By Phyllis Chesler

Before dawn Monday, four suicide bombers killed five and wounded at
least a dozen in the Lebanese Christian town of al-Qaa. Later that
night, as townspeople prepared to bury their dead, four more suicide
bombers hit.

The attacks underscored just how endangered are Christians who live
in today’s Muslim world. As the United States debates how many Mideast
refugees to accept and who should get priority, the answer is staring us
in the face: Those most in need of refuge are Christians and Yazidis
who live among Muslims.

On June 19, a suicide bomber killed three people as he detonated
himself at a memorial to massacred Christians in Qumishi, Syria. On June
9, a Pakistani Muslim mob badly beat a man merely because he was a
Christian. On June 5, two people were killed when Islamists targeted a
church with rockets in Syria; the same day, a Christian man was hacked
to death at his shop by Islamists in Bangladesh. On June 2, in Nigeria,
Muslim youths beheaded a Christian woman for allegedly insulting
Mohammed.

Beirut (AFP) – The Lebanese army
said Thursday it had foiled attacks planned by the Islamic State
jihadist group on a tourist site and a crowded area, arresting five
“terrorists”.

“Military
intelligence services have foiled two terrorist operations prepared by
Daesh that would have targeted an important tourism site and a crowded
area,” the army said in a statement, using an Arabic name for IS. It
was not clear when the arrests took place, but the military official
said the attacks were to have been carried out “10 days ago”.

They
would have targeted “the Casino du Liban as well as a crowded area,
like a shopping centre, the southern suburbs of Beirut or indeed the
(downtown) neighbourhoods of Hamra or Ashrafiyeh”, the official said.

He
said “suicide bombers and armed men” were to have carried out the
attacks, and added that investigations would follow on other possible
cells and potential targets.

catholicherald.co.uk

Destitute refugees now comprise half the people living in Lebanon,
Cardinal Bechara Rai, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, has
said during his visit to New York. He added that refugees are attractive targets for terrorist
recruiting, and their continued presence threatens to drown Lebanon’s
identity, he said.

Cardinal Rai spoke yesterday at Catholic Near East Welfare
Association headquarters in New York while in the United States for a
pastoral visit. A permanent solution to the refugee crises throughout the Middle East
requires lasting peace and the repatriation of refugees, not
resettlement to third countries, he added. “A political solution to the conflicts ought to be the top priority,
and a just, global and permanent peace should be established as soon as
possible,” the Lebanese cardinal said.

“We would ask nations to help refugees where they are; but it’s not
enough to help, they should also stop wars, because every day we are at
war, we’re creating new refugees,” Cardinal Rai said. “We must find a
just, global and lasting peace for refugees, repatriate them and help
them rebuild their lives and businesses.”

By Theguardian.com

The Lebanese government has warned of a heightened terrorist threat
after eight suicide bombers attacked a Christian village on the border
with Syria, in the latest spillover of its conflict into Lebanon.

The village of al-Qaa was targeted on Monday in two waves of suicide
attacks that killed five people. The first group of bombers attacked
before dawn and the second later at night, two of them blowing
themselves up near a church. Security officials believe Islamic State militants were behind the attack. There has been no claim of responsibility.

In reference to the number of assailants, the Lebanese government
said the attack and the unfamiliar way it was carried out represented a
new phase of “confrontation between the Lebanese state and evil
terrorism”. The prime minister, Tammam Salam, “expressed his fear that what
happened in Qaa is the start of a new wave of terrorist operations in
different areas of Lebanon”, the information minister, Ramzi Jreij, said
in televised comments after a cabinet meeting.

By Mona Helmi – english.aawsat.com

Tripoli has been linked over the past years with conservative
movements and many extremist cells that were dismantled in northern
regions like Akkar and Daniye. The Islamic scene in the city has long
been influenced by the local complicated politics and the adversity
toward al-Assad regime, which led to many terroristic attacks against
the so-called Hezbollah that supports Assad’s troops in Syria.

Speaking about the conservative Islamic movements in Lebanon, Dr.
Abdul Ghani Imad, expert in Islamic movements’ affairs explains that
Sheikh Salem al-Shahhal established the first conservative Islamic group
during the forties. His movement was missionary and aimed to amend the
wrong practices of Muslims. On the political side, Shahhal didn’t have a
clear position. He stood for the parliamentary elections in 1972, but
he withdrew in favor of the “Jamaa Islamiya” (Islamic Group).

Many other extremist schools emerged in the region, like the school
of Salem el-Rafei, who was among the first voices calling for “Jihad” in
Syria, Bilal Dekmak , Sheikh Nabil Raheem or Sheikh Mohammad Khidr,
along with radical Islamic movements like “Al-Tawhid” (Islamic
Unification Movement) established by Sheikh Saeed Shaaban.

By sarah el deeb, associated press

A prominent dual British-Lebanese journalist who hosted a talk show
critical of the government of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi
arrived in Beirut on Tuesday after authorities in Cairo briefly detained
her and then deported her, her lawyer said.

Lilian Daoud, a former BBC reporter, could not immediately be reached
for comment. Her lawyer, Zyad el-Elaimy, wrote on his Twitter account
that her first comment after landing in Beirut was that she will
challenge the decision to deport her.

There was no formal explanation for Daoud’s deportation from Egypt.
An Egyptian security official, speaking Monday on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said
Daoud’s residency permit expired after her contract with the private
ONTV station in Egypt was terminated.

“It’s the first time someone is deported in this fashion in Egypt,”
el-Elaimy told The Associated Press, speaking by telephone from Cairo.
He said even criminals are asked to leave, not taken from their homes.

BEIRUT
(AP) — Lebanese troops detained 103 Syrians for illegal entry into the
country in a security sweep Tuesday, a day after a series of deadly
bombings struck a village near the Syrian border, the military said.

The
government warned of a mounting challenge in tiny Lebanon, which abuts
the war-torn Syria, underlining the magnitude of Monday’s attack that
saw nine bombings, eight of them from suicide attackers, strike in the
small Christian village of Qaa, killing five people.

“The
attack on the Lebanese national security and the unfamiliar manner in
which it was executed usher in a new kind of phase in the state’s
confrontation with the dark forces of terrorism,” a Cabinet statement
said.

The
bombings triggered fear and panic among Qaa’s residents and a deepening
sense of foreboding in Lebanon, which has grappled for over five years
with spillovers from Syria’s civil war.

By Reuters:  Eight suicide bombers
attacked a Lebanese Christian village on Monday, killing five people and
wounding dozens more, in the latest violent spillover of the five-year-old
Syrian war into Lebanon. Security sources said they believed Islamic State was
responsible for the bombings in the village of Qaa on Lebanon’s border with
Syria, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A first wave of attacks involved
four suicide bombers who struck after 4 a.m., killing five people, all
civilians.  The first bomber blew himself
up after being confronted by a resident, with the other three detonating their
bombs one after the other as people arrived at the scene. The Lebanese army
said four soldiers were among the wounded.

A second series of attacks,
involving at least four bombers, took place in the evening as residents were
preparing the funerals of those killed earlier. Two of the four bombers blew
themselves up outside a church, security sources said. Nobody was killed.
Medics put the number of injured at 15. “It is clear from the pace of
explosions that we have entered an episode from hell,” Wael Abu Faour, the
health minister, told Reuters.

by dailystar.com.lb Hanan Khaled| The Daily Star

Lebanese politicians Monday denounced the quadruple suicide attack
that killed at least six people and wounded 19 in a northeastern Lebanon
border town at dawn, expressing solidarity with its residents. Four Lebanese soldiers were among the wounded in the suspected ISIS bombings in the predominately Christian village of Al-Qaa.

“Once
again the hand of evil and disloyalty extends to Lebanon by targeting
innocent civilians,” Defense Minister Samir Moqbel said in a statement. He
emphasized that all security agencies in Lebanon “are ready to stand
united to defend the land of the nation, to confront the terrorists and
to pursue and foil their plans to ignite sedition in the country.”

Foreign
Minister Gebran Bassil told reporters after he inspected the site of
the attacks that the village has been “defending Lebanon for the past
few years… Al-Qaa has been repelling terror attacks targeting the
country.” Bassil warned that the threats posed by the attack
shouldn’t be leniently addressed, citing previous reports that
extremists are seeking to reach Lebanon’s coastal areas to target other
countries.

“Lebanon is defending the world similarly to how Al-Qaa is defending Lebanon,” he added.

ISIS
has been seeking to declare an Islamic emirate in Lebanon to serve as a
geographical extension of the group by setting up cells in the northern
areas of Tripoli, Dinnieh, Akkar and a part of the Bekaa Valley.

“It’s
an open war with terrorists… We shouldn’t forget that they are still
occupying a part of our land [on the outskirts of Arsal],” the FM said.