Friday, January 16, 2015
Are Jews Safe in Europe?
There are three lessons from the explosion of European anti-Semitism.Caroline Glick: The answer to French anti-Semitism
First, hatred of Israel can no longer be separated from loathing of Jews. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same. The hard-core anti-Israel protests that engulfed Europe showed that the demonstrators aimed to dismantle the Jewish state because of its Jewishness. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called contemporary anti-Semitism "pretend criticism of Israel," an "expression of Jew-hatred at pro-Palestinian demonstrations."
The second lesson is that mere opprobrium from European leaders is insufficient. To their credit, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Italy last summer condemned "the anti-Semitic rhetoric and hostility toward Jews [and] attacks on people of the Jewish faith and synagogues." But rhetoric is not enough.
So the third lesson is the need for a zero-tolerance policy toward violent anti-Semitic rallies. And Europe should immediately adopt the U.S. State Department's definition of modern anti-Semitism, which includes anti-Zionism/Israelism. Finally, terrorist entities like Hezbollah and other jihadi networks should be banned. In sharp contrast to the United States, Europe allows Hezbollah's so-called political wing to operate and recruit within the 28-member European Union. Worse, with Europe striking Hamas from its terrorist list, there has been an active attempt to legitimize Islamist groups.
Change must ultimately start at the grassroots, turning anti-Semites and their political and religious movements into pariahs.
Absent this change, the safety of Jews, as well as European democracy, will continue to be jeopardized.
January 16 is the nine-year anniversary of the beginning of the Ilan Halimi disaster.Sarah Honig: 'Charlie' makes them laugh
On January 16, 2006, Sorour Arbabzadeh, the seductress from the Muslim anti-Jewish kidnapping gang led by Youssouf Fofana, entered the cellphone store where Halimi worked and set the honey trap.
Four days later, Halimi met Arbabzadeh for a drink at a working class bar and agreed to walk her home. She walked him straight into an ambush. Her comrades beat him, bound him and threw him into the trunk of their car.
They brought Halimi to a slum apartment and tortured him for 24 days and 24 nights before dumping him, handcuffed, naked, stabbed and suffering from third degree burns over two-thirds of his body, at a railway siding in Paris.
He died a few hours later in the hospital.
In an impassioned address to the French parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls gave a stirring denunciation of anti-Semitism, and demanded that his people stop treating it as someone else’s problem.
In his words, “Since Ilan Halimi in 2006... anti-Semitic acts in France have grown to an intolerable degree. The words, the insults, the gestures, the shameful attacks... did not produce the national outrage that our Jewish compatriots expected.”
Valls insisted that France needs to protect its Jewish community, lest France itself be destroyed.
Valls words were uplifting. But it is hard to see how they change the basic reality that the Jews of France face.
When all is said and done, it is their necks on the line while humanity’s conscience is merely troubled.
The inclination, subliminally or otherwise, to isolate Jews in a separate classification is pervasive.Ambassador Prosor in UNSC: The Situation in the Middle East
The assumption that the bad guys aren’t primarily after non-Jews even offers a sense of semi-safety to the presumably uninvolved onlookers.
The segregation of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel terror into a different category is abetted by the two-faced denunciation of the Paris bloodshed by Mahmoud Abbas and his on-and-off Hamas partners in Gaza. They enable terror on a grand scale, but then deny culpability.
They pro forma condemn carnage but endorse, glorify and bankroll the perpetrators.
Sanctimonious pen-warriors don’t take Abbas or Hamas to task for their wrongdoing and blatant deception. Europe’s media further adds insult to injury by helping disseminate the false analogy between the demonized and dehumanized Jews of Hitler’s Germany to Europe’s Muslims who claim to be equally as collectively demonized.
Disagreeable as it surely is to tar any group collectively, there’s too much cynical PR profit in drawing this parallel for it to be taken at face value. Comparing Holocaust- era Judeophobia to Islamophobia is not only spurious but colossally galling.
For one thing, Jews never engaged in terror against Germans.
If anything, they regarded themselves as German patriots.
Then comes the minor matter of Arabs having been among the most vociferous promoters of Judeophobia in Nazi times. They still are to this day.
But Europe’s self-acclaimed pen-warriors are loath to take note, expose the chutzpah and sincerely fight against mega-hypocrisy. With rare exceptions, they are nothing like the gallant guardians of their own conceited portrayals. Their syrupy catchphrases in the end give succor to the implacable enemies of us all. “Je suis Charlie” makes the jihadists laugh.
JPost Ediorial: Protecting lives
All liberal democracies face a dilemma when fighting terrorism. On the one hand, terrorists must not be allowed to exploit the freedoms they enjoy,. On the other hand, values such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression must be protected; otherwise, the West risks forfeiting the very values that give it the moral high ground.Dore Gold: Isolated incidents or global war?
But faced with the choice between encroachments on certain freedoms – such as the right of European citizens to return from places like Syria and Iraq after extended stays, or the right to full Internet privacy – we would prefer upholding the right of citizens of liberal democracies to be protected from violent, anti-Semitic, nihilistic terrorists.
During a meeting Sunday with 11 interior ministers from the European Union states, US Attorney-General Eric Holder told them they were not doing enough to combat terrorism. We hope they will heed his warning.
Free societies have an obligation to protect their citizens against homicidal violence inspired by Islamist extremism.
Being overly cautious out of an exaggerated zeal to protect the rights of those who, given the chance, would undermine liberal democracy, risks undermining the very underpinning of the democratic social contract – the right to life.
In response to the first attack in Paris on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a member of a jihadi forum, affiliated with ISIS, wrote a very striking explanation as to why France in particular was targeted. As is usual in the jihadi world, which seeks to return to the early days of Islam centuries ago, history played an important role in his thinking: "France was one part of the Islamic land and it will be Islamic again."Israelis support Netanyahu's visit to Paris after attacks
What was he talking about? For years, global jihadi organizations have issued calls to retake al-Andalus, the Arabic name for Spain and those parts of the Iberian peninsula when they were held by the Muslims from 711 until 1492. This last summer ISIS members produced a video calling for the liberation of al-Andalus. But, it is often forgotten that shortly after the conquest of Spain, an Arab army crossed the Pyrenees and occupied territories that today are part of France. Having captured Bordeaux, it was met and defeated in 732 by a Frankish army led by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours -- some 200 miles from Paris. Even after this historical battle, Arab armies did not halt their efforts to seize French territory. They in fact reached Lyons and threatened to occupy all of Provence. In fact, parts of France remained under Islamic rule until 759, when Narbonne, the main base of the invading Arab armies, fell.
Whether or not the attack in France was motivated by such historical memories, the passion to recover lost territories that were once under Islamic rule is a theme running through most of the organizations associated with the global jihadist network. It was no less than Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who first articulated this theme: "Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, South Italy and Roman Sea Islands were all Islamic lands that had to be restored to the homeland of Islam; the Mediterranean and Red Sea should equally be part of the Islamic Empire as they were before." Al-Banna's writings, which are to this day still revered by most of the radical Islamic movements, are available on the internet today in Arabic and even in English.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to France this week following the terrorist attack at a kosher supermarket that left four French Jews dead and the shooting massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper caused a certain amount of controversy, but the overwhelming majority of Israelis support both his visit to Paris and his conduct while there, an Israel Hayom poll shows.Will the Paris attacks change France’s view on Israel and the Palestinians?
Three-quarters of Israelis polled said that Netanyahu was right to travel to France to participate in the massive protest march against terrorism. Only 16 percent of respondents said he should not have gone, and another 9 percent said they did not know if he should or should not have taken part.
One of the issues raised by Netanyahu's visit was whether he should have issued a call for French Jews to move to Israel. Some saw his words as offensive, implying that the French government was incapable of protecting its citizens.
However, most Israelis polled agreed with the prime minister. When asked if Netanyahu had conducted himself appropriately when he urged French Jews to make aliyah, two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents said they approved. An additional 25 percent said they disagreed with his calling on French Jews to emigrate to Israel, and 9 percent said they did not know if he was right to do so.
The world leaders have gone, the millions of marchers have dispersed, the speeches are done, the streets have been cleaned, the victims buried. Now will come the test whether, as some said, last week’s attacks in France truly constituted that country’s 9/11 moment.France’s stance on Palestine recognition unchanged by attacks
What does that mean, a 9/11 moment? It means a turning point. It means a watershed. It means a fundamental change of perspective and policy toward terrorism.
Just a month after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, Congress passed the sweeping Patriot Act, which gave far-ranging – and controversial – powers and tools to the government to fight terrorism.
And in July 2002 then-president George W. Bush gave a speech in the White House Rose Garden fundamentally changing US policy toward the Middle East.
In that speech, laying out a vision of a two-state solution, Bush declared that peace would only come if the Palestinians got rid of Yasser Arafat, though he did not mention him by name, and elect new leadership.
“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror,” he said. “Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.”
France has no intention of walking back its principled support for Palestinian statehood or its voting pattern at the United Nations, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls indicated Thursday.Stop Comparing Anti-Islamic and Anti-Semitic Cartoons
During a conference call with American Jewish leaders, Valls was asked whether Paris would consider adopting a more pro-Israel approach in international forums in light of the deadly attack on a Jewish-owned supermarket outside Paris last Friday.
Valls did not directly reply to question, saying only that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had nothing to do with the threat on the French-Jewish community.
“You know how much friendship I feel toward Israel. The bond between France and Israel is very strong. Of course we can disagree on one political topic or another,” Valls told members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations.
“The two things are not related,” he continued, referring to Friday’s attack in the HyperCacher market in Paris and France’s support for Palestinian statehood.
The difference is in the reactions.France lacks the means to grapple with terror, Paris expert says
Such cartoons offend us both. What is the Jewish reaction? We kvetch. We write about it, maybe even go to court.
What is the Muslim reaction? Violent terrorist attacks, rioting- murder.
No, we are not hypocrites, and yes, we believe in free speech. But we are allowed to be offended, as anyone would be.
Catholics were offended by the “Holy Virgin Mary,” an “artist’s” portrayal of Jesus’ mother covered in elephant dung. The artist has his right to free speech, just as the Catholics and other Christians have their right to be offended and complain about it. But no Christian murdered the artist, and no priest issued some Christian equivalent of a “fatwa” for his death.
Being offended does not equate to a rejection of free speech.
‘France marched for Charlie, not for the Jews’Today, the most significant terror threat in France stems from jihadi networks associated with the war in Syria and northern Iraq, continued Hecker. Approximately 1,200 French citizens are involved in these networks; people who have either made concrete plans to travel to combat zones in the Middle East, or who have already returned from them. French security estimates that 400 citizens are currently in Syria, and approximately 50 have been killed.“That’s huge for a country like France,” Hecker claimed. “Compared to what we’ve seen in the past — the Iraqi networks in the early 2000s, or the networks related to Afghanistan, Chechnya or Bosnia — this is on a completely different scale. Back then, we had dozens of French citizens involved, now it’s hundreds.”France’s domestic intelligence agencies are not scaled for this new type of threat, Hecker opined. The DGSI, France’s domestic security agency, employs just 3,500 people, tasked with missions ranging from counterintelligence to threats from far-right and far-left organizations.A second group of potential terrorists are those who have gone through a process of self-radicalization — young men who watch online videos of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda and decide to act.“They can’t do something very big. They can run people over with their car or fire at them with an AK-47, but they won’t kill hundreds of people. Still, it’s a threat, and in France even killing two or three people is perceived as strategic.”
For Schmidt, a Jewish human rights lawyer and vice president of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, Sunday’s so-called Republican March was “a sign of popular mobilization against extremism” following three attacks last week by Islamists in the Paris region that killed 12 at the offices of a satirical weekly, a policewoman on the street and four Jews at a kosher supermarket.‘They aimed at the Jews and they hit innocent Frenchmen’
French President Francois Hollande and dozens of world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attended the rally in commemoration of all 17 victims that drew a record number of demonstrators.
Yet in Schmidt’s estimation, most of the people marching “were there for Charlie, not for the Jews,” he said, in reference to the killings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a magazine targeted for its satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
His opinion is shared by many French Jews who, despite supporting the massive response to the attacks, doubt it will help curb rising anti-Semitic violence.
“I hope the response heralds a change in the indifference to anti-Semitism, but I am also aware that no such response came when only Jews were targeted,” Schmidt noted in reference to the murder of four in 2012 at a Jewish school in Toulouse by another Islamist, Mohammed Merah. Three children were among the victims.
“There was no Republican March or anything comparable after Toulouse,” he said.
They did not flood the streets in their millions in sympathy with the small Jewish children, whom Mohammed Merah hunted down and shot through the head in front of their school.Israeli Ambassador to US Predicts Major Rise in French Jewish Immigration to Israel
Nor did they react, when some years prior to the killings in Toulouse, Ilan Halimi was slowly tortured to death over the course of three weeks by Muslims in Paris.
The French masses have not risen in solidarity with the countless numbers of French Jews, who have in recent years been subjected to verbal and physical abuse, harassment on the streets and in the school yards, on the metros and in front of Jewish restaurants and even in their own homes.
The French barely noticed, when a march for Gaza this summer nearly ended in a pogrom on a Parisian synagogue filled with Jewish worshippers. They did not protest, when a mob of thousands marched in the streets of Paris, hollering that the Jews did not belong in France.
By not showing much concern for the plight of their Jewish fellow citizens, the French have proved beyond any doubt that egalité and fraternité are just historical slogans.
This is hardly news. When in October 1980 terrorists placed a bomb in a synagogue in Rue Copernic in Paris, four people were killed, two of them non-Jewish passers-by, and ten were wounded. The then prime minister of France, Raymond Barre, had this to say:”They aimed at the Jews and they hit innocent Frenchmen”.
Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, told MSNBC on Wednesday that, due to rampant antisemitic attacks, capped by last Friday’s terror shooting which killed four people at a Paris kosher supermrket, Israeli officials are readying for upwards of 15,000 French Jewish immigrants in 2015.Ron Dermer: Netanyahu did exactly what Prime Minister of Israel has to do do by standing with France
“That’s two and a half percent of [France's Jewish] population,” Dermer noted, observing that France’s nearly 500,000 Jews felt besieged by growing domestic hostility.
“In American terms, it would be about 150,000 American Jews in a year, all of a sudden deciding to come to Israel,” he said.
Referring to the deadly attack at a Parisian kosher supermarket by an Islamic State terrorist, and similar attacks elsewhere in France and on the Continent, Dermer characterized Europe as, “…a place of many ancient traditions and antisemitism is the first of them,” according to Israel’s NRG News.
“There was only a very small window of opportunity in which Europe was not anti-Semitic, for several decades after the Holocaust,” Dermer asserted.
Hyper Cacher victim’s father knew his son ‘would fight’
Hattab was shot to death after he snatched a rifle from the market terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, but the weapon was jammed, and he was killed immediately. Three other Jewish men — Phillipe Barham, Yohan Cohen, and François-Michel Saada — were also killed in the siege at the Hyper Cacher market. All four were buried in Jerusalem.Family of Hyper Cacher victim blasts British press over publishing attack footage
In a letter published on Chabad.org on Friday, Rabbi Binyamin Hattab, the chief rabbi of Tunisia, praised his son’s bravery and commitment to religious tradition.
Last Friday, when the family was informed of the hostage crisis, and were told several people had been killed, “I told those around me, in tears, that I was sure Yoav was one of them,” he wrote in Hebrew.
“Because Yoav was not one to stand quietly, watch a terrorist try to kill others and let it pass in silence. I was sure he would fight, would do anything he could, even risk his life, to try and stop the savage murderer,” wrote Hattab.
“And several hours later, it became clear my gut feeling was right.”
Yaakov Simah, a cousin of Cohen, lashed out against a decision by the Daily Mail to publish security camera footage images of the inside of the Hyper Cacher store during last Friday’s standoff between Islamic extremist Amedy Coulibaly and French police. While the tabloid blurred the victims’ features, their bodies can clearly be seen on the floor of the supermarket in the images published online.Did French TV stations endanger hostages?
While Cohen’s parents did not view the pictures, his uncle did, Simah said.
“He is in shock that you cannot understand, because he was the one needed to identify his nephew, so he is very nervous and [the family] asked me to do whatever I can to take off the pictures from the [Inter]net,” he said.
It was irresponsible for the media to publish such pictures, he added.
“We buried, all the family, our son, our brother, a part of our family. So one day after the burial they put [up] pictures of the crime scene? I cannot imagine how they don’t have any scruples. I don’t understand it. It’s just unbelievable.
“It’s a shame what they did. It’s like they are taking our wounds and putting a knife inside and turning it.”
Son of Paris Victim: Don't Wait to Make AliyahAt the printing plant north of Paris, Lilian Lepere was hiding under a sink, apparently unbeknownst to the gunmen. Lepere’s sister said on France 2 television that the family had stopped calling him so as not to compromise his hiding place — an admission that could have alerted the gunmen to her brother’s presence.Lepere was released unharmed. But the Higher Broadcasting Council that same day issued a warning to news media to “act with the greatest discernment.”“It’s an ethical problem,” said French commentator and political scientist Dominique Moisi. “If you want to be ahead of the police because that’s the way to attract your public, if you deal with those things like a kind of live show, it can because dangerous and prejudicial. Because by the end of the day, you forget that there are real lives at stake.”In the other standoff, the wife of one hostage accused BFM-TV of putting her husband and others at risk by revealing their hiding place in the freezer of a kosher grocery store.“You nearly made a huge, huge mistake, BFM,” the woman, whom the station did not name, said on the air the next day. “The terrorist was watching BFM. … Fortunately he did not see that, otherwise my husband and the five others would be dead.”
Arutz Sheva paid a condolence visit to the family of 63-year-old Francois-Michel Saada hy''d, one of four Jews murdered last Friday in an Islamist terror attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris.Kerry lays wreath at Paris kosher supermarket attacked by gunman
Saada's son Yonatan spoke about his father, noting he always "tried to unite people and gather people," patiently working to resolve any conflict between members of the family.
Yonatan chooses not to view his father's violent death as "tragic," remarking that in being killed for being a Jew his father's death was kiddush Hashem - a sanctification of G-d's name.
His death "will help a lot of Jews, not only in France but all around the world...maybe they will realize that sometimes in life you don't have to wait for people to take decisions for you, you have to take decisions for yourself and, you know, leave."
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday paid his respects at a kosher supermarket where an Islamist gunman took several hostages last week and was later killed by police.Two Killed in Belgium Terror Raid: Kalashnikov Rifles and Police Uniforms Found
Kerry laid a wreath together with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and both marked a moment's silence.
Earlier, Kerry met President Francois Hollande, giving him a hug in the courtyard of the Elysee presidential palace.
Kerry said his visit to France was "to give a big hug" to Paris. Senior US officials were absent from a commemoration march held in Paris on Sunday attended by dozens of world leaders. President Barack Obama's administration conceded that was an omission.
Belgian authorities report they have foiled an imminent attack by a cell operating above a bakery in the town of Verviers. Two have reportedly been killed and a third injured by police marksmen as officers attempted to gain entry to the property.FM: Will EU condemn Belgium, France for ‘excessive force’?
Reports indicate the group had an arsenal of AK-47 assault rifles as well as police uniforms, suggesting they were planning to affect disguises to cause havoc and mistrust in Belgium. Belgian prosecutors announced in a press conference this morning that the group planned to kill police officers in the streets, raid police stations, and commit kidnap.
The intelligence-led raid, said Belgian authorities, was initiated after intelligence collection on the group suggested an attack was “imminent”. The three men, the surviving one of which is now under police custody, had all recently returned from Syria where they are believed to have fought with extreme Islamist groups. 300 Belgians have gone to fight with the Islamic state.
Police surrounded a former bakery where they were holed up with police marksmen and snipers on surrounding rooftops.
In total, 13 people have been arrested in Belgium overnight, with further terror arrests made in France and Germany. German authorities have announced they too have foiled an imminent attack.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Friday rebuked the European Union for its frequent condemnations of Israel’s counterterrorism efforts, as Belgium, France, and Germany launched a crackdown on radical Islamists.Belgium Anti-Terror Raid Highlights Security Fears Within Jewish Community
Two people were killed and one was wounded during a raid in eastern Belgium on Thursday night, Paris police rounded up a dozen terror suspects, and Germany detained two Turkish nationals.
In a statement on Friday, Liberman wrote: “I wonder if the EU will issue a condemnation to the governments of Belgium and France for the use of excessive force and call on them to negotiate with terrorists and resolve the issues around the negotiation table… interesting.”
Rabbi Shimon Lasker, who represents the Chabad movement in Belgium, told The Algemeiner that news of the raid was spreading uncertainty through the 50,000-strong Jewish community, particularly after the terror attacks in Paris last week.Terror threat in Europe shuts down Jewish schools
“More than before, people here, especially those with children, are asking whether there is a future,” Rabbi Lasker said. “They are asking, if there is a raid on a Jewish school, are we equipped, are we ready?”
A dinner planned for this Friday night with a Jewish youth group had already been canceled, Rabbi Lasker said, adding that some families with children had also stopped attending synagogue in recent days.
Charles Picqué, a leading Belgian socialist politician who enjoys close relations with the Jewish community, has called for additional resources in the fight against terrorism. Earlier this week, he told Belgian news site DH.be that “it is not the police who must protect the many Jewish institutions located in area, but the military. The police are not trained to fight against people armed with Kalashnikovs who are returning from Syria.”
The only Orthodox Jewish school in the Netherlands was closed on Friday as a precautionary measure after an anti-terrorism raid in Belgium left two suspects dead.'Death to France. Death to Charlie': Pro-ISIS hackers launched 'unprecedented' wave of cyber-attacks on 19,000 French websites
There was no concrete threat against the Cheider School in Amsterdam, Dutch national broadcaster NOS said, citing the school's Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs. School phones went unanswered Friday morning.
Jewish schools in Antwerp and Brussels are also temporarily closed after two terrorism suspects were killed in a raid in Verviers, Belgium, on Thursday.
Dutch Jewish schools and prominent Jewish monuments - including Amsterdam's Anne Frank House and Jewish Historical Museum - have had extra security since June, on advice of the country's national anti-terrorism office.
Up to 19,000 French websites have been hacked since the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office on January 7, the country's head of cyber-defence has confirmed.French towns don't want to bury Paris killers
Rear Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere has said the scope and severity of the attacks is 'unprecedented'.
According to CNN Money, the French Defense Ministry and ANSSI - its version of America's National Security Agency - said they have been monitoring waves of cyber-attacks on all kinds of websites.
The websites of French businesses, religious groups, universities and municipalities were altered to display pro-Islamist messages.
As a mourning France struggles to overcome last week's atrocities, the question of where to bury the terrorist's bodies is alarming authorities in the home towns of the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly.Charlie Hebdo founder accused murdered editor of 'dragging team to their deaths'
Under French law, the deceased must be buried in either their home district or in the place where they passed away, with relatives having the final say on the matter.
But the mayors of Gennevilliers and Reims, the towns where Cherif and Said Kouachi resided, are fearful that the graves could become rallying points for the many Islamist radicals in France who have already voiced their admiration for the 12 murders the brothers committed at Charlie Hebdo’s offices last week.
According to Antoine Flasaquier, lawyer for Said Kouachi’s partner, his client wishes to “keep the place of burial confidential so that the grave doesn’t become a headstone of remembrance for the deranged”.
The murdered editor of Charlie Hebdo dragged his journalists to their deaths by mocking Islam, one of the magazine's founders has said.Islamophobia Bigwig in France Says Protecting Synagogues, Not Mosques, is Double Standard
Henri Roussel, 80, accused Stéphane Charbonnier - known as Charb - of being "pig-headed" in publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The satirical magazine's mockery of Islam culminated in last week's terror attacks, in which 10 of its staff and two police officers were killed by extremists.
Roussel wrote in French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur: "I am going to be unpleasant here about Charb. He was the editor. What need did he have to drag the team into such a high-stakes game?”
How could we have forgotten all those incidents of Jews massacring Muslims in France?Angry Syrian Protesters Burn 'Je suis Charlie' Poster
"Abdallah Zekri, head of the National Observatory against Islamophobia, said Muslim sites such as Paris’s main mosque were not getting the same protection as Jewish synagogues or schools.
“There are websites out there calling for the murder of Muslim leaders and the torching of Muslim religious sites,” he told France Info. “Let’s stop the double standards.”
Sure. Let’s stop those awful double standards of protecting the people being killed instead of the people killing them.
Syrian protesters in a rebel-held area of Aleppo on Thursday burned a poster expressing support for satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, accusing it of stoking Muslim anger, AFP reports.European Jewish leaders demand EU name anti-Semitism czar
Dozens of people marched in the battered district of Salaheddin, in the southwest of Syria's second city, against Charlie Hebdo's new cartoon, which depicts the Prophet Mohammed.
Speaking with the EU Foreign Affairs And Security Policy chief Federica Mogherini, a delegation from the European Jewish Congress stated that in the wake of last week’s attack by Islamists against Paris’s Hyper Cacher kosher market, it is incumbent that the EU ramp up it’s efforts to protect its Jewish citizens.Dutch high-school humiliates teacher: has to go and excuse himself in every classroom to Muslim students for Charlie Hebdo poster
“Now more than ever, the European Union needs to create a position and organization specifically geared toward finding long-lasting solutions for anti-Semitism and other forms of racism,” said EJC president Dr. Moshe Kantor, urging the formation of a task force dealing with the issue.
According to Kantor, who has previously said that “normative Jewish life is unsustainable” without an amelioration in the fear and insecurity felt by Europe’s Jews, recent events have demonstrated that the Jews’ sense of security in parts of Europe is “at its lowest point since the end of the Holocaust and many are leaving their homes as a result.”
Stating that European Jewry had warned of an escalation of violence following the 2012 massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse and last year’s shooting attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Kantor said that it is “incumbent on the European Union to urgently place combating anti-Semitism as one of its highest priorities because this is a hatred that transcends borders and cannot be dealt with by any single nation on its own.”
Dutch high-school bans Charlie Hebdo cartoonsAlleged Boko Haram Leader Celebrates Charlie Hebdo Massacre
The management of the Dutch high-school “Kennemer College” in Heemskerk has banned a Charlie Hebdo poster of a Muslim man kissing a cartoonist that was put on the wall by one of its teachers. This was done after predominantly Muslim students complained about the poster. “They responded very emotionally to the poster and experienced it as offensive. We are talking about children aged between 12 and 15 years old, who are attending vocational training and don’t understand the French text (l’amour plus fort que la haine – love is stronger than hate). They don’t understand the nuances, and experience the picture, that was published in a newspaper, as offensive to their faith”, explains school principal Marleen Lemstra. But not all parents are pleased with the measures taken by the school’s management and have complained to the school.
The world turned upside down
“After what happened in Paris, this is the world turned upside down. A teacher has to go to all classrooms to apologize because students of Moroccan and Turkish descent complain about a magazine that has always put the freedom of speech center stage”, some mothers point out. School principal Lemstra however, thinks that the decision to remove the poster was the right thing to do. “Off course there is freedom of speech here, but it must be respectful and not oversimplified. Pamphlets and posters do not belong in a school. Teachers want to have a discussion with the students, we do not walk away from that. But one must also be aware of the fact that this group of students does not understand the poster. And let’s face it, we know that the magazine Charlie Hebdo was pushing the boundaries. That is sometimes offensive. Do we want that in a school? Also tolerance has it’s boundaries.
A man claiming to be the leader of Nigerian jihadist terror group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, has appeared in a new video this week praising the organizers of the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, condemning the Western nation’s “religion of democracy” and proclaiming that his terrorist group is “very happy” with the attack.Deborah Maccoby to Europe’s Jews: denounce Israel & live happily thereafter
The video, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, appeared on YouTube on Wednesday in its full-length form, an eight-minute monologue in which the man claiming to be Shekau repeatedly states that Boko Haram is “very happy” with the deaths of a number of the editors of Charlie Hebdo. “Oh you French people, oh you who follow the religion of democracy, between you and us is enmity to eternity,” Shekau proclaims in the video.
Deborah Maccoby bills herself on some occasions* as “Executive, Jews for Justice for Palestinians”. Alternatively she presents herself as “a member of the Executive Committee of Just Peace UK, the Israeli-Palestinian peace group and the UK branch of ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)”. At the same time she is gainfully employed “at the BBC World Service as a Production Assistant and has written book reviews for the Arabic Service”. Which is a significant point, showing a person with access to one of the heaviest propaganda juggernauts out there.Portland teen accused of threatening to blow up NE Portland deli 'in the name of Allah,' court records say
So, if after looking at the pictures, you have conjured in your mind an image of one of these slightly demented aunts that are very good in making their own preserves or jams, overcook the roast and are afraid of spiders – perish the thought. Deborah Maccoby is a very strong anti-Zionist presence on many fronts and, as a prominent member of the British “AssaJew” community, has quite a few ideas to offer on many subjects.
One of such subjects is a solution for antisemitism, which Ms Maccoby hinted about as early as 2009. In this letter that starts with predictable “Sir: I am a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and have participated in every one of the national demonstrations against Israel’s brutal onslaught against Gaza”, she offers the magic recipe in the last sentence:
"If Jews really want to reduce anti-Semitism, they should speak out to change Israel’s destructive and self-destructive policies."
A 19-year-old is accused of threatening workers repeatedly at a Northeast Portland deli when he wasn't able to buy a single cigarette, saying he would blow up the store "in the name of Allah," court records say.German paper apologizes for fake Charlie Hebdo anti-Semitic cover
Abdalah Mohamed also is accused of making disparaging remarks about Jews and Israel in July, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Mohamed was arraigned Monday afternoon on two counts of second-degree intimidation. He entered not guilty pleas to each count.
He was booked into the downtown Portland jail on the warrant Friday.
Court records indicate he's lived in Northeast Portland for about six years and is originally from Kenya.
The daily Berliner Zeitung featured four real Charlie Hebdo covers on its front page January 8, along with a fake one depicting what appears to be an Orthodox Jew making a quip about the Holocaust. The cover carried the name “Charlo Hebdo” — one of the clues it was a fake.Algerian Newspapers Launch 'We Are All Muhammad' Campaign; 'Echorouk': France's Crimes Are 10 Times Worse Than The Murder Of A Few Journalists
The Berliner Zeitung said Thursday it “failed to recognize that one of the cartoons was a fake” and offered its “profoundest personal apologies for this highly regrettable mistake.”
It said it had posted a correction in Friday’s paper acknowledging that it mistakenly printed an anti-Semitic cartoon.
In response to the publication of the latest issue of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo featuring another cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover, a week after the January 7, 2015 terrorist attack on its offices in which 12 of its staff were murdered by Cherif and Said Kouachi, French Muslim brothers of Algerian descent, the Algerian dailies Echorouk and Al-Nahar Al-Jadid launched a "Nous Sommes Tous Mohamed" ("We Are All Muhammad") campaign, that received widespread attention on social media around the world.In Pictures: Angry Muslims Protest Against Turkish Paper that Published Charlie Hebdo Cartoons
The front pages of the January 14, 2015 issues of both newspapers included a headline reading "We Are All Muhammad." Echorouk devoted its entire issue to this topic, with all 20 pages full of reports, articles, opinion pieces, and cartoons protesting against the insult to the Prophet. On the front page of this issue it featured a cartoon comparing the world's reaction to terrorism "when relating to the West," with a man holding a sign saying "Je Suis Charlie" to the world's reaction to terrorism "when related to Arabs" with a tank with a sign reading: "Je Suis Char" – "I Am a Tank" – crushing "Gaza," "Mali," "Syria," and "Iraq." Its January 15 issue was also dedicated primarily to the topic. The top of every page on both days featured the words, "Support for the Prophet Muhammad; No to Insulting the Prophets; No to Terrorism." One January 14 article stated, "Insulting the Prophet is a 'red line.'" Al-Nahar Al-Jadid's January 14 issue featured on its front page a photo of hands holding up a Koran and a sign reading "We Are All Muhammad" in Arabic and French.
Protesters took to the streets of Istanbul after Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet published a four-page supplement of cartoons from the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo.Did the Pope Justify the Charlie Hebdo Massacre?
The paper chose not to print the famous front-cover showing Mohammed crying in the suppliment, but it did show it in two columns elsewhere in the paper.
It had initially planned to reprint the whole magazine, but scaled back due to security concerns.
Did Pope Francis justify the brutal Islamist attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris last Wednesday, in which 12 people were murdered in cold blood?Ron Paul Institute Says Charlie Hebdo Attack a ‘False Flag’
The Vatican has snapped into overdrive trying to play down controversial comments made by the pope this Thursday, which are seen as blurring the lines of free speech.
On a flight to the Philippines on Thursday, the pope spoke about the attack last week at the magazine which has published cartoons of Mohammed, the founder of Islam - along with cartoons poking fun at the pope and the Catholic church.
Saying there are limits to free speech, the pope referred to Alberto Gasbarri who organizes his trips, reports Associated Press.
"If my good friend Dr. Gasbarri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," the pope said half-jokingly, proceeding to throw a mock punch at him. "It's normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."
He called the attack an "aberration," but at the same time said a response - evidently a violent response as per his example - was expected.
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, an isolationist think tank connected to former presidential candidate and GOP congressman Ron Paul, said in a blog post Wednesday that the terrorist attack on French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo “has many of the characteristics of a false flag operation”:Bill Clinton On Politics Of Islam: Paris Killers Exemplify 'World's Greatest Double Standard'
The attack on the cartoonists’ office was a disciplined professional attack of the kind associated with highly trained special forces; yet the suspects who were later corralled and killed seemed bumbling and unprofessional. It is like two different sets of people.
Usually Muslim terrorists are prepared to die in the attack; yet the two professionals who hit Charlie Hebdo were determined to escape and succeeded, an amazing feat. Their identity was allegedly established by the claim that they conveniently left for the authorities their ID in the getaway car. Such a mistake is inconsistent with the professionalism of the attack and reminds me of the undamaged passport found miraculously among the ruins of the two WTC towers that served to establish the identity of the alleged 9/11 hijackers […]
This was the former president’s first television appearance in the aftermath of the Paris attack.
“You read the profile of the two guys most prominently involved in the killing and how they got sucked into this by somebody essentially using religion and religious politics to advocate the world’s greatest double standard,” Clinton told the late night host.
“If you come to our country, we won’t let you worship the way you want. We won’t let you say what you want. They won’t let you do what you want to do,” Clinton continued. “However we have come to your country, therefore we have a right to do whatever we want to do, including kill you if you make us mad.”
“It’s just madness,” the former president said. “I think it can be rooted out if, and only if, the modernizing Muslims, the Arab Emirates, for example, Oman, which has tried to be a force in moving away from this, will do what they should do.”
