WarSclerotic

Prominent Rabbi Calls on Europe to Allow Jews to Carry Guns
by Ari Soffer January 14, 2015 Via Israel National News

(Damned good advice. If you care about your own self defense, carry a weapon! Europe is nothing more than a huge ‘Gun Free Zone’. To the terrorists, it’s like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel. Don’t give them an edge. Defend yourselves and your loved ones now! – LS)

Following last week’s deadly attacks in Paris, Rabbi Menachem Margolin urges EU gov’ts to allow special gun permits for Jews.

A prominent European rabbi has called on governments to relax gun-licensing legislation to allow Jews to carry firearms for self-defense, following last week’s deadly Paris attacks and amid rising anti-Semitism on the continent.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin wrote to the governments of all EU-member states urging a change in the law to allow special gun permits for Jews at risk.

In the letter Rabbi Margolin, who is director general of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) and the European Jewish Association (EJA), wrote:

“We hereby ask that gun licensing laws are reviewed with immediate effect to allow designated people in the Jewish communities and institutions to own weapons for the essential protection of their communities, as well as receiving the necessary training to protect their members from potential terror attacks.”

In a statement to Newsweek, which obtained a copy of the letter, Rabbi Margolin added that he believes that “as many people within the Jewish community as possible” should carry weapons.

His call, he says, is a result of the clear failure of European governments to protect their Jewish communities. The letter was sent less than a week after four shoppers were gunned down by ISIS terrorist Amedy Coulibaly at a kosher supermarket on Friday, in what was just the latest in a string of deadly attacks against European Jews by Muslim extremists.

French Jews have been particularly targeted by Islamist violence. In 2012 Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Mohammed Mera murdered three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse; that, along with several other anti-Semitic murders – including that of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped and tortured to death by a Muslim gang – has left France’s Jews feeling utterly abandoned by their government.

But other European Jewish communities have also been attacked in recent years, for example last year in Belgium, where an ISIS terrorist murdered four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels.

And the problem is wider still, with near-daily incidents of “lower-level” anti-Semitism – ranging from violent assaults to graffiti and arson, to threats online – are being reported throughout the continent. In particular, last summer saw an unprecedented spike in anti-Semitism in Europe, as extremists used the 50-day war between Israel and Gazan terrorists to whip-up Jew-hatred.

Warning of the threat posed by “home-grown” jihadis in Europe, Rabbi Margolin continued: “We need to recognize the warning signs of anti-Semitism, racism, and intolerance that once again threaten Europe and our European ideals.

“Right now Jews do not feel safe… We are threatened on a daily basis,” he added. “People are afraid to come to synagogue. People are afraid to go to Jewish schools.”

“[The police] are not doing enough, for sure. We just need more. The best solution is having at least two police officers at each Jewish institution, 24 hours a day. Until that happens we need to be able to feel secure in other ways.”

France has taken steps following the attacks to secure Jewish institutions, deploying some 5,000 security force personnel to protect Jewish schools from attack. But many French Jews fear it may not be enough to protect them in their day-to-day lives.

Rabbi Margolin cautioned that he was not calling for Jews to arm themselves illegally, but for governments to take steps to allow them to protect themselves within the law so that they can “feel protected.”

“It would be completely controlled in the most professional way.”

“Even just a gun. I’m not referring to tanks, it’s not about heavy weapons. It’s just that everyone would have something in their pocket.”

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FM: Will EU condemn Belgium, France for ‘excessive force’?

Amid crackdown on jihadists, Liberman says unlike Israel, European nations won’t likely be urged to ‘negotiate with terrorists’

By Marissa Newman and AFP January 16, 2015, 1:29 pm

via FM: Will EU condemn Belgium, France for ‘excessive force’? | The Times of Israel.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

oreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Friday rebuked the European Union for its frequent condemnations of Israel’s counterterrorism efforts, as Belgium, France, and Germany launched a crackdown on radical Islamists.

Two people were killed and one wounded during a raid in eastern Belgium on Thursday night, Paris police rounded up a dozen terror suspects, and Germany detained two Turkish nationals.

In a statement on Friday, Liberman wrote: “I wonder if the EU will issue a condemnation to the governments of Belgium and France for the use of excessive force and call on them to negotiate with terrorists and resolve the issues around the negotiation table… interesting.”

The foreign minister was referencing the frequent denunciations and calls for restraint from the 28-country bloc in response to Israeli operations, and repeated calls to reinstate peace talks with the Palestinians.

Police arrested several Islamist suspects in anti-terror raids across Europe on Friday as a deadly shootout with militants in Belgium and the aftermath of the Paris attacks kept the continent on alert.

Belgium beefed up security a day after police killed two suspected jihadists in the eastern town of Verviers near the German border, foiling what police called “imminent” attacks by a cell that had recently returned from Syria.

Belgian police arrested 13 people during a dozen raids overnight, smashing a plot to kill police officers “in public roads and in police stations,” prosecutors said Friday.

“The group was on the verge of carrying out terrorist attacks to kill police officers on public roads and in police stations,” spokesman Eric Van der Sijpt told a news conference.

French police detained 12 people overnight in the suburbs of Paris in connection with last week’s attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, in which 17 people were killed.

The nine men and three women arrested in France overnight were to be questioned about “possible logistic support” they may have given to the Paris gunmen — Islamist brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly — in particular weapons and vehicles, the source said.

Hundreds of German police meanwhile raided alleged Islamist sites in Berlin early on Friday, arresting two men suspected of being part of a group planning to carry out an attack in Syria, police said.

There was no immediate link between the raids, but they highlighted fears about young Europeans traveling to fight a holy war with the Islamic State and other extremist groups in the Middle East, and then returning to launch attacks on Western targets.

Prime Minister Charles Michel raised Belgium’s terror alert to its second-highest level following the militant gun battle, which was followed by around a dozen raids in Brussels and its suburbs.

Jewish schools in Brussels, the port city of Antwerp, and in Amsterdam in the Netherlands closed Friday due to fears of further trouble.

Two dead in Belgian anti-terror raid against group planning ‘grand scale’ attacks – International – Jerusalem Post.

Belgian authorities arrest third suspect in operation for now not being directly linked to last week’s attacks in Paris.

BRUSSELS — Belgian police killed two men who opened fire on them during one of about a dozen raids on Thursday against a group that was about to launch “terrorist attacks on a grand scale,” a federal prosecutor told a news conference.

A third man was arrested during the operation in the eastern town of Verviers, Eric Van Der Sypt added, saying there was, for the time being, no direct connection to last week’s attacks in Paris. No police were injured in the operation, he said.

“The suspects immediately and for several minutes opened fire with military weaponry and handguns on the special units of the federal police before they were neutralized,” he said.

Judiciary officials confirmed only that a counter-terrorism operation had taken place near the center of the town, in the east of the country between the city of Liege and the German border.

RTBF said it was an operation intended to check on suspected radicals — one of several being conducted against people believed to have returned to Belgium after taking part in the Syrian civil war.

Belgium has seen significant radical Islamist activity among its Muslim population.

Local media said gunshots and several explosions were heard on a residential street in Verviers near the railway station and one photo posted by a witness on Twitter showed police vehicles and ambulances blocking the street.

The raid came after prosecutors said earlier on Thursday that Belgian authorities have detained a man for arms dealing and were investigating whether he supplied one of the Islamist gunmen who together killed 17 people in Paris last week.

Belgian media reported that a man had handed himself in to police in the southern city of Charleroi on Tuesday, saying he had been in touch with Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who took hostages in a Jewish supermarket in the French capital and was later killed by security forces.

Israeli Official: Hezbollah Will Invade Israel In Next Middle East War

via Israeli Official: Hezbollah Will Invade Israel In Next Middle East War | Washington Free Beacon.

BY: Abraham Rabinovich
January 15, 2015 10:50 am

JERUSALEM—In the next war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based militia will likely attempt sending large ground forces across the border to seize villages inside Israel, according to Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the outgoing head of Israel’s Military Intelligence research division.

In an interview with the newspaper Israel Hayom, Brun said that Hezbollah would also likely carry out pinpoint terrorist attacks on cities in northern Israel, like Nahariya, a seaside city of 50,000 population six miles south of the border.

However, Hezollah’s main effort will be the firing of 1,000 rockets a day into Israel, more than twice the average fired during the month-long Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. Brun said the rockets would target strategic facilities. The militia’s arsenal is believed to contain well over 100,000 rockets. Unlike the 2006 conflict, when almost all the 4,000 Hezbollah rockets fired were of short range and endangered mainly border areas, Hezbollah now has thousands of rockets that are capable of hitting almost anywhere in Israel, said Brun.

Hezbollah was armed and trained by Iran, which sees its rocket arsenal as a major deterrent aimed at forestalling an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Brun did not say when a clash with Hezbollah is likely to happen but he predicted that the Middle East as a whole will simmer in 2015. “We are expecting the mess in the Middle East to continue,” he said.

Although the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad announced that it has rid itself of all its chemical weapons, he said, it in fact continues to use them in the current civil war. These agents are not as deadly as sarin or VX, said Brun, but can nevertheless be lethal. “They neutralize in low doses and kill in high doses. Assad used chlorine gas, for example.”

The intelligence officer said that terrorist organizations fighting the Damascus regime may eventually get their hands on chemical weapons. “They may not pose a strategic threat to the (Israeli) home front but they are certainly a threat to the military.”

As for the Palestinians, Brun said that the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, does not support terrorism. “He does not doublespeak, and he does not incite.”

Terror strikes, such as the ones that took place last week in Paris, will continue against the West, including Israeli and Jewish targets. “This is a permanent phenomenon that needs to be confronted.”

Writing in the newspaper Haaretz, analyst Ari Shavit likewise predicts a stormy year ahead. Referring to the recent, relatively calm, years Israel has enjoyed, he said 2015 will be a year of destabilization, with the West Bank likely erupting in violence and Gaza as well. “Fasten your seat belts – Israel, with eyes wide open, is flying into a storm.”

The efforts by the Palestinian Authority to gain international recognition as an independent state, bypassing negotiations with Israel, will draw an Israeli economic and diplomatic response that will escalate the situation, Shavit predicted. “If there is an escalation in the coming year (on the Palestinian front),” he warned, “it’s highly likely to be a dual-front (West Bank and Gaza) escalation.”

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Israel’s most highly decorated soldier, dropped out of politics and the public eye four years ago. In a rare interview last week in Haaretz, he spoke morosely of Israel’s political situation, particularly the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank. Asked if he would respond positively if there was a call to him to lead a political party again, he indicated that he would. “I am realistic enough to know that a situation could emerge, heaven forbid, in which people will turn to me and I will be compelled to consider it. And because I know what that type of situation would be, I say let’s hope we don’t get there.”