Terror in France, Again: Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2016— It’s a sign of the times that news of a truck plowing into a crowded street makes us immediately suspect Islamist terrorism.
Jihadi Terrorism: You Think It's Just the Jews? Think Again: Giulio Meotti, Gatestone Institute, July 15, 2016 — Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded.
No Permanent Allies or Enemies: Only Permanent Interests: Isi Leibler, Candidly Speaking, July 13, 2016— Aware that President Erdogan remains an aggressive Islamist and presumably harbors as much love for Israelis as we do for him, the government was strongly criticized for the unpalatable concessions it granted in order to restore economic and diplomatic relations with Turkey.
Brexit, National Sovereignty and the Jewish Question: Jonathan Rosenblum, Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2016 — Political theorist Mark Lilla noted the irony that “Once upon a time, the Jews were mocked for not having a nation- state. Now they are criticized for having one,” and for their stubborn determination to defend it.
Terror Wave Targeting Europe 'Has Not Reached its Peak,' Security Expert Warns: Ya’akov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2016
French Islamism and the Future of Europe: Guy Millière, Middle East Forum, July 11, 2015
The Post-Brexit Future of European-Israeli Relations: Amb. Freddy Eytan, JCPA, July 3, 2016
Theresa May, Jews and Israel — 6 Connections: Times of Israel, July 12, 2016
Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2016
It’s a sign of the times that news of a truck plowing into a crowded street makes us immediately suspect Islamist terrorism. But after Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Orlando, Istanbul, Dhaka and Baghdad, what else should we think about a truck killing scores of revelers celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France? Jihad has become the default assumption of our age.
As we went to press late Thursday, French officials were reporting at least 77 dead and dozens more wounded. Witnesses described a truck veering into the seaside promenade where a crowd had gathered to watch the French national day’s fireworks. The driver was killed by police; Nice’s deputy mayor told French TV the vehicle “was full of weapons and grenades.”
The attack took place hours after French President Francois Hollande had announced that he would lift the state of emergency under which the government has operated since last November’s Paris massacre. The emergency, which gave the government expanded powers to carry out house raids and place suspects under house arrest without judicial oversight, was ferociously criticized by civil libertarians, many from Mr. Hollande’s Socialist Party.
Now the question isn’t whether the emergency went too far, but whether it went far enough. Nobody doubts the importance of civil liberties, but surely one of them is the right to watch fireworks without fear of being bombed, shot or run over by terrorists.
The French may also wonder whether the country’s domestic intelligence and security forces have the manpower and resources to deal with the threat. Paris has an estimated 10,000 names on its terrorist watch-list, but fewer than 5,000 agents to monitor them. That ratio needs to be reversed.
An equal challenge will be to defeat Islamic State at its Mideast source. The Obama Administration insists that it is making steady progress in defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But the slow pace of the U.S. campaign has allowed ISIS to train tens of thousands of recruits, many with European passports, while extending its territorial reach from North Africa to South Asia. The threat has expanded its reach faster than it is being contained at its core.
For Europeans, one lesson in the Administration’s failure to defeat ISIS swiftly and decisively is that they cannot count on the U.S. as they once did to provide security in their neighborhood. Europe must do more for itself. But Americans watching the horror in Nice must also know that it could as easily have happened here. All the more reason to strengthen an Atlantic alliance to protect the freedoms of 1776 and 1789 against this 21st-century barbarism.
YOU THINK IT'S JUST THE JEWS? THINK AGAIN
Giulio Meotti
Gatestone Institute, July 15, 2016
Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded. The attacker drove a 19-ton truck into a large crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, France's national holiday, running down men, women and children over a 2km stretch of road and sidewalk.
On July 2, nine Italian citizens were butchered by Islamists in the assault at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They were tortured and killed with "very sharp blades" wielded by smiling terrorists who spared the life of those who knew the Quran. For almost a year already, poor Bangladeshis have been experiencing similar shocking massacres. But those victims were not wealthy non-Muslim foreigners — they were anonymous Muslim bloggers, accused of "blasphemy" and murdered out with "sharp blades" — five victims in 2015 and a law student in 2016, as well as a Hindu priest hacked to death.
The same cycle took place in Syria and Iraq, where the beheaders of the Islamic State first targeted many Western journalists, then expelled and killed Christians in Mosul, and then landed in Paris to exterminate Western civilians. Two weeks ago, a 13-year-old Israeli girl was stabbed to death while sleeping in her bed. As in Bangladesh, the Palestinian Arab terrorist used a knife to kill Hallel Yaffa Ariel. That is not a simple act of murder; it is a slaughter that wrongly equates building a home with murdering a child. Italian newspapers even deprived her of identity. Il Corriere della Sera, Italy's second largest newspaper, wrote: "West Bank: 13-year-old American killed".
When four Israelis were murdered last month in Tel Aviv's Max Brenner restaurant, the whole foreign media again had "mistaken" headlines. From Le Monde to Libération, the French press used the word "shooting" instead of terrorism. CNN reported about the "terrorists" in quotation marks. La Repubblica, Italy's largest newspaper, called the Palestinian Arab terrorists "aggressors".
What do these distorted headlines mean? That we in the West naively believe that there are two kinds of terror: "international terror" that targets Westerners in Nice, Paris, Dhaka, Raqqa or Tunisia; and "national" terror, between the Arabs and Israel, in the face of which the Israeli Jews must retreat and surrender. There is also "faceless terror," as in Orlando, where an Afghan-American Muslim massacred 50 Americans and everybody, as usual in America, refused to name "Islam."
It is the reaction of the appeaser, "one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last" according to Winston Churchill. The problem is that whether you are pacifists or warmongers, gays or heterosexuals, atheists or Christians, wealthy or poor, blasphemers or devout, French or Iraqis, jihadi terrorism does not discriminate. Every one of us is a target: Islamist terrorism is genocidal.
Despite easy slogans such as "Je Suis Charlie", very few in the West showed solidarity with the French cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo. Most Europeans thought those journalists were looking for trouble and found it. Or worse, as the Financial Times' editor said, that they were "stupid". But after January 7 came November 13. By then, no one still blamed cartoons of Mohammed for the terrorist attacks in Paris.
While the Islamic State was enslaving and raping hundreds of Yazidi girls, our intrepid feminists in the West were very busy fighting for an Irish referendum on gay marriage. They clearly did not care about the fate of their Yazidi and Kurdish "sisters". Those victims were hidden away in the remote and exotic East, as were the murdered secular Muslim bloggers in Bangladesh.
It is time to remember the famous poem by Martin Niemöller, a German Christian pastor who was imprisoned in a concentration camp for 7 years by the German Nazi regime: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist//Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —Because I was not a Trade Unionist//Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —Because I was not a Jew//Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Similarly, when Islamist terrorists target Muslim dissident bloggers, faraway Yazidi women or Israeli girls — and they are enslaved, flogged, raped or murdered — it should concern us in the West. Islamists are just sharpening their knives on them before coming for us. If we do not speak out today, we will be punished for our indolence tomorrow.
NO PERMANENT ALLIES OR ENEMIES:
Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking, July 13, 2016
Aware that President Erdogan remains an aggressive Islamist and presumably harbors as much love for Israelis as we do for him, the government was strongly criticized for the unpalatable concessions it granted in order to restore economic and diplomatic relations with Turkey. The reality is that we have become increasingly conscious that alliances are not exclusively based on shared values or feelings of friendship. Obviously a shared Judea-Christian heritage is a major asset as evidenced by the love for Israel shared by evangelical Christians in the US which became an important factor restraining the Obama administration from abandoning Israel in order curry favor with Islamic states.
In contrast, the absence of a strong pro-Israeli element in Europe, facilitated the increasingly hostile European Union approaches against Israel. European soil was drenched in Jewish blood during the Nazi era, aided and abetted in most cases by local collaborators. Today Europe faces an onslaught both internally and externally from Islamic fundamentalism which is challenging its social order. At the frontline of the battle against Islamic terrorism is Israel, an oasis of democracy and stability in a region dominated by barbarism reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
Yet despite hypocritical calls for peace, Europe remains passive as the Muslim-dominated global community campaigns to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state. The EU has applied moral equivalence towards Israel’s self-defense and the criminal Palestinian regime which incites and sanctifies killers. It has sought to pressure Israel into accepting indefensible borders and is orchestrating efforts to force Israel to unilaterally provide further concessions that could endanger its existence. In this context Brexit may alleviate the situation by weakening the control of the post-modernist EU bureaucrats, many of whom regard any nation state and in particular Israel, as remnants of a bygone era of nationalism and imperialism. They also undoubtedly now face their own nationalist problems.
The Netanyahu government is moving away from what was hitherto almost total dependency on the United States and is seeking to bolster relations with other countries. These efforts have been accelerated by the Obama Administration’s undisguised attempts to create daylight in its relationship with Israel in order to appease Moslem states hostile to Israel, in particular the Iranian terrorist state.
Today Israel welcomes alliances based on pragmatic mutual economic, political or defense interests. Turkey fits into this category as do a number of Arab countries threatened with ISIS and or Iranian hegemony. Saudi Arabia (and the Gulf States), currently at least, are willing to covertly benefit from an Israeli military presence in the region. But we should be under no illusions. For generations the Saudis, like inhabitants of most Arab states, have been exposed to intensive anti-Semitic indoctrination – both religious and political. The Wahhabi religious teachings continue to promote obscene Nazi-style stereotypes of Jews and the mullahs tell their followers that we are direct descendants of apes and pigs.
Yet astonishingly, in the wake of a failed Muslim Brotherhood government, today we find ourselves sharing common interests with Egypt in combating ISIS and extremism in the Sinai Peninsula which also includes Hamas. Taking account of the bitter anti-Semitism which permeated Egyptian society, it is a remarkable situation for Egyptian President Sissi to be calling for the eradication of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism in religious dialogue and this week formally dispatching his Foreign Minister to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem. But we should not delude ourselves that Sissi has become transformed Sissi into a lover of Zion.
These developments require constant juggling. For example, Israel created mutual interest-based relations with the Greeks and Cypriots who had previously bitterly opposed us and we must endeavor to retain these ties despite our new relationship with Turkey. Our most extraordinary, even dazzling relationship is with the Russians. Who could have envisioned that a former KGB officer, now President of Russia would hold more annual meetings with the Israeli Prime minister than the US president? And that this Russian president speaks in endearing terms about Jews in his country and his admiration for Israel. The arrangement between Russia and Israel since their involvement in the Middle East bloodbath on the borders of Israel, is unprecedented and extraordinary. But despite what seems to be a genuine affinity between President Putin and Israel, if current mutual interests conflict we should be under no illusions…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
BREXIT, NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE JEWISH QUESTION
Jonathan Rosenblum
Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2016
Political theorist Mark Lilla noted the irony that “Once upon a time, the Jews were mocked for not having a nation- state. Now they are criticized for having one,” and for their stubborn determination to defend it. That is why the dramatic reassertion of national sovereignty in the Brexit vote is important for Israel. Nor was the British public alone. Laurent Wauquiez, former French minister for European affairs, said in the wake of the Brexit vote that “the result would have been the same in any other country in the EU. Perhaps an even greater rejection in France.”
At the core of the concept of national sovereignty, writes Lilla, is the “notion of autonomy, which in political terms means the capacity to defend oneself, and when necessary, wage war.” A corollary is that nations have a duty to value the lives of their citizens above those of citizens of other countries. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fully justified by the projected loss of a million American servicemen in an invasion of the Japanese mainland. (More Japanese civilians would also have died in that invasion than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) And if Hamas or Hezbollah fire missiles at Israeli civilians from amidst their own civilian populations, Israel has the duty to do everything necessary to stop that fire, while trying to minimize civilian casualties.
European nations have lost the ability – and among the elites the will as well – to advance the interests of their citizens or to defend themselves. One thousand young English girls were impressed into sex slavery by Pakistani immigrants in Rotherham, over a period of 20 years. The authorities did not intervene lest they be accused of Islamophobia. When rapes of Swedish women in Stockholm increase 15-fold as 1.5 million Muslims enter the country, opposition to unfettered immigration is neither racism nor xenophobia but simple self-preservation.
Another aspect of national sovereignty is the ability of each nation to control its borders and determine who will become citizens. Thus immigration debates have taken a central place in America and Europe today.
Current EU rules require Britain to admit any immigrant from another EU country. As a consequence, job seekers from eastern bloc countries in the EU have flooded England. Drawn by Britain’s comparatively free labor markets, resulting in more unskilled jobs, they have claimed 70% of all new unskilled jobs. And if they fail to obtain jobs, they are immediately entitled to all the benefits of Britain’s welfare system.
Underlying the sovereignty debates is a deeper philosophical one: Are all people essentially alike – homo economicus, each rationally pursuing a slightly larger slice of the economic pie? (Note the only argument advanced by the Remain camps was: Brexit will cost us money.) And can they be organized, economically and politically, according to rational principles best administrated by an elite of trained bureaucrats? Never mind the abject failure of every centrally planned economy or of the EU itself. Today Europe is the only continent with a declining percentage of world economic activity. Its common currency, the euro, almost brought down the entire banking system when Greece went bankrupt, and remains vulnerable to worse disaster if Spain or Italy follow suit.
The opposing Burkean view that human beings are products of particular cultures, bound to one another by ties of history, kinship and language, underpins the case for national sovereignty. For Burke, human beings are not abstractions – random sets of individuals born to another random set of individuals. Rather they are products of an organic historical development, the nether reaches of which cannot be determined by abstract thought experiments à la John Locke. Those living today are part of a pact with previous generations and those yet unborn.
Appalled by the devastation of two world wars, European elites sought to jettison nationalism and the nation- states that were thought to have caused that destruction. The vision of a European political union resulted. But to say that modern Europe was “born in the ashes of Auschwitz,” notes Alain Finkielkraut, is also to forget that Europe is heir to a great civilization and it results in a passion for sameness.
For those who reject all pride in one’s country or culture, there is nothing worth defending beyond one’s time on this planet, or worth transmitting to future generations. The yet unborn remain unborn. Witness Europe’s demographic suicide. The stubborn refusal to acknowledge the depth of culture differences led Angela Merkel to throw open the gates of Europe to millions of refugees from an alien culture who have proven unable to assimilate, even in much smaller numbers.
No people ever insisted on its own uniqueness – indeed chosen status – to the same degree as the Jewish people. Without a sense of special mission, we could not have survived for millennia apart from our land.
Not by accident did the first great theorist of national sovereignty, Jean Bodin, draw heavily on Jewish sources.
Jews have been the fiercest opponents of those spreading one universal culture, from the Seleucid Greeks to Napoleon’s armies. The Jews rejected paganism’s easy acceptance of a pantheon of gods and we stood against the monotheistic faiths – Christianity and Islam – that sought to unite all mankind under one banner. When Napoleon’s liberating armies approached Russia, Rabbi Shmuel M’Liadi, the founder of Chabad, prayed for his defeat. He realized that the slogan of the French Revolution, “To the Jews as individuals – everything; as a nation – nothing,” might be good for individual Jews but would spell the end of Jewish history.
Resurgent pride in place and people may well unleash old genies in Europe. But Europe’s rationalist bureaucrats have not exactly done a bang-up job of defending Jews or Israel. The Jewish people will never be well served by those for whom religion and national identity are atavistic holdovers from a less enlightened past.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Terror Wave Targeting Europe 'Has Not Reached its Peak,' Security Expert Warns: Ya’akov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2016 —The wave of terrorist attacks targeting Europe will likely intensify, a senior Israeli security expert warned on Friday.
French Islamism and the Future of Europe: Guy Millière, Middle East Forum, July 11, 2015—In a May 24 talk in Philadelphia hosted by the Middle East Forum, noted professor and anti-Islamist author Guy Millière warned that Islamism has spread throughout Europe and argued that this process will likely continue unabated. Daniel Pipes followed with a brief rebuttal, arguing that growing opposition to Islamism offers much hope for a solution.
The Post-Brexit Future of European-Israeli Relations: Amb. Freddy Eytan, JCPA, July 3, 2016—Britain’s exit, or Brexit, from the European Union is first and foremost, a severe British domestic problem that its leaders alone must solve with diligence and as soon as possible.
Theresa May, Jews and Israel — 6 Connections: Times of Israel, July 12, 2016—ritain’s new prime minister, like her trailblazing female predecessor Margaret Thatcher, is a firm supporter of Israel, and of the Jewish community… and of a celebrity Israeli chef. As Theresa May prepares to succeed David Cameron, here are six Jewish or Israeli links, ranging from her mother’s name to her cooking preferences.
