Saturday, January 10, 2015
Douglas Murray: The siege in a kosher shop in Paris proves why Israel needs to exist
As I write a siege is ongoing in a Kosher shop in Paris. In France, Belgium and across Europe in recent years, Jews have repeatedly been the targets of Islamist attack. They always are. Last year saw the largest upsurge of anti-Semitic hate crime on record even in the UK.Ben-Dror Yemini: The forces of darkness are winning
But it is the continent that has seen the worst and growing litany of attacks. In 2012 Mohamed Merah killed three Jewish children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse. In May last year three people were shot dead by an Islamist gunman at the Jewish museum in Brussels.
During the twentieth century Judaism on the continent of Europe was almost wiped out. In twenty-first century Europe the remaining Jews are once again the target. But from a different type of fascism and from a population who came to Europe since the Holocaust. In the last few years France has seen a larger exodus of Jews moving to Israel than any other country.
There are two questions we really need to consider at such a time. The first is, ‘Why do they always target the Jews?’. In 2008 when Mumbai was attacked, the Islamic terrorists rampaged through that great Indian city. But they specially sought out the tiny Chabad house in Mumbai and there they slaughtered the young rabbi and his wife. It is the same story everywhere. And of course the sort of people who gun down cartoonists for exercising their right to free expression will be the same people who will target Jews.
The second question is this: How dare so many Europeans still wonder why Israel needs to exist. Today Israel is the world’s only really safe haven for Jews who live in a world which cannot keep them safe, even when it wants to.
The City of Light suffered a painful terrorist attack this week. It wasn't just another terror attack; it was a terror attack aimed at the very heart and values of the free world. It was a terror attack on freedom of speech and the status of women. It wasn't a terror attack perpetrated in protest against discrimination.David Brooks: I Am Not Charlie Hebdo
It wasn't a terror attack for the sake of the rights of the Muslims. It wasn't a terror attack against unemployment or alienation. The Jihadists aren't fighting for a better world. They are fighting against anyone and anything different from them. They're fighting to establish a dark Islamic entity.
The problem is the battle is lost. They are winning. Almost a decade and a half ago, the world suffered a jarring experience – the large-scale terror attacks in the United States. There have been other large-scale terror attacks in the West too, in Madrid and London. And what has emerged since? A lot. A whole lot.
The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.Phyllis Chesler: #Je Suis Juif (I am a Jew)
Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.
Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.
Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium.
At least four, possibly five French Jewish hostages, probably women who were shopping for the Sabbath, were killed by Jihadists before the French police stormed the kosher supermarket. The male and female pair of jihadists were demanding the freedom of the Charlie Hebdo jihadists.
Simultaneously, the police also stormed the building in north Paris where the Charlie Hebdo jihadists were holding a hostage; they apparently freed that hostage and killed the terrorists.
I am launching a #Je Suis Juif hashtag, not only in honor of these latest Jewish victims, but in honor of all the Jewish victims whose deaths have met with the hashtag world’s indifference.
Douglas Murray - Charlie Hebdo on Al Jazeera (highlights)
Douglas Murray - Charlie Hebdo on WSJ
Clear language on jihad from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
The day after the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, gave one the strongest statements on what the world is really facing when it comes to radical Islam.
JOHN BOLTON - Obama doesn’t realize Western Civilization is UNDER ATTACK and we need to respond
The Frightening Reality For the Jews of France
The deadly siege on the kosher supermarket, which occurred on a Friday afternoon, when Jewish shoppers would likely be purchasing last-minute items for Shabbat, is not without context. Marc Weitzmann’s sadly prescient five-part series, France’s Toxic Hate, which details the rise of extremism throughout France and its anti-Semitic tendencies, is a helpful primer.Landmark Paris synagogue closes on Shabbat for first time since World War II
But the other important piece of context is that this attack comes after a truly frightening year for French Jews. Nearly 7,000 French Jews moved to Israel this year, more than double the figure from the previous year. Smaller things, like the viral popularity of the quenelle gesture—a reverse Nazi salute—created by controversial Cameroonian-French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, compounded with attacks on visibly identifiable young Jews in Paris and the quickness with which anti-Israel protests during this summer’s Gaza war devolved into anti-Semitism, have fueled a climate in which many French Jews simply don’t feel safe.
Here’s what the past year looked like for French Jews.
The Grand Synagogue of Paris shuttered ahead of Shabbat services on Friday night in the wake of a series of terror attacks across the city, including one siege on a Jewish market by an Islamic extremist.Remembering the anti-Semitic “pro-Palestinian” Paris riots of July 2014
The synagogue was evacuated during the event, Le Monde reported on Friday, and did not reopen for services on Friday night.
Friday's closure marks the first time since World War II the synagogue, a Paris landmark, was not open for worship on the sabbath, according to the Orthodox Union.
“The Jewish community feels itself on the edge of a seething volcano,” said Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Paris-based director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (h/t Yenta Press)
The attack by radical Islamists at the Paris Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket left four hostages dead, plus one of the gunmen.Four French Jews named as victims of Paris kosher deli attack
The Hyper Cacher supermarket attack appears to have been coordinated with the two men who killed 12 at Charlie Hebdo.
The specter of widespread anti-Semitism on the streets of Paris is nothing new. It has been fueled not only by centuries-old hatreds, but by the more modern Islamist, “anti-Zionist” and BDS movements whose hatred of Israel is obsessive and dehumanizing.
The umbrella group for French Jewish communities on Saturday named the four victims of a hostage siege at a kosher supermarket in Paris the day before.Tunis chief rabbi's son among dead hostages
The CRIF organization named the four Jewish fatalities as Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada.
“These French citizens were struck down in a cold-blooded manner and mercilessly because they were Jews,” read the CRIF statement sent out on Saturday.
Saved by hiding in the FREEZER: Thirty Jewish shoppers avoided being taken hostage at kosher deli by shutting themselves in cold storage, huddling together to stay warm
The victims, all Jews, were identified as Yoav Hattab, 21, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Tunis, Philippe Braham, in his 40s, Yohan Cohen, 22 and Francois-Michel Saada, in his 60s. One of them - reportedly Yohan Cohen - tried to snatch one of the attackers weapons away and was shot in the head.
Terrified shoppers hid in a freezing cold storage room for five hours after Islamic terrorists stormed a Paris supermarket.Yards from terror, teffilin at the ready
Hearing the sound of gunfire above them about thirty Jewish people buying kosher food for the Sabbath cowered in minus three temperatures praying they would not be found.
One of the shoppers, 36-year-old father-of-four Johan Dorre was able to call a friend on his mobile phone to tell him they were trapped two floors below the ground floor, where six hostages were held at gunpoint.
Hollande: Terror Attacks 'Anti-Semitic', but 'Fanatics Have Nothing to Do With Islam'The police officers preventing us from crossing were chatting among themselves, ignoring the crowd of curious passersby who paused to take pictures of the boulevard – normally a vibrant market which suddenly looked eerily empty because police had closed it to vehicular traffic.Yet one of the people hanging around the barricade was having no downtime at all.Holding his tefillin kit at the ready, a bearded follower of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement was soliciting Jews who passed by to put on the leathery straps and pray for the safety of the Jews who were being held hostage nearby at the Hyper Cacher kosher store.Michael Bloch, a reporter for the Le Journal de Dimanche, took a picture of the man in action and placed it on Twitter.“A surrealist scene: A Lubavitcher putting on tefillin on a Jewish passerby. We are 100 meters away from the Hyper Chacher,” Bloch wrote. He did not name the man.
Hollande promised that enhanced security would be deployed by the government “to guarantee that we can live quietly, in peace, so that at no moment we will be subject to risk and threats, but we must remain vigilant.” An earlier BBC report said Hollande made reassuring the nervous French populace a top priority for his government ministers, not only because of the spectacular denouement of the Charlie Hebdo outrage, but because a number of other threats still unrevealed to the public have been thwarted by French security forces recently.Kosher supermarket attacker claimed IS bonds; wanted to target Jews and defend Palestine.
“Unity is our best weapon,” declared Hollande, calling on France to be “firm against racism and antisemitism.” He was forthright in describing the deadly siege of the kosher grocery in Vincennes today as a “terrifying anti-semitic attack.” Other actions taken by the police today suggested the government had reasons to suspect further anti-Semitic actions might have been taken, including the shutdown of a popular shopping district right before the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath would have filled them with shoppers.
Hollande also declared that the “fanatics” who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack and its bloody aftermath “had nothing to do with the Muslim religion.”
Amedy Coulibaly, the hostage taker who killed four people and wounded four others in a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday, called BFM-TV before he died to claim allegiance to Islamic State, saying he wanted to defend Palestinians and target Jews.Kouachi brothers had a massive weapons arsenal and set booby traps
Coulibaly said he had jointly planned the attacks with the Kouachi brothers, who were responsible for the bloody attack on the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday. Police confirmed they were all members of the same Islamist cell in northern Paris.
Police had already been hunting 32-year-old Coulibaly along with a 26 year-old woman after the killing on Thursday of a policewoman. The woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, remains on the run.
Officials said Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said, both in their thirties, died Friday when security forces raided a print shop in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the chief suspects in Wednesday's attack against French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo had been holed up. The hostage they had taken was safe, an official said.Hero print worker hid in cardboard box and guided police by text messages as they moved in to take out jihadi brothers
Minutes after the print shop assault, police broke the second siege at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris. Four hostages died there along with the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly.
Paris chief prosecutor Francois Molins told a press briefing that the two Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly had an arsenal of weapons and had set up booby traps.
"A M82 rocket launcher with a loaded rocket - I insist on this, a loaded rocket - ten smoke grenades, two Kalashnikov machine guns and two automatic pistols were discovered," Molins said, speaking about scene after the print shop assault.
Holed up in a printworks and surrounded by police, killers Said and Cherif Kouachi were unaware that commandos were being tipped off about their every move.Jeannette Bougrab, Partner of Charlie Hebdo Editor, Speaks About His Death
For, hidden in a cardboard box just yards away was 27-year-old Lilian Lepere.
And he was able to alert police about the location of the gunmen and the layout of the building.
For more than six hours the graphic designer passed on crucial information until the siege ended in a bloody shootout as the terrorist brothers, who had vowed to die as martyrs, burst out from their lair all guns blazing and were mown down in a hail of bullets.
In an interview with French television station BFMTV, Jeannette Bougrab, partner of slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier spoke about his death.Widow Of Charlie Hebdo Editor Killed In Paris Attack Speaks
“He died standing,” Bougrab said. “He defended secularism, he defended Voltaire’s spirit, he in fact was really the fruit of this ideal of the Republic that we’ve almost forgotten. He died, executed with his comrades, as he would say.”
Charlie Hebdo isn’t backing down—next week’s cover proves it
Terrorists murdered 10 members of Charlie Hebdo’s team on Wednesday; six of them were cartoonists, and all of them believed passionately in the right to express themselves via satire no matter who was likely to be offended by it.Australian newspaper publishes Muhammad cartoon
The remaining members of the editorial team have chosen to release an issue next week, and the cover photo, recently shared on Twitter, will serve as a perfect memorial to the spirit and memory of those who fell victim to the brutal attack:
Translation? Urgent: hiring 6 new cartoonists.
Deep breath.
While we’re not 100% sure that this is the cover that will appear on newsstands, we do know that Charlie Hebdo will release a new issue next week.
The Weekend Australian newspaper published the cartoon by Bill Leak entitled “Let us pray” in which Jesus is holding up the Koran and telling Muhammad: “I’ve told you this needs a sequel,” a reference to the Bible which has an Old and New Testament.'Every single French Jew I know has left Paris': Editor of Britain's Jewish Chronicle claims people are fleeing terror-hit French capital
To which Muhammad, brandishing a newspaper with the headline “World at War,” replies he can’t return to human form right now because he would be “crucified.”
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad such as the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo are banned in Islam and mocking him angers many Muslims.
In an editorial, The Weekend Australian called on the Western world to show no weakness in defending its core values or retreat from free speech.
“Whether deliberate or not, one of the most damaging aspects of this atrocity,” it said of the Paris attack, “is that it hit our civilization in a place already shaping as our Achilles Heel — a spineless and growing penchant for political correctness.”
“Over recent years, in the face of the perpetually outraged, our pluralistic, democratic and free societies have gradually been yielding on our hard-won freedom of expression,” it said.
Jews are fleeing terror-hit Paris because of growing anti-Semitism in France, one of Britain's most influential Jewish journalists said today.Responding to Paris Terror Outrages, US Jews Highlight Centrality of Anti-Semitism to Islamist Ideology
Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, spoke out after an Islamic terrorist took six people hostage and held them captive in a Kosher supermarket in the French capital.
This afternoon police ordered all shops in a famous Jewish neighborhood in central Paris to close.
The mayor's office in Paris announced the closure of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris' Marais neighborhood, in the heart of the tourist district and less than a mile away from the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.
Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually crowded with French Jews and tourists alike.
Mr Pollard said today's terror attack in Paris, linked to the massacre at the office of Charlie Hebdo, will force more French Jews to flee the country.
American Jewish organizations responded to today’s fresh terrorist outrages by highlighting the profound danger posed by Islamist extremism and the need for western governments to adopt a coherent strategy in the face of an ongoing threat.Obama Should Have Called Paris Market Attack What It Is: Anti-Semitism
“The world can no longer pretend that Islamist fundamentalists consist of a few isolated cells,” declared Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and Dean and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “They have millions of adherents around the world of Muslim communities. These horrors will not end until our political leaders come up with a global plan to identify, root out and destroy the cancer of Islamist extremism and until responsible leaders – religious and secular – go on the offensive against their co-religionists who murder and maim innocents in the name of Allah.”
The Anti-Defamation League pointed out the centrality of anti-Semitism to Islamist ideology. “The attacks on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher store are linked by the perpetrators’ ideology, not just their acquaintance,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. “Islamic extremism is a common enemy of Jews and democratic states. That message needs to be heard and internalized by governments and mainstream society.”
Foxman added: “Anti-Semitism is at the core of Islamic extremist ideology, interwoven with its hatred of basic democratic freedoms, and continues to motivate adherents around the world. The packaging of anti-Semitic narratives has radicalized followers and influenced numerous international and domestic extremists with tragic results.”
The president did well to express solidarity with France as our oldest ally as well as condemnation of the actions of the terrorists that he characterized as standing for “hatred and suffering.” But the sensible reluctance on the part of Western leaders from casting this conflict as one between all Muslims and the rest of the world is no excuse for his determination to ignore the fact that these crimes are rooted in a form of political Islam that is supported by tens if not hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Pretending that these armed killers are not connected to a worldwide movement, even as information about their connections to such groups continues to trickle out, does nothing to avoid antagonizing those who already hate Western values and culture. It also serves to help unilaterally disarm both Muslims and non-Muslims who understand that we must directly confront the corrupt and evil source of this violence within the spectrum of Islamic belief.Just as wrongheaded was the president’s conspicuous omission of a mention of anti-Semitism.Dershowitz: France Shows ‘Capitulating’ to Terror Does not Work
On Thursday evening’s edition of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, attorney Alan Dershowitz clashed with the host over claims that France bore some blame for the terror attacks it suffered this week by giving in too readily to terrorists’ demands in the past.Zbig Brzezinski: ‘So-Called Satire’ Was ‘Appalling and Directed at the Prophet Himself’
O’Donnell took Dershowitz on for saying, “They reward every terrorist,” objecting to the generalization about French policy. Dershowitz countered: “They have the worst record of any country in Europe on terrorism….Virtually every terrorist who has been convicted and sent to prison in Paris has either gotten out.” He referred O’Donnell to his 2003 book, Why Terrorism Works, for empirical evidence to back up the claim about France’s record.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbingniew Brzezinski said the United States should reexamine free speech after terrorists murdered 12 people in France for publishing cartoons.Imam Choudary: Obama Is 'Lying' About The True Nature Of Islam
“We have to take a look more closely at the nature of the so-called satire,” Brzezinski said. “I’ve not seen what I’m about to say, but I’ve been told by some people that some of the cartoons are absolutely appalling and directed at the prophet himself. Is that really humor?”
Brzezinski’s comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe come after news outlets censored or refused to publish the cartoons for which the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo staff were murdered by Islamic terrorists.
Jeffrey Goldberg countered Brzezinski’s statement, saying, “In the first amendment we don’t protect–the goal is not to protect inoffensive speech. We have free speech from text what many people consider offensive speech. It’s immemorial whether the speech is defined as vulgar or crude. Our goal in the west is to allow people to say what they want even if it’s offensive and painful. that’s the principle. That’s sacred ideal of France. it’s a sacred ideal of the U.S.”
On the Ben Shapiro Show Thursday, Imam Anjem Choudary said the President Obama is “inventing” his own version of Islam to forward his foreign policy agenda and that the “radical” form Choudary espouses simply aligns with the principles of the Koran and Sharia Law.Hezbollah chief Nasrallah says terrorists damage Islam more than cartoons (not satire)
Shapiro led into the segment by quoting from Choudary’s USA Today Jan. 8 opinion piece titled “People Know the Consequences,” which blamed the French government for allowing publications to “provoke Muslims” and argued that Muslims do not in fact believe in the freedom of expression:
The leader of the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah said on Friday that Islamist terrorists had done more harm to Islam than any cartoon or book, a reference to the attack by suspected Islamist militants on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.Hamas condemns murderous Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris (not satire)
Hassan Nasrallah said what he called "takfiri terrorist groups" had insulted Islam more than "even those who have attacked the messenger of God through books depicting the Prophet or making films depicting the Prophet or drawing cartoons of the Prophet."
Takfiri is a term for a Muslim who accuses others, including another Muslim, of apostasy. Hezbollah considers members of ultra-hardline Sunni-dominated groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State to be takfiris.
Hamas on Saturday condemned the deadly terror attack by French Islamists, which claimed 12 lives at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo this week.Algerian misunderstanders of Islam call to ‘strike Jews’ in celebration of Paris attack
AFP reported that the Palestinian group released a statement in French that said Hamas "condemns the attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine and insists on the fact that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder."
According to the statement, however, Hamas denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for remarks linking the attack in Paris with rockets fired by Hamas in Gaza at Israeli civilians.
"Hamas condemns the desperate attempts by... Netanyahu to make a connection between our movement and the resistance of our people on the one hand and global terrorism on the other," AFP quoted Hamas as saying.
Hamas, however, apparently had no response over a separate attack in the French capital this week at kosher deli Hyper Cacher that ended on Friday in the death of four hostages.
Islamists in Algeria shouted anti-Semitic slogans at a rally celebrating the slaying of 12 people in Paris.Turkish deputy claims Charlie Hebdo attack was ‘staged’
Several dozen men participated in the rally that took place Wednesday outside a mosque in the Belouizidad district of Algiers, the news site tamurt.info reported Thursday.
They shouted “strike France and the Jews,” “Allah is the greatest” and “Charlie is dead.” French authorities suspect the January 7 attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly was carried out by Islamists who targeted the publication for its satirical cartoons lampooning Islam.
Elsewhere in Algiers, Islamists celebrated the deadly attack with a dance party on the street near the Djamaa Lihoud mosque, tamurt.info reported…
A deputy from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has claimed that the deadly Jan. 7 Charlie Hebdo attack was “staged like a movie scene.”Edgar Davidson: Jews - killed for being Jews - do not count as terrorist victims
Ali Şahin, a member of Parliament representing the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep, sent a series of tweets on Jan. 8 saying the lack of traffic in the Paris street during the attack was “thought-provoking” and that it seemed “as if it was a movie scene.”
The Turkish deputy also claimed that the “God is great” rallying cry of the assailants was “a fabricated mise-en-page [layout],” apparently mixing the French word with “mise-en-scene.”
The world will, rightly, never forget the murder of the Charlie Hebdo journalists (although the religion of their killers will be obfuscated). However, the main stream media is already doing its best to play down the fact that - within hours of their murder earlier today - the Jews who were killed at the end of the episode were murdered by Islamists because they were Jews. For some reason only Israeli media reported the rather important fact that the terrorist who carried out the murders called French TV to say he wanted to target Jews. Sky News tonight is even now still pushing the narrative that the ultimate victims here are French Muslims who face the mythical 'backlash'.CNN Tries To Convince Viewers Attack On Kosher Market Was Not Anti-Semitic
And if you do not think the Jewish victims will be quickly forgotten, then how do you explain the fact that multiple commentators and members of the public who have been interviewed in France in the last few days have been saying that this kind of terrorist attack is something 'new' in France? It is less than 3 years since a French Al Qaeda terrorist carried out a string of murders culminating in the singling out of Jewish children for slaughter at their school in Toulouse. On that occasion the media lost interest in the case when it was Jews being singled out by an Islamist for murder because they were Jews. And, of course, everyone has forgotten the mass anti-semitic attacks in Paris only last summer.
The BBC officially refuses to classify terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians in Israel - including babies - as being terrorist attacks. Informally the media is extending this 'classification' to terrorist attacks against Jews outside of Israel. It does not fit the media narrative to admit that Muslims want to kill Jews because they are Jews.
Hours after French President Francois Hollande denounced Friday's terrorist attack against Hyper Cacher, a Paris kosher market, as an "anti-Semitic attack," CNN wasn't convinced. According to Chris Cuomo, the fact that Muslims shop at the market because followers of Halal can also eat kosher food casts doubt about why the market was chosen.'What?!' Gutfeld Calls Out CNN's Amanpour for Labeling Terrorists 'Activists'
Cuomo: Let's go to Isa Soares. The French President Isa ---You are outside of the kosher market where hostages were held and many were released. Some did not make it out. Others were injured. So were some of the S.W.A.T. Team members that perpetrated the assault there to try to free them. The French president said this was an anti-Semitic attack. Now, of course, it’s a kosher market. We're also told that many Muslims shopped there as well to fill their own specific religious dietary needs. What have you heard there about how this is perceived and whether or not it was a specific targeting attack of Jews? (h/t dabney)
Greg Gutfeld tonight slammed the media’s coverage of the terror attacks in France this week.New York Times Reports On Muslim Proselytizing During Charlie Hebdo Attack, Then Deletes It
“It’s good to see all these vocal free speech supporters, many of whom were silent when [Ayaan] Hirsi Ali, Condoleezza Rice and others were kept from speaking on campuses,” Greg Gutfeld quipped. “I suppose you only express solidarity when it's cool and there's a neat hashtag.”
Gutfeld cautioned that terror wins when fighting evil is labeled as bigoted by the media, campuses and our leaders.
Gutfeld played a clip of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour calling terrorists "activists,” reacting with a bewildered, “What?!”
He also charged editors with worrying “more about right-wing reaction to terror than terror itself.”
“The enemy is pre-ordained. It's us. Which means Howard Dean is right. This is a cult, a cult of apologists. But Dean is also right when he says this is not a religious issue, which means, if I don't see Islam when I fight terror, then you cannot see Islamophobia when I fight it,” Gutfeld remarked.
When Islamic terrorists expressly tell their victims why they’re being attacked, our mainstream media will do anything to cover it up. They’ll change the subject, they’ll blame the victims… they’ll even stealth-edit* their own copy.Why Ezra Klein is Minimizing Radical Islam
Here’s the latest example of the New York Times censoring itself to avoid offending Muslims after an act of Islamic terror. This morning, BenK at Ace of Spades quoted an NYT story by Liz Alderman titled “Survivors Retrace a Scene of Horror at Charlie Hebdo.” Take note of these two paragraphs from that story:
Sigolène Vinson, a freelancer who had decided to come in that morning to take part in the meeting, thought she would be killed when one of the men approached her.
Instead, she told French news media, the man said, “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,” she recalled.
I was intrigued by this quote, and it seemed worth exploring, so I went to the NYT story to quote it. But guess what?
Ezra Klein of vox.com has come in for some richly-deserved mockery for his attempt to argue that the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo had nothing to do with the newspaper’s provocative Muhammad cartoons, much less with radical Islam. Klein says that there was no motive—that the attack was simply “unprovoked slaughter,” perhaps a product of madness: “The fault lies with no one but them and their accomplices. Their crime isn’t explained by cartoons or religion.”This 57-Second Clip May Just Be the ‘Dumbest Ever’ in Television History
It is hardly worth debating such a ridiculous claim, which does irreversible damage to Klein’s effort to defend his brand as the whiz kid who explains the news. But it is worth taking a closer look at why Klein is trying to hard to minimize the radical ideology behind the attack. There is more here than the officious obfuscation of the Obama administration, which is constantly at pains to deny that terrorism exists at all, and typically refuses to call radical Islam by its name.
Klein says—pardon the gratuitous profanity, which is evidently how the “cool kids” assert that they know more than the rest of us—that “we shouldn’t buy into the bullshit narrative of a few madmen that their murders were a response to some cartoons.” Why not? Because “Allowing extremists to set the limits of conversation validates and entrenches the extremists’ premises. That was true in the criticism of Charlie Hebdo’s covers, and it’s even truer in today’s crimes.”
It’s hard to rebut Jonah Goldberg’s pregnant question, “The Dumbest 57 Seconds on TV?“, because the pretend-academic discourse in this clip is too emblematic of what passes for thoughtful commentary nowadays.Hugh Hewitt To Catholic League President, Your Claim Is 'Deeply Embarrassing To Me As A Catholic'
At the same time, it’s reached Orwellian fever-dream proportions. A trio of vicious Islamic extremists brutally murder four satirists, since the former were “offended” at some provocative cartoons, and the media rush out to say, “Christians have their loonies, too!”
This type of mendacious conflation of modern Christianity with barbaric Islamist extremism is driven by the left’s irresistible urge to tear down what many Americans hold to be “good” and elevate what progressives believe is being besmirched.
MSNBC’s drive to find panelists who would throw a Jerry Falwell suit from the 1980s (because, why not?) into a national conversation about the Islamist terror threat is not only insipid, it’s dubious.
For the listener it was great radio, but for observant Catholic Hugh Hewitt who interviewed president of the Catholic League Bill Donohue in the second hour of the Hugh Hewitt Show, it was a fight for the reputation of his faith. Donohue wrote a post which accused the Charlie Hebdo victims of bringing on the terrorism which killed them. Hewitt called it "morally repugnant, embarrassing, it's a scandal on the Church."German satire mag hits back with penis joke
Even the most contentious Hewitt interviews usually begin on a friendly basis, but the host was out for blood from the beginning:
The German equivalent of Charlie Hebdo hit back Thursday with a joke front page suggesting Muslims have smaller penises, in the wake of the Paris newspaper massacre.Mark Steyn Tears Media A New One Over Charlie Hebdo Coverage
Titanic's featured homepage cartoon promises a study in comparative religion, illustrated with four phalluses - punning on the gag that "the pen is mightier than the sword."
The cover is a repost of the March 2006 cover depicting four major world religions, including Islam, as told by comparative phalluses.
"After the attack on the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, the Titanic editorial staff is reacting with solidarity (tsk tsk!) and steadfastness (We will continue to make jokes – right after our lunch break!)," their website stated.
Their website even included a come-and-get-us message.
"Terror alert: At 1600 a press conference will be held at Titanic that will be attended by RTL, Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurter Rundschau and other private and news agents. For terrorists this offers the possibility to not only take care of satirical press, but also the entire German press of lies. There will be sandwiches (afterward!)."
Yeah, I think Bill Maher is absolutely the exception, Sean. And, interestingly enough, the fellows in Charlie Hebdo are all basically men of the left. The people I mentioned a couple minutes earlier, the other cartoonists in Europe, they're all basically old-time secular lefties who think you should have the right to make the same jokes about Muslims that you make about Christians and Jews and everybody else. And the American left is not there for them.Atheist Richard Dawkins Has a Message About Islam in the Wake of France’s Deadly Terror Attack
And it was to me pitiful to listen to the sort of antiseptic eunuch statement that Jon Stewart issued last night. If Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are at the height of political satire in the United States, then I'll take these guys in France any day of the week. They're doing what real satirists do, which is offending you and challenging you over the serious questions of the day. They're not just doing lame old tired anti-Bush jokes a quarter century after he's left office. And these guys learned, these Euro lefties learned that when you're really up against it, when people are trying to kill you, that apart from Bill Maher and one or two other men of principle - I would rate Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist who nevertheless acknowledged yesterday that while he hates all religions, he actually has a bigger problem with Islam than any of the other ones for the obvious reason that they're trying to kill him and the other ones aren't - apart from Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins, there were actually very few principled lefties out there speaking up for these poor beleaguered guys over in Europe.
Atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins took to Twitter in the wake of France’s deadly terror attack Wednesday, proclaiming that “all religions are not equally violent.”Kuwaiti Singer Condemns Paris Attacks
Dawkins sent a series of tweets about religion following news that terrorists attacked Charlie Hebdo, a weekly newspaper in France, killing 12 people.
“They shouted ‘We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,’” Dawkins wrote. “Some useful idiot will claim it had nothing to do with religion.”
From there, he added, “No, all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didn’t.”
Kuwaiti singer Ema Shah has condemned this week’s terror attack in Paris against the staff of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, known for its controversial cartoons.Asterix returns to pay tribute to the Charlie Hebdo victims: Cartoonist behind legendary comic strip comes out of retirement to show his respects
Shah has previously courted controversy in the Muslim world by singing in Hebrew.
In a message sent to Breitbart News, she said:
“The terrorist operation was an operation against thinking, against freedom, against art, and against expression, also against humanity,” she said.
“You have killed unarmed civilians who used colors and pens versus blood and terror. So, O Paris, the country of art, science, creativity, and freedom–do not lose it.
“We are all Charlie.”
The cartoonist behind the legendary French comic strip Asterix has come out of retirement to pay tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack.Bill Whittle: Terrorist Nation
Albert Uderzo released two new drawings in solidarity with the cartoonists killed on Wednesday, which he shared on the official Asterix Twitter account.
One shows Asterix declare: 'Moi aussi je suis un Charlie' - which translates to 'I too am a Charlie'.
The other sketch shows main characters Asterix and Obelix bowing their heads in grief with their hats in their hands.
Asterix holds a rose in one hand, and their pet Dogmatix looks back over his shoulder with sadness.
From the murder of the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics in 1972, through the murder of 5 rabbis at prayer in 2014, the Palestinian cause has been driven by TERROR. In his latest Firewall Bill Whittle discusses their domestic front -- Students for Justice in Palestine.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.
I remember the first time I heard the world “Palestinian.” I was thirteen years old. The 1972 Munich Olympics were coming to an end, and I had been fascinated by American swimmer Mark Spitz and his seven gold medals, and had a big crush, for some reason, on Russia Gymnast Olga Korbut.
You’re still a boy at 13 – or I was, anyway. And when the first reports came in that Israeli athletes had been taken hostage by a Palestinian Group called Black September, I remember clearly having what seemed like a very adult idea at the time: namely, that I had thought the entire idea of the Olympics was based on the ancient idea of a truce; that enemies could take two weeks off and come together and compete at sports instead of hacking each other to death. It seemed a good an honorable thing to do. Who breaks a truce held under a burning flame? Wasn’t that the entire purpose of lighting and then extinguishing the flame – that was the duration of the cease-fire? Wasn’t the burning fire symbolic of sanctuary from violence, if only for a few days?
How Much Zionism is Acceptable to the BDS-Lite Movement?
Among the most pernicious consequences of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement has been the wedge driven between Israel and liberal Americans, including liberal American Jews. The relentless misappropriation of human rights and anti-racist discourse, the slanderous talk of Israeli "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide," and the bitter, ad hominem attacks against Israelis, their international supporters, and the peace process itself have taken a severe toll on American civil discourse.Another Glimpse at Concentration Camp Gaza
It is therefore especially dismaying to see the new call by leading American Jewish figures of the academic left, most prominently Michael Walzer of Princeton University, Todd Gitlin of Columbia University, and Alan Wolfe of Boston University, for sanctions against right-wing Israeli politicians whom they deem "annexationist." These academics, 14 in all, are members of the "Scholars for Israel and Palestine," a subgroup of the leftist pro-Israel, anti-BDS organization called "The Third Narrative."
At another level, the American Jews demanding sanctions on Israeli politicians are blind to the strategic goal of the BDS movement whose methods they imitate: to eliminate Israel by stages. By adopting these tactics, they validate the larger movement's methods, if not its goals. By endorsing sanctions, they create the implication if not the expectation that ever-increasing sanctions on Israel might be justified—and thus, by extension, that if Israel becomes unsatisfactory enough, its very legitimacy and existence may be questioned. Of course, this is precisely the goal of the BDS movement, and one for which no supporters of Israel – as Third Narrative claims to be -, however appalled by its policies or politicians they may be, should provide cover.
Though conceived by Palestinians, the Western BDS movement is an unholy alliance of far left organizations and foundations (like the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, the WESPAC Foundation, and the American Friends Service Committee, among many others), and Muslim Brotherhood backed Islamists, notably Students for Justice in Palestine and its supporting organization, American Muslims for Palestine. These latter organizations grew out of the network of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in America, above all CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust. The Islamist view on the Arab-Israeli conflict is uncompromising.
Convincing Jews that the path to higher morality is to anathematize other Jews has been one of the BDS movement's signal successes. This project has been made easier by the cadre of Quislings, notably Jewish Voice for Peace, a full partner to the Islamists, who have played on Jewish sensitivity to "social justice" and Jewish guilt to call for Israel's demise through sanctions and, eventually, the Palestinian "right of return."
More snapshots of Gaza, reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto. Clearly the world's largest open air concentration camp.Assad said seeking nuclear weapons with Hezbollah aid
Check out the Facebook page of the Orhan Center
Not a single stiffing black tarp in sight
Yes, this is the Gaza under rubble we've heard so much about. The starving Gaza. The humanitarian crisis of epic proportion. This is the Gaza without power, without water, where children freeze to death on the street.
All of these photos were added to the Orhan facebook page within the last month
Intelligence suggests that Syrian President Bashar Assad is building a secret underground plant with the aim of developing nuclear weapons, Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine reported Friday.Blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes in Saudi Arabia is flogged 50 times while shackled in chains outside mosque in first round of punishment for 'insulting Islam'
The Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which supports Assad’s regime in the bloody conflict in Syria, is guarding the secret project, it added.
Citing information made available by unidentified intelligence sources, Der Spiegel said the plant was in an inaccessible mountain region in the west of the war-ravaged country, two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Lebanese border.
It is deep underground, near the town of Qusayr and has access to electricity and water supplies, the magazine said in a pre-released version of the story made available ahead of Saturday’s publication.
It said it had had access to “exclusive documents,” satellite photographs and intercepted conversations thanks to intelligence sources.
A Saudi blogger underwent the first round of 50 lashes in public while shackled in chains for 'ridiculing Islamic religious figures'.Hate Preacher Abu Hamza Sentenced to Life in Prison
Raif Badawi, who co-founded the Free Saudi Liberals website, was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to 1,000 lashes and a decade in prison for insulting Islam on his online forum.
The start of his corporal punishment began after prayers today outside the Al-Juffali mosque in the city of Jiddah, which has earned the grisly nickname 'Chop Chop Square' as the site of executions.
Reports from the scene said Mr Badawi arrived at the mosque in a police car and had the charges read out to him in front of a crowd.
He was then made to stand with his back to onlookers and whipped, though he remained silent throughout the ordeal.
A judge in the United States on Friday sentenced British hate preacher Abu Hamza to life behind bars for 11 terrorism and kidnapping convictions, calling his crimes that spanned the globe "evil" and "barbaric", reports AFP.
The hook-handed imam, blind in one eye and a double-hand amputee, became a tabloid bogeyman in Britain for preaching vitriolic, anti-American sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London.
The sentencing on Friday comes eight months after he was convicted by a jury on May 19, after a four-week trial.
Abu Hamza would be "committed to a sentence of life imprisonment in the custody of the United States attorney general and U.S. marshals," the judge announced at the end of a three-hour hearing.
Blind in one eye and with both hands blown off by an explosives experiment in Pakistan, he alarmed the jury by speaking of his love for Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden and compared himself to Irish republican leader Gerry Adams.
Abu Hamza showed no remorse for his crimes, and again pleaded his innocence in court and demanded to be sent to a federal prison hospital, where he said he would be better treated as a double amputee suffering from diabetes.
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