Tag Archive for: France

The Surge of Deadly Illegal Migration Across the Mediterranean

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The EU is in the midst of another refugee crisis in the Straits that separates Sicily from North Africa. The flash point of the humanitarian crisis is the Island of Lampedusa 297 kilometers offshore of Tripoli, Libya. 168 kilometers north of Lampedusa is the Island Republic of Malta which is also in the crosshairs of this crisis. Refugees from the Jihadist conflicts throughout the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, even South Asia pack into a flotilla of overloaded vessels which make a bee-line for this Italian landfall with less than 5,000 full time residents, where heretofore they received a welcome. Off-shore of Lampedusa now sits a flotilla of EU coast guard vessels on rotating duty alert for distress calls escorting floundering vessels to port on the Italian island and hence to Sicily and the Italian mainland. Unfortunately, these days Italian and EU coast guard vessels also search for the bodies of illegal migrants washed overboard.

The illegal refugee crisis in the Mediterranean reached a new peak in late April 2015 when thousands of illegal ‘migrants’ attempted the perilous journey. They were seeking refuge and access to generous welfare and absorption benefits from the EU. In one tragic instance, an overloaded 66 foot fishing vessel capsized on Sunday, April 19th when migrants rushed to one side of the deck hailing a commercial vessel responding their distress call. The result was over 800 downed, less than 49 survived and 28 bodies have been pulled from the water so far. Another ship disaster last week claimed 400 lives off Tripoli. The picket line of Italian and other EU coast guard vessels were pressed into service endeavoring to recover the remains. That week, an estimated 8,500 made the crossing on questionable vessels arranged by human traffickers. In 2014 more than 1,600 died during turbulent crossings. So far this year more than 900 lives have been lost. Frontex data shows that migration across the Mediterranean in 2014 peaked to a level more than twice as high as its previous peak in 2011. 170,760 migrants crossed the Mediterranean in 2014, compared with 64,300 in 2011, 15,900 in 2012, and 40,000 in 2013.

Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat requested an emergency EU Summit to address these deadly illegal migrant ship disasters. It was quickly added to the agenda of the EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg.  According to a USA Today report Renzi said, “How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?” Muscat seconded Renzi calling “it the “biggest human tragedy of the last few years.” The illegal migration problem was discussed at the Informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the EU and the Southern Mediterranean countries held in Barcelona on April 13th to discuss the future of the European Neighborhood Policy.

However, there was a new development. In one illegal crossing, 12 Christians from Nigeria and Ghana were thrown overboard from a sinking raft by Muslim compatriots, because they wouldn’t recite the Shahada – the profession of faith or other Qur’anic verses. The perpetrators were arrested by Italian police. Onshore, ISIS followers in Libya beheaded 30 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians seeking to make the illegal passage across the Mediterranean, yet another outrage. That sparked anger from the Obama Administration. However, in the 20 months remaining of President Obama’s final term in office, the priority is engagement with Iran over its nuclear program via the P5+1 process hoping to deprive the Islamic regime of nuclear weapons. That priority leaves a legacy for his successor to deal with, a welter of crises.

Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels in a 10 NewsDK blog post noted the scandal of EU cooperation with North African human traffickers:

Last weekend the EU coast guard transported 8,500 people from North Africa to Italy alone. EU says that it “saves” the “refugees” (many of them turn out to be jihadis or fake refugees) from the dangerous travel across the Mediterranean. However, it is the EU that lures millions to do this potentially deadly trip by promising Western welfare to those willing to take the chance. The EU should either start offering free transport from Africa to Europe or start sending all refugees back to local camps. I advise the latter option, and not just because it would make us able to give safety to more people for the same amount of money – which is more compassionate. But also because it would dissuade people from taking the deadly chance. Thereby nobody would die in the attempt to reach EU shores. That is how Australia does it – and since Australia introduced this policy, the amount of drowned boat-refugees decreased to zero.

It is obvious that the situation is unsustainable, but as long as our politicians continue to obey the EU and the UN, the human tsunami of refugees seeking the help of European tax payers will continue. According to humanitarian agencies “up to half a million migrants may try to cross the Mediterranean this year – a figure that would dwarf the 170,000 who reached Italy last year.”

According to a report from Express, North African Human smugglers are alerting EU authorities they are sending illegal people across the Mediterranean:

Trafficking gangs ferrying immigrants into the European Union are tipping off officials so Italian and EU coast guard vessels   can pick up their boats. …

Gangs are so certain their boats will be picked up they’re even putting less fuel in the tank because naval vessels will pick them up, a former UK immigration manager has revealed.

Of the 270,000 migrants who arrived in Europe illegally last year, more than 220,000 of them came through North Africa.

Many of those attempting the dangerous crossing in overloaded un-seaworthy craft were propelled by sectarian conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria involving ISIS, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram. Muslims among these illegal migrants are being welcomed into what the scholar Bat Ye’or called Eurabia: the Euro Arab Axis. In her book, Bat Ye’or warned about the consequences of EU bureaucracies engaged in outreach to Muslim countries on the periphery of the Mediterranean via the Barcelona Process of the 1990’s. That led to the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in Paris on July 13, 2008 at a meeting of 43 heads of Euro-Mediterranean States. Subsequently, Foreign Ministers of the UfM met in Marseilles in November 2008 and established a headquarters in Barcelona. In 2010, senior member states of the UfM approved the Statues and Barcelona Headquarters in accordance with Spanish Law. According to the website of the UfM its vision and mission/mandate are:

The UfM is a multilateral partnership aiming at increasing the potential for regional integration and cohesion among Euro-Mediterranean countries. The Union for the Mediterranean is inspired by the shared political will to revitalize efforts to transform the Mediterranean into an area of peace, democracy, cooperation and prosperity.

The UfM was promoted by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a means of contending with the problems of rejectionist émigré Muslim communities engaged in internal disturbances attributable to mass immigration. Add to that are the contemporary problems of thousands of EU Muslims traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State to fight and build the self-declared Caliphate. A Caliphate engaged in ethnic cleansing of infidels: Christians, ancient religious minorities and what are deemed heterodox Muslims.

Fjordman, Norwegian blogger Peder Jensen, author of Defeating Eurabia  said in an email exchange:

While the Mediterranean is flooded with illegal immigrants, including Islamic Jihadists, the EU elites are creating a Union for the Mediterranean. Europe needs a Union for the Mediterranean just like it needs a beheading. This is, coincidentally, just what it might get. It is doubtful whether most Europeans want a Union with North Africa and the Middle East, but then the EU elites never cared about what ordinary Europeans think. There is no reason for them to start now.

The Syrian Civil war displaced nearly 4 million registered refugees. UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) administered camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt hosting 3.2 million. 22 countries have agreed last December to accept 100,000 of the more than 320,000 Syrian refugees most at risk in 2016. The UNHCR has requested absorption of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees by major EU countries and even here in the US.

The consequences of these refugee and illegal migrant flows caused by sectarian Jihad warfare in the Muslim Ummah heartland are ironic. The Eurabian bureaucracies have in effect acquiesced to the Islamic doctrine of Dar al Hijrah – the land of immigration, a reflection of the Prophet Mohammed’s migration from Mecca to Medina that kick started the first grand Jihad. That has given rise to calls by center right parties in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, Sweden and the UK to reject further mass Muslim migration, whether legal or illegal. This is a reflection of rising concern over Muslim citizens traveling to join the cause of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda only to have some return to commit massacres like the Charlie Hebdo mass shooting and the Hyper Cacher Kosher Supermarket in Paris that killed 17 in January 2015. As both Sennels and Fjordman have stated, the EU citizens will pay the price of this massive wave of illegal Muslim emigration across the Mediterranean spawned by Jihad.

Geert Wilders’, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV)  in the Netherlands, drew attention to this dilemma in a speech April 29, 2015 at the Washington, D.C. Conservative Opportunity Society:

The UN plan to resettle 1 million immigrants in Western nations will provide jihadis an opportunity to infiltrate Western countries, including the US. It will give terrorists the opportunity to settle in our countries without the extra scrutiny involved in obtaining a visa or a residence permit.

We should not do this. The vast majority of the European citizens disapprove of the way their governments are handling immigration. Moreover, there are plenty of other safe countries where immigrants bound for the West can go to, including the wealthy Gulf States that have almost zero asylum-seekers today.

Immigration, especially Islamic immigration, had devastating consequences. It has made our countries less safe.

Tunisian Captain and Syrian first mate of capsized fishing vessel off Libya, April 19, 2015.

Smuggler Profiteering of Illegal Migrant Trafficking

The massive surge in the deadly illegal migrant trade across the Mediterranean figured in the emergency meeting of EU Foreign ministers in Luxembourg. The loss of over 1,200 in two separate trafficking ship disasters spurred on deliberations requested by Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat. April 22, 2015 charges were brought in Italian courts against the 27 year old Tunisian captain and 25 year old Syrian mate of the 66 foot fishing boat that capsized off Libya with a loss of 800 crammed into the flimsy vessel. NBC news reported:

The Tunisian captain of the boat — 27-year-old Mohammed Ali Malek — was arrested along with a Syrian crew member, 25-year-old Mahmud Bikhit.

Sicilian prosecutors said Tuesday that Malek has been charged with culpable shipwreck, manslaughter and aiding and abetting illegal immigration. Bikhit has been charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration, the statement from Catania’s prosecutors said.

The question is who benefits from this deadly smuggling business?

The answer is the jihadists in Libya who have profited from the turmoil in the region. A Wall Street Journal report revealed how profitable the business of trafficking illegal migrants is worth taking the risks involved as deadly as the results have been to their customers seeking refuge in the EU. This is the bottom line of the WSJ report: “Brazen, multi-million-dollar people-smuggling enterprise run by Libyan militias and tribesmen proves hard to combat.”

The WSJ wrote:

Various armed groups in Libya are aggressively advertising their services to would-be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Syrians fleeing conflict in their country, presenting the collapse of order in Libya as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure safe passage to Europe, says Arezo Malakooti, the director of migration research for Paris-based Altai Consulting, a consultancy that works with the International Organization for Migration and other migration-related groups.

“The profits from human trafficking have consolidated a new balance of power in the Sahel and Libya,” says Tuesday Reitano, head of the Geneva-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

How a Saharan tribe profits:

The Saharan Tebu tribe, for instance, is now making “a killing,” according to Ms. Reitano, who estimates the tribe pockets some $60,000 a week by charging West African migrants for a seat on four-wheel-drive cars that take them to Agadez, a major city in Niger. From there, they ferry the migrants to the central Libyan city of Sabha and then proceed to northern Libya ahead of their sea journey to Italy and Malta.

The profits are such that tribes normally at war cooperate at times in getting migrants from one place to the next.

Mustapha Orghan, an activist who has worked with aid groups to track smuggler operations said:

Tebu and Tuaregs used to smuggle goods. The new alternative is human trafficking…and now both Tuaregs and Tebu are trying to get their share of the cake.

Mr. Orghan said Ghat, a southern Libyan town near the Algerian border where he lives, is the first entry point from Algeria for Africans. There, he said, “African migrants get sold from one smuggler to another.”

He said the trafficking business has become increasingly lucrative since chaos in Libya sharply reduced traditional sources of income in the region: heavily subsidized oil, food and other goods from Algeria.

“Farming” migrants to make profits:

In Sabha, African men typically spend months working as laborers, and women as housemaids, to earn the roughly $1,000 to pay for the crossing from Libya’s northern coast. If there is no demand for their services in Sabha, smugglers farm them out to cities further north and west for approximately 700 Libyan dinar, or about $500.

Discrimination among “customers” leads to deadly trips:

Ismail, an African migrant who declined to give his full name and nationality, tried to cross three times in recent weeks but was thwarted by overcrowding and breakdowns of the cheap plastic boat of the sort usually provided for Africans. Syrians, who can often pay more and aren’t discriminated against by the overwhelmingly Arab smugglers, typically make the crossing in sturdier wooden boats.

According to the Frontex agency the EU has arrested 10,000 involved in the illegal migrant trade, mainly truck drivers and many migrants involved in navigating the flimsy crafts. Italian authorities have arrested 1,000 smugglers since 2014. However of these, less than 100 have been convicted. They simply lack the resources in contending with the mushrooming human trafficking business as Libya devolves into a failed state.

Watch this WSJ video dramatizing the journey of an Eritrean illegal migrant across Africa to Libya and his perilous transit via smugglers to his ultimate destination in the Italian island of Lampedusa:

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg may have surfaced calls for safe and secure channels to reduce the deadly toll of illegal migrants, but going after the lucrative smuggling trafficking business at its source means contending with warring militias and the criminal activities of tribal groups in Libya. Note this ironic comment from the UN Human Rights Commission head:

“Europe is turning its back on some of the most vulnerable migrants in the world, and risk turning the Mediterranean into a vast cemetery,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein Monday. “Migrant smugglers are the symptom, not the cause of this wretched situation.”

The European Commission Proposals

The Brussels meeting of the European Commission (EC) on April 23, 2015 proposed a number of temporary measures to deal with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. The EC recommended doubling of Southern European border–control missions of Spain, Malta and Italy from the present level of $3.2 million monthly to effectively “increase search and rescue operations.” The EC will also provide additional resources to Spain, Malta and Greece. Another EC proposal would provide assistance to Tunisia, Egypt and Niger in buttressing their land border controls. The EC proposed a pilot project to re-distribute 5,000 refugees who meet asylum requirements stranded outside the EU, as an attempt to fairly distribute the burden of asylees. That flies in the face of objections by major northern countries to further asylum quotas. In 2014, 626,065 refugees filed asylum claims, a 44% percent increase over 2013. As one example, Germany experienced a sharp rise is asylum requests over the first quarter of 2015 to 85,394, double over the same period in 2014. By contrast the U.S. received 47,500 asylum applications.

The majority of those asylum seekers hail from Kosovo, Syria and Albania. Germany currently has a backlog of over 200,000 applications. This has given rise to complaints by municipalities in Germany about the impact on facilities and community integration. In the most controversial proposal, the EC requested EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Federica Mogherini to develop rules of engagement enabling it to capture and destroy illegal smuggling vessels. Overall EC President Donald Tusk of Poland said the illegal migrant crisis is a” complex issue” that will “take time to tackle.”

However in the immediate future the southern tier of EU nations may yet see a further spike in illegal migrants. In the final Week of April 2015, more than 10,000 refugees from the conflict in Yemen fled in rickety boats across the Bab al Mandab to the Republic of Djibouti placing a further burden on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Djibouti borders Eritrea where a number of migrants have followed the smuggler network to Libya and the dangerous passage to Italy and Malta on fleets of unseaworthy boats.

Conclusion

Jihad conflicts in the Middle East and Africa are driving hundreds of thousands annually in desperation to pay top dollar for a deadly ride on those rickety boats whose owners mage large profits. Nature abhors a vacuum when chaos creates rich opportunities to rake in enormous wealth from trafficking illegal migrants. The successful smugglers even alert EU officials that they are bringing another shipload of hapless migrants to fatten their margins from this deadly trade. The EU and the Union for the Mediterranean proposals for dealing with illegal mass immigration will surely cost billions of Euros. In the meantime, Italian and other EU coast guards continue to provide a picket line of vessels daily monitoring these dangerous trips in flimsy craft across the Mediterranean from the failed state of Libya.

 EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.

Major Gaps between P5+1 and Iran on Framework Agreement

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This Passover Easter weekend, the media was abuzz in speculative commentary on President Obama’s announcement in the Rose Garden on Thursday April 2nd of the P5+1 Framework for a nuclear deal with Iran. Problem is no one really knows what is involved in drafting let alone concluding a definitive technical agreement between the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic of Iran by June 30, 2015, 90 days from now. President Obama extolled the virtues of the deal saying:

Good afternoon, everybody. Today, The United States, together with Allies and Partners, have reached a historic understanding with Iran, which if fully implemented, would  prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, As President and Commander in Chief, I have no great responsibility than the security of the American people. I’m convinced that if this framework leads to a final a final comprehensive deal, it will make our country, our allies, and our world, safer. This has been a long time coming. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been advancing its nuclear program for decades.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Read the opening stanza of former President Bill Clinton on October 18, 1994, when he announced a previous nuclear framework agreement that failed to stop North Korea from eventually creating a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear tipped missiles:

Good afternoon. I am pleased that the United States and North Korea yesterday reached agreement on the text of a framework document on North Korea’s nuclear program. This agreement will help to achieve a longstanding and vital American objective: an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula.

This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world. It reduces the danger of the threat of nuclear spreading in the region. It’s a crucial step toward drawing North Korea into the global community.

In the words of baseball great Yogi Berra, “its déjà vu all over again.”

Today on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd interviewed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said:

“I’m not trying to kill any deal. I’m trying to kill a bad deal…The current plan “leaves the preeminent terrorist state of our time with a vast nuclear infrastructure.” It would spark an arms race among the Sunni states, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” the Israeli leader warned. “And the Middle East crisscrossed with nuclear tripwires is a nightmare for the world. I think this deal is a dream deal for Iran and it’s a nightmare deal for the world.”

Netanyahu stressed that when it comes to Iran’s nuclear capabilities, he prefers a “good” diplomatic solution to a military one.

He outlined such a solution as “one that rolls back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and one that ties the final lifting of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program with a change of Iran’s behavior” and insists that Iran stops “calling for and working for the annihilation of Israel.” He also called for further sanctions on Iran as a way to get the country to take a deal that contains no concessions.

Watch the NBC “Meet the Press” segment with Israel PM Netanyahu:

Sen_ Chris Murphy

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)

Connecticut Democratic  Senator Chris Murphy, member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee  who followed Netanyahu on Meet the Press  found the agreement announced by the President, “remarkable. “ He remarked that  “sanctioning Iran into submission is not what the partners signed up for. When the question of changing Iran’s behavior on support for global terrorism and violations of human rights came up, Murphy basically followed the Administration line of let’s get the nuclear agreement done first. The Washington Post reported  Murphy saying:

It’s true that this deal doesn’t turn Iran from a bad guy into a good guy”. “But it’s a little bit of rewriting of history to suggest these negotiations were about all of the other nefarious activities of Iran in the region. These negotiations were about ending their nuclear program, such that we can start to lift up the moderate elements … [and] talk about all these other issues.

You take this issue [the nuclear program] off the table and you empower people like Rouhani and Zarif, who may see a different path for Iran — less as an irritant, more as a member of the global community.  “And you may see a pathway to solving some of these other problems (ballistic missiles, support for terrorism and human rights violations) and you can do it potentially without new rounds of traditional sanctions.

Ehud Yaari

Ehud Ya’ari Israeli Middle East analyst and Channel 2 TV Commentator.

More emerged about the differences in the announcement about the framework parameters between the State Department Fact Sheet and Farsi statement of Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. Noted Israel Middle East analyst, Ehud Ya’ari, a Washington, DC Institute for Near East Policy Fellow and Israel TV Channel 2 commentator, identified six major gaps The Times of Israel reported:

  1. Sanctions: Ya’ari said the U.S. has made clear that economic sanctions will be lifted in phases, whereas the Iranian fact sheet provides for the immediate lifting of all sanctions as soon as a final agreement is signed, which is set for June 30. (In fact, the US parameters state that sanctions will be suspended only after Iran has fulfilled all its obligations: “US and EU nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended after the IAEA has verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps.” By contrast, the Iranian fact sheet states: “all of the sanctions will be immediately removed after reaching a comprehensive agreement.”)
  2. Enrichment: The American parameters provide for restrictions on enrichment for 15 years, while the Iranian fact sheet speaks of 10 years.
  3. Development of advanced centrifuges at Fordo: The US says the framework rules out such development, said Ya’ari, while the Iranians say they are free to continue this work.
  4. Inspections: The US says that Iran has agreed to surprise inspections, while the Iranians say that such consent is only temporary.
  5. Stockpile of already enriched uranium: Contrary to the US account, Iran is making clear that its stockpile of already enriched uranium — “enough for seven bombs” if sufficiently enriched, Ya’ari said — will not be shipped out of the country, although it may be converted.
  6. PMD: The issue of the Possible Military Dimensions of the Iranian program, central to the effort to thwart Iran, has not been resolved, Ya’ari said.

The U.S. parameters make two references to PMD. They state, first: “Iran will implement an agreed set of measures to address the IAEA’s concerns regarding the Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of its program.”

They subsequently add: “All past UN Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted simultaneous with the completion, by Iran, of nuclear-related actions addressing all key concerns (enrichment, Fordo, Arak, PMD, and transparency).” The Iranian fact sheet does not address PMD.

The differences between the sides became apparent almost as soon as the framework agreement was presented in Lausanne on Thursday night. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif issued a series of tweets late Thursday, for instance, that protested the U.S. State Department’s assertion that the nuclear deal struck between Iran and world powers would only see sanctions on the Islamic Republic removed “in phases.”

If this weekend is an example, the controversy about the framework “parameters” await the details from the final agreement targeted for June 30th. Problem is those negotiations may extend well beyond the current deadline, perhaps may spark further negotiations and may be incapable of resolution unless the Administration caves into all of Iran’s demands. In the meantime Swiss and French trade delegations are in Tehran discussing possible deals, the Germans have already held theirs, and, of course, Russia and China, have already conducted business with the Islamic Republic. Despite Turkey’s Erdogan expressing pique at Iran’s hegemony in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, he will soon hold trade talks again in Tehran on more gas deals.

Thursday’s announcement sent the Tehran Stock Exchange skyrocketing Friday. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif are smirking over their victory contemplating keeping all of its nuclear, missile and military applications under wraps. Besides they also have four bargaining chips; three imprisoned Americans and a fourth missing for eight years.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of the P5+1 plus Iran and EU Foreign Relations Commissioner in Lausanne, Switzerland 4-2-15.

Sweden’s Jews Threatened by Muslim Antisemitism

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Earlier today, I exchanged an email with a French Jewish resident here in  Florida seeking assistance to gain permanent resident status in the US, given his retirement  here. Under US immigration law he and his wife can only remain in the US for a maximum of 180 days annually and must return to France to obtain fresh tourist visas.  He is an accomplished professional and like many of France’s 600,000 Jews disturbed about the threats coreligionists face from Muslim second and third generation émigrés. He and his family came as émigrés from North Africa to escape Islamic hatred only to be threatened again in his home community in France. Both our colleague Nidra Poller and French commentator, Michel Gurfinkiel have written  graphically about  the predicament of French Jews  threatened by  Islamic and other forms of Antisemitism. That was crystallized by three French and one Tunisian Jew killed on January 9, 2015 in the Antisemitic attack by Jihadist Amedy Coulibaly at the Hyper Cacher Kosher supermarket in Paris.

There are continuing assaults against Jews daily in major cities throughout France. The dilemma faced by French is reflected in the increasing numbers making aliyah to Israel and  others who have opted to seek sanctuary here in the U.S. many of whom have taken  up residency in Florida. There are a number of French Jewish synagogues that have sprouted in Florida to take care of the spiritual and community needs of francophone brethren. The necessity of applying for formal resident status in the U.S. was reflected at the conclusion of an email exchange,  “I was aware many years ago about the coming change in France and the blindness of French politicians.”

That blindness also  faces Jews in Malmo, Sweden denied their rights of free expression ,opposing politicians in Sweden’s third largest  city who tolerate virulent Islamic Antisemitism  from  the large émigré community.  That is the subject of a Gatestone Institute article by Ingrid Carlqvist and Lars Hedegaard, the co-editors of Dispatch International, Sweden Imports Jew-hatred. The authors wrote:

If anyone had thought that the slaughter of four Jews in a Paris supermarket — for the reason that they were Jews — would have caused the Swedish mainstream press and the government to explain who is behind Europe’s growing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence, he would be sadly mistaken. With the exception of one television program, the connection between anti-Semitism, Islam and Muslim mass immigration remains a mental no-go area in Sweden.

[…]

Swedes now tend to view all immigrants as victims of totalitarianism and refuse to acknowledge that not all immigrants think like Swedes. They cannot comprehend that people would flee unless they were hated and threatened.

Swedes have a minimal knowledge of the Jew-hatred that is part and parcel of Islam, and the authorities and politicians refuse to acknowledge that Jews are now fleeing the southern city of Malmö due to its steadily growing Muslim population. Quite simply, most Swedes have never realized that one minority group may expose another minority group to violence and intimidation.

There are other reasons Malmö’s politicians turn a blind eye to Jew-hatred. Malmö is Sweden’s third-largest city and probably has the greatest proportion of Muslims. (It is hard to give exact figures because Swedish law forbids registration based on religion.) It is normally assumed that approximately one-third of Malmö’s 300,000 inhabitants have a foreign background and that their number is steadily increasing. Currently, most refugees come from Syria and Somalia, and most are Muslims.

The reason for hatred foisted on Malmo’s Jews  is the Socialist-Muslim alliance:

Malmö has nearly always been governed by Social Democrats — a party that has every reason to keep on the good side of Muslims. In municipal elections, the Social Democrats can normally count on 30% of the general vote, and on 70% of the Muslim vote.

This circumstance was undoubtedly the most important reason the city’s former Social Democratic Mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, refused to do anything about rampant Jew-hatred. He surely must have been aware that the perpetrators of anti-Semitic excesses were his own voters.

For many years, Malmö’s Jews have reported a growing number of hate crimes against their synagogue and themselves, but nobody has taken their complaints seriously. Eventually, a journalist by the name of Andreas Lovén from the local newspaper Skånska Dagbladet wrote in a series of articles that Jew-hatred was causing more and more Jews to move to other Swedish cities or to Israel.

For the first time, it was openly said who was behind the anti-Semitism — the city’s Muslim population. Many Jews told the paper that they dared not let their children grow up in Malmö — the town where, on January 25, 2009, a Muslim mob was allowed to pelt a peaceful Jewish demonstration in support of Israel with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs (see video).

Instead of breaking up the anti-Israel demonstration, which took place without a police permission and which seriously threatened the Jews and friends of Israel assembled at Malmö’s Great Square (Stortorget), the police chose to revoke the Jews’ right to assemble.

This decision was harshly criticized by Parliament’s judicial ombudsman, who wrote: “To permit counter-demonstrators to more or less systematically prevent their opponents from voicing their opinions at public gatherings is unacceptable in a democracy.”

Obama’s Envoy on Global Anti-Semitism  weighs in:

The situation got so bad [in Malmo] that in April 2012, President Barack Obama sent his special envoy and head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal, to Malmö to read the riot act to Mayor Ilmar Reepalu. She pointed out that the problem is not only the many hate attacks on Jews but also the fact that the mayor has exacerbated the situation by statements such as: “Jews have themselves to blame as long as they don’t distance themselves from Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.”

Last month, Swedish television aired a program on Jew-hatred in Malmö, which clearly documented that the hate emanates from the city’s Muslim population. The reporter had donned a Jewish skullcap and a Star of David and went around town to see what happened. He was immediately met with verbal abuse and was spat on.

A later program dealt with the claim of anti-Muslim hatred in Sweden. A female reporter walked the streets of Södertälje with a veil. Most of the town’s immigrants are Christian Syrians and Assyrians, with Muslims in a clear minority, and she was not accosted a single time.

Sweden’s Jewish organizations have other priorities- combating Islamophobia and attacking one of the authors of the Gatestone Institute article:

Regrettably, Sweden’s biggest Jewish organizations are as blind as the media when it comes to Nazism with its Jew-hatred, supremacist ideology and hunger for world domination. The SKMA (Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism), equates Jew-hatred with hatred of Muslims, and attacks everyone who will speak out about the true genesis of “Swedish” anti-Semitism. The SKMA refuses to talk about Muslim Jew-hatred, and gladly walks side by side with imams to protest against “growing xenophobia”.

In December 2013, the SKMA criticized the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism, an Israeli organization, for having “ articles dealing with anti-Semitism in Sweden spread Islamophobic messages” and thus “given legitimacy to the Swedish Muslim-hater Ingrid Carlqvist.” SKMA accuses Carlqvist of equating Muslims with Nazis, which is a lie. What Carlqvist has written many times is that Islam, that is the ideology, can be compared with Nazism with its Jew-hatred, supremacist ideology and hunger for world domination.

The authors concluded:

The question is how Swedish Jews will fare in an increasingly Islamic Sweden, when not even their own organizations will point out where the Jew-hatred comes from, but would rather attack Swedes who speak the truth about why Sweden went from a safe haven for Jews to a country Jews are fleeing. As long as the SKMA refuses to acknowledge that the vast majority of the Swedish Jew-hatred comes from Muslim immigrants, how can one expect ordinary Swedes to understand what kind of threat the Islamization of Sweden is to all of us who live here?

The first to go down the road of extermination are the Saturday People; then come the Sunday People.

Whether France, Sweden, the UK or elsewhere in the EU, Antisemitism is rampant as reflected in various studies and surveys. It is bolstered by the hatred of Muslim émigrés whose children now flock to the black banner of the Islamic State intent on killing all infidels.  Especially Jewish infidels as did Amedy Coulibaly at the Paris kosher market on January 9th.  Hence, like the French sojourner who wrote me, politicians in France and Sweden are blinded by the votes of the Muslim émigrés in their midst denying Jews rights of free speech and safety.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of a boycott Israel Protest Rally in Malmo, Sweden in 2012.

The “I Am Charlie” Phenomenon by Georgiana Constantin

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Next to the message “I am Charlie” a new message has recently been trending on Facebook. “I am not Charlie. I am Ahmed. The dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.” We should all decry the tragic events in France and condemn the barbaric terrorist actions. But I am not Charlie, simply because I cannot stand for any voice which calls for hatred and mockery with no intention other than to insult.

“Je suis Charlie” or “I am Charlie” are the words which have been circulating throughout the Internet since the unspeakably tragic events at the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French weekly magazine. The bold attack shocked the world, partly because of its cold blooded nature, and partly because many saw this as a direct assault against the freedom of speech. The slogan is meant to symbolize solidarity with the 12 people who were assassinated on Wednesday and the work they were doing as journalists.

It is indeed sad that such barbaric acts still take place in the 21st century and all of our hearts go out to the victims and their families. Terrorism is the plague of modern day society. These terrorists accomplished what they had set out to do – avenge the Prophet Mohammed for the blasphemous cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo.

The event didn’t just spark empathy, sadness and anger, however. It also sparked debates regarding the freedom of speech and the extremes to which satire can go. These debates began with the horrendous terrorist acts in France, yet have now gained a life of their own, leading the dialogue away from the tragic event and into the realm of definitions and questions about right and wrong.

So, in the spirit of the recently sparked public discussions, just what is this freedom of speech that is so revered in Western societies? Basically, it is the right to speak without censorship or government restraint. This right is found in almost every European constitution, while in the United States it is a cherished protection guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

However, freedom of speech or of the press does not maintain that while speaking one should not appeal to an inner common sense and make sure that whatever satirical jest is made does not spark unconstrained irrational hatred of others.

In fact, by looking at the very idea of satire and why it was created, one realizes that the intention of taking negative characteristics of other people and exaggerating them in a mocking manner through works of art or free expression has often had the desired moralizing effect – and not one of instigating irrational hatred.

What sort of a moralizing effect could depicting God, Jesus Christ, Mohammed or any religious symbol being stripped naked and subjected to perverted sexual jokes have had? Unless the moral of their drawings was meant to be that any religious person is stupid and ridiculous, with a touch of sadomasochism, there was no real message other than openly confessing hatred towards such symbols. If there is no moralizing intent then it is not satire, and, since it does not take skill to insult someone, it cannot be considered an art form.

Also, it is one thing to make fun of an overly chubby or rich priest, imam or rabbi, calling out for the need for humility, and quite another to try and desacralize symbols of faith and morality.

Imagine if the paradigm was to shift just slightly from mocking religion to mocking people who have been discriminated against many times in the past, like those with weight issues, homosexuals, women, or the handicapped? What if the subject of the jokes had been someone’s race or color? What if they had made jokes about the Holocaust? Would that have been acceptable? Would the world still have rushed to identify with Charlie?

Consider, for example, the 1960s humor of the Irish born British comedian, Dave Allen, who mocked the Roman Catholic Church. “His shows were subversive. He mocked and offended the Catholic Church, resulting in a ban by Irish TV and death threats from the IRA,” wrote Martin Chilton for the Telegraph on December 28, while reporting on “God’s Own Comedian” in a review of BBC Two’s special tribute. Dave Allen, however, died of natural causes in 2005.

Public opinion and the inevitable self-censorship which it already imposes does not seem to incline towards a fair distribution of allowed and forbidden behavior.

Why has the West come to the conclusion that everything a person considers sacred, except religion, is to be respected?

In the process of de-sanctifying everything in society, many forget that even though one is free to call the other person a moron, and even spit in their face, that does not mean that one ought to do so. In fact, such behavior would not make for a very civil or peaceful society. And, certainly, one should not be condemned to death for insulting a religion or a religious leader.

In many criminal codes around the democratic world, spitting on a national symbol (representing a person or emblem), verbally assaulting someone or verbally defaming the image of one’s country results in a criminal record or possibly even imprisonment. So, some symbols are protected by law, as they represent identities and beliefs. Yet, the very symbols which have generated morality in the world, those pertaining to religion, are being mocked irrationally on a regular basis.

If we maintain that the 21st century is, in reality, the civil era of which we regard ourselves as a part, perhaps it is time to realize that, while freedom of speech is our natural right, we have a responsibility regarding what we express. Such a realization, however, should be a function of culture rather than legal repression.

We have a public duty to protect our God given freedom of speech by respecting our fellow man, just as one does on a day-to-day basis in their private lives.

Is it right to say that some human “sensitivities” should be respected while others are ignored? Is it acceptable to confuse free speech with insults? And, most importantly, is it appropriate to neglect to behave publically with the same respect and dignity we show in private, ignoring the duty the freedom to touch so many lives has given us?

Next to the message “I am Charlie” a new message has recently been trending on Facebook. “I am not Charlie. I am Ahmed. The dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.”

We should all decry the tragic events in France and condemn the barbaric terrorist actions.

But I am not Charlie, simply because I cannot stand for any voice which calls for hatred and mockery with no intention other than to insult.

It would be a sad irony if these violent events force us to defend the actions of those who made a career of undermining religious precepts – Christian, Jewish, or Islamic – which helped develop a culture that promotes civility and mutual respect. And, it would be worse still if so many people would see fit to identify with an entity which chose to put the lives of others in danger, having already made their point, with no regard for caution in dealing with such an existential threat.

We shall not be worthy of the freedom of speech until we learn that through it we have the power to stop hate, not start it.

I am not Charlie. Are you sure you are?

Georgiana Constantin is a law school graduate who has studied International, European and Romanian law at the Romanian-American University in Bucharest and received her Masters from the Nicolae Titulescu University in Bucharest. Ms. Constantin, who is based in Romania, is also a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis.

VIDEOS: Our Response to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

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Between 7 and 9 January, Paris witnessed a brutal and drawn-out terrorist attack which left 17 dead and sparked widespread debate on questions of security and freedom of speech. Though shocking, the attack is just one in a string of radical Islamic terrorist atrocities targeting civilians as well as the democratic and security institutions of Western nations.

As ever, The Henry Jackson Society was on hand to provide in-depth analysis to top news outlets in the UK and around the world, arguing vocally against any compromise in our right to freedom of speech.

Associate Director Douglas Murray led opinion with his thought leadership on the attack in both the Daily Mail and the Spectator (both are reprinted below).

Below is a selection of HJS’ latest TV and radio interviews on the topic. We will, of course, continue to promote our cause throughout the media and our appearances can always be viewed on our YouTube channel.

TV Appearances

7 January: Douglas Murray on Channel 4 News 

7 January: Davis Lewin on France 24

7 January: Douglas Murray on WSJ Live 

7 January: Robin Simcox on ITV News 

7 January: Hannah Stuart on Al Arabiya  

8 January: Alan Mendoza on CNBC  

8 January: Douglas Murray on Sky News  

8 January: Douglas Murray on Al Jazeera  

8 January: Douglas Murray on BBC Daily Politics  

10 January: Davis Lewin on France 24  

11 January: Douglas Murray on BBC’s Big Questions  

Radio Appearences

7 January: Douglas Murray on BBC World Service

7 January: Douglas Murray on BBC London

7 January: Robin Simcox on BBC 5 Live

7 January: Douglas Murray on BBC 5 Live

8 January: Douglas Murray on BBC World Service’s World Tonight

9 January: Emily Dyer on BBC Ulster

9 January: Douglas Murray on BBC World Serivce’s World Have Your Say

Thought Leadership

A threat to every single one of us: The cold-blooded outrage in Paris is about our right to be free to express ourselves

Douglas Murray in The Daily Mail

The cold-blooded outrage in Paris is not a story about one magazine or one country – and it is not just about freedom of the Press.

It is about the right of every single one of us to be free to express ourselves. And it is high time the nations of Europe woke up to how gravely that right is under threat.

Because what happened yesterday – though the most appalling incident of its kind yet – is in many ways far from unprecedented. It is just the latest chapter in a long, concerted campaign to shut down criticism and discussion of one religion, its founder and its teachings.

The aim of the campaign is to place that religion – Islam – above the level of all other religions or ideas and make it immune from criticism. And the tactic is working.

This campaign has been gathering pace for at least 25 years. It really started in the West in 1989 after the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which contained passages considered deeply offensive by some Muslims.

The novel resulted in Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issuing a fatwa – a religious judgment, in this case a death sentence – on Rushdie that forced the author into hiding. Though Rushdie survived, the fatwa was followed by the murder of a translator of his works and knife attacks on two others.

Then, as now, some people claimed that Rushdie had been deliberately provocative. Then, as now, even if that were the case it would matter not a jot. Nosociety can be considered truly free if its members are terrorised into silence and hiding by fatwas and mortal threats.

Even so, ever since the Rushdie affair, most authors, artists and publishers have avoided producing anything that might stoke the ire of fundamentalist Muslims.

Of course it is important to state that the great majority of Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, who abhor violence. Indeed yesterday Muslim leaders in Britain were among the first to condemn the Paris atrocity.

Nevertheless, there have been a very troubling number of attacks carried out in the name of Islam on those in the West considered to have criticised or shown a lack of respect to the religion.

In 2004, the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh was shot, stabbed and partially decapitated in broad daylight on a Dutch street. His killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, objected to a film van Gogh had made which criticised some of the Koran’s teachings about women.

Fear works. It breeds self-censorship. In 2005 the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten discovered that no illustrator in Denmark would depict Islam’s founder for a series of children’s books on world religions.

The paper commissioned a dozen cartoonists to break this apparent taboo and published the results. The subsequent furore saw burnings and lootings of Danish Embassies across the Middle East and threats against Danes worldwide.

Having investigated and written about the growth of Islamic fundamentalism and its effects on our society for some 15 years, I came to know some of those involved in that Danish newspaper, as well as those at Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine attacked yesterday.

I began to realise how they had to endure constant threats to their safety, yet they continued to publish because they believed supremely in the right to freedom of expression, the right to make jokes about anyone and any subject, however powerful or revered they may be. Charlie Hebdo is a satirical, secular, punchy magazine which has picked up themes most people wanted to ignore.

In the wake of the 2005 Danish cartoons furore, it was about the only magazine that, sticking to its principles, chose to print any depiction of Islam’s founding prophet.

The magazine, which laughs at all religions, politics and beliefs, argued that if you are to be free you cannot allow any ideology to hold such a privileged position as to be above criticism. And so they lampooned Mohammed, and ISIS – as well as other targets like critics of Islam and the Far Right politician Marine le Pen.

After an issue that played on the magazine’s name and sharia law with the title ‘Charia Hebdo’, and mercilessly mocked Islamic fundamentalists, a firebomb was thrown into its offices. Its editor – who died yesterday, along with his police protection officer – received constant death threats.

But Charlie Hebdo magazine was not alone in being targeted for daring to poke fun. In 2010 one of the Danish cartoonists was confronted in his home by an axe-wielding Islamist trained by the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. A different cartoonist from Sweden, Lars Vilks, was targeted for death in a separate attack.

Across Europe I have encountered countless people – Muslim, ex-Muslim and non-Muslim – who have faced death threats.

Two years ago a 70-year-old friend of mine in Denmark – the historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard, who founded a Free Press Society in the wake of the cartoons affair – woke to a ring from the postman.

But the man at the door was not the postman. He was a young man with a gun who fired at Lars’s head at almost point-blank range. Miraculously he missed.

As Lars struggled with his would-be assassin on his own doorstep, the man fired again. The gun jammed and the culprit ran off. If you have seen and studied these cases of assassination and attempted assassination as many times as I have you notice certain patterns emerging.

One of the most common is for Western apologists for these terrorists to suggest that the victims have provoked the rage of fundamentalists – and they have therefore brought it upon themselves.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The only people responsible for the carnage in this insidious and evil campaign to stamp out our freedoms are the thugs and murderers who carry it out.

In galleries, newspapers and magazines every day and week of the year there are works of art and articles that offend mainstream Christians.

Cartoons abound at Christmas depicting the Three Wise Men or the Virgin Mary with a humorous twist; there are revolting and puerile cards whose Christmas messages contain foul language.

Imagine that a Christian – any Christian – were to have responded to those cartoons or images by decapitating or gunning down the editor or staff of the magazine, newspaper or art gallery in question. Would we blame his victims, saying they had provoked the outrage? I think it highly unlikely.

Politicians in France have in the past dismissed Charlie Hebdo as radicals of the Left and ‘provocateurs’ – although one would hope yesterday’s events will shock them out of complacency.

The fact is this challenge to our freedoms from radical Islam is real and happening now. If mainstream politicians ignore or shy away from it, tragedy beckons for all of us.

Charlie Hebdo stood alone. What does that say about our ‘free’ press?

Douglas Murray in The Spectator

Over the coming hours and days there will be a lot of talk – largely by anonymous Twitter warriors – about the need to express ‘solidarity’ withCharlie Hebdo.  Many others will say how important it is to ensure that ‘the terrorists and fundamentalists don’t win.’

But the terrorists and fundamentalists are winning and for the moment it looks like they will keep winning.  Because even before today Charlie Hebdoalready stood alone.  In the wake of the 2005 Danish cartoons affair no other major newspaper or magazine in Europe was willing to keep running depictions of Islam’s founder.  Of course they said they didn’t publish, or republish, because they didn’t want to cause offence, or because they thought the (wholly innocuous) depictions were wilfully ‘provocative’ and the like.  And of course Jyllands Posten is a conservative, ‘right-wing’ newspaper.

But they will say the same thing now.  And the left-wing Charlie Hebdo will be abandoned now even more than the right-wing Jyllands Posten was back then.  People will come up with various excuses, but in truth they won’t publish because they are afraid.  The remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo could hardly be more alone.

There is only one way in which this couldn’t remain the case: if tomorrow, or some day this week every newspaper and magazine in Europe, the front-page of the BBC and Channel 4 News websites and every other major news site simultaneously published a set of Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of Mohammed among others.  I put this suggestion to the BBC today during an interview and was told by the presenter that ‘in fairness’ to the BBC they had earlier retweeted Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoon of ISIS’s leader al-Baghdadi.  Which, of course, isn’t quite the same thing.  Some readers may recall that during the Danish cartoon affair Channel 4 ran a live programme on freedom of speech which included a live vote as to whether or not Channel 4 should show the cartoons.  The public voted that they should.  And then Channel 4 unilaterally decided to ignore the public’s wishes and would not show the cartoons.

It was around the same time that Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it best.  She suggested in the wake of the Danish cartoons affair that ‘we have to spread the risk.’  But the free press didn’t spread it around then.  And I very much doubt that they will now.  I know all the arguments.  I know the fears – that someone from the typing pool or on the front desk will be the target.  I’ve heard every possible argument over the years.

And that is why I can safely say that the free press will fail this latest test too.  For all its historic traditions, its self back-slapping for its alleged ‘bravery’ and so on, there are only a couple of tiny outcrops of freedom.  The rest of the vast, powerful, fearless, outspoken tradition that is the Western press is too intimidated to publish a single cartoon that might conveivably provoke a Muslim.

This is what it looks like to lose a freedom.  Not many people will care today.  But they will tomorrow, or another day in the future.

FRANCE: Jihad Wins – French Lose

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Our attention is turned to the developing attacks in Paris, France. As various terrorist cells go operationally jihad, we center in on the systemic failures of elected officials, both in France and America, to properly and professionally make the obvious connection between the doctrine of Islam, the behavior of the jihadi and the consequent death of innocent Westerners.

The question is raised: Will France learn a lesson about confronting the take over of its country by Islamic supremacy?

Or will the bad guys have another tactical success in their march to building a world Caliphate?

HINT: French President François Hollande went out of his way to state that the attacks from Islamic terrorists had NOTHING to do with..Islam!

Watch and find out!

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Charlie Hebdo jihad mentor’s wife lives on welfare in UK

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Congress’ First Navy Seal: Obama’s Foreign Policy Supports Terrorism

Double-Agent: Numerous Jihadist Sleeper Cells Prepared to Repeat Paris Attacks Worldwide

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of RubenL.nl.

Islam’s Struggle Against Cartoon Terrorism Offline

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Western terror labs have finally produced a weapon so horrific that it has shaken Islamic world to the core, making over a billion people from Morocco to Indonesia fear for the survival of their freedoms, morals, beliefs, cultures, governments, and the very life itself.

The new weapon of terror, the so-called “Cartoon,” is capable of delivering an equivalent of one million Hiroshima bombs, resulting in a horrendous mass destruction like none seen on Earth before.Ahmed Jihad of the Qatar-funded charity Make Bombs, Not Cartoons sadly stated that “This is the end of a tenuous peace between Muslims and Infidels, with only the occasional beheading, open market suicide bomb, or fiery suicide plane mission.”

Howard Dean and John Kerry launch investigation to determine the extent to  which Bush knew about the cartoons prior to their publication.

“I see no way to combat this horrific infidel weapon other than by balanced, fair, and rational hostage-taking, bomb-throwing, and embassy-burning, based on strict Islamic law and mutual understanding of our common goal, which is the Islamization of Earth,” Mr. Jihad added. “These methods have proven efficient in dealing with the West in the past.”Qatar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have been clandestinely working on the “Mother of All Erasers,” in an attempt to control the budding menace of cartoon proliferation.

“You can kill one infidel with a sword, but if he has already published a Mohammed cartoon, the cat is out of the fire, so to speak. With our new eraser technology, we may stand a chance at eliminating the cartoons before the damage is done,” said Rabid Habibi, a member of People for the Unethical Treatment of Infidels.

People for the Unethical Treatment of Infidels: Stop cartoon proliferation before it destroys this wonderful green planet. of ours!

French, German, and U.K. politicians have already promised to deliver any wayward cartoonists to the proper authorities for beheading.

Said English foreign secretary Jack Straw, “We stand with our Islamist brethren on the precipice of an escalation from the current calm discourse to a world in which cartoons are free to offend willy-nilly, resulting in the need for retaliation against infidels on a broad scale. We in the West understand this, and will do our part to maintain the peace.”

In the U.S., Howard Dean and John Kerry plan to hold special hearings on the matter, and are proposing a bill criminalizing the depiction of all Islamic religious figures.

A probe is underway to determine the extent to which the Bush Administration knew about these cartoons prior to their publication.

Charlie Hebdo is Dead – Mohammed is Avenged [+ Video]

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As the Muslim jihadis were slaughtering the employees of Charlie Hebdo in their editorial conference room, the savage Muslims yelled out, “Mohammed is avenged,” as Charlie Hebdo died.

Please tell me what kind of religion pleases their god by executing people who make cartoons spoofing all religions and political parties? Please tell me what kind of religion finds their pleasure in watching the flesh, bones and blood of other humans cut to pieces by the automatic fire of AK machine guns? For the answers to these and other critically important questions watch our special show which features two experts, former FBI agent, John Guandolo and filmmaker, Chris Burgard.

This is a very sad day for the West and could get worse, if the predictible capitulation to Islamic supremacy wins the day.

To learn more visit www.theunitedwest.org.

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Canada’s Harper: “The international jihadist movement has declared war….we are going to have to confront it.”

Charlie Hebdo jihad attack: Free speech is a microcosm of a much larger issue

Muslim Pelosi staffer, Salon writer on French jihad: ‘Muslim terrorists get the job done’

zaid-jilani-550x175

Islam Kills Again

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The news from Paris about the killing of twelve journalists highlights Islam’s war on the West that represents a fundamental truth about this cult of Mohammad.

Most are familiar with the Islamic schism between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. It dates back to the very earliest days of Islam when the two groups disagreed over who should be the successor to Mohammad.

There is a new schism in Islam these days and it is between a moderate interpretation of Islam and fundamentalism. We have all seen what fundamentalism produces.

The past year had dramatic and tragic slaughters by the Islamic State (ISIS) in the Syrian-Iraqi area they control, the murder of more than 140 school children in Pakistan by the Taliban, and the kidnapping of 276 girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria. These acts represent a strict interpretation of Shia law based on the Koran.

That is why an address by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on New Year’s Day, to clerics at Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry is particularly significant. As reported by Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum, Sisi “a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date.”

His speech was a warning that “the corpus of (Islamic) texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years” are “antagonizing the entire world.”

Referring to the 1.6 billion Muslims, Sisi said it is not possible that they “should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live.” Islam, said Sisi “is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

I cannot recall any other Islamic leader saying anything this bold and this true. Directly addressing the clerics, Sisi said “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (Islamic world) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.” That is, of course, exactly what has been occurring.

Sisi called for “a religious revolution”, what Christians would call a reformation. “You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting for your next move…”

Islam - Obama's Muslim QuoteBased on negotiations led by the U.S., the world is waiting to see what Iran, the home of the Islamic Revolution—the name given to the ayatollah’s movement that overthrew the Shah in 1979—will do in the face of demands that it cease its quest to produce its own nuclear weapons.

You don’t have to be a U.S. diplomat to know the answer to that. As Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently wrote, for decades the Iranian leadership has referred to “American Islam”, a term that describes what Iran “perceives to be a depoliticized perversion of the true faith, devoid of the revolutionary sentiment that guides the Islamic Republic.” Calling it “American” demonstrates their contempt for everything American.

The Iranians even apply the term to Muslim nations “deemed pliant before the will of superpowers like the United States.” In their view, they are the champions of “the pure Islam of Mohammad.” The Iranians are Shiites. As such, they are a minority sect within Islam, though a large one by any standard.

Those U.S. diplomats negotiating to get Iran to agree to cease pursuing the ability to construct their own nuclear weapons should read the memoirs of Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator. As Taleblu notes, Zarif has a PhD from an American university, but he still wrote “We have a fundamental problem with the West and especially with America. This is because we are claimants of a mission, which has a global dimension.”

That mission is to impose Islam—their fundamental brand of it—on the entire world. That would get easier if they can threaten the world with nuclear weapons. Iran has been the leading sponsor of Islamic terror since its revolution in 1979.

The gap between Egyptian President Sisi’s concerns about the state of Islam today and the intention of fundamentalists like Zarif are a capsule version of what is occurring among Muslims throughout the world.

Islam is not inclined toward any form of modernity and most certainly not toward any form of personal freedom so the world has to remain watchful and, at this point, far less inclined to give its terrorists a pass with the claim they do not represent Islam.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

RELATED ARTICLE: Terrorists in Paris were Asking for Specific People during the Shooting

EDITORS NOTE: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement regarding the deadly terrorist attack in Paris earlier today:

“I was saddened to learn of the terrorist attack that claimed 12 lives at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris earlier today. These journalists and satirists were apparently killed by Islamic extremists for exercising the fundamental human right of free speech and expression. These terrorists don’t hate cartoons, they hate freedom. They’re willing to target anyone and destroy anything in the name of intimidating free people and spreading their cruel and hateful dogmas. It is important for the United States – and free nations everywhere – to oppose these forces with strength and vigilance. Today, the United States must stand unequivocally with the people of France in their time of need and mourning. We must assist them to bring the perpetrators and sponsors of this act to justice.”

Anti-Israel Protesters Attack Paris Synagogues: Congregants trapped in building as Bastille Day demonstration turns violent

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Traditionally French people dance in the streets and fire stations on the eve of the Quatorze Juillet, known in English as Bastille Day. This year, however, anti-Israel demonstrators took control of the monument in the center of the Bastille circle Sunday, brandishing Palestinian flags and cardboard replicas of scimitars and Kassam rockets. Described in AFP releases as a well-mannered demonstration except for a few incidents, it was in fact a hate-fest against Israel and the Jews. “Death to the Jews,” “Murderous Israel,” “One Jew Some Jews All Jews are Terrorists” figured loudly among the slogans hurled by kefiyyeh-clad marchers.

According to the police, the 7,000 demonstrators (organizers claimed 30,000) began in the northern quartier of Barbès, which has a large African and Maghrebi population, and marched to the Bastille, where they remained for several hours. A small contingent started to attack the police, and was quickly brought under control. At the same time, hundreds of protesters raced up rue de la Roquette—street of the rocket—and surrounded the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue, which is protected by a tall metal gate. Security guards from the SPCJ (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive), Beitar, and the Jewish Defense League faced assailants reportedly armed with knives, axes, and iron bars.

Five riot policemen stationed in front of the synagogue, where some 200 congregants happened to be attending a prayer service for Israel’s safety, were unable to handle the crowd. It took a half hour for reinforcements to arrive, and another two hours during which law enforcement combed the surrounding streets before members of the congregation were told it was safe to leave. The chief rabbi of Paris, Michel Guggenheim, was at the synagogue during the incident.

Another synagogue, on the rue des Tournelles near the Place des Vosges, was also targeted, though details of that incident have not yet emerged. Two weeks ago I attended a joyful ceremony there for the more than 1,500 French Jews making aliyah this summer, in the presence of Natan and Avital Sharansky, as well as the Israeli ambassador to France andnewly elected chief rabbi of France Haim Korsia.

Jewish radio stations were abuzz Sunday evening and Monday with testimony from people who had been inside the synagogue and statements from Jewish community leaders. Mainstream media coverage, however, focused largely on the 14 Juillet military parade, with the day’s “death to the Jews” chants neatly overlooked.

Roger Cukierman, the president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jews, and Joël Mergui, president of the Consistoire, met with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve yesterday, and asked for an outright ban on anti-Israel demonstrations due to their blatant disregard for law and order.

Local Jewish community leaders have excellent relations with President Francois Hollande’s government, as they did with the previous Sarkozy administration. During the incident at the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue, Jewish leaders were in contact with the Interior Minister, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, and the chief of police. No one questions the government’s sincere sympathy for the Jewish community, or its fervent wish to bring a halt to the incidents, which are alienating French Jews and giving France a bad reputation internationally. The problem is that French authorities are overwhelmed, outrun, cornered, and caught in their own contradictions.

Violent demonstrations under various pretexts have taken place in France since the early 2000s. In 2003, participants in a peace march beat up two young men from Hashomer Hatzair, then tried to break into a building in the Marais where more than 100 young Jews were gathered. There were massive, violent anti-Israel rallies during the 2009 conflict between Israel and Hamas. Sunday’s incident, however, signifies a heightened threat against French Jews. Anti-Israel protestors are more heavily armed and more defiant than before.

French Jews, however, are not cringing. They are standing firm and demanding appropriate government measures. Still, there is a sinking feeling that one day soon the doors will not resist, the mob will enter, the intolerable will occur.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Tablet Magazine. The feature photo of the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

Paris Synagogues Attacked by pro-Palestinian Protesters

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Sunday in France witnessed protests by thousands of Palestinian supporters  with  small groups attacking  the police and two synagogues in Paris.  The marchers were protesting Israeli Operation Protective Edge against the Hamas blitz of hundreds of rockets launched from Gaza against Israeli populated areas including major cities like Ashkelon, Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

paris synagogue

Paris synagogue. Photo courtesy of the Jerusalem Post.

Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have launched more than 715 rockets, while Israel’s Iron Dome system has intercepted and destroyed 160 rockets. The Palestinian death toll has reached 168 and over 1,000 injuries. Two elderly Israelis died of heart failure responding to Code Red alarms, while several IDF troops were slightly injured with shrapnel from fallen rockets and a raid  early Sunday morning against a launching site in northern Gaza.  Prime Minister Netanyahu on FoxNews Sunday said: “We face a very brutal enemy. We use our missiles to protect our people, they use their people to protect missiles”.

Here are excerpts from the AFP report on the large protests and synagogue attack in Paris and Lile, “Clashes in Paris as thousands march against Israel offensive”:

Clashes erupted in Paris on Sunday as thousands of people protested against Israel and in support of residents in the Gaza Strip, where a six-day conflict has left 168 Palestinians dead.

Several thousand demonstrators walked calmly through the streets of Paris behind a large banner that read “Total Support for the Struggle of the Palestinian People”.

But clashes erupted at the end of the march on Bastille Square, with people throwing projectiles onto a cordon of police who responded with tear gas.

The unrest continued early Sunday evening as police announced six arrests had been made.

A small group tired to break into two synagogues in central Paris, a police source told AFP.

Riot police dispersed the group, with two members of the Jewish community and six officers slightly injured in the ensuing scuffle, the source said.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls condemned the attempted synagogue stormings “in the strongest possible terms”.

“Such acts targeting places of worship are unacceptable,” he said in a statement.

– ‘Profoundly shocked’ –

“I am profoundly shocked and revolted. This aggression towards the Jewish community has taken an absolutely unacceptable turn,” Joel Mergei, president of the Israelite Central Consistory of France, told AFP.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called for “calm in the face of tensions” in the Middle East.

In the northern city of Lille, meanwhile, between 2,300 and 6,000 people protested peacefully, according to differing figures provided by the police and organizers.

[…]

“I came to say no to this massacre,” Amid Hamadouch, 30, told AFP at the Paris protest while it was still peaceful, with a sticker reading “Boycott Israel, Racist State” on his jacket.

“They are bombing innocent people. There are missiles being launched by Hamas, but the Israeli response is disproportionate. They are attacking the civilian population and not Hamas officials.”

The crowd, very young, shouted slogans such as: “We Are All Palestinians!” and “Only One Solution, End the Occupation!”.

Earlier today, former Israeli Ambassador Michel Oren on CNN promoting a proposal for a cease fire modeling on the Chemical Weapons destruction in Syria that would entail having international force to secure and destroy the current rocket and missile inventories of both Hamas and the PIJ.  That proposal was floated yesterday in Israel by a number of experts including former Israeli Chief of Staff, Gen. (ret.) Shaul Mofaz and others.  Amb. Oren in an Israel Seen, op-ed,  “A Smart Way out of the Gaza Confrontation, ” said:

The next stage would apply the formula with which the United States and Russia successfully removed chemical weapons from Syria. American inspectors can locate Hamas’ rocket stockpiles and ship them abroad for destruction.

Cessation of the Gaza rocket war against Israel would be only the first step in an orchestrated program to permanently end the threats from Gaza  to the Jewish nation. Ultimately those rockets have to be destroyed and the Hamas PIJ leaders brought to justice.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review. The featured photo is of demonstrators protesting in Paris to denounce the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip, July 11, 2014. Photo by AFP.

France’s united front of Jew hatred

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Parts of the French left have no problems participating in anti-Semitic demonstrations demanding that Jews be kicked out of France. The Socialist government is less than pleased.

PARIS. What happened in the streets of Paris on the 26th of January? On the eve of Shoah Remembrance Day, a significant contingent of demonstrators marching in the Jour de Colère [Day of Rage] howled “Jews, get out of France” and other vicious anti-Semitic slogans.

The best coverage of the march I have seen begins with a display of Islamic Jew hatred on the Champs Elysées in October 2012. Then, scenes of wild Dieudonné fans mocking the Shoah alternate with choice excerpts from the Day of Rage, illustrating converging branches of Jew hatred packed into a cocktail of contemptuous destructive rage.

One week later, on February 2nd, a far larger crowd marched peacefully for five hours with absolutely no violence, anti-Semitism, or disrespect for the République. The Manif’ pour tous [Everyone’s protest march] is a movement created last year in an attempt to block the passage of the mariage pour tous [marriage for everyone] Bill. Though the Hollande government tried desperately to link the two movements, the difference is visible to the naked eye and confirmed by closer examination of the people, the discourse, and the outcome.

The Left, which is never more than a heartbeat away from the barricades, adores street protests… when it is in the Opposition. Today, an embattled government with nothing to show for its first 18 months in office but a tawdry politico-sexual scandal at the summit is tut-tutting about “baseless” demonstrations. The JDC [Jour de Colère] is, apparently, the brainchild of Béatrice Bourges, a dissident of the MPT [Manif’ pour Tous]. Exasperated with the failure to prevent passage of the same-sex marriage law, Bourges created an aggressive Printemps Français [French Spring] faction that engaged in battles with the police, easily used by the government to discredit the squeaky clean MPT movement that had mobilized at least half a million. Having failed to take over leadership of the MPT, Bourges sought new allies and new forms of action.

Ten days before the Day of Rage, in a debate with Pierre Cassen of the anti-Islamization site Riposte Laïque, Béatrice Bourges presented her analysis of same-sex marriage and parenthood, by adoption and eventually artificial insemination and womb rental, as part of a global project of “transhumanism.” The plan is to create a New Man hors sol [without national identity] and hors sexe [without sexual identity], a slave of an oligarchy determined to rule the world by turning people into featureless units of production and consumption. Her choice of villains and vocabulary ring with the familiar string of adjectives often associated, in times of trouble, with Jews: “stateless cosmopolitan unscrupulous money-grubbing demons of finance …”

Cassen announced he would not participate in the Day of Rage after Dieudonné encouraged his followers to join the troops. Bourges countered, helter skelter, that Dieudonné himself wouldn’t attend, the best way to discourage his acolytes was to ignore them, but it doesn’t matter if they do come because this is the Day for all the rhymes and reasons of Rage, no one should be excluded. Expressed rage, she said, is less prone to violence than repressed rage. These and other predictions about attendance—“it will be a tsunami”– and results—“the government has feet of clay, a few good blows and it will topple”– turned out to be equally inaccurate. I have not found on the Jour de Colère or Printemps Français any statement sites of disapproval of the anti-Semitic slogans, chants, and signs.

Though Béatrice Bourges is believed to be a central figure in the JDC organization, the movement adopted the anonymous Facebook-twitter image ascribed to the “Arab Spring.” Another “Arab Spring” prop, the “Hollande dégage” [Hollande, bug off] slogan, picked up from one of the participating groups, goes back to Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” and subsequent uprisings in Libya, Egypt, etc. “Day of rage” is associated with a Palestinian practice of periodic organized violence against Israel. Aside from the strange Middle East echoes, these borrowings perpetuate the idea that we are living under a dictatorship that must be overthrown. (Similar echoes were found in the Occupy Wall Street movement.)

This justified accusations that the protest movement is aimed at destroying the République. But nothing can hide the Left’s paternity of a movement that coalesces dark forces from all extremes of the political spectrum. It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give an idea of the pot pourri of participating groups listed on the Jour de Colère site. Splinters, split-offs, offshoots of multiple varieties–anti-Islamization, Muslims against gender theory, anti-globalization, anti-population replacement, Catholic fundamentalists, old fashioned neo-Nazis, small businessmen, freelancers, nationalists, royalists, farmers… An undercurrent of the Jew hatred that emerged on the Day of Rage can be discerned here and there: the campaign to keep children home from school to protest gender theory indoctrination in kindergartens was organized by Farida Belghoul, one of the pioneers of the “beur” [second generation Maghrebi] movement spawned on the Left. She is now allied with arch anti-Semite Alain Soral. Media Press, a JDC-friendly site links to articles such as “Is Manuel Valls the Interior Minister of France or Israel?”

Will the coalition of united rage, fired by the weakness of the French government, find Jew hatred as its common denominator? The danger is real. Socialist deputy Julien Dray declared that an important faction of the Day of Rage demonstration intended to march into the rue des Rosiers in the heart of the Jewish Marais. Sammy Ghozlan, president of the BNVCA [Bureau national de vigilance contre l’antisémitisme] warns that when the law catches up with Dieudonné and puts him in handcuffs, it could trigger a “Crystal Day.”

Is there room for the hope that many French people, disgusted with overt Jew hatred, will withdraw from the hastily concocted coalition? It only took fourteen years for the guttural shouts of “Kill the Jews” that have been ringing out in pro-Palestinian, anti-war, pro-Hamas and go-jihad marches to reach the ears of French media. And for the government to recognize that anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism is a danger to the République.

Epilogue

The Manif’ pour Tous is another story and the government didn’t know what to do about it. Spokespersons and friendly media pumped out the talking points as tens of thousands marched in bright winter sunshine: This protest is based on wild rumors. Reproductive boosters—PMA [artificial insemination] for lesbian couples and GPA [womb rental] for males—do not figure in the Family Affairs Bill slated for March. The “ABC of Equality,” experimented in hundreds of kindergartens, is not “gender theory,” it’s just about abolishing stereotypes. Mariage pour tous is the law of the land; it is undemocratic to demonstrate against it.

It didn’t work.

Monday morning the Interior Minister, followed quickly by the Prime Minister, promised they would not allow deputies from the majority to attach PMA and GPA amendments to the Bill.

By late afternoon the government announced that the controversial Bill is postponed … indefinitely.