A bus ticket for Bulgaria, and then jihad

(SOFIA) - When Bulgarian police on January 1 arrested Frenchman Fritz-Joly Joachin, a self-confessed "old friend" of the Charlie Hebdo attackers, he was not the first suspected Islamist trying to cross the EU's south-eastern border into Turkey.

Indeed, Bulgarian Interior Minister Veselin Vuchkov says, "hundreds" of Europeans have travelled to Bulgaria to traverse the 275-kilometre (170-mile) border into Turkey, some then crossing into Syria to join Islamic State (IS) militants.

The most popular route for the several thousand European Union citizens believed to have joined the ranks of IS has been to fly to Turkey and then cross the border into Syria.

But with Turkish airports tightening up controls, going by land via Bulgaria, often by bus, has become more attractive, alarmed European officials say.

"With surveillance of arrivals at Istanbul airport being stepped up, this (Bulgarian) channel is being used more and more," a French anti-terrorism official in Paris said on condition of anonymity.

"Crossing the Bulgaria-Turkey border is relatively easy, particularly at night, when it's winter, it's snowing..."

Already in 2012 there were signs that extremists were using this route with the arrest in Bulgaria of Flavien Moreau, the first Frenchman to be convicted of fighting with jihadists, as he tried to return to Syria.

But the case of Joachin, 28, who admits knowing the Kouachi brothers -- who shot dead 12 people in an attack on the Paris offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7 -- showed how easy leaving Bulgaria can be.

Bulgarian police only arrested the Muslim convert of Haitian origin -- who denies being an extremist -- because of a European warrant based on claims by his wife that he was kidnapping their three-year-old son.

Only after the Paris attacks, six days after his arrest, did the French authorities issue a second warrant, this time for alleged membership of a "terrorist" organisation. He was extradited this week.

Moreover, his three travelling companions on the bus, who also allegedly knew the Kouachis, were allowed to continue their journey. And one of them, Cheikhou Diakhaby, should have set alarm bells ringing.

Diakhaby had spent seven years behind bars in Iraq after being captured while fighting against US forces in 2004 and was sent back to France in 2011. Turkish police managed to pick him up however on January 2 -- on the Syrian border.

- Tighter controls -

Bulgaria's focus until now has been trying to deal with people coming the other way, erecting a barrier topped by razor wire to stem the flow of thousands of refugees from Syria entering the country.

But lately, and in particular since the Paris attacks, Bulgarian authorities have turned their attention to people leaving the country -- and to EU citizens who may be returning after fighting alongside IS.

In recent weeks senior officials including US Secretary of State John Kerry, British counterpart Philip Hammond and EU counter-terrorism chief Gilles de Kerchove have visited Sofia with improved security cooperation high on the agenda.

Bus operators say that their vehicles are attracting more attention from customs officers at the main border crossing point. Passengers' passports are now routinely verified and cross-checked with the EU's Schengen database.

"A few months ago they started scanning all buses," said a manager at Metro, the biggest operator of buses from Sofia to Istanbul. Previously this only happened if customs officers were suspicious.

But the problem remains that the Bulgarian authorities say that they are not given enough information by other EU countries, and can only intercept people when they are alerts about them or an arrest warrant.

"Many hundreds of citizens of the EU, with absolutely valid documents and without any security alerts about them, can easily cross Bulgaria's territory," said Vuchkov, the interior minister.

Women and jihad – from Algeria to present day Syria

Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, Carnegie Middle East Centre

30 January 2015 at 15:40

Much has been made in the media of the women jihadists of IS, but this kind of violence by women is not unprecedented and is comparable to the Algerian experience of the 1990s.

Last June, the Islamic State (IS) announced the creation of an all-female brigade called Al Khansa, active in Al Anbar province (Iraq) and in Raqqa (Syria). The brigade comes after the creation of the Free Syrian Army's (FSA) women brigades baptised Oumana Aïcha and Banat al Walid, active in Homs and Aleppo.

This news has made headlines, as if violence by women were an unprecedented, almost unusual fact. Public reaction to the existence of those brigades lies in society's perception of women as innocent victims. The word "executioner", for example, is generally not associated with females.

But violence by women is a reality. Women have often played deadly roles in conflicts, even as non-combatants. The reasons for this are varied, but in looking at conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa in modern history, one can see that there are certain similarities between the reasons for which women are joining the Islamic State and the Free Syrian Army and the Algerian experience of the 1990s.

During the Algerian conflict in that period, hundreds of women first joined the Islamic Salvation Front, and later, armed groups like the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)—one of the first groups to train units exclusively comprised of women. Then, as now, jihadist women often joined as first-aid providers and nurses, but their roles evolved according to the circumstances and strategies of their organisations.

In Algeria, women in the field passed from being nurses to jailers (of the sabaya captives) to fighters on the frontlines. After being trained in the use of firearms and learning different fighting techniques, they actively participated in sabotage, assassinations, and fake checkpoint missions, and landed key positions within their organisations.

This was, for instance, the case of Lalla Fatma or Djabri Kheira, two jihadists in a group active in Medea in 1994. These women and their female brigades carried out many massacres (Magta' Lazrag, Douar Bedarna and Douar of Nechachba). Others, such as the women nicknamed "the ear cutters" by the survivors of the Bentalha slaughter (1997), participated in the massacres by despoiling their victims of their gold, snatching teeth and cutting off fingers and ears in order to obtain jewellery.

Taking this experience as a reference, jihadist women from the FSA and the IS who are currently on first-aid and nursing missions are likely to be called upon to play more active roles in the future. Two or three brigades are already active in the armed struggle, such as Banat al Walid.

But why do women become jihadists? The motivations are varied. One motivation is economic, as joining armed organisations secures women a livelihood. The Islamic State's female jihadists earn around $200 per month, which is a substantial sum under the current conditions in Syria and Iraq.

There are also those who join for ideological reasons. A large number of these evoke their desire to "glorify the word of God on earth" or to demonstrate "their love for God and the desire of raising the banner of Islam". Women also join by "compromise": after "serving" the armed group, they are compromised and are incapable of backtracking.

The progress of an individual in an armed group is gradual and usually slow. It begins with several small tests that eventually lead to a more important mission. These steps are usually non-violent. This is the case, for example for Um Omar, leader of Katibet Oumana Aisha in Aleppo, in the Salah Eddine neighbourhood:

"I started by going to demonstrations, and then I participated in nursing the injured. Later I helped to reopen schools before I participated in the armed struggle. Today I am a chief of katiba".

Some of them participate in armed struggle with the aim of rectifying a grievance of which they have been a victim. Carrying weapons enables them to act, and to avoid being subjected to potential or proven aggressions such as rape. A combatant from Katibat Banat Al Walid in Homs stated: "Our main goal is to protect ourselves against the fierceness of Assad groups."

Familial ties also lead to the active participation of women. Forced or consensual marriage additionally helps in consolidating alliances, making desertion more difficult.

Then and now, these women, who not only offer moral support, but also combatant support in the field, contribute—directly or indirectly— to an industry of death, as they strive for the inexorable march of jihadism, and the extermination of those they see as "impious" and "apostates".

 

The author is a research analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center. She is a political scientist with expertise in jihadism, political violence, extremist violence, and terrorism, with a focus on Algeria.

En Turquie, la traque des candidats au jihad en route vers la Syrie

Dans un grand aéroport de Turquie, à la porte d'un avion en provenance d'un pays du Moyen-Orient. Deux policiers en civil ont pris position en bout de passerelle pour un contrôle de routine, à l'affût d'apprentis jihadistes en transit pour la Syrie.

Des personnes attendent pour embarquer à l'aéroport d'Istanbul, le 29 janvier 2015 - Ozan Kose AFP

Dans un grand aéroport de Turquie, à la porte d'un avion en provenance d'un pays du Moyen-Orient. Deux policiers en civil ont pris position en bout de passerelle pour un contrôle de routine, à l'affût d'apprentis jihadistes en transit pour la Syrie.

Depuis des mois, le gouvernement islamo-conservateur d'Ankara est sous le feu des critiques de ses alliés, qui lui reprochent sa mansuétude, pour ne pas dire sa complaisance, dans la lutte contre les filières qui garnissent les effectifs des combattants du groupe Etat islamique (EI).

Les autorités d'Ankara rétorquent faire le «maximum» pour intercepter les étrangers en route pour le front syrien. Piquées au vif, elles ont entrouvert à l'AFP, à titre exceptionnel et sous conditions, la porte de leur dispositif de sécurité.

Aujourd'hui, la cible est donc ce biréacteur venu tout droit d'une capitale arabe. Au milieu de ses passagers, deux hommes attirent aussitôt l'œil des policiers.

Premières questions. Oui, ils ont un billet de retour. Leur destination finale? Adana, au sud de la Turquie, pas très loin de la frontière syrienne... Les deux «suspects» sont illico conduits au poste sous bonne escorte.

La plupart de ses recrues rejoignent l'EI via la Turquie, qui partage 1.300 km de frontière avec la Syrie et l'Irak. Elles débarquent à Istanbul, gagnent en avion ou en bus une ville du sud du pays, d'où elles passent illégalement sur le territoire syrien.

Il a beau le nier catégoriquement, le régime turc est accusé de fermer les yeux sur ces «autoroutes du Jihad» et même d'avoir longtemps soutenu l'EI, convaincu qu'il pouvait faire tomber rapidement le président syrien Bachar al-Assad, sa bête noire.

- Des trous dans le filet -

Jusqu'à ce qu'Européens et Américains tapent du poing sur la table. Alors, à l'automne dernier, les Turcs ont annoncé un durcissement des contrôles à leurs frontières. Aux principales entrées sur leur sol, ils ont installés des «centres d'analyse du risque», chargés de détecter les islamistes radicaux désireux de rallier le drapeau noir du jihad.

C'est dans un de ces centres que les deux suspects du jour sont conduits.

«On repère nos +clients+ dès la passerelle, on contrôle leurs papiers puis, si nécessaire, on les emmène au centre d'analyse des risques pour un interrogatoire approfondi», explique un officier de sécurité sous le couvert de l'anonymat.

Depuis leur création, ce dispositif a permis d'isoler 1.500 passagers douteux. Un tiers a été renvoyé dans son pays d'origine, assure l'officier.

Outre ces contrôles aléatoires, les services turcs affirment disposer d'une liste de 10.000 noms de jihadistes présumés déclarés persona non grata, selon le chiffre rendu public cette semaine par le porte-parole du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Tanju Bilgiç.

Même resserrées, les mailles du filet laissent encore passer quelques gros poissons. Ainsi Hayat Boumeddiene, la compagne d'un des trois auteurs des attentats qui ont fait 17 morts au début du mois à Paris. La Française, a pu rallier la Syrie le 8 janvier en traversant le territoire turc sans être inquiétée.

Même si Paris a signalé tardivement la jeune femme, cet épisode a embarrassé Ankara, qui s'est défendu en mettant le cause le manque de coopération des services français.

- Pays exportateurs -

«Dans la passé, le partage de renseignements (avec la France) était très pauvre», déplore l'officier de sécurité turc. Et même si les attentats de Paris lui ont donné un coup de fouet, «il n'est pas encore suffisant», ajoute-t-il.

A ceux qui les accusent de ne pas s'engager assez contre les filières jihadistes, les autorités turques répondent que la principale responsabilité de ce combat doit reposer sur les épaules des pays «exportateurs» de jihadistes.

«Les contrôles de passeports et les mesures prises dans leurs aéroports ne sont pas suffisants», a répété il y a quelques jours le chef de la diplomatie turque, Mevlüt Cavusoglu, «ces Etats doivent faire encore plus».

L'officier de sécurité ne se fait pas prier pour illustrer de quelques exemples récents les ratés de ses collègues occidentaux. Comme celui de ce Français de 33 ans intercepté à Istanbul en juin dernier avec un bagage rempli de livres religieux. Ou encore de ce Norvégien qui voyageait avec des chargeurs d'arme à feu et des jumelles.

«Comment est-ce qu'un individu qui transporte du matériel militaire et veut rejoindre Daesh (l'acronyme arabe du groupe EI) peut passer inaperçu à l'aéroport de son pays de départ ?», s'indigne l'homme des «services» turc, «c'est à ce pays de trouver une solution».

Comme 1.150 autres avec lui, selon le dernier recensement turc, ce Norvégien très équipé a été expulsé par le premier avion.

Malgré les questions insistantes de l'AFP, les autorités turques ont refusé de préciser le sort réservé aux deux suspects interpellés jeudi à leur descente d'avion

Iraqi Kurdistan’s Yazidi Affairs Directorate denies pregnancy among women captives released by Islamic State

ERBIL-Hewler, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’,— Yazidi Affairs Directorate in Kurdistan Regional Government denied that there are cases of abortion or pregnancy among women who were detained by Islamic State group IS, as pointed out to Kurdistan procedures of members of the community.

IS had kidnapped hundreds of girls and women from different ethnic groups, especially Yazidi Kurdish girls during the invasion of the north and west of the country last summer.

Militants have sold the women and girls on IS elements in slavery markets to take them as sex slaves, but some of them managed to escape from the grip of militants.

Thousands of Kurdish Yazidi women and girls have been forced to marry or been sold into sexual slavery by the IS jihadists. Photo: SN

 This has led a number of members of Kurdistan Parliament to move towards the enactment of a law that give permission to perform exceptional abortions, without exposure to prosecution, especially that Iraqi law prohibits doing this type of operation.

Some press reports have talked about the pregnancy for some women who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of IS jihadists, during the period of their detention.

For that , a group of parliamentarians interested in human rights in Kurdistan region initiated to work on wording of the draft law that provides exceptional law for those women having abortions.

The MP in Kurdistan Parliament from the Iraqi Turkmen Front, Aiden Maroof said that 62 Yazidi and Turkoman woman were raped by IS militants.

However, the general manager of the Yazidi affairs in Kurdistan Regional Government, Khairy Bozani said, that “the debate on this topic has no credibility and we do not accept it.”

He said that 321 were women released or escaped from IS and there is no pregnancy among women raped by terrorists, but he also said that there was one woman was carrying a fetus among the detained women and made sure from her condition of being pregnant before her abduction.

“We as a society have habits and Kurdish traditions that are very conservative towards issues related to honor, what has been carried out by IS militants of assault and rape against Yazidi women and other Iraqi women, aimed at smearing the sacred values. Therefore, we do not accept more than talking about it and this talk have no basis. ”

Reports which indicated that some Yazidi families refused the return of their captive daughters by IS, Bozani said, “This is ridiculous and unfounded. We talked with most of these families and they showed opposite of what the international reports have talked about.”

The IS group has extended its control on most Kurdish parts of  Yazidi Sinjar (Shingal) district (124 km west of Mosul) on August 3, 2014 which led thousands of Kurdish families to flee to Mount Sinjar, where they were trapped in it and suffered from significant lack of water and food, killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis hundreds buried alive, and countless acts of rape, kidnapping and enslavement are perpetuated against Yazidi women.

Hundreds and possibly thousands of Kurdish Yazidi women and girls have been forced to marry or been sold into sexual slavery by the IS jihadists, according to Amnesty International.

Kurdish forces have recovered in recent months, the majority of areas which were lost in the summer, including most of Sinjar district which is a stronghold of the Yezidi areas.

On the number of the Yazidis abducted by IS , Bozani said, “According to our estimates, more than 3500 people are held by IS and distributed on their presence between Iraq and Syria.”

On the Kurdistan Region’s actions against Yazidis, specifically families of the victims, General Manager of Yazidis Affairs said that, “we are going to register martyrs in the Ministry of Martyrs and ensure the treatment of the wounded.”

Yazidis are religious group most of its members live near Mosul and Sinjar Mountains in Iraq, an estimated 600 thousand people, and smaller groups living in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Georgia and Armenia.

According to the researchers, the Yazidi religion is of the ancient Kurdish 

The Curious Status of South African Jews under Apartheid

Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family by Roger Cohen, review: 'brave and enlightened'

Miranda Seymour admires a turbulent history of a Jewish family in which the Zagare genocide looms large

In 2012, Roger Cohen returned to the Lithuanian village in which – 70 years after the mass slaughter of Zagare’s Jewish population – a plaque was finally to be unveiled. That commemoration offered the first public acknowledgement that local Lithuanians had collaborated with their German overlords in this hideous massacre. Among the 625 children who died just outside Zagare, the tiniest had their heads smashed against trees in deep woods. Here, a mass grave was intended to bury all evidence of the atrocity. Ever practical, the killers had noted that head-smashing would save on ammunition costs. 

Cohen’s grandmother Polly grew up in Zagare. Settled with her family in South Africa in the earliest years of the 20th century, Polly preserved innocent memories of summertime walks through the Lithuanian forests. But she never returned to her homeland, and it’s unclear how much she would have known of the horrors that later took place, in October 1941, deep within the enchanted woodlands of her childhood. 

Roger Cohen is an eminent journalist and a wonderful storyteller. Linked to Lithuania through his forebears, he places the Zagare genocide at the centre of his three-generational history of a Jewish family that chose different homelands in which to bury or, for those who moved to Israel, confront a past whose silent hold upon them could never, Cohen argues, be loosened. 

South Africa, as Cohen is quick to indicate, offered a persecuted and displaced people one distinct advantage. “Thank God for the blacks,” was the favourite saying of a Cohen elder. “If not for them, it would be us.” Jews, back in the heady early years of mining for gold, could make a fortune in the Cape. They could transform themselves, emulating the old-fashioned splendours of an English squire. Cohen’s Lithuanian grandfather, Isaac Michel, founded the chain of general stores OK Bazaars, built himself a chateau and created a lavish country estate, complete with imported English gardener and two Irish setters. The African servants who waited on Michel’s family at table – their black hands sheathed within white gloves – were housed in small concrete boxes behind their employer’s handsome abode. 

Back in the Thirties, the benevolent welcome of Jewish refugees to South Africa became tempered by the fear that they would grow too populous. By the Fifties, with the insidious expansion of apartheid, attitudes had changed. The Jews, it was perceived, would side with the whites, bolstering the supremacists’ hold over the country they had so richly exploited. When Rabbi Ungar, arriving in South Africa from London in 1955, remarked upon the similarity under apartheid to the ways in which Jews had once been banned from stores, benches and parks back in his native Budapest, his outspoken words earned the would-be reformer a swift expulsion. Roger Cohen’s parents, a brilliant young doctor and his lively, liberal-minded wife, left for England shortly afterwards, governed by ethical principle, but also by fear of what lay ahead for those who seemed to endorse apartheid’s brutal laws. 

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June Cohen, the author’s mother, was 28 when she arrived in London in 1957. The following year, with her husband’s consent, she received a course of ECT in a grim hospital that sounds like something out of Gormenghast. Early ECT treatment applied harsh electrically charged jolts to the most fragile of troubled psyches. Occasionally, such therapy worked. In June Cohen’s case, it did not. 

His mother’s dreadful struggle with manic depression burns at the dark heart of this book. Cohen’s love for her is as apparent as his boundless sadness for a woman whose uncompromising devotion to her family warred against the temptation of “the cajoling voice in her ear”: the wish for death. 

June’s husband, a brilliant but emotionally uncommunicative doctor, hid anguish behind euphemisms: “somewhat euphoric” was how he once recorded the onset of a manic phase. The family, struggling for normality, was finally awed by the courage and even gaiety with which June Cohen embraced the torments of a cancer that brought a lingering death. 

Roger Cohen’s tribute to his mother is immensely moving. However, in seeking to connect her mental condition to the Jewish heritage – “the tremendous pressure of wandering, adapting, pretending, silencing and forgetting” – his book seems to miss a step. June, we learn, was one of the six children of Isaac Michel, the Lithuanian-born department store magnate. Three of the siblings became depressives; three did not. (Isaac himself suffered only, we are told, from a blind spot about marital fidelity.) The possibility is never explored that Michel’s Newcastle-born and non-Lithuanian wife may have bequeathed a genetic disorder to her children. 

A minor chord of doubt is sounded by Cohen’s decision to yoke a personal family tragedy to the author’s liberal-minded unease about whether, in Vikram Seth’s words, a chosen people have the right to decide who shall be unchosen. But on this – a topic most directly addressed when Cohen visits his Israeli relatives – The Girl from Human Street has important things to say, things that can perhaps only be said by a Jewish author. Cohen’s book is brave, honourable and enlightened. It is also beautifully written. 

The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family by Roger Cohen

304pp, Bloomsbury, Telegraph offer price: £16 (PLUS £1.95 p&p) (RRP £20, ebook £10.79). Call 0844 871 1515 or see books.telegraph.co.uk

Jewish peer considers his position on Israel

Written by Mandy Rhodes on 1 February 2015 in News

'Blue Labour' architect tells Holyrood he has found attacks on Jews hard

An influential Jewish peer and former guru to Ed Miliband has told Holyrood that he is rethinking his position on Israel following the Paris massacres in a kosher supermarket last month.
Speaking to Holyrood on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Baron Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill said that while he had never been a Zionist, he now worries about the safety of Jews living in Britain.

His comments follow the murder of journalists working at the Charlie Hebdo magazine and also of Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris. Speaking as tributes were paid across the world to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, Glasman, the architect of ‘Blue Labour’, said there was a growing tide of anti-Semitism and intolerance against Jews.
“I’ve never been a Zionist. I have always been committed to exile but this is a very difficult situation to deal with and I am rethinking lots of my previously held views on this,” he said. “With the dead Jews in France, suddenly I could see a situation in Britain where Jews are not welcome, where life will be difficult and dangerous, and so I am in the process of rethinking quite a lot of that and maybe I was too quick to think that everyone could live together as they did.  
“Britain was the only place in Europe where Jews were not killed and that is a source of my patriotism. The people of Britain ensured that my parents weren’t killed and that was drummed into me growing up. And while, I don’t like the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo much, I defend the right for people to do it.“I respect faiths and I respect people’s sensibility in relation to that. Shooting journalists at their desks and shooting Jews when they are doing their shopping, though, is fascist. 

"Britain was the only place in Europe where Jews were not killed and that is a source of my patriotism."

“The relatives that I had living in Israel were refugees from Prague and Vienna and no one else would have them after the war. Looking at that, I’m thinking, it’s weird there’s not more understanding that Jews going about their daily lives and being killed is a shocking, awful, terrible thing. People tend to say it’s complicated and that they didn’t kill Jews before Israel but it’s not like that. This is something else and really wrong, this is an attack on the conditions of Jewish life in exile. I’m absolutely committed to the common good, I am intensifying my efforts to build a broad-based politics and have been criticised for the extent of my engagement with faith communities, but these last few weeks have been hard for me and just to share that with you, I’m suddenly turning round and people are saying weird and strange things which I wouldn’t expect. There is a lot to consider here for me.”
Glasman’s comments echo those of the Jewish actress, Maureen Lipman, who has said the rise of anti-Semitism in the UK has prompted her to consider leaving the country. The Yorkshire-born actress has said she had thought about moving to New York or Israel following an increase in the number of attacks against Jews. 
A recent YouGov poll found that 54 per cent of British Jews feared they had no future in the UK and a quarter had considered leaving the country in the last two years. Another poll commissioned by YouGov found that 45 per cent of British people agreed with one of four anti-Semitic statements, while 25 per cent agreed with at least two.  

To read the full interview with Lord Glasman see tomorrow's Holyrood Magazine

https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/jewish-peer-considers-his-position-Israel

Bradford Shul appoints member of Muslim community to its council

Jani (left) and Rudi (right) at the Bradford Holocaust Memorial Day Event 27 January 2015, City Hall, Bradford.

Bradford’s Reform Synagogue has deepened its strong community relations, by including a member of the Muslim community on to its council.

After the Muslim community came to the financial rescue of the Jewish community in Bradford in 2013, A group called ‘Friends of the Synagogue’ was founded.

According to Rudi Leavor who is the chair of the Synagogue’s council, one of the close contacts made was Jani Rashid who is head of Diversity and Cohesion at Bradford education .

Leavor told the Jewish news “We thought it would be a splendid idea to co-opt Jani to the Council. When the proposal was put to him he assented immediately”, representing the Friends group.

Jani Rashid said: “I am delighted to take up this kind offer to sit on the Synagogue Council’. I am a firm believer in openness within and between communities.”

“This helps us to respect one another’s diversity and, to share in our common beliefs of decency, respect and compassion for our fellow human beings.”