Wednesday, November 18, 2015
PMW: Fatah official: Murdering Israelis is Palestinian "right"
Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen participated in a rally honoring Palestinian terrorist murderer Muhannad Halabi, and “saluted the soul of [the] Martyr, who detonated the Jerusalem intifada,” Ma’an news agency reported. The Fatah official supported the murders committed by Halabi and the other recent shooting and stabbing murders, saying that Palestinian young men have the “right” to cause “Israeli women to cry”:Douglas Murray: Why are the Gulf states bankrolling IS barbarians?
“It is the right of our young men to cause Israeli women to cry like our women are crying, even though our women make sounds of joy after their sons’ and husbands’ deaths as Martyrs.” [Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Nov. 14, 2015]
Palestinian society continues to give special honor to Halabi, more than the other murderers of the current terror campaign, because he carried out the first “successful” stabbing attack. He murdered two Israeli men who were walking with their wives in Jerusalem, and his attack was then copied by dozens of other terrorists. According to Muhaisen, who spoke at a rally in Halabi’s honor, Halabi “detonated the Jerusalem intifada.” The rally itself “turned into a national wedding,” the news agency reported. This is a reference to the Islamic belief that "Martyrs" for Allah are wedded to 72 Virgins in Paradise.
At the rally, PLO Central Committee Member and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) member Omar Shehadeh stated that Halabi “represents an example and role model for generations of young.” [Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Nov. 14, 2015]. PLO Executive Committee member and Deputy Secretary-General of the DFLP Qais Abd Al-Karim called terrorist Halabi a “hero,” expressed “pride” in him and talked about Palestinian “loyalty to [his] blood.”
Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Cameron said: “It is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between Islam and the extremists. Because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims.”Douglas Murray - Spectator PodCast - The Paris attacks and what happens next (best bit 7:20)
In telling this truth the PM is following the example of Sajid Javid, who said the same thing after January’s Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
Many people of Muslim background, like Javid, know what vicious and fanatical foes we are all up against.
It has taken 14 years, since 9/11, to get Western leaders to the point where they are willing to say this. But it is important. Unless we understand what drives the terrorists we cannot defeat them.
As the fallout from Paris shows, there is support for IS in Europe. Britain is not exempt — more British Muslims have gone to fight for IS than serve in our British Armed Forces. This swamp of support must also be tackled.
Even if IS are crushed there are many other groups with the same aims. Before anyone had heard of IS there was al-Qaeda. Before al-Qaeda, there were others.
The problem is the ideology. As are those “friends” in the Middle East who back it.
John Kerry Offers “Rationale” for Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack
Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to justify the terror attacks earlier this year on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo during remarks in Paris Tuesday, saying that there was a “rationale” behind the murders of 11 cartoonists and journalists.
Kerry contrasted that massacre with the recent wave of terror attacks last week, in which 129 people have died. “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” he said while speaking at the American embassy in Paris. “There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for.”
The terrorists who committed the Charlie Hebdo attack were reportedly upset by the magazine’s disrespectful portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad. Following the attack, no top U.S. dignitaries appeared at a major rally in Paris to support free speech and stand up against terror. (h/t Yenta Press)
Krauthammer and Fournier: Kerry’s Remarks On Legitimacy Of Terrorist Attack ‘Appalling’
Columnists Ron Fournier and Charles Krauthammer blasted Secretary of State John Kerry for remarks he made Tuesday in Paris that sympathized with the motivation of the terrorists involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack earlier this year.
“If a gaffe is when a politician speaks the truth, what’s really on his mind. When Kerry said legitimacy, it told us a lot about him and the president,” Krauthammer said. “A president who said at the U.N. the future does not belong to those who insult the prophet, they think deep down, that the murder of cartoonist has kind of legitimacy because it transgressed religious sensibility. That’s appalling coming out of the secretary of state and by consensus, this administration.”
Christie Rips Kerry’s Charlie Hebdo Remarks: ‘Get Some Sleep and Shut Up’
Gov. Chris Christie (R., N.J.) said that Secretary of State John Kerry “needs to get some sleep and shut up” Wednesday in response to Kerry’s comment that he could see a “rationale” behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks.Obama on Paris: “Not Interested” in “Slogans” About American Leadership
“He needs to get some sleep and shut up, is what he needs. That’s disgraceful,” Christie said.
He proceeded to condemn the Obama administration for its misguided, “weak” words and actions.
“This is the same president who is sitting around saying that somehow it’s everyone else’s fault. He’s the guy who drew the red line in Syria and didn’t enforce it, didn’t set up a no-fly zone, or these refugees wouldn’t have to be leaving their own country,” he said.
The administration’s “mixed signals” have left the American people feeling unsafe, according to Christie.
After being asked by ABC’s Jim Avila whether the United States should adopt a more aggressive approach to fighting ISIS, Obama dismissed concerns by stating that his critics were relying on “slogans.”Why Hillary and Obama Prefer Islam to Christianity
We’ll do what’s required to keep the American people safe. And I think it’s entirely appropriate in a democracy to have a serious debate about these issues. If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisors are better than the Chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff and the folks who are actually on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate. But what I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning, or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people, and to protect people in the region who are getting killed, and to protect our allies and people like France. I’m too busy for that.
In fact, leftists see all religion this way: as the refuge of the weakminded underclass. As Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Barack Obama agrees: as he said back in 2008, poor people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”Elliot Abrams: Obama's 'Shameful' Policy Toward Middle Eastern Christians
The view that all religious practice is essentially the domain of the exploited would cut in favor of seeing all religious practices as equally worthy of dismissal.
But the left prefers Islam to Christianity. They’ll fight against anyone drawing pictures of Mohammed, but they’ll lose their minds if Christians complain about an “artist” soaking a statue of Jesus in urine.
Why do leftists treat Christianity and Islam differently, if both are merely chimerical responses to the vicissitudes of life? Because leftists see Christianity as the creator of Islam’s rise, and Christians as the victimizers of Muslims. The Obama State Department won’t recognize Christians as victims of incipient Muslim genocide in the Middle East, but President Obama will equate ISIS violence in 2015 with the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. President Obama believes, like many on the left, that Western civilization was founded in racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bigotry – and that Christianity, as its wellspring, provided that impetus.
The president’s argument is that distinguishing the cases of Muslim and Christian refugees would be “shameful.” As a question of national security, that is a difficult argument to sustain: in the United States and Western Europe, Christian refugees have not become terrorists and it’s a simple fact that their admission does not present the same security risk. That does not mean no Muslim refugees should be admitted, but it does suggest that an adamant refusal to distinguish among refugees on religious lines is illogical. The 1930s provide a useful comparison: would it have been “shameful” for the United States to provide special help to Jewish refugees, who were the targets of special persecution and genocide? Or was it instead “shameful” to refuse such help?Francois Hollande is making Obama look like a fool
The Obama argument vilified his critics: “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he said. Really? Has he never heard of the hate crime legislation his administration has comprehensively supported? We distinguish in the United States between acts of violence committed for financial or personal reasons, for example, and those motivated by hate—including “attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin.” So we distinguish in American law between some victims and others, even if the damage done to them by the violence is exactly the same. Why? According to the “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” because “Such violence disrupts the tranquility and safety of communities and is deeply divisive” and “A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim and the family and friends of the victim, but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected.”
Quite right—and quite right not only in the United States but in Syria and Iraq. Christian and other minority communities are being “savaged” in just that manner by the “violent crime” called mass terrorism by the Islamic State.
It’s beyond surreal that the president of France is making the American president look like a cheese-eating amateur.After LGBT Rainbow Tribute, No Special White House Lighting For France
The terror attacks in Paris Friday took scores of lives and thrust the entire civilized world into paroxysms of grief and despair. Then something unexpected happened.
French President François Hollande stepped up to the soccer goal. And he displayed the kind of leadership one normally does not associate with the randy politician presiding over the land of vintage Champagne and Brie.
No sooner had ISIS claimed responsibility for the butchery than Hollande got in front of TV cameras and told the traumatized public that the savagery was an “act of war.’’ He vowed to pound ISIS into submission.
Compare that to the American president’s initial reaction. President Obama, who once ridiculed ISIS (or “ISIL,” as he calls it) by comparing it to a junior varsity squad, was loath to point fingers. “I don’t want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this,” he said.
After the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, famous buildings and monuments around the world were used to signal solidarity with the French people with special lighting using the colors of the French flag.Sen. Schumer: Condoning Terror against Israel Led to Paris Massacres
The Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, San Francisco City Hall, Sydney Town Hall in Australia, Madrid’s Town Hall in Spain, and the town hall of Brussels were all lit up over the weekend to demonstrate support. In the United States, the One World Trade Center spire was lit up on Friday evening with the colors of the French flag.
Although the White House lighting has been used to advance certain agendas and causes by the Obama administration, it appears that solidarity with France is not one of them.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
He directly blamed last Friday’s Islamic State (ISIS) massacres in Paris on years of malign neglect as terrorists mowed down Israelis one by one and 10 by 10, with the numbers now in the thousands and going up.Ayaan Hirsi Ali: We Need To Face Problem Of Radical Islam
Here are some of his comments, reported by the Jewish Insider:
Israel and the Jewish people have been subject to the same type of terrorism since the 70s. And for so long, when it just happened to Israel, the world condoned it.
They [may have not] condoned it, but maybe didn’t do much about it, and Israel had to fight terrorism on her own.
One of his comments was half-correct and ignored the world’s lack of appreciation for Israel’s putting a virtual end to aerial hijackings in the 1970s.
Schumer said, “Had the world come down when the terrorists shot the Israeli athletes at the Olympics (in Munich 1972), or hijacked El AL planes, and come down on them hard, we wouldn’t have had what happened in Paris, today.”
John Prescott at Daily Mirror: West should respond to Paris attacks by solving Palestine issue
During the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, the British tabloid The Daily Mirror published an op-ed by former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party John Prescott which labeled the Israeli military operation a ‘war crime” and described Gaza as “a concentration camp”.Doubling Down on a Failed Strategy
As if the odious accusation that Israel was keeping Palestinians in a “concentration camp” wasn’t bad enough, Prescott doubled down on his Holocaust inversion, and asserted the following:
What happened to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis is appalling. But you would think those atrocities would give Israelis a unique sense of perspective and empathy with the victims of a ghetto.
As Howard Jacobson argued about critics who lecture Jews on their sub-par post-Shoah moral performance:
“[For such people] the Holocaust becomes an educational experience from which Jews were ethically obliged to graduate summa cum laude, Israel being the proof that they didn’t.”
Well, Prescott just published a new op-ed at The Mirror (‘Western interventions only pour petrol on fires of Middle East unrest – but there are three things we can do, Nov. 14), that somehow manages to find an Israeli angle to the recent attacks in Paris.
After the terrible massacre carried out in Paris by ISIS, some analysts are asking the same question they asked in the summer of 2014 when ISIS was carrying out televised beheadings of American hostages: Why are they doing this? Don’t they realize it’s counterproductive? Won’t it just galvanize the world to defeat ISIS?Dennis Prager: Prager: The Left and the Attack on Paris
It’s impossible to know exactly what the apocalyptic fanatics who run ISIS think — and it’s certain that they think differently than the rational Western analysts who ask these questions. But we may surmise two answers to this question.
First, shocking acts of violence, whether against American hostages or Parisian concert-goers, enhance ISIS’s standing among a small subset of fanatical Muslims who form its core “audience” and support base. By taking the fight so directly and savagely to the “infidels,” ISIS eclipses rival groups such as al-Qaeda and creates an aura of fear that serves its interests.
Such attacks are all the more important now to counter any hint of weakness because ISIS has lost a small amount of territory at the margins of its “caliphate,” most recently around Sinjar, Iraq. ISIS needs to keep moving forward in order to avoid any impression of retreat — and the way it moves forward is by carrying out ever-more horrific acts of violence.
This was not an “attack on all humanity.” It was an attack on Western liberal values. And it wasn’t an attack on “the universal values we share,” since there are in fact few universal values that humanity shares. If humanity shared universal values, there wouldn’t be wars, or hundreds of millions of subjugated women, or theocratic and secular tyrannies.Experts Explain How Global Powers Can Smash ISIS
The president offered another piece of left-wing foolishness:
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to work with the French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice.”
This notion of “bringing terrorists to justice” is in keeping with the left-wing denial that we are in a war — specifically a war on Islamist terror. In war you defeat — which usually involves killing — your enemy. You don’t bring them to justice; you bring domestic criminals to justice. But for the left, all the world’s Islamist terrorists are isolated criminals who by amazing coincidence happen to be Muslim.
And then there was New York Times columnist Frank Bruni.
In a column of breathtaking self-righteousness, Bruni wrote that he “felt sick” over the fact that people were saying anything about the Paris attack other than offering condolences to the French people.
“Can’t we wait until we’ve resolved the body count?” he asked.
Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, argued that Western powers needed to start identifying Mr. Assad’s government as part of the problem, because its brutality and sectarianism have allowed the Islamic State to thrive.Senor: European Countries Under Threat Should Learn From Israeli Experience
“Assad is not a sideshow,” he said. “He is at the center of this massive dilemma.”
If the United States went this route, it would immediately have the support of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but it would require a great deal of diplomatic heavy-lifting to persuade Mr. Assad’s two most important backers — the Russians and the Iranians — to agree to his removal.
“The answer is simple: To beat ISIS, you need the enlistment of the Sunni forces that won’t happen as long as Assad remains in power in Damascus,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The shortest and most effective way to deal with ISIS is for the United States and Russia to come to an agreement about the removal of Assad, and they will get support from others. Then the Sunni forces, the rebels, can deal with ISIS on the ground.”
Foreign Policy Initiative co-founder Dan Senor said Tuesday that European countries under threat should learn from Israel’s security culture, but that the best way to deal with Islamic extremism would be to destroy the Islamic State’s sanctuary in the Middle East.EXCLUSIVE - U.S. Warned By Ex-Mossad Chief: Time For Armed Guards At Cafes, Malls and Clubs
“The kind of terrorist attack that happened in Paris is almost impossible in Israel today,” Senor said, pointing to Israel’s experience fighting a violent population within its borders.
“Israel has dealt with a population within its borders effectively,” he said. “Some elements of which are at war with [it].”
As a result of the conditions, Israelis have become accustomed to extensive security measures and developed a culture of security.
“There’s basic security in any facility that is hosting large numbers of people. You can’t walk into […] any kind of public space, without them checking your bag, searching you down,” he said.
Senor said that Israeli citizens understand the necessity of preventative measures, surveillance, and profiling.
The U.S. and European countries should seriously consider adapting the Israeli model of combatting terrorism in order to fight an increasingly aggressive Islamic State, former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit told Breitbart Jerusalem.Mayor Nir Barkat: A note from Jerusalem to Paris: Sharing lessons of hope and resilience
These measures include deploying armed guards to protect soft targets like restaurants, shopping centers, and movie theaters.
“You have to strike the right balance between defense and offense,” posited Shavit, who led Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency from 1989 to 1996. “If you adopt only the defensive strategy, pretty soon you realize that your investments achieve a prohibitive level.”
Shavit argued that the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday need to be analyzed in the wider context of other purported ISIS assaults over the past week. These include the group’s claim that it downed a Russian airliner over Egypt, as well as a double suicide attack in Beirut on Thursday.
These three events, said Shavit, indicate a change in ISIS strategy. “Until recently, ISIS was involved in killing other Arabs and Muslims, but now they have made a strategic change in their strategy. They have decided to go after what they call the infidels, and kill not only Arabs and Muslims but also Europeans and others.”
“Being able to perpetrate all of these terrorist attacks within one week in territories very far from each other indicates a high level of capability and preparedness,” he said.
Last year, following the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in France, I flew to Paris with a professional delegation from the Jerusalem Municipality. We encountered a city reeling from the aftermath of multiple brutal terror attacks. During the visit, I met with Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and we shared best practices for dealing with terror in the streets of our respective cities.2 dead, 7 arrested in Paris police raid targeting attack mastermind
Not even a year has passed and Paris is once again the target of the brutal carnage of evil. In Jerusalem, we are unfortunately intimately familiar with terrorism that indiscriminately targets innocent civilians going about their daily lives. The lives of innocent people in Jerusalem and Paris were cut short simply because they were dining out, praying in houses of worship, attending concerts and sporting events, or running typical errands- the mundane activities that make up the fabric of our everyday lives.
As Mayor Hidalgo and the people of France grapple with the aftermath of this past weekend’s attacks and attempt to comprehend their new reality moving forward, I would like to humbly share five pieces of advice that are based on our own experiences in Jerusalem:
Shooting broke out in northern Paris during a dawn raid by police investigating the Paris attacks, sources said Wednesday, as police hunted those behind the attacks that claimed 129 lives in the French capital on Friday.Poll: Third of Syrian Refugees Are ISIS Sympathizers
Two suspects were killed during the exchange, including a woman who detonated an explosives belt, police said.
Gunfire and explosions rocked the Saint-Denis area in the north of the city, near the Stade de France stadium, from before dawn as terrified residents were evacuated or told to stay in their homes.
Authorities arrested seven people and five police officers suffered minor injuries in the operation — a seven-hour stand-off between security forces and a group of people holed up in an apartment.
Black-clad elite police were seen hauling away a naked suspect in the streets near where three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the football stadium at the start of Friday’s attacks.
A poll released in November but ignored by the mainstream media shows that a third of Syrian refugees do not want the Muslim terrorist group ISIS defeated, reports Gateway Pundit.Joel Pollak: Why Syrian Refugees Are Not Like Jewish Refugees in WWII
The poll reveals that thirteen percent of Syrian refugees have a positive opinion of ISIS. That's a big, collective thumbs-up to a gang of savages who burn people alive, enslave women, behead children, and heave gay men to their deaths from rooftops. Another ten percent have a negative opinion to some extent on the terror group, though the poll doesn't specify in what way. Perhaps that ten percent feels that ISIS isn't killing enough gay men.
The poll also shows that thirty-one percent of Syrian refugees oppose the campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS.
Applying those figures to the 10,000 Syrian refugees Obama plans to bring into the United States means that Obama will be allowing into the country around 1,300 people who are rooting for our destruction at the hands of ruthless jihadists, and a total of 3,100 who, at best, do not want ISIS defeated.
Applying those numbers to the 1,600 Syrian refugees the Obama administration imported in the last fiscal year means the possibility of about 200 Syrian refugee ISIS supporters and a total of nearly 500 ISIS sympathizers are already here.
And Obama wonders why over half the governors in the country refuse to go along with his plan to import 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.
As the backlash against President Barack Obama’s plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States grows, the left is pushing back by comparing the crisis to the plight of Jewish refugees in World War II.Brother of Paris Attacker Worked in Belgian Immigration Department
The argument is that the U.S. should have learned its mistake: by turning away Jewish refugees, America (and other nations) doomed many to death at the hands of the Nazis. In addition, Americans opposed resettling Jewish refugees then–and that was wrong. Conclusion: we must throw open our borders.
But there are several reasons the Jewish and Syrian crises have little in common, and why opposition is different in the two cases.
1. Jews were not a terror threat; there is evidence terrorists are hiding among Syrian refugees. Jewish refugees were not a threat to the countries where they sought asylum. In the early 1920s, fears of communist activism among Jewish immigrants had helped drive restrictive immigration laws, but that threat–and the over-reaction to it–had long passed. In contrast, at least one, and as many as three, of the terrorists in the recent Paris attacks allegedly hid among Syrian refugees, prompting legitimate fears.
2. Jews were singled out for persecution by the Nazis, not (initially) fleeing an ongoing war. If anyone has a unique moral claim that parallels the Jews of Europe, it is the Syrian Christians, Iraqi Yazidis, and other minorities being persecuted by radical Islamist forces in the Middle East. But that is not true of the broader wave of Syrian refugees. That is not to blame them for the war, but it does suggest there is a good moral case for distinguishing among refugees, rather than admitting all who wish to come.
Mohamed Abdeslam is the brother of two of the terrorists that attacked Paris Friday night. They hail from Molenbeek, an impoverished immigrant district in Brussels known to be a jihadi hotbed. One of Mohamed's brothers, Ibrahim, blew himself up outside of the cafe Comptoir Voltaire near the Bataclan concert hall. The other, Salah, is now on the run after making it back across the Belgian border and is currently one of the world's most wanted terrorists. Mohamed was held and questioned by French police, but later released after it was determined he played no role in the attacks.Bomb Scare Rocks German Soccer Stadium, Officials Give “All Clear”
However, a bit of interesting information was released about the man. An ex-mayor of Molenbeek said up until the time Mohamed was arrested, he worked for the district's immigration department. In light of the current mass refugee influx in Europe suspected to be ushering in scores of ISIS militants, this is a most remarkable detail.
But Mohamed maintains that he had nothing to do with the attacks and has no idea where his brother may be hiding. Upon his release, he told the media in Belgium:
A soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands has been canceled over the “concrete threat” of a planned bomb attack.Paris Massacre Mastermind: ‘It Is Nice To See The Blood Of Infidels’
Hanover, Germany is the latest site of two separate terror scares in the wake of Friday’s massacres in Paris, France. French intelligence officials gave the all clear just moments ago (as reported in a Fox News live broadcast) after a fresh tip prompted law enforcement to evacuate the area following a previous false alarm.
Fox News explains what happened:
“We had concrete evidence that someone wanted to set off an explosive device in the stadium,” Hannover police chief Volker Kluwe told German TV. Referring to another bomb threat about an hour beforehand that turned out to be a false alarm, Kluwe said, “After the first object turned out to be harmless, we got a tip that had to be taken seriously that an attack was being planned.”
Investigators found a suspicious suitcase inside or near the stadium and a second suspicious device at the city’s central train station, German media and Sky News report. Police closed off part of the train station.
The nearby TUI-Arena was evacuated as well, and a planned concert from the German pop band Soehne Mannheims was canceled.
An eerie video has surfaced in which the suspected mastermind behind the Paris massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud – aka “Abu Omar Al-Belgiki” – praises the “sweetness of martyrdom” and expresses joy at seeing the “blood of infidels.”Guns, God and grievances - Belgium's Islamist 'airbase'
Abaaoud is at the center of a massive manhunt and is believed to have fled to ISIS-held territory in Syria although reports overnight suggest he could have been the target of a police operation in the Saint-Denis area of Paris designed to hunt down the perpetrators of last Friday’s terror attack.
According to European officials, Abaaoud is the link between the ISIS leadership in Syria and terrorists operating in Europe. He reportedly has close ties with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS’s self-proclaimed Caliph.
The 27-year-old terrorist grew up in Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels known as a hotbed of radical Jihadist activity. According to the Associated Press, Abaaoud attended one of Belgium’s most prestigious high schools.
"A breeding ground for violence" the mayor of Molenbeek called her borough on Sunday, speaking of unemployment and overcrowding among Arab immigrant families, of youthful despair finding refuge in radical Islam.Couple planned Isil suicide bombing of Westfield or Tube, court hears
But as the Brussels district on the wrong side of the city's post-industrial canal becomes a focus for police pursuing those behind Friday's mass attacks in Paris, Belgian authorities are asking what makes the narrow, terraced streets of Molenbeek different from a thousand similar neighborhoods across Europe.
Three themes emerge as Molenbeek is again in a spotlight of Islamist violence, home not just to militants among Belgium's own half a million Muslims but, it seems, for French radicals seeking a convenient, discreet base to lie low, plan and arm before striking their homeland across the border:
Security services face difficulties due to Belgium's local devolution and tensions between the country's French- and Dutch-speaking halves; the country has long been open to fundamentalist preachers from the Gulf; and it has a thriving black market in automatic rifles of the kind used in Paris.
A married couple plotted an Isil suicide bombing of the London Underground or Westfield shopping centre around the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 suicide attacks, a court heard on Tuesday.Is It Only Me Who Sees the Hypocrisy?
Mohammed Rehman, 25, and his wife Sana Ahmed Khan, 24, had enough bomb material to “cause multiple fatalities” and were just days away from being able to carry out an attack.
They had already tested explosives in a back garden and only needed to make a detonator, when counter-terrorism police swooped.
But they were caught after police spotted Rehman’s Twitter account, where he went under the name “Silent Bomber” and had asked followers for advice on which target to hit, the Old Bailey heard.
I am happy France is bombing the [blank] out of ISIS.EXCLUSIVE - Israelis to France: Still Want Us To Show ‘Restraint’ In Face Of Terror?
I just hope they dropped leaflets or called the houses they were bombing before doing so. How many civilians were killed in this bombing?
Will the UN condemn France? Will Obama make a statement?
How about I call on both sides to act with restraint.
Yeah I know, you are offended by my sarcasm.
Too bad when France says it to Israel, they are serious!
Ya think we will see these demonstrations in the streets of France?
Is it only me who sees the hypocrisy?
France’s “massive” retaliation for the Paris attacks has irritated Israelis who feel that when Israel responds to terror it is held to a double standard by the international community.Australia Police In Extremist ‘Shoot On Sight’ Training
French President Francois Hollande called the terrorist attacks an act of war and promised that France would take revenge. On Sunday, 12 aircraft – including 10 fighter jets – dropped a total of 20 bombs on Raqqa, ISIS’ de-facto capital.
“It was normal to take the initiative and action and France had the legitimacy to do so. We did it already in the past. We have conducted new airstrikes in Raqqa today,” France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “One cannot be attacked harshly, and you know the drama that is happening in Paris, without being present and active.”
Now Israelis are asking themselves how the world would respond had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the same remarks following Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis. They have little doubt that Netanyahu would be denigrated for suggesting that it was “normal” and “legitimate” to respond the way France has.
Australian police are being trained to shoot armed extremists on sight it was revealed Tuesday, in a change of tactics from “contain and negotiate” amid fears of further terrorist attacks.Denmark raises threat level after Paris attacks
Canberra has become increasingly concerned about the prospect of lone-wolf attacks by individuals inspired by groups such as Islamic State, and a tightening of counter-terrorism laws is underway.
Six attacks in Australia have been foiled over the past 12 months, according to the government, but several have not, including a police employee being shot in the back of the head in Sydney last month by a teenager reportedly shouting religious slogans.
In response the country’s most populous state, New South Wales, has begun training police to shoot armed attackers immediately, rather than the “contain and negotiate” protocol that has been in place for decades.
“We’re at a point now where the ground has shifted, things have changed and starting with Mumbai onwards there’s been any number of attacks where you have a mobile enemy force, which moves through places and kills people,” Deputy NSW Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas told 2UE radio.
“We would be mad to continue to say we will do nothing but contain and negotiate.”
Danish police on Wednesday raised the country's threat level by one notch to the next-highest level, citing the elevated risk of a terrorist attack after last week's Paris attacks.'Beautiful Revenge' - Swedish Islamists Praise Paris Attacks, Promise More Violence To Come
"Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, the Danish police is now raising its internal preparedness level" to "significantly heightened preparedness", it said in a statement.
Police cited the "uncertain situation in a number of European countries."
However, it said the Danish intelligence service PET had "not changed its assessment of the terrorist threat against Denmark, which is still considered serious."
The Danish public would not see any difference in their daily lives as a result of the change, police said, according to AFP.
Swedish Islamists have reacted with joy at the Paris attacks, writing praise from their new homes in the Islamic State and promising more of the same.Iran's Basij Commander: Israel, not ISIS behind Paris attacks
One ‘Swedish’ Muslim propagandist who publishes pictures of himself wielding automatic weapons glorifying jihad and calling on other people in Sweden to join the Islamic State praised the Paris terrorists. Posting online, he wrote the killings were “this beautiful revenge… it is in the name of Allah”, reports Sweden’s high-circulation left-wing daily Afton Bladet.
Another jihadist who previously lived in Sweden is a 25-year-old man, who warned the West and Russia against retaliatory attacks after the Paris killings. Posting to Facebook he said: “If Hollande bombs Muslims in Syria we will bomb his civilians. If Putin kills our women and children, we will bring war to his streets.
“You are conducting a war against Syria and Iraq to kill our civilians. By Allah, we will shoot your civilians wherever you are”.
Muslim terrorists belonging to Islamic State (ISIS) murdered at least 129 people in Paris on Saturday - but according to a top Iranian general, Israel is to blame.Report: Iranian Cartoonist Arrested After Drawing Cartoon in Support of France
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, head of Iran's Basij paramilitary force, made the baffling assertion on Wednesday, as cited by the semi official Fars News Agency.
"If we write the word Israel instead of ISIS, the behind the scene of the recent events in France will come into light," he claimed as quoted by the Iranian paper.
"ISIS is the infantry unit of the US and the usurper Zionist regime since they don’t have fighters today anymore and have lost power to fight, and they have created ISIS by making investment on the fools," he said. "Such events should happen in Europe in order for the US and its hirelings to be able to justify their presence in the region and escape from criticisms."
An Iranian cartoonist was reportedly arrested in Tehran after drawing a cartoon in support of France after suicide bombings and shootings in Paris killed and wounded hundreds of people.The Façade in CAIR’s Paris Attacks Condemnation
Official state news media, which are controlled by Iran’s hardliners, have yet to report the arrest of the cartoonist, Hadi Heidari.
The New York Times reported:
The Tabnak news site, a Persian-language service in Iran, said Mr. Heidari was taken into custody for “unknown reasons” Monday afternoon while at work at The Shahrvand, a daily newspaper in Tehran that is owned by Iran’s Red Crescent Society, or Red Cross. Iranian rights activists, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for protection, said they had learned of Mr. Heidari’s arrest from his colleagues at The Shahrvand, who described the arresting agents as members of the intelligence unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. … It came after the publication of a cartoon by Mr. Heidari depicting tearful solidarity with the people of France over the attacks Friday that left at least 129 people dead.
Minimizing debate is counter-productive, he added, because there are voices advocating reform who challenge “the fusing of religion and politics, the voices that want to challenge the scriptural basis which extremists claim to be acting on…the voices that are crucial in providing an alternative worldview that could stop a teenager’s slide along the spectrum of extremism.”'We need to wage a jihad against the jihad': French Muslims join mourners to condemn Paris attacks... But are they too late?
These voices lack the profile and money the terrorists have at their disposal.
Perhaps Shibly and his colleagues at CAIR are targeting the wrong audience. Rather than tell non-Muslims to ignore the statements issued by Islamist terrorists, CAIR might provide a better public service by loudly and clearly speaking to the terrorists themselves. If the terrorists are wrong theologically, who better than the most visible Muslim advocacy group in the country to set them straight?
Instead, CAIR has chosen the same template over and over again. Like “Fight Club,” the first rule of radical Islam is you do not talk about radical Islam.
As crowds continued to gather at the Place de la République last night, laying flowers and lighting candles in memory of the dead, a group French Muslims held up banners and started to chant.'They may have guns... we have Champagne!': Charlie Hebdo responds to Paris terror attacks with cartoon of gunned down reveller enjoying one last drink
'Unite against brutality, unite for humanity!' They shouted. 'Killing any human is killing all mankind! Saving any human is saving all mankind!'
Around 30 Muslims, all of Bangladeshi origin and living in Paris, felt they had to take a stand against Islamic extremism because – as they saw it – few other Muslims were willing to raise their voices.
The cartoon is of a man riddled with bullet-holes – each of which spurts out the champagne he carries on drinking, regardless of his wounds.Turkish soccer fans BOO during minute's silence for victims of Paris attacks and chant 'Allahu Akhbar' ahead of 'friendly' game against Greece
‘They have weapons,’ says the caption. ‘F*** them. We have champagne.’
This is the arguably tasteless front cover of France’s satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, due to be published on Wednesday in direct and self-consciously defiant response to Friday’s ISIS massacres in Paris.
Turkey fans were heard booing during the minute's silence for the victims of the Paris attacks before kick-offUnited in grief... and defiance: England stands shoulder to shoulder with France in emotional night at Wembley as fans, players and royalty put on show of support after Paris atrocities
Chants of 'Allahu Akbar' - the Islamic phrase meaning 'God is greater' - were reportedly heard in Istanbul
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu watched the game together
It was the first time the two teams met for eight years and the Turkish Football Federation announced a string of additional security measures - the neighbours' relationship has suffered from hostilities in the past
Fatih Terim's side were held to a goalless draw by Michael Skibbe's visitors at the Basaksehir Fatih Terim Stadium
More than 70,000 fans joined Prince William and David Cameron for rousing rendition of La Marseillaise at Wembley'It's as if we are the ones who are responsible': Australia's Grand Mufti says he should NOT have to 'condemn every single terror attack' during Arabic radio interview
Supporters came together in a poignant display of solidarity as England and France went head-to-head in a friendly
England won the match 2-0 with the help of goals from Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli and captain Wayne Rooney
Wembley arch was lit up in the French tricolore while words to the French national anthem were shown on a screen
Security for the game was heightened with SAS units patrolling 90,000-seater stadium, with 5,000 troops on standby
Prince William said the game was 'powerful message of Britain's friendship' while David Cameron also in the stands
Elsewhere friendly between Germany and Holland was cancelled tonight after suspicious object found at stadium
France coach Didier Deschamps later revealed he did not tell his players about the postponed game before kick-off
Grand Mufti said he should not have to condemn every instance of terrorGuantanamo Human Rights Group CAGE: 'Jihad Is An Important Concept'
He also said Jesus Christ had also been mocked by his people
The Grand Mufti added that he had been target by Islamic State
Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed made the comments to SBS and 2UE Radio
Dr Mohammed reiterated that attacks in Paris were not in name of Islam
He said he has condemned the Islamic State from its beginning
Dr Mohammed did both radio interviews speaking in Arabic on Wednesday
He reportedly speaks Arabic on 'intense' issues so he is not misinterpreted
CAGE – a group formed by former Guantanamo Bay detainees which claims to be a human rights organisation – has stepped back from a clear opportunity to disown comments made by their research director earlier this year, in which he called Mohammed Emwazi, better known as the ISIS executioner Jihadi John, a “beautiful”, “kind” and “humble” man.AP: Explosion Blamed on Nigeria's Boko Haram 32 Dead 80 Wounded
In a pained evidence session in front of the British Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee yesterday, Dr Adnan Siddiqui, director of CAGE drew harsh criticism from the committee for offering up vague and contradictory answers to direct questions, and stated: “I accept that the concept of jihad is an important concept.”
Despite this, the committee was able to establish that Dr. Siddiqui did not condemn his colleague’s remarks regarding Emwazi; did condemn the government’s targeting of Jihadi John in a drone strike as an act of “vengeance”; and seemed to give his support to a suicide bombing in Aleppo which resulted in the escape of 300 prisoners.
Despite being established more than a decade ago, CAGE reached the peak of its fame in March of this year when, in a press conference, research director Asim Qureshi described Mohammed Emwazi [Jihadi John], who he met repeatedly in 2012, as “such a beautiful young man […] He was the most humble young person that I knew. This is the kind of person that we are talking about.”
A night-time suicide bombing blamed on Boko Haram extremists killed 32 people and wounded 80 Tuesday at a truck stop in northeastern Nigeria, an emergency official said.Analysis: Assad is the Main Beneficiary of War on ISIS
Tuesday night’s blast breaks a three-week hiatus in bombings after a string of suicide attacks culminated in twin explosions in mosques in two northeastern cities that killed 42 people and wounded more than 100 on Oct. 23.
One of the mosques attacked was in Yola, capital of Adamawa state, where the insurgents struck again. It was the third suicide bombing in as many months in a city overflowing with some of the 2.3 million refugees driven from their homes by the Islamic uprising.
At least 32 people were killed and about 80 wounded victims were evacuated to hospitals after Tuesday night’s blast, coordinator Sa’ad Bello of the National Emergency Management Agency told the AP.
Most victims were vendors and passers-by, said Deputy Superintendent Othman Abubakar, the police spokesman for Adamawa state.
The increased attention ISIS is receiving in the wake of Friday’s deadly terror attacks in Paris is “taking the pressure off the Syrian regime right at the moment when pressure might have been effective,” Josh Rogin wrote Sunday on Bloomberg View.FCC Chairman 'Not Sure Our Authority Extends' to Shutting Down ISIS Websites
ISIS was able to establish itself in Syria due to Assad’s brutal campaigns against Sunni Muslims in the country, which drove many of them into the arms of the terror group, Rogin argued. Meanwhile, Russian and Iranian forces have launched frequent attacks on non-ISIS rebels, though they have mostly left ISIS alone. “Assad wants the Islamic State to remain an imminent threat, so the international community will see two options: keep Assad or let terrorists take over Syria,” Rogin explained.
Rogin quoted several experts who also reached this conclusion, including former White House advisor and veteran diplomat Dennis Ross. “Bashar Assad is not the answer to defeating ISIS; he helped produce them, buys their oil, is the cause that draws foreign fighters to them,” Ross tweeted on Sunday.
“Making sure Assad is not the answer is key to a viable settlement,” Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, similarly told Rogin. “At the end of this process, it has to be a viable agreement that puts a country back together or we are going to have terror attacks in the U.S.”
“There is a lot of temptation, in the wake of the horror in Paris, to treat only the symptoms of instability in Syria,” Rogin concluded. “But the Assad regime is the disease, and the symptoms will not go away until Assad is gone.”
On Tuesday, at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) inquired if the Federal Communications Commission has the power to shut down websites used by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.Why I’m Not Drinking The Waleed Aly Kool-Aid
“ISIS and the terrorist networks can’t beat us militarily, but they are really trying to use the Internet and all of the social media to try to intimidate and beat us psychologically,” Barton told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler:
Isn’t there something we can do under existing law to shut those Internet sites down, and I know they pop up like weeds, but once they do pop up, shut them down and then turn those Internet addresses over to the appropriate law enforcement agencies to try to track them down? I would think that even in an open society, when there is a clear threat, they’ve declared war against us, our way of life, they’ve threatened to attack this very city our capital is in, that we could do something about the Internet and social media side of the equation.
I have a problem with it – a problem already articulated by The Australian’s Chris Kenny.The Guardian: The Paris attacks prove Charlie Hebdo’s critics wrong
Aly’s sermon on The Project last night has gone viral, as they say, and to the young and naive and to the forever apologetic Green Left, it offers a comforting message that love will conquer the suicide bomber and the terrorist with an AK-47.
Yet by trumpeting this message at the expense of talking about the ideology of Islamist extremism that permeates the globe and motivates these indiscriminate killings, Aly and others deliver a message that amplifies the propaganda of the ideologues.
Aly’s core element of truth is that the terrorists want to foment division.
But he echoes their logic by suggesting it is the reaction of the broader community that sows division; that hatred somehow comes from our reaction to terrorism rather than the terror itself.
By suggesting that the broader public in western countries would turn on Muslims, politicians and commentators feed the narrative of Muslim grievance that terrorists use to motivate their followers and recruit extremists.
This is the message of terror in its purest form: nobody is safe. It could be you. The cartoonists murdered in January belonged to the old guard of the secular, libertarian left. Many of Friday’s victims were young enough to be their grandchildren, from a generation less likely to celebrate secularism by goading religion. Both were slaughtered by young men inflamed by the same vicious ideology. Those who had limited sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo victims on the grounds that they had to some extent provoked violent retribution must now realise that no provocation is necessary, unless communal joy counts as a provocation.Mother Jones: Mocking Concerns About Refugees Makes Democrats Appear Detached from Reality
It should have been obvious all along that the cartoons were merely an excuse. It flattered the terrorists and insulted their victims to pretend there was an atom of justification, and the latest attacks make fools of anyone who did.
One of the victims of the Bataclan massacre was the rock critic Guillaume B Decherf, whose final pieces for the magazine Les Inrockuptibles included an enthusiastic review of the latest album by Eagles of Death Metal. He ended it by applauding the band’s desire to please, writing: “Plaisir partagé!”, “Pleasure shared!” For Decherf, this was a life-affirming goal and a reason to celebrate music. For the terrorists in Paris, plaisir partagé was a reason to kill and kill and kill.
It’s not every day that Mother Jones magazine publishes something asking progressives to take it down a notch, but that’s what author Kevin Drum did in a piece published Tuesday.PreOccupiedTerritory: Your Obtuseness About Why I Want To Kill You Makes Me Want To Kill You (satire)
Drum was reacting to a flood of mockery he saw in his Twitter feed Monday. While fellow progressives were directing their barbs at anyone suggesting the U.S. should reconsider taking in refugees from countries awash in Islamic extremists, Drum notes this is not a concern limited to the far right.
As proof, Drum cites a Pew poll published by the Washington Post. While the poll doesn’t directly address the refugee situation, it does show that a majority (71%) of Republicans and nearly half of Democrats (46%) are concerned about the spread of Islamic extremism here at home. Those numbers represent a large base of people who might see the refugee question as a genuine national security concern in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Given the polling, Drum writes, “It doesn’t seem xenophobic or crazy to call for an end to accepting Syrian refugees. It seems like simple common sense.” And therein lies the political problem for Democrats. Attacking those who think it might be time to reconsider our plans to import refugees from Syria, “seems absurdly out of touch to a lot of people.” Drum writes that it leaves some people wondering if Democrats are “detached from reality?”
Perversely, the very elitism and arrogance so many of you so-called experts blame for this situation is on display when you refuse to accept our simple explanation, and instead try to attribute it to Western policies, as if nothing we Muslims do can be the product of our own culture and society. No, that culture and society can’t possibly be robust enough to account for phenomena with a global impact – it has to be the West’s fault. Muslims can’t do that by themselves! Only OUR Western behavior is important enough to lie at the root of these things! Goodness gracious, you morons. The stupidity born of your arrogance is so frustrating it makes me want to bludgeon you to death.3 Month Failure: Networks Make No Mention Of 'Islam' In Israeli Terror Attacks
What does it take to get the message across? We’ve tried beheadings, mass rape, mass shootings, suicide attacks, sniper attacks, grenades, car bombs, and a hundred other methods of conveying the fact that we want to kill you because of who you are, not what you do. We even got an educated Kuwaiti-British fellow to pontificate on video for you to that effect before he cut off Westerners’ heads, and your reaction was to beat your own breasts and wail mea culpa over your society’s role in creating militant Islamism. Idiots. Here, let me do the beating for you. I’ll use a sledge hammer.
You make me so angry with your willful blindness at my unequivocally transparent motivations for killing you that I want to stab you repeatedly with a fork. Goddamn retards.
