What America needs to know about the Afghanistan Papers - Ryan Di Corpo (America the Jesuit Review)  

Canada's support for UN resolution condemning Israel 'occupation' blasted as 'Faustian bargain' - Jesse Snyder (National Post) Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch, said the resolution condemned Israel’s security barrier but it “omits to mention that it was built in response to the Second Intifada which killed or wounded 8,341 Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombings, suicides, stoning, stabbings, lynchings, rocket and other methods of attack.”

Iranian-Chinese-Russian Naval Exercise to Be Held near Persian Gulf - John C.K. Daly (Arab Weekly-UK)

Pro-Iran Militia Kills Scores in Baghdad - Richard Spencer (The Times-UK)

Iraqi Militia Kidnapped 300 Baghdad Protesters, Holds Them in Secret Prisons - Joyce Karam (The National-Abu Dhabi)

Libya’s War of the Many - Emadeddin Badi (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) 

Erdogan, Putin Hold More Discussions on Libya - Dorian Jones (VOA)

Turkey and Libya challenge Israel’s allies in the Mediterranean - Michael Harari (Jerusalem Post) 

Sudan Pledges to Close Down Hamas and Hizbullah Offices - Mohammed Amin (Middle East Eye-UK)  

Hamas Plots Attacks on Israel from Turkey as Erdogan Turns a Blind Eye - Raf Sanchez 

(Telegraph-UK) 

Turkey Warned over Money Laundering and Terror Financing - Laura Pitel (Financial Times-UK)

Turkey to Send UAVs to Northern Cyprus Base, Expanding Mediterranean Operations (T-Intelligence) 

CIA-Backed Afghan Paramilitaries Behind Unlawful Killing Surge - Patricia Gossman (Just Security) 

To End the War in Afghanistan, the U.S. Reaches Out to Its Rivals (Stratfor) 

Facebook, Google, Apple promote slave trade apps - Lauren Wolfe (Women's Media Center)

Slave markets found on Instagram and other apps - Owen Pinnell, Jess Kelly (BBC News Arabic)

Kuwait moves on Instagram slave traders after BBC investigation - Owen Pinnell, Jess Kelly (BBC News Arabic)

Palestinians in Gaza Launch Ten Rockets at Israel - Amos Harel (Ha'aretz)

Al-Baghdadi's Brother Traveled to Istanbul as His Courier for Months - Jack Moore (The National-Abu Dhabi)  

Turkey: Arming Genocide of Christians in Nigeria? by Raymond Ibrahim (Gatestone Institute) Nothing new here See this AIE post from 2014: Did Turkey arm Boko Haram? - Michael Rubin (American Enterprise Institute)

U.S. Military Convoy Comes under Fire from Turkish-Backed Forces in Syria (RT-Russia)

BBC Arabic radio promotes Israel-free map of ‘Palestine’ for children (BBC Watch)

Sut Jhally Is Not the Victim - Dexter Van Zile (The Algemeiner) Chairman of the communications department at UMass Amherst and his incessant and counter-factual propagandizing against Israel must be held accountable.

FBI Scrutinizes Over 2,000 Cases Tied to Foreign Terrorist Organizations - Masood Farivar (Voice of America) 

The Cyrus Debate Confirms the Truth of Jewish History in Jerusalem - Rivkah Fishman-Duker (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

Germany Charges Two Syrians with Crimes Against Humanity (Deutsche Welle-Germany)

FYI Hizbullah/Hezbollah is often referred to as "Iran-backed Hizbullah"

Hezbollah’s “Virtual Entrepreneurs:” How Hezbollah is Using the Internet to Incite Violence in Israel - Michael Shkolnik, Alexander Corbeil (Combating Terrorism Center at West Point)

Moroccan Activist Arrested for Protesting Against Israel's Participation in Exhibition (Middle East Monitor-UK)

What do you call a dead Terrorist? - Daniel Pomerantz (Honest Reporting- video) Washington Post calls Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an "austere religious scholar"

Five Things You Should Know About The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)" (IPT-video)

U.S., Gulf Countries Impose Joint Iran-Related Sanctions on 25 Targets - Doina Chiacu (Reuters) 

Middle East Realities: Political, Economic, and Strategic - Bernard Haykel (Vital Interests/Center for National Security)

Albanian Police Say Iranian Terror Cell Planned to Attack Exiles (AP-Guardian-UK)

Israel and Gulf States Are Going Public with Their Relationship (Bloomberg)

Guilt By False Association: Israel ‘Noted in Particular’ - Simon Plosker (Honest Reporting) There is no credible reason that Israel should be “noted in particular” other than the hateful agenda of Zinevich and The Independent.

In Government Daily, Jordanian Diplomat Defends Peace Treaty With Israel, Condemns Those Who Attack It (MEMRI)  - other reports I've read said both Israeli and Jordanian press are ignoring the anniversary or are hostile to it

Hamas Arrests Dozens in Bid to Deter Gaza Protests - Elior Levy (Ynet News)

Five Brothers, Five Countries: A Family Ravaged by Syria’s War - Michael Safi (The Guardian)

Pentagon: U.S. to Send Additional Troops to Syria to Protect Oil Fields from ISIS (AP-CBS News)

The following viewpoint is interesting, but ignores the fact that we asked Kurds to dismantle bridges, trenches and tunnels just prior to announcing they're on their own.

Some Uncomfortable Truths about U.S. Policy in Syria - Aaron David Miller, Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky (Politico)

• Putin did what the Obama and Trump administrations would not - intervene in the Syrian civil war. Putin won the Syrian civil war, and he deserves its spoils. And what spoils they are - a war-torn society, a ruined economy, bombed-out cities, and millions of refugees. If Putin wants to take on the burden of rebuilding Syria, fixing what his air force destroyed, and brokering peace among Syria's many factions, then we should let him.
• But the idea that Putin's Syria gambit will allow him to take over the Middle East is just silly. Few, if any, core U.S. interests - halting nuclear proliferation, preserving Israel's security, preventing terrorist attacks against the homeland, and maintaining the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf - are likely to suffer.
• Rather than chase unrealistic ambitions, the U.S. should remain focused on what its core interest in Syria has been since 2011: countering the threat from ISIS. The conditions that created ISIS are not going to go away. But Washington should assume that at some point Assad and his allies will act in their own self-interest - and they all want to prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
• More importantly, attacks by ISIS, while horrific for the people of Syria, should not be conflated with a heightened threat to the American homeland. It has been 18 years since the U.S. suffered a terrorist attack that was planned and executed by foreign jihadists. Attacks on the U.S. homeland may well continue to be committed by radicalized U.S. citizens, but that problem won't be solved by maintaining American troops in Syria.

U.S. Special Operations Secrets Could Fall into Hands of Russians and Syrians - Shawn Snow (Military Times)

Iran Captures Exiled Dissident (Radio Farda)    Rouhollah Zam, a Paris-based Iranian dissident, was lured in a "complicated intelligence operation" and brought to Iran, the Revolutionary Guards announced Monday.

Iraq is not yet lost, but if we continue to ignore it, it soon will be -Anna Borshchevskaya (The Hill)

U.S. Airstrikes Kill 1/3 of Libya's Islamic State Fighters - Kyle Rempfer (Army Times)

His name is Avera Mengistu... and he's a prisoner in Gaza (Video - Honest Reporting)

PA Warns Against New U.S. Hospital in Gaza - Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik (Palestinian Media Watch) The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health condemned the planned construction of a 500-bed hospital in northern Gaza that was donated by the U.S. NGO Friendship and is partially funded by Qatar.

Kurdish politician, other civilians ‘executed’ by Turkey-backed group - AFP (Times of Israel) Hevrin Khalaf, her driver and seven others killed by fighters allied with Ankara on road outside Tel Abyad in northern Syria, monitor says

Syrian Kurdish Commander Explains Deal with Assad and Putin - Mazloum Abdi (Foreign Policy)  In light of the invasion by Turkey and the existential threat its attack poses for our people, we may have to reconsider our alliances. The Russians and the Syrian regime have made proposals that could save the lives of millions of people who live under our protection. We do not trust their promises. But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people. 

Is Assad's control of Syria now a best case scenario?

Turkey Suspected of Using White Phosphorus Against Kurdish Civilians in Syria - Anthony Loyd (The Times-UK)

In an October 10, 2019 podcast, according to Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor and one of Britain’s best-known war correspondents, there "haven’t been all that many" terror attacks in Israel "in recent years." Perhaps this bizarre claim stems from the BBC's failure to adequately report the scale of terror attacks against Israelis. In 2018 the BBC covered at most 30.2% of the more than 3,000 terror attacks. As reported by CAMERA

Indoctrinating Children in the UK: A Textbook Example - David Collier (david-collier.com)

October 16, 2019 - One day before the UN's election of 14 nations to its highest human rights body, UN Watch is condemning the almost certain election of the Mauritanian regime ruled by General Mohamed Ould Ghazouani.(See UN Watch's press release and full report on all candidates, and its call with fellow human rights groups to reject the unqualified candidacies of Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Venezuela.) Note: U.N. member-states on Thursday elected Venezuela onto the world’s body’s Human Rights Council, handing the Maduro regime more votes than Costa Rica, Further demonstrating that UNHRC has no concern for human rights.

United Nations Backslides on Human Rights in Counterterrorism - Ben Saul (Lawfare)

Turkey's Assault on Kurds:The Silence of the (American)  Islamists - John Rossomando (IPT)

On 9/11, Recalling the Ties between Iran and Al-Qaeda (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

Al-Qaeda Leader Urges Attacks on U.S., European, Israeli and Russian Targets in 9/11 Speech - Tim Korso (Sputnik-Russia)

BDS Campaign Targeting Toronto Businesses Backfires - Paul Lungen (Canadian Jewish News)

BDS Activists Assault Israeli Film Festival Attendees in Berlin - Benjamin Weinthal (Jerusalem Post)

European Court May Remove Hamas from Terrorism Blacklist  (Middle East Monitor-UK)

New U.S. Sanctions Target Terrorists Affiliated with Hamas, ISIS, Iran's Qods Force (U.S. Treasury Department)

Cyprus Detains 3 Iranians Using Fake Travel Documents to Fly to UK (Cyprus Mail)

The North Korean-Israeli Shadow War - Jay Solomon (Tablet) A trove of downloaded photos detailed a building being constructed on the Euphrates River at Al Kibar in eastern Syria that was revealed to be a virtual replica of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor, a plutonium-producing facility that the U.S. viewed as a virtual bomb-making factory. One photo showed Othman arm-in-arm with Chon Chibu, a North Korean nuclear scientist who worked at the Yongbyon facility.    Israel's security officials say that North Korea's past actions suggest Kim would have no qualms transferring these capabilities to Israel's Mideast enemies, particularly for the right price.

Qatari Envoy: Egypt Benefitting from Gaza's Isolation - Ali Younes  (Al Jazeera) 

UN report on Syria conflict highlights inhumane detention of women and children (UN News)

BBC Imagery Implies Israeli Airstrikes Target Children - Simon Plosker (Honest Reporting)  How can the BBC justify including an unrelated graphic video of a disfigured Kurdish child in a story of a presumed Israeli airstrike on a pro-Iranian militia? This is misleading, inflammatory and it's clear what the BBC is implying.

Sky News Arabia Ignores that Deceased Palestinian Prisoner Was a Terrorist - CAMERA Arabic (UK Media Watch)

Harrowing Cables Detail How the CIA Tortured Accused 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Jeopardizing the Case Against Him - Daniel DeFraia   (The Intercept)

The True Story of an Iranian Sportsman's Fight for Life - Nicolas Messner and Pedro Lasuen (International Judo Federation)

The US-Taliban Negotiations: A Deadly Qatari Trap -  Yigal Carmon (MEMRI)

The Afghan ‘peace’ deal will not bring peace to the Afghan people - Sahar Halaimzai   & Horia Mosadiqi (AlJazeera)

Russia 'arming the Afghan Taliban', says US  - Justin Rowlatt (BBC) 

EU to Give PA $27 Million to Pay August Salaries (Middle East Monitor-UK)

Hezbollah and Iran (Honest Reporting/Youtube Video)

Hamas Chief Thanks Ayatollah Khamenei for Support (Fars-Iran)

Palestinian Authority Declares End to Division of West Bank according to Oslo Accords - Jack Khoury  (Ha'aretz)

Palestinian Authority Must Pay $3.61 Million in Torture Case - Ahmad Melhem  (Al-Monitor) 

Palestinian Children Stage Mock Kidnapping of Israeli Boy at Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony - Chris Pleasance (Daily Mail-UK)

Syria Imported 17 Million Barrels of Iranian Crude in Past Year (Maritime Executive)

U.S. forces strike Syrian al Qaeda facility - Defense Dept (Reuters)

The Return of Doomsday The New Nuclear Arms Race—and How Washington and Moscow Can Stop It - Ernest J. Moniz And Sam Nunn (Foreign Affairs)

What the HBO Series "Our Boys" Doesn't Want Us to Know - Jonathan S. Tobin (JNS)

On Monday, reports of heavy and potential violence against Israel on multiple fronts. Wall Street Journal and others report on "Shadow War" between Israel and Iran. See  Israel Has Become A Five-Front War - Shmuel Rosner (Jewish Journal) 

IDF Foils Iranian Plot to Kill Israelis - Yoav Zitun (Ynet News) 

Drone Strike Targets Shiite Rocket Squad in Iraq (AFP-France 24) 

Video: Gaza Rockets Intercepted above Israeli Concert - Judah Ari Gross (Times of Israel)     See also Video: Israelis Evacuate Concert, Mothers Shield Children (YouTube)

Israeli Teen's Murder in Bomb Explosion Points to Organized West Bank Cell - Amos Harel (Ha'aretz)
Report: Israel Strikes Palestinian Terrorist Base near Lebanon-Syria Border - Daniel Siryoti (Israel Hayom) 

Palestinians: Why Allow Facts to Get in the Way? - Bassam Tawil (Gatestone Institute)

Hamas Lauds "Heroic" Bombing Attack that Killed Israeli Teen (Times of Israel)

Israel-Iran conflict exposes bleeding edge of a war for the entire Middle East -  Avi Issachoroff (Times of Israel)

Syrian Army Makes Gains on Last Rebel Stronghold as Russia Brings Reinforcements - Suleiman Al-Khalidi (Reuters)

UKMW prompts Guardian to restore omitted paragraph on Palestinian violence - Adam Levick (UK Media Watch)

Positive News

Egypt Criticizes Its Judoka Who Refused to Shake Hands with Israeli Opponent - Itamar Katzir (Ha'aretz) 

Unprecedented Meeting in Mecca Rejects Extremism - Charles "Sam" Faddis (The Hill) 

Elite British Troops Fight Off 100 ISIS Jihadis in Afghanistan - Simon Osborne (Daily Express-UK)

Toronto church cancels Palestinian event called an ‘open glorification of terrorists'- Adrian Humphreys (National Post)

Egypt Sentences Six over Spying for Iran (Asharq Al-Awsat-UK)

Iran's New Global Terrorist Network - Con Coughlin (Gatestone Institute)  New evidence has emerged that highlights the Iranian regime's attempts to establish a terrorist infrastructure in Africa. Iranian cells are said to be active in Sudan, Chad, Ghana, Niger, Gambia and the Central African Republic.

Revolutionary Guards Strategist Proposes Exporting "Sacred Defense" Culture to Iran Proxies - Yaghoub Fazeli (Al Arabiya)  Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq have today become Iraq's IRGC.   "Shiites of the world gathered under the command of commander Qasem Soleimani and created a Shiite NATO in Syria."  Abbasi added that 2,300 Iranians who were sent to fight alongside Bashar Assad's forces have been killed in Syria.

Yazidi, Christian ISIS Survivors Complete Post-Trauma Course in Israel (Kurdistan 24)

Israel Voices Frustration with Lebanon over Sea Border Talks (Reuters) Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz voiced frustration on Friday with Lebanon's failure to agree to U.S.-mediated talks on setting their maritime border, suggesting Iran-backed Hizbullah was applying pressure on Beirut.

Jordan to Increase Electricity Exports to Palestinians (Xinhua-China)

Rethink U.S. Security Aid to the Lebanese Army - Richard Natonski and Thomas Trask  (The Hill) The U.S. has provided the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with $1.7 billion since 2006, hoping substantial military aid would decrease Hizbullah's influence in Lebanon. In recent years, however, multiple factors indicate that ties between Hizbullah and the LAF are growing dangerously close. In southern Lebanon, the LAF has ignored its obligation to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for the "disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon" other than the LAF, and Hizbullah's military capacity has continued growing unchecked. Lebanese President Michel Aoun remains a loyal ally of Hizbullah and has repeatedly hailed Hizbullah's "major" and "essential" role in Lebanon's defense apparatus.

Foreign Powers Stoke Libya's Civil War - Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) According to Libyan sources, Turkey is operating a command and control center in Tripoli, with Turkish officers flying drones and assisting Tripoli's troops.  At the same time, Tripoli says French and Emirati forces were involved with Haftar's forces, while U.S. and Chinese weapons were delivered to his troops.  Haftar is supported by Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and France, and is facing a Turkish-Qatari-Jihadist coalition assisting the Tripoli government.

HR Slams Disingenuous ‘Apology’ After South African Media Slur - Simon Plosker (HonestReporting)

Britain, France Agree to Slight Troop Increase in Syria - Lara Seligman (Foreign Policy) "Overall we have been disappointed" in efforts to persuade U.S. allies to commit additional resources to the ongoing fight against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria.  The marginal increase of UK and French troops likely won't completely fill the gap left when U.S. forces leave. The U.S. footprint in Syria is expected to drop from 2,000 troops to 400. A second source estimated that Britain and France each has 200 to 300 troops in the country. 

Hate wrapped in cotton candy at the PalExpo - David Collier (Times of Israel)

Do you listen to Boston Public Radiow WGBH? Please consider contacting WGBH and asking them to hold Charles Sennott accountable for attacks on Christian Zionists. Sennott promotes the false notion that the Christian population is “withering” in the Holy Land and omits it's flourishing in Israel. Additionally, he claims Christian Zionists are hindering the peace process or threatening Christians, not radical Islamists.

Sennott Still Looking for Crazies After All These Years - Dexter Van Zile (CAMERA)