanted to go shopping in the warehouse on Saturday night in a grocery store that had already closed. As a result, Lebanese people forced Syrian businessmen to reopen the shop so that the Mir family member could shop there.

A Syrian woman is said to have been insulted while shopping. Her relatives became angry, whereupon the Lebanese brought reinforcements. These are said to have fired several shots, some of which set the camp on fire.

According to a UN spokesman, around 75 families lived in the camp – consisting of several hundred family members. After fleeing from dictator Assad in neighboring Syria, they are now homeless again.

According to the government, around 1.5 million Syrians live in Lebanon, including one million people registered as refugees at the UN. After they fled the civil war in neighboring Syria, there are repeated conflicts between them and the Lebanese in the country, which is only around five times as many.

Since 2018, Lebanese authorities have been trying to send the refugees back to the “pacified” neighboring country Syria. But only a few thousand accepted the offer. Most would rather live on in tents in Lebanon than under the victorious one “Butcher of Damascus”, Dictator Bashar al-Assad.

https://m.bild.de/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/wegen-streit-mit-clan-libanesen-fackeln-syrisches-fluechtlingslager-ab-74634742,view=amp.bildMobile.html

On Wednesday, a day before Christmas Eve, German-owned liberal Polish portal Onet.pl published an article titled: “On the front, in the camp, under occupation…The saddest Christmas”. The article included a very vivid description of the Christmas of Germany’s Wehrmacht soldiers stationed in Stalingrad in 1942.

The article caused massive outrage online from various conservative journalists, commentators and politicians. Law and Justice (PiS) MEP Dominik Tarczyński harshly criticized the portal and the article.

“This is an absolutely scandalous publication, another one released by the German portal published in Polish, and we must react against this,” he said. Tarczyński said he feels that opposition to the article must be made clear because it suggests that “Germany which occupied our country and murdered Poles actually suffered just as much or similarly to the nations killed by them.”

Onet.pl is owned by Ringier Axel Springer Polska, which belongs to Axel Springer, Germany’s largest newspaper publisher. 

The PiS MEP also pointed out that this is just yet another Onet publication which has sparked outrage in Poland.

“They publish this content and spit on Poles, withdraw it, and then the next day comes and they repeat it. They are testing the endurance and patience of Poles. Today, they crossed a border which could not be crossed. Onet reached rock bottom. They will suffer the consequences,” he said.

A few hours after the publication of the article, Onet.pl has removed it from the web and released a public apology written by its Editor-in-Chief Bartosz Węglarczyk:

“The article ‘On the front, in the camp, under occupation…The saddest Christmas’ should not have been published by Onet. I apologize in my name and that of the editorial board. I wish you a calm and healthy Christmas,” he wrote.

Tarczyński referred to the apology and said that he believed that if the editorial board decided to remove the article and the editor-in-chief apologized for it, then they were aware of how absolutely scandalous and unacceptable it was. He added that there will be many more such cases in the future and that the remorse is fake, which is why the public and even the government must respond to the publication. 

The PiS MEP announced that he will take action in the European Parliament concerning the continuous publishing of scandalous articles by the Ringier Axel Springer Polska portal. He underlined that he did not accept such manipulation and false creation of social consciousness in context of historic truth. According to Tarczyński, a debate concerning the media is needed to be initiated in the European Parliament.

https://rmx.news/article/article/polish-mep-tarczy-ski-condemns-onet-article-sympathetic-to-wehrmacht-soldiers-at-stalingrad

by Giulio Meotti

The French Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer,divulged to RTL microphones that since Samuel Paty’s beheading in broad daylight, there have been 800 incidents linked to Islamic radicalism. The most sensational case concerns another professor. Not a middle school one, like the teacher of History and Geography beheaded at the college of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine for showing cartoons on Mohammed, but a university jurist.“She doesn’t want her name to be published or take on the role of the sacrificial figure of censorship that is devouring academia”, says weekly Le Point. Literally.

“Caroline L.” is a professor at the Faculty of Law of Aix-Marseille. For talking about “sexually transmitted religions” during a master’s degree, she received a complaint from the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (League for the Rights of Man) and countless death threats. Two months after Paty’s murder, this case of another teacher accused of Islamophobia reveals the tragic cracks that fragment academia, freedom of expression and human rights in France.

“I am deeply saddened by what I consider an attack on free speech and academic freedoms,” says the teacher. She was accused of “Islamophobic” claims and the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor opened an investigation for “public insults for belonging to religions.”

The Mediapart website, directed by Edwy Plenel, accused of being the leader of a phenomenon known as “Islamogoscism,” published an excerpt from her university course on Zoom on October 27, eleven days after Paty’s murder. The professor explains there that “there is no freedom of conscience in Islam. If you were born to a Muslim father, you are a Muslim for life. A kind of sexually transmitted religion. One of the biggest problems we have with Islam, and unfortunately it is not the only one, is that Islam does not recognize freedom of conscience. It is absolutely terrifying.”

Students passed the file on to the Human Rights League and the complaint begins. Thousands of death threats come around. The teacher tells Le Point: “Two months after the murder of a teacher, we are in a total inversion of values! I am threatened with death. My words do not contravene any law. We have the right to express an opinion or criticism on any idea. My observations refer to Islam and not to Muslims.”

There is a risk of conviction. “If this were the case, it would mean that in France we would admit the crime of opinion and forbid academics from making critical judgments about a religion, a political idea or anything else … It would be very serious and would mean that very soon it would be necessary to organize large auto-da-fés to burn the works of Voltaire who made virulent observations on religions, especially the Catholic one.”

No remorse. “If you ask me if I regret being insulted and threatened with death, living in fear for my family and I, of course I regret it. I regret living in a society where academics can find themselves hindered in their freedom of speech, that is, in their work.”

Samuel Paty was beheaded. Mila, the high school student guilty of having insulted Islam, is too “radioactive” to set foot in a school again.

To the few academics who speak their minds, it seems that the only “choice” is the same one that Islamic fundamentalists left for the French people in Algeria at the time of its decolonizationt: the suitcase or the coffin.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/293809

A young Muslim man was beaten up in France for celebrating Christmas with his family and posting pictures of it on the internet. The 20-year-old Nabil from the eastern French town of Belfort was first insulted and threatened by an acquaintance via the online network Snapchat. The classmate wrote to him that he was “shocked” that Nabil celebrated Christmas being a Muslim.Nabil had previously published photos of the family dinner that he had with his mother and stepfather on the internet. Nabil’s parents are also police officers, which is another reason why he was attacked online. Because of the photos, the school and football colleague threatened him: “I’ll show you what a real Arab is.” When he then wanted to meet the young man to discuss the matter, he was ambushed and physically attacked by a total of five men. Before leaving the injured Nabil behind, they told him to expect the worst if he told anyone about the incident or should he go to the police.When he returned home later, the 20-year-old, whose face was bleeding and covered with bruises, nevertheless reported the incident to the police. Because of the text message, the attacker was quickly identified and arrested. During his interrogation, he still expressed ” being shocked” that Nabil had posted the pictures of the Christmas dinner online and said: “It’s not the Muslim way to celebrate Christmas.”The regional president of Grand Est, Jean Rottner, was appalled by the incident. On Twitter, he spoke of an “unacceptable aggression” that was caused by “racism and hatred towards the police”. The young man was also attacked on the internet because his parents are police officers.Nabil’s mother later said that her son had to “pay for his origin”, but especially for being the son of two policemen. Such racist and divisive behaviour is not tolerable in the 21st century, she said.

https://www.krone.at/2306399