‘We Need to Know We’re Not Alone’: Ukraine’s Soldiers Carry the Burden of a Nation at War

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As the war in Ukraine nears its third calendar year, Ukrainian troops remain entrenched along a static front line in eastern Ukraine where they exchange small arms and artillery fire with combined Russian-separatist forces every day.

More than 21 months after it was signed, the cease-fire is a charade. The war may be at a lower intensity due to the cease-fire’s loosely adhered-to rules—but there is still very much a war in eastern Ukraine.

Combat is ongoing and intense throughout the Donbas—Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia. And civilian and military casualties still occur daily.

For many Ukrainian soldiers, war has become a way of life.

“I am at home now, this is my family,” Andriy, a 30-year-old soldier in the Ukrainian army’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, told The Daily Signal from a front-line position in the embattled town of Marinka.

Andriy has continuously served in combat since the war began in spring 2014. He asked that his last name not be used due to security concerns.

The Ukrainian troops believe in the justice of their cause, yet, there is a pervasive sense of disappointment, bordering on betrayal, expressed by many front-line soldiers toward their civilian leadership in Kyiv.

“We are fighting for our land, to defend every centimeter of our country,” Dimitry Karamushka, a 30-year-old soldier in the 92nd Brigade, told The Daily Signal in Marinka. “We are not fighting for our government.”

The 92nd Brigade recently rotated to Marinka from a previous combat deployment outside the separatist stronghold of Luhansk. The unit comprises a mix of both draftees and volunteers, with some soldiers having served continuously in combat, with only periodic breaks of a week or two to go home, since spring 2014.

Ukrainian forces are dug in, battle-hardened, and better equipped and armed than they were a year ago. Conditions have improved, but supply shortages are still common, and the Ukrainian troops are still largely left to fend for themselves to provide many basic necessities—such as electricity.

“More than ammunition, we need to know we’re not alone,” Andriy said. “We are fighting two wars. One against Russia, and the other against the government in Kyiv.”

Casus Belli

Ukraine’s deployed troops remain committed to their cause, and treat the war as an existential fight for the country’s independence against what they call a Russian invasion of their homeland.

“We can’t leave the war and go to Kyiv,” Karamushka said. “It would mean surrender to Russia. And what would it mean to all the people who died?”

“We are standing for our territory,” said Alexandr Chernov, a chaplain in the 92nd Brigade. “Everyone wants peace. But peace will only come after victory.”

Chernov paused, smiled, and then added: “And when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is gone.”

Ukraine’s military has been locked in a static, frontal war against a combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars since the second, current cease-fire—called Minsk II—was signed in February 2015.

Today, at some places in and around Marinka, less than 300 meters (about 1,000 feet) of no man’s land divide the opposing camps.

“The situation here is stabilized,” said Vsevolod Chernetskyi, a 22-year-old soldier and Raven drone operator, in near perfect English. “We are in the same positions as a year ago, the Russians and us. It’s mostly artillery now.”

The war has killed about 10,000 Ukrainians and displaced about 1.7 million people, according to various reports from humanitarian organizations.

The conflict began in spring 2014 when Russian-backed separatists formed two breakaway republics in the Donbas.

Despite denials from Moscow, numerous news reports have shown that Russian troops are fighting among the separatists, that Russian military commanders command and control separatist forces, and that Russian weapons and ammunition continue to feed the war effort.

Through binoculars from the roof of the 92nd Brigade’s outpost in Marinka, this correspondent observed a Russian flag flying over a building across no man’s land on the combined Russian-separatist side of the contact lines.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence estimates, there are about 5,000 to 7,500 Russian troops currently deployed in the Donbas. About 55,000 Russian military personnel are also forward deployed to locations within Russia near the Ukraine border.

Combined Russian-separatist forces in eastern Ukraine currently control more tanks than Germany’s armed forces, and the Donbas is replete with Russian surface-to-air missile systems.

“I don’t feel we are winning,” Chernetskyi said. “The Russian forces are much stronger than ours. They can always provide more artillery than us, better tanks, more drones.”

During breakfast, this correspondent remarked to Chernetskyi how the shooting had stopped in time for both sides to take their morning meal.

Chernetskyi replied that the combined Russian-separatist forces operate on Moscow time, one hour ahead of Kyiv’s time zone.

“They eat an hour before us,” he said.

He paused a beat and then added: “They’re always one step ahead of us.”

Differences

The corner of an artillery-blasted apartment building in Marinka is marked by a spray-painted word in Russian. In English it translates to “For what?”

Approximately 5,000 civilians have fled Marinka since the war began, comprising about half of the town’s pre-war population of 10,000.

Daytime is usually relatively peaceful here. Civilians mill about outdoors, pedestrians are on the sidewalks. There’s an outdoor market where one can buy goods ranging from produce to clothing.

Across town, there is the sound of hammering as workers repair buildings damaged by shelling. They replace shattered windows and reconstruct crumbled walls.

There is a daily rhythm to the war, which conceals the brunt of the fighting from the intergovernmental organization responsible for overseeing the cease-fire.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, do not travel through the war zone at night due to security restrictions.

At night, consequently, the war begins in earnest.

“There is almost no artillery during the day, because the OSCE is here,” Chernetskyi, the 22-year-old Raven operator, said.

Winter sunsets in eastern Ukraine come early, around 4:30 p.m. As darkness falls there is, at first, only the occasional sound of a mortar explosion or an artillery shot, and the every-so-often burst of a machine gun or Kalashnikov.

As the hours pass, the pace and intensity of the shooting slowly builds like the different sections of an orchestra chiming in.

At the nocturnal peak of the fighting, typically around midnight, tracers cut across the night sky, the flashes and booms of mortar and artillery explosions come several times a minute, and there is a nearly constant background din of small arms fire.

This correspondent witnessed such a scene in Marinka on the night of Nov. 21. The Ukrainian soldiers on scene, as well as several civilians from the area, said the intensity of the fighting on that night was “normal.”

While casually smoking a cigarette in the night, one soldier jokingly recommended that this correspondent return “when things really get hot.”

Spartan

When U.S. troops go to war, they usually enjoy the support of specialized units—such as the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy Seabees, or Air Force Civil Engineers—dedicated to building and maintaining base infrastructure, even in the most austere locations.

For deployed Ukrainian troops, however, this task is a collective effort, in which the diverse skills each soldier brings to the war are identified and utilized for the common good.

One example. A 92nd Brigade soldier with a university electrical engineering degree illegally tapped into the local power grid to provide electricity for the outpost in Marinka—effectively stealing electricity from the same government that had sent him to war.

The power still frequently goes out, however. Wood-burning furnaces provide heat to stave off the winter cold and cook food.

Soldiers say the military has improved on its deliveries of basic necessities such as water and foodstuff during the past year.

Yet, non-essential food items like honey, sugar, and coffee are still provided by civilian volunteers. As are other more vital supplies, including most soldiers’ body armor, boots, and winter underwear.

Weapons and ammunition are not a problem, although the soldiers complain about the quality of their armaments—some of which date back to World War II, almost all of which are Cold War vintage.

The soldiers in Marinka still lack basic sanitation. They use a wooden outhouse as a toilet—a miserable proposition in eastern Ukraine’s frigid winters.

The soldiers’ diets mainly comprise traditional Ukrainian foodstuff—including copious amounts of buckwheat, bread, potatoes, and salo (cured slabs of pork fat). Sweetened condensed milk is another troop favorite.

At night, the soldiers sometimes enjoy a moonshine popular throughout the front lines called Avatar; a reference to one’s facial complexion after over-indulging.

Nearly everyone smokes. At night, as the not-too-distant battles rages, the soldiers stand casually outside for as long as they can tolerate the cold to enjoy a cigarette or two. They are desensitized to the war, able to instantly and instinctively tell when the shooting is near enough to pose a real threat.

As at other front-line Ukrainian positions across the war zone, the items hung on the interior walls are a testament to the life stories of these men at war.

Kalashnikovs and body armor hang beside Orthodox religious icons, and posters of soccer stars and beautiful women. Letters from home share tabletops with grenades and bullets.

Outside the few scattered buildings in which the soldiers are holed up, a collection of tanks and armored personnel carriers are scattered under concealment.

At dawn, this correspondent joined a brief patrol into no man’s land in an armored personnel carrier from the 1970s called a BMP. The foray was cut short when the Ukrainian driver spotted enemy forces.

The ebb and flow of life here is likely not too different than it was for the soldiers who fought for this land in World War II.

Except for the presence of smartphones and a few laptops—and the U.S.-made Raven UAV the unit operates—the war-fighting technology and the circumstances of day-to-day life here would not be out of place seven decades ago.

“We want people to know that this war could happen in other places in Europe,” Chernov, the chaplain, said. “We have to stop Russia here.”

Red to Blue

The soldiers (the majority of whom are millennials) reject their country’s Soviet military heritage in favor of closer ties with the U.S. and NATO.

On Soviet battle maps, red icons (for the Red Army) symbolized friendly forces, and enemy forces were blue.

After the current war in the Donbas began, Ukrainian forces flipped the colors of their icons to match NATO maps, in which the colors are reversed.

The move was a practical step in bringing Ukraine’s military in line with NATO standards (part of a larger effort to foster closer ties with the Western alliance), but it was also a symbolic pushback against Russia.

The soldiers consider the United States to be an ally, and they want American military support. Many, however, oppose the idea of direct U.S. military intervention.

“American help is OK,” Andriy, the 30-year-old soldier from Kharkiv, said. “But we need to learn how to do this on our own. We shouldn’t rely on other countries for help. We need to fight this war on our own.”

There is a symbolic value to U.S. support that the soldiers exploit to rattle their enemies.

The Punisher skull symbol—a comic book emblem made popular among soldiers by Navy SEAL Chris Kyle of “American Sniper” fame—is painted on Ukrainian armored fighting vehicles in Marinka.

As at other locations along the front lines, the Ukrainian soldiers in Marinka did not have encrypted communications. They shared the airwaves with their enemies on off-the-shelf walkie-talkies.

A common Russian propaganda line is that U.S. troops are deployed and fighting alongside the Ukrainians. (There are, in fact, no U.S. troops fighting in the Ukraine conflict.)

Sometimes, as a joke, a Ukrainian soldier fluent in English will speak on the open airwaves, pretending to be a Navy SEAL, or a U.S. Marine. The gag usually elicits a flurry of incensed responses from their enemies, the Ukrainian soldiers said.

The Raven

One overt sign of U.S military support for Ukraine is the 92nd Brigade’s use of the U.S.-made Raven drone. The small drone is tossed in the air like a giant paper airplane.

The U.S. gave 24 Ravens in all to the Ukrainian military, and the drones are scattered throughout various units.

Chernetskyi trained on the Raven with the U.S. Army for three weeks in Huntsville, Alabama.

The Raven is a non-offensive weapon, but Ukrainian forces use it for artillery spotting.

While not a game-changer on the battlefield, the Raven does afford the Ukrainians some advantages over the modified off-the-shelf drones they also use.

“It’s useful mostly because it can fly at night,” Chernetskyi said.

The Raven is still susceptible to Russian jamming, however.

“The Russians can jam it, no problem,” Chernetskyi said. “It was made for Afghanistan, and the Taliban didn’t have jamming.”

Defenders of the Motherland

Some soldiers expressed frustration that their commanders were stuck in antiquated habit patterns from the Cold War, making them resistant to commonsense changes implemented from the bottom up, which could streamline the war effort.

Andriy brought out a thick stack of worn paper maps of the Marinka area. Each map was thoroughly marked in pen and marker notations, indicating enemy and friendly positions.

The troops complained that this pile of maps, enough to fill a wheelbarrow, could be condensed into a single app for a tablet or a file on a laptop.

An electronic version could be continuously updated and overlaid with other information, such as weather or locations where civilians are observed, the soldiers said.

Perhaps most frustrating of all for the front-line troops is the disconnect between life on the front lines and the rest of the country, where daily life seems to carry on unaffected by the war.

While front-line soldiers shiver in sub-zero temperatures, enduring artillery and sniper fire, in Kyiv—a 9-hour journey from the front lines by car and rail—there were Black Friday sales going on at the city’s many shopping malls last weekend.

(Ukraine does not celebrate Thanksgiving, yet Black Friday is a major shopping event.)

Over the weekend, the malls in Kyiv were crammed with bargain-hunting patrons in stores like The Gap, Columbia Sportswear, and Zara. Christmas lights and trees are going up around town.

Bars and restaurants in Kyiv remain busy. At more popular places, you can’t get in without a reservation on the weekends. The city’s trendy speakeasy-style, craft cocktail bars are always packed. One would hardly know this is the capital city of the country home to Europe’s only ongoing land war.

“Everyone should know our story,” Chernetskyi said.

The soldiers are not generally resentful that life is going on outside the war. In fact, many say that’s what they’re fighting for; a sign that the Russian threat has been kept at bay.

Yet, the head-spinning contrast with life on the front lines sparks feelings of unequally shared sacrifice among the troops and combat veterans.

“It is war here,” Evgeniy Varavin, a 27-year-old soldier from Kharkiv, said from Marinka.

“Some civilians look at soldiers and don’t understand why we’re fighting,” Varavin, who was a construction worker before the war, continued. “I don’t pay attention to what civilians say. My parents are proud of me, but they’re worried. They don’t understand why I came back for the second time. But how can I work back home in Kharkiv when there is war, and while my comrades are here? My soul is here.” (For more from the author of “‘We Need to Know We’re Not Alone’: Ukraine’s Soldiers Carry the Burden of a Nation at War” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Will Trump and Republicans Finally Shut Down Suicidal Somali Immigration?

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For years, our political leaders have learned all the wrong lessons from Israel. They spent two decades trying to localize the jihad and diminish its significance to that of a conventional land dispute between “Israelis and Palestinians.” All the while forgetting Israel was confronted with a global Jihadist threat and that they were the harbinger of what was going to come to the West. Yet, rather than tightening immigration, Europe and the United States opened the doors to the Islamic world and are now facing the same enemy Israel has faced for years, albeit without their robust security apparatus. Now, with the news of the Ohio State attack fresh in our minds, we can appreciate that much like in Israel, bombings, stabbings, and vehicular attacks have become a regular occurrence.

If we don’t get serious about prioritizing our security needs through immigration policy, yesterday’s attack in Ohio State could be just the beginning of things to come. In fact, it is a reflection of a new norm that has already come to our shores. From Chattanooga and Fort Hood to San Bernardino and Orlando, we’ve witnessed jihad through mass shootings. From University of California Merced and the first Columbus, Ohio stabbing last year, to the Minneapolis mall stabbing and yesterday’s stabbing and vehicular attack at Ohio State, we are witnessing jihad by other means. The common thread is not the weapon of choice, but the jihadist motivation perpetrated on America by individual Muslim immigrants or children born to immigrant parents that have been admitted over the past two generations to this country.

Nowhere do our suicidal immigration policies exemplify this problem more than with Somali immigration over the past two decades. We’ve brought in over 130,000 Somali refugees ever since Somalia collapsed into a failed state in the early ‘90s. To my knowledge, we have never taken in a consistent and significant flow of refugees from any other country for this many consecutive years. While everyone is focusing on Syrian refugees, we have brought in at least as many Somali refugees this year, even though the conflict there has been raging for over a generation.

What have we gotten for our hospitality?

At least 40 young Somalis have been investigated for terrorism in the Minneapolis area since 2008 and some of them were convicted earlier this month. But the problem runs much deeper than a few dozen individuals. What sort of climate of neighbors, friends, family, and religious community leaders cultivates the mentality that leads to involvement in terrorism?

Last year, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lugar warned that there is “a terror-recruiting problem in Minnesota” among the Somali youth and that it does not stem from overseas but “may be their best friend right here in town.” Similarly, a federal judge warned earlier this month, “This community needs to understand there is a jihadist cell in this community. Its tentacles spread out.”

Last year, Ami Horowitz (no relation), a filmmaker who produces documentaries, recorded “man on the street” segments with Somali immigrants in Minneapolis’s Cedar Riverside community. His findings were quite disconcerting to say the least. Almost all of the dozen or so people he interviewed said they preferred Sharia law over the Constitution and felt it should be a crime to insult Muhammad. This random sampling, while more pronounced in the Minneapolis Somali community, jives with other findings that show these sentiments to be widespread among American Muslims. A poll commissioned by the Center for Security Policy last year found that 51 percent of Muslims living in America believe “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to sharia.” Twenty-nine percent agree that violence against those who insult Mohammad is acceptable and 25 percent agree that violence against America can be justified as part of Global Jihad. Among males under the age of 45 that number rises to 36 percent.

Thus, the threat of homegrown terrorism is born out of the threat of homegrown subversion and a culture that is fundamentally incompatible with our values. This is why the entire debate over “vetting” refugees is a non-sequitur. Authorities will rarely discover official ties to known terror groups when investigating families with young children apply for refugee status from a Middle Eastern country. But a large number of these families subscribe to Sharia law and raise their children accordingly. In other words, they are not people “who are attached to our Country by its natural and political advantages,” a quality James Madison felt should be a litmus test for immigration.

What experience in America and Europe has shown over the past few years is that the children of immigrants are the ones who are most likely to be drawn into jihad. Yet, there is no way to vet people like Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Ohio State jihadist, who came to America as a teenager. The Chattanooga shooter was just two years old when he came from Kuwait, the Elizabeth New Jersey bomber was a young boy when he came with his asylum-seeking family from Afghanistan, and the Orlando and San Bernardino terrorists were born after their families immigrated here.

Perforce, there is no way to vet a mentality born out of a religious worldview that rejects our values. Europe’s experience stands as a testament to the suicidal path we are following with regards to immigration, particularly from countries like Somalia.

As with any form of immigration, there will always be decent and productive people from any country. Somalia is no different. But it is downright reckless for our political leaders to continue risking our security when we are having such widespread difficulty with many of the Somali immigrants already in America. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, herself a Somali immigrant, wrote last year, “I have no objection to other people coming to America to seek a better life for themselves and their families. My concern is with the attitudes many of these new Muslim Americans will bring with them – and with our capacity for changing those attitudes.”

This is Trump’s first big test. Instead of focusing on flag burning or other sensational headlines, he needs to return to his campaign promises to end these suicidal immigration policies. The Ohio State jihadist demonstrates the veracity of his campaign rhetoric on refugee resettlement. Why is Trump not being more vocal about it?

Furthermore, this will be Rep. Tom Price’s, R-Ga. (D, 62%) other major test, aside from overseeing the repeal of Obamacare. Many people forget that the head of HHS oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement. He must immediately rein in the private resettlement contractors and enforce the letter and spirit of the statutes which require advanced consultation with states and to ensure that local communities are not fundamentally transformed and burdened by resettlement, as required by law. He should work with governors, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbot who are drawing the right conclusions from recent terror attacks committed by refugees:

As I noted last week, Trump can shut off immigration from dangerous countries at will on the first day of his presidency without an act of Congress. Concurrently, it would be advisable for Republicans in Congress to back up his executive order with permanent legislation to prioritize the safety of the American people over the cult of multiculturalism.

Over two decades after Black Hawk Down, the mistakes of our Somalia intervention are plaguing us more acutely than ever and have now become an enemy within. It’s time to stop the madness. (For more from the author of “Will Trump and Republicans Finally Shut Down Suicidal Somali Immigration?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

See College Students’ Responses When Asked to Compare Castro to Trump

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College students in the nation’s capital thought it was a “tough question” whether former Cuban President Fidel Castro or American President-elect Donald Trump is more favorable.

Campus Reform, a project of the Leadership Institute, polled several students at American University in Washington, D.C., and captured the students’ responses in the video below.

Many students could not give a clear answer whether they thought Castro, the Cuban dictator who died last week, or Trump was a better leader.

Some of the American University students told Campus Reform they favored Castro over Trump.

“I would say at this very moment, I have a better opinion of Fidel Castro,” one female student said in the video.

As The Heritage Foundation’s Ana Quintana wrote in an op-ed piece for The Daily Signal, “Religion was criminalized, dissent was violently punished, and Cuban citizens became property of their communist state” under Castro’s rule.

One student told Campus Reform she didn’t have an opinion on either man.

“I never really had an opinion on [Castro] to start with other than he was really, really bad for the world,” the student said. “Donald Trump, I still don’t have any opinion on. I just choose to ignore it.”

Another student said that if Trump’s administration “is anything like he said it will be, then I think that Fidel Castro will absolutely have been a better leader to the Cuban people than Trump will be to the U.S., just based on his statements alone.” (For more from the author of “See College Students’ Responses When Asked to Compare Castro to Trump” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Dollywood Employee Finds Burned Bible Page After Wildfires

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The day after wildfires tore through Gatlinburg, destroying more than 150 structures, killing at least three people and displacing thousands, Isaac McCord was doing his part to help out, picking up debris from the Dollywood park grounds.

Gripping his rake, he revisited a spot in Craftsman Valley he had skimmed over after his co-worker, Misty Carver, quipped, “Is that how you clean your room?” Provoked, he said he had started “really getting in the nooks and crannies” under a park bench when he caught a glimpse of a piece of paper lying in a puddle of water — soggy, seared and torn in two . . .

“As soon as I got down on the ground, I noticed it was a Bible verse, and I was like holy crap,” McCord said in a phone interview on Tuesday night. “It was in a puddle of water. I said, ‘I want to take care of this the best way I can,’ so I gently scooped it up and carried it out the best I could” . . .

In silence, the pair pored over the page, the edges of which were burned black, rendering many words illegible. But parts of the right side of the page were preserved enough to get the message across: it perfectly reflected, McCord said, the tragic natural disaster that had thrust Gatlinburg and Sevier County into the national spotlight the night before.

“O Lord, to thee will I cry: For the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field,” the page reads, according to a picture of the page posted on McCord’s Facebook. (Read more from “Dollywood Employee Finds Burned Bible Page After Wildfires” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump

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The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition.

Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies — Republican Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Republican Representative Mike Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency — are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The fights expected to play out in the coming months — in Senate confirmation hearings and through executive action, legislation and litigation — also will set up an early test of Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley giants including Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Trump signaled as much during his presidential campaign, when he urged a consumer boycott of Apple for refusing to help the FBI hack into a terrorist’s encrypted iPhone.

An “already over-powerful surveillance state” is about to “be let loose on the American people,” said Daniel Schuman, policy director for Demand Progress, an internet and privacy advocacy organization . . .

In a reversal of curbs imposed after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about mass data-gathering by the NSA, Trump and Congress may move to reinstate the collection of bulk telephone records, renew powers to collect the content of e-mails and other internet activity, ease restrictions on hacking into computers and let the FBI keep preliminary investigations open longer. (Read more from “FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump” HERE)

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Revival in Iran: ‘You Can See What the Holy Spirit Is Doing’

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The Islamic Republic of Iran is experiencing a revival of faith in a big way, said Rahman Salehsafari, a house church pastor who ministers there as well as worldwide via Skype, in a CBN News interview. The Holy Spirit’s work in Iran is evident in the large numbers of people accepting Jesus, he said.

“Right now you can see the results of the Holy Spirit. [In] 1994, there were about 100,000 believers,” he explained. “Right now, there are 3 million. You can see what the Holy Spirit is doing with the people.”

For some, the experience that drew them to Christ was nothing short of miraculous. “I had a dream a long time back and every time that Jesus was with me,” said a young man named Reza. “In all of my life He was helping me and I didn’t know who is this person. Suddenly, Jesus Christ was over there and He said, ‘Come to Me.’ Then I came to that side and He accepted me.”

Becoming a Christian was not something they took lightly — they knew they would have difficulty living out their new-found faith in their homeland.

Many of the new Christians had to flee Iran because of religious persecution and ended up in Turkey. They noticed a marked difference in the freedom to practice their faith. Afshin, an Iranian who lives in Turkey now, said the contrast is extreme. “[It’s] totally different from Iran,” he explained. “I can privilege [speak about] God’s Word to other guys. I can freely praise the Lord. I can easily go to church. It’s really completely different.”

Afshin, who attended Pastor Saeed Abedini’s church before Abedini’s 2012 arrest, said he fled Iran because it was getting progressively difficult each day to live as a Christian and he felt it was too much of a risk. Afshin said he had to leave his home because he believed the intelligence service would recognize it as a home church. Others fled in fear for their lives.

A young woman named Raizal, along with her brother Reza, fled Iran for fear they would be killed. “Even if I say ‘Jesus Christ,’ they may kill me,” she said. “They tried to kill me,” said Reza, who also had problems with his health and at his job because he was a Christian. “Then I start (sic) to run away.”

Many of the Iranian believers in Turkey hope to one day achieve refugee status and immigrate to other countries.

Even with the persecution, the threats on their lives, the uprooting and fleeing to another country and the unstable residency status, these Christians maintain their joyfulness and love of Christ. They clap and cheer as new brothers and sisters in Christ are baptized. They worship the Lord with praise songs and laughter.

Their desire now is that their brothers and sisters around the world would pray for Iran and the Church there. “I’m just begging really from other believers, from the other sisters and brothers from all over the world to pray for Iran,” said Afshin. “To all the people of Iran, to be familiar with God, with Jesus Christ.”

See the full interview here:

(For more from the author of “Revival in Iran: ‘You Can See What the Holy Spirit Is Doing'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Gay Rabbi and My Mother’s Funeral

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There are few things more intimate than a gravesite funeral service attended by a handful of family members and friends, and if I were a homophobic person, you would think that I would have been mortified at the news that the rabbi presiding at the ceremony was openly gay. The truth is that I welcomed him warmly (knowing exactly who he was) and he in turn welcomed me warmly (knowing exactly who I am). In fact, he is a regular listener to my radio broadcast, and I’m writing this article with his full permission and encouragement.

You see, it really is possible to love your gay neighbor as yourself while at the same time opposing the goals of gay activism, and it really is possible to recognize that every human being is created in the image of God (yet fallen) while at the same time having massive differences on religious, cultural and moral issues.

In the case of my precious mom’s funeral, I was told by the local funeral director that there could be a potential issue with the Jewish cemetery in New Jersey where my mother would be buried because I am a well-known Messianic Jewish leader (Messianic Jews are Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah). There was also the issue of having a rabbi do the ceremony at the funeral, since my sister and her son, who would also be attending, were not believers in Jesus. Would the rabbi have a problem with my participation in the service?

After meeting with the funeral director in North Carolina (where my mother passed away), I heard from the rabbi, who is Reform (which is the largest and most liberal branch of Judaism in America). He wanted me to know that he had no problem with “interfaith” services, and he assured the cemetery things would be fine. He also wanted me to know — to my absolute surprise — that he was a regular listener to my radio show. How extraordinary!

I, for my part, told him to focus on my sister and her son in terms of the ceremony, since he was especially there for them, while I would concentrate on giving the eulogy and he need not be concerned about offending me in any way.

Out and Proud

When we finished our talk, I got online to see if I could find out more about him and, again to my absolute surprise, I learned that he was an out and proud gay rabbi who strongly advocated LGBT-affirming synagogues.

I immediately texted him to let him know that I had read about him online and that it appeared that our lives intersected in yet another unexpected way, making me all the more eager to meet him.

You might say, “But that’s outrageous! How could you let a gay rabbi officiate at something as sacred as your mother’s funeral service?”

Actually, the rabbi was there at the request of my sister and her son, so in that respect, the ceremony was for them. But from my perspective, it was altogether fitting that, on the day of my mother’s burial, I would be standing side by side with an openly gay rabbi and that we would be treating each other with kindness and respect.

You say, “But don’t you believe what the Torah says about homosexual practice?”

Yes, I certainly do, without apology, and the rabbi, Bill Kraus, is fully aware of my position. Yet he, for his part, was quite willing to perform the ceremony for my mother, even though some rabbis once branded me “Public Enemy Number One” because of my Jewish outreach work, while some gay activists have branded me one of the nation’s “most vicious homophobes.”

Our Shared Humanity

The reality is that I am not a Reform Jew and the rabbi is not a Messianic Jew, and so what brought us together last week was our shared humanity, our shared (albeit very different) Jewish heritages, and our commitment to honor the memory of the dead, me as a grieving son and he as a hospice and cemetery rabbi.

I truly believe all this was ordained by God rather than coincidental, and from my perspective, it illustrated what I have said for years: My profound opposition to LGBT activism is biblical, not personal, and I truly do care about those whose agenda I resist and whose “marriages” I do not recognize.

That’s why I often recount that my first organ teacher, when I was just 7-years-old, was an openly gay man named Russ, and he would often come to our house with his partner, Ed, a hair dresser. After teaching my sister and me, they would stay for dinner, and Ed would do my sister’s hair.

These are distinct childhood memories, and this reflects the openness with which our parents raised us. My faith in Jesus and my belief in the authority of God’s Word has only deepened my love for those who identify as LGBT, and only God knows the holy tension I live with in following the mandate to “reach out and resist,” meaning to reach out to the LGBT community with compassion while resisting their agenda with courage.

As for Rabbi Kraus, my greatest desire is that he comes to recognize Jesus as our Messiah, and I imagine that one of his greatest desires would be to introduce me to his “husband” so as to lovingly challenge my views of gay couples.

In any event, the funeral service was meaningful to both of us in that it provided an unexpected opportunity in a most personal (and painful setting) to demonstrate that, while we can be deeply entrenched, ideological opponents, we are even more deeply committed to treating each other with kindness and respect, seeking to win the other over with a message of truth and love.

That’s why we have been texting each other since the funeral, that’s why Rabbi Kraus was kind enough to check on my daughter Megan and I to be sure we arrived safely home (she traveled with me to New Jersey for the funeral), and that’s why he assured me that his comments to his friends and colleagues about me were as respectful of my comments about him (he heard me speak about him on the radio after the funeral).

In that spirit, then, may I suggest a prayer that you could pray for both the rabbi and me? It would simply be, “God, bring these men into your very best plan for their lives, whatever that plan might be. Where either one is following the truth, affirm them, and where either one is following error, correct them.” I welcome that prayer warmly and believe that Rabbi Kraus would as well.

As for those who think I’m going “soft” on LGBT issues, it would appear they have not heard a single word I’ve said for the last 10-plus years. (The same would apply to my LGBT critics who would be shocked to read this article.) I do what I do because I seek to love God with all heart and love my neighbor as myself. That’s why I take the stands that I take, and that’s why I deeply care about Rabbi Kraus and his gay friends and colleagues.

Thank you in advance for praying that prayer for us. (For more from the author of “The Gay Rabbi and My Mother’s Funeral” please click HERE)

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Bioethicists Want to Purge Christian Doctors

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Two academic bioethicists want to bar Christians and those who hold other traditional religious beliefs from practicing medicine, and even from attending medical school. The pair fear, as the National Post summarizes, doctors might “impose their values on patients.”

Of course, it is impossible — not unlikely: impossible — for doctors not to impose their values on patients. Even using a tongue depressor on a patient presupposes certain moral values. (Presumably the doctor is doing this to aid in his goal of healing the patient, a moral value.) Since morality infuses all actions, the only real question is this: what moral values should doctors hold?

Julian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk (I will refer to them as “the SS” hereafter), in their paper “Doctors Have No Right to Refuse Medical Assistance in Dying, Abortion or Contraception” in the journal Bioethics, argue that conscientious objectors not be allowed to train for or to practice medicine. “The problem with conscientious objection,” they write, “is that it has been freely accommodated, if not encouraged, for far too long.”

Conscientious Objection

In their definition, conscientious objectors are those medical professionals who refuse to kill or to disperse contraception for traditional religious reasons. Throughout their paper the SS assume, but never argue, it is a moral good that doctors kill patients when patients demand to be killed, or that doctors kill the lives inside would-be mothers when requested.

“Enlightened, progressive secular countries like Sweden, have labour laws in line with our arguments. Sweden provides no legal right of employees to conscientious objection.” To the SS, the more enlightened and progressive a country is, in effect, the farther it is from Christianity.

The SS say anti-conscientious objection laws have “not had a detrimental effect on applications to these countries’ medical schools.” This must be false. If these laws have been applied, then they have prevented faithful Christians and other religious from (openly) entering these schools. If this turning-away hasn’t happened to many, it proves only how quickly Christianity has faded in these countries.

Religion in Medicine

“We don’t know of any evidence that those with religious beliefs make better medical doctors,” say the SS. This is proof the SS aren’t up on medical history. If it weren’t for Christianity, the tradition of hospitals, nursing, and even doctoring would be far different, notably far less prevalent. They say, “We are deeply sceptical that holding religious beliefs makes one better at the practice of medicine.” But the opposite of these religious beliefs lead to killing patients and the lives inside women, as opposed to healing and preventing death. In their scheme, medicine is no longer what is best for the patient or mankind, but what is most expedient.

They assert contraception is a “social good,” “one of the greatest and most valuable of human achievements.” This is false. It is by definition an anti-human achievement. Where contraception has been adopted, birth rates have plummeted, often below replacement levels. And there are many other detrimental effects (many are listed here).

Who Decides Right and Wrong?

The SS continue with their reasoning:

If society thinks contraception, abortion and assistance in dying are important, it should select people prepared to do them, not people whose values preclude them from participating. Equally, people not prepared to participate in such expected courses of action should not join professions tasked by society with the provision of such services.

That “tasked by society” bit comes dangerously close to arguing that morality can be decided by vote. If a society decides it wants a thing, then that thing is “right.” But then the SS also admit this kind of “ethical relativism is practically ethical nihilism. If one accepted ethical relativism, the holocaust was, from the Nazi’s perspective, right. It is just that today we have a different set of values from the Nazis.” This is true. Ethical relativism is ethical nihilism. And since this is so, theirs is a direct admission that we need seek for morals truths which transcend societies and times.

That truth can be found in the natural law. There is a lot more too it of course, but very briefly, the natural law states that that which goes against human nature is wrong. Impeding the results of sexual intercourse, and the direct killing of innocent human lives are antithetical to human nature, and they are therefore immoral.

Rights Don’t Trump Wrongs

It is important to understand that when doctors have a monopoly over a procedure like surgery, it is not a luxury that they can choose to give or withhold on personal grounds. There are criteria around justice, autonomy and interests that determine whether it is provided. When contraception, abortion or euthanasia are made legal and they become part and parcel of medical services over which doctors have monopoly power, patients do acquire a right to them.

It is an absurd argument that because a thing is legal that therefore people have a “right” to it. Driving is legal; do people therefore have a right to free cars?

Excepting contractual agreements and the like, it is just not true that a doctor is, as the SS say, ethically bound to provide any service asked of him.

Of course, potential employers (like hospitals) may choose not to hire doctors who refuse to kill or dispense contraception. If these acts are legal, this is the employers’ right. And given that legality, it does follow that certain medical schools may also bar entrants who do not promise to abide by that school’s ethics.

The SS have much of the law on their side. But that only demonstrates the well known truth that what is legal is not always what is right. So far, conscientious objection is still legal. Yet the SS gleefully look forward to a time when faithful Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other conscientious objectors are barred from practicing medicine. If we aren’t vigilant, they’ll get their wish. (For more from the author of “Bioethicists Want to Purge Christian Doctors” please click HERE)

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Better Late Than Never: Germany’s Chancellor Decides to Deport 100,000 Refugees

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Following a year of the chaos and facing a reelection challenge in the coming year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to finally be rethinking her open-borders refugee policy, and is making plans to start deporting thousands.

According to the Daily Mail:

Germany is planning to return 100,000 rejected asylum seekers to their home countries after Angela Merkel admitted: ‘It cannot be that all young people from Afghanistan come here’.

About 60,000 will be returned under voluntary repatriation programmes while the rest face compulsory deportations, the German chancellor revealed.

Of course, the decision won’t be cost neutral for the German people, as the deportees will be given both a plane ticket and some startup money to help them get back on their feet in their homelands.

And this took a while. Since September of last year, Merkel has stood firmly in her open-borders stance, which allowed over an estimated 1 million unvetted migrants to enter the European country. What followed in the months afterward was a year of chaos, including innumerable sexual assaults, multiple jihadist attacks, and concerns of jihadist infiltration into refugee populations as well as the military. At one point, German officials were even considering putting troops on the streets to address increased security problems.

And who can forget when migrants burned down a refugee center in Düsseldorf earlier this month, claiming there wasn’t enough Nutella and sweets?

The chancellor has invited criticism even from members of her own party, which has suffered in state and local elections in recent months. She faced further challenge recently, after announcing her run at her national party conference.

“With your truly unparalleled ‘laissez-faire’ refugee policy you have burdened us with something that we will not get rid of any time soon,” party member Ulrich Sauer said, according to Reuters. “Step down now before the damage you have done becomes even greater.”

Now, it would seem that after months of electoral hits, intra-party damage, and falling poll numbers, Frau Merkel is finally listening to the will of her own people, but only time will tell if this is the true beginning of a return to normalcy for them.

If the reversal succeeds electorally, Merkel will not have to learn the difficult electoral lesson as the anti-Brexit crowd did in the U.K. or that pro-amnesty Democrats and Republicans learned in the U.S. this year, giving her the chance to eclipse her mentor Helmut Kohl as Germany’s longest-serving postwar chancellor.

As it turns out, when you remove the ability of the body politic to control its own sovereignty, the body politic tends to get ticked off and vote you out of power (especially when they’re being shot, stabbed, blown up, or dealing with artificially deflated wages as a result). Borders are important, as is prioritizing the concerns of your own citizens first.

The world is still dealing with the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War, but as policymakers like Angela Merkel and others have learned, answering this crisis with charity unbalanced by prudence is a good way to lose the support of your people rather quickly. (For more from the author of “Better Late Than Never: Germany’s Chancellor Decides to Deport 100,000 Refugees” please click HERE)

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Threatening Electors Violates Federal Law. So Why Isn’t Loretta Lynch Doing Anything About It?

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Before Donald Trump’s stunning victory on November 8, liberals called for acceptance of election results. But since the election didn’t go as they’d planned, some have taken to harassing and intimidating electors in an attempt to change the election results. Some of these threats may violate federal law, yet the Justice Department acts strangely uninterested in investigating.

Following the election, a coalition of liberal activist groups launched #NotMyPresident Alliance, an organization dedicated to fighting the inauguration of President-elect Trump. As part of that effort, #NotMyPresident distributed personal contact information — including telephone numbers and addresses — of electors in states that voted Republican.
According to Buzzfeed, Maddie Deming, a strategist for the group, said they wanted to put electors in the spotlight and “to hold them accountable for their decision.” Whatever the intent, the initiative has produced a deluge of threats.

Electors across the country report receiving not only a flood of emails and phone calls to change their vote to Hillary Clinton but death threats as well. Alex Kim, a Texas Republican elector, reported that he and other electors had “receiv[ed] thousands of emails a day” urging them to vote for Clinton, including threats of harm and death. Arizona’s electors have reported harassment as well.

Michael Banerian, a Michigan GOP elector, received some of the most extreme threats according to The Detroit News. One email, Banerian said, talked about “shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out.” Another told him to “do society a favor and throw yourself in front of a bus.”

In Georgia and Idaho, the threats have been so extreme that the secretaries of state both released statements calling for the harassment to end. But the federal law enforcement agency that should be acting to stop these threats — the U.S. Department of Justice — has not done a thing.

Section 11b of the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. §10307) makes it a crime for anyone to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote.” While this has been applied in the past to ordinary, everyday voters in federal elections, the language does not limit it only to such voters. Electors who are casting their votes for president and vice president are also protected by Section 11b since the Electoral College is an essential part of the federal voting process. This is supported by Section 14(c) of the VRA, which says that “voting” includes “all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election.” Obviously, the votes cast by Americans on Nov. 8 will not be effective if the electors they chose are intimidated from casting their votes in the Electoral College.

Federal law (3 U.S.C. §7) requires electors to cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, which this year is Dec. 19. These are recorded as “certificates of vote,” signed, sealed, and delivered by December 28 to the president of the Senate and the archivist of the United States (3 U.S.C. §11). Congress is required to meet on Jan. 6, 2017 in joint session to count the Electoral College votes (3 U.S.C. §15).

The Dec. 19 deadline for the electors to cast their votes is less than three weeks away, which makes it essential that the Justice Department act immediately — and very publicly — to deter and stop these threats and this intimidation. Yet the website of the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs contains no announcement of an investigation into these threats. Moreover, we can be pretty certain that if investigators had actually contacted any of the threatened electors, it would have been reported in the press by now. The obvious conclusion is that the Justice Department has done nothing to enforce Section 11b against those who have tried to intimidate and who have threatened electors with bodily harm if they vote for Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, that’s not surprising. After nearly eight years of operation, the Obama administration has yet to file a single Section 11b case. Indeed, shortly after Mr. Obama entered the Oval Office, his Justice Department essentially dismissed almost all of a pending, high-profile Section 11b case concerning voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the Civil Rights Division had the open-and-shut case dismissed because its “progressive” new leaders did not believe the Voting Rights Act should be used against black defendants to protect white voters. This radical position ignores the fact that the law is race-neutral and protects all voters.

Seriously, if Hillary Clinton had won and Donald Trump supporters were threatening Clinton electors with bodily injury, does anyone doubt that the Justice Department would have acted immediately to enforce Section 11b?

Making threats and attempting to intimidate electors is as anti-democratic as it gets. The U.S. Justice Department, which is charged with protecting all voters, should act to quash this outrage immediately. Failure to do so will just be further evidence that this Justice Department does not believe in equal protection under the law. (For more from the author of “Threatening Electors Violates Federal Law. So Why Isn’t Loretta Lynch Doing Anything About It?” please click HERE)

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