Two extremist groups apparently clash in Texas

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NEED TO KNOW:

Two extremist groups have apparently clashed in Texas.

One was Pamela Geller's New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative, which exists almost exclusively to antagonize, ridicule, and spread hatred against the American Muslim community. 

Geller — in the wake of the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, a magazine based in Paris that has published depictions of the Prophet Muhammad on its covers — decided to hold an entire Muhammad cartoon-drawing competition in a suburb of Dallas on Sunday. The prize for the “best” cartoon — how this was judged is not entirely clear — was $10,000.

The other extremist group might have been the Islamic State. Two gunmen opened fire outside the competition on Sunday and managed to shoot a security guard in the leg before being killed by police. Several Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State appear to have tweeted about the attack just before it happened. Local media identified one of the shooters Monday morning as a man the FBI had been watching for suspected terror connections.

A live-stream from inside the event Sunday shows a private security guard — armed and dressed in camouflage, like he might have been securing the Green Zone in Baghdad — interrupting the festivities to warn that there had been a shooting outside. 

“Was the man a Muslim?” someone in attendance asked.  

WANT TO KNOW:

Thousands of Ethiopian Jews clashed with Israeli police on Sunday in Tel Aviv. The police responded with tear gas and water cannons. More than 60 people were wounded and 40 arrested. It was the second largest protest by the Ethiopian community in Israel in the last few days and more are expected.

The protests were first sparked by the emergence of a video showing Israeli police viciously beating an Ethiopian Israeli. Ethiopian Jews have been coming to Israel for three decades. They now number about 120,000, making them a tiny minority in the country. Many suffer from racist hostility, poverty and police harassment.

The large protests appear to have taken the Israeli government off guard. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called for some soul-searching. He said the situation was an “open wound in the heart of Israeli society.”

Another open wound in the heart of Israeli society is the treatment of non-Jewish refugees from Ethiopia's neighbors, Sudan and Eritrea. There are more than 50,000 Sudanese and Eritrean refugees living a precarious existence in Israel, writes GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Laura Dean. “They face a choice between detention, a life on the run, or returning to a country of origin that many fled in fear for their lives,” she writes.

The harsh policy toward refugees in Israel — it built a giant wall to prevent any more from getting in — is reflected in comments from the country’s political leaders. In May 2012 recently re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called refugees “a threat to the social fabric of our society, our national security, our national identity … and … our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.” A lawmaker called them “a cancer in our body.”

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

For the LGBT community in Russia, victories don't come often. But when they do, even the tiniest ones, they can be sweet. One such win came unexpectedly on Friday during a May Day march.

Russia's most vocal anti-gay rights lawmaker, Vitaly Milonov, was on the sidelines. He's the guy who called on Apple to remove gay emoticons from its latest operating system. He also authored some of Russia's most hateful legislation.

In a video, he can be seen urging nearby police to arrest LGBT activists holding rainbow flags and signs. He then starts to demand that they do. But the police, in an unusual act in Russia, hold Milonov back — even as he hurls insults at the passing crowd — allowing the march to proceed peacefully and without interruption.

Yes, this is a victory. That is the state of gay rights in Russia right now.