World leaders link arms at the Paris anti-terror rally on January 11, 2014. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stands at the far right of the front row. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

His Excellency, François Hollande

Dear Mr. President,

First, I wish to express my deep condolences over the killing of innocent citizens in the recent terror attacks in Paris.

Second, I want to apologize to Your Excellency for not revealing my true identity. After you read my letter, you will realize why people like me are afraid to reveal their real identity.

I decided to write to you this letter after hearing my president, Mahmoud Abbas, declare that you had invited him to attend the anti-terror rally in Paris earlier this week.

Like many Palestinians, I see President Abbas's participation in a rally against terrorism and assaults on freedom of speech as an act of hypocrisy -- a condition that is not alien to Palestinian Authority leaders.

In fact, many Palestinians nearly fell off their chairs upon seeing their president march in the front row of a rally in your capital, in protest against terrorism and assaults on freedom of the media.

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Firefighters work at the offices of the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper in Hamburg, Germany, which was attacked by arsonists on January 11. (Image source: Tagesschau video screenshot)

The offices of a German newspaper that republished satirical cartoons from Charlie Hebdo, a French magazine known for lampooning Islam, have been hit by arsonists.

No one was hurt in the attack on the Hamburger Morgenpost, which occurred in the early morning hours of January 11 and caused only minor damage.

Although police arrested two individuals in connection with the incident, their identities have not yet been released to the public. But German police said they are "working under the assumption" that the attack was connected to the decision by the paper, also known as MOPO, to republish cartoons spoofing Mohammed on its front page on January 8, as an act of solidarity with the attack on the journalists of Charlie Hebdo.

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Turkish MP Ali Sahin (left) claims the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris was "staged like a movie scene." Turkey's top Muslim cleric, Professor Mehmet Gormez (right), thinks someone else carried out the Paris attacks and put the blame on Muslims.

Turkey cannot be serious about fighting Islamist extremism. In the first place, Turkey's leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, does not believe "Islamic terror" exists.

More recently, Erdogan even fabricated an acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL]: "Deas." He simply took the terror organization's Arabic acronym, Daesh, took out the word "Islamic" from, it and created "Deas." Last week, the Turkish military HQ and Foreign Ministry started to refer to ISIL as "Deas" on their web pages.

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• Read Ahmed Vanya's essay "Beautifying Islam"

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Brandeis University, like many other academic institutions, is experiencing a wave of vicious, irrational and extremist hatred of Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, and Zionism, which is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. On many campuses, anti-Israel zealots among the faculty often misuse the classroom to promote bigotry, hate speech and extremism. Much of their venom is directed not only against Israel, but also against Western democratic values, and especially the United States. These hateful attitudes often influence young students who identify with popular radical professors. Sometimes the students come to the university with these views already formed.

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Fatah's image from its official Facebook page, celebrating their killings of Jews.

The two Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah, are once again proving that when it comes to terrorism, they are masters of double-talk, saying one thing for the international community, which has so recently been good to them, while at home practicing the opposite. Mahmoud Abbas's denunciation of the Paris terror attacks and his decision to participate in the anti-terrorism rally in the French capital is also a sign of the ongoing hypocrisy and double standards of both Fatah and Hamas.

Hamas should be the last to denounce assaults on journalists and free speech. Its security forces in the Gaza Strip continue to arrest and intimidate Palestinian journalists on a regular basis.

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The funeral procession for the victims of the 2011 Uludere/Roboski massacre in Turkey.

What happens if an army kills Turkish civilians? It seems to depend on which army does the killing.

On May 31, 2010, the Israeli Defense Forces raided the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish vessel leading a flotilla in order to "end the illegal Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip."

During the raid, nine Turkish activists lost their lives due to what later Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted were "operational errors." (A United Nations-sponsored investigation known as the U.N. Palmer report later determined Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip to be legal, but stated that the "decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable.")

In response, Turkey downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel and threatened to isolate the Jewish state in an international campaign. Since then, Turkish-Israeli relations have never normalized.

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French police storm the HyperCacher Jewish supermarket in Paris, as hostages flee the store, Friday, December 9.

A seemingly required inclusion in most reports on the recent mass murder in Paris was the rhetorical question posed by reporters has been: "Will these events invite a wave of anti-Muslim incidents"? Since these Islam-inspired murders, however, there have been only a few anti-Muslim actions -- all against property.

Under-reported, however, was how rapidly the assault against Charlie Hebdo migrated into an anti-Jewish mini-pogrom in the heart of Paris. What did shoppers in a kosher market, four of whom were slaughtered, have to do with the cartoon images of Mohammad? Nothing. But the assault on the HyperCacher Jewish kosher supermarket has a lot to do with the true nature of Islamic militancy.

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Raif Badawi and his children.

His first 50 lashes were administered Friday. After the noon prayers, outside the mosque, Saudi writer and blogger Raif Badawi, 30, received a sentence perhaps worse than death. Accused of "insulting Islam," he is to receive 1000 lashes: 50 per week for 20 weeks -- nearly half a year. "The lashing order says Raif should 'be lashed very severely,'" a twitter notice read. "If they lash him again next week we do not know if he is going to survive. He has no medical assistance," another notice said.

After that, he is to spend ten years in prison and pay a fine of $266,000. If he ever leaves prison, his life will have been destroyed -- by voyeurs as sexually twisted as those of ancient Rome.

His wife and three children have been given asylum in Canada. Her family has filed for divorce on the grounds of his supposed apostasy.

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Shama Bibi (left) and Sajjad Maseeh, a Christian couple and parents of four children, were burned to death by a Muslim lynch mob in Pakistan because of a false blasphemy accusation.

Both in the Islamic world and the Western world, Muslims continued to attack and slaughter Christians.

In Pakistan, "A mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily, according to family members who witnessed the attack," reported NBC News:

Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday. Their legs were also broken so they couldn't run away.

"They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire," he said. "And then they threw them inside the furnace."

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Palestinian Authority riot police clash with protesting women in Hebron, October 2014.

As Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pursues his efforts to convince the international community to support the establishment of a Palestinian state, his Palestinian Authority [PA] and Hamas continue to show disregard and contempt for human rights.

Both the PA and Hamas know that they can continue to violate the human rights of their people because the international community simply does not care about Palestinians who are being targeted by their own governments.

The international community cares about human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip only when Israel could be held responsible.

The same applies to most foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Arab conflict in general, and Palestinian affairs in particular. They too prefer to look the other way when Palestinians complain of human rights violations by the PA and Hamas.

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The tweet came in: "Urgent: It is confirmed that #RaifBadawi will be lashed tomorrow. The lashing order says Raif should 'be lashed very severely.'"

More on Raif Badawi can be found in "Eroticized Violence, Savage Justice in Saudi Arabia," by Valentina Colombo, published by the Gatestone Institute on July 7, 2014 (excerpted below):

Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger, has been sentenced to 1000 lashes, ten years in jail and a fine of $270,000 for a blog regarded by Saudi Arabia's regime as insulting Islam.

"My commitment is…to reject any repression in the name of religion…a goal that we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way." — Raif Badawi

Badawi was condemned, according to Amnesty International, for having co-founded a website, "Saudi Arabian Liberals," and for having written and publishing on it his blog and other writings, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, -- as well as for other "offenses to Islamic precepts.

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Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor and publisher of Charlie Hebdo, who was murdered yesterday along with many of his colleagues, is shown here in front of the magazine's former offices, just after they were firebombed in November 2011.

Wednesday's massacre at the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo was not just a barbaric act of jihadist violence. It was also a test for the West and for the freedom of speech in the West. It is a test that we all have been failing.

Those of us who have proposed that all Western -- and in particular European -- news outlets should multilaterally publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have been greeted in return with a terrified and terrifyingly self-conscious silence. The papers and broadcasters do not want to do it. Last time they refused to republish the cartoons, from Denmark's Jyllands Posten, they said it was because the cartoons were from a "right wing" newspaper. This time they refuse to republish cartoons from a "left-wing" newspaper. It does not matter what the politics are -- it is not about the politics, it is about the cartoons. The sooner the press at least has the guts to admit this, the better.

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Hezbollah combat units, battle-hardened from fighting in the Syrian civil war, now have improved capabilities to deploy against Israel.

Despite Israel's deterrence, the risk of an inadvertent clash between Israel and Hezbollah is rising

The new year holds many new dangers and few opportunities, as Israel's two near enemies, Hezbollah in Lebanon on its northern front and Hamas in Gaza on its west, continue their large-scale armament programs, and prepare for a future day when they will fight another war with Israel.

Although neither Hezbollah nor Hamas has an interest in sparking a war with Israel any time soon -- when they stand to suffer widespread, lasting, and crippling damage from any such clash -- both are nevertheless preparing in earnest.

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Steven J. Rosen says the rational choice for Israel and the Palestinian leadership is to return to the pursuit of common interests through cooperation. Above, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) meets with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem, Israel, on September 15, 2010. (Image source: U.S. State Dept.)

In response to Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas's latest diplomatic offensive at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court [ICC], Israel's security cabinet is to meet this week to decide on possible measures to take.

Israel has floated a number of possible countermeasures. It seems to be considering, among other legal actions, lawsuits against Hamas and the PA for war crimes that they have committed.

The United States, for its part, has threatened to withhold funding from the PA; and Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) threatened to withhold US funding from the UN if it attempts to impose the terms of a Palestinian statehood.

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