Europe Losing Freedom of Speech, America Next, Fox News, Brigitte Gabriel via You Tube, March 29, 2016
Posted tagged ‘Islamic terrorism’
Europe Losing Freedom of Speech, America Next
March 30, 2016Ethics of Muslim Immigration, Pt. 2 – US Under Siege?
March 30, 2016Ethics of Muslim Immigration, Pt. 2 – US Under Siege? PJTV via You Tube, March 30, 2016
(A point that I did not see made is that Europe has many more Muslims than America, thus far. — DM)
US Residents Linked to Terrorism Increased 200% in 2015
March 30, 2016US Residents Linked to Terrorism Increased 200% in 2015, Truth Revolt, Tiffany Gabbay, March 29, 2016
In the wake of terror attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a new report that exposes the rise of terrorist activity among US-based Muslims.
ADL reports that in 2015, 80 US residents were inspired by ISIS and linked to terrorism themselves, marking a nearly 200 percent increase from 2014. PRNewswire reports:
“The tragic attacks in Brussels remind us of the need to continuously evaluate the threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations and the influence they have on communities around the world,” said Oren Segal, Director of ADL’s Center on Extremism. “While there are significant differences in the threats to the U.S. and Europe, this report identifies some meaningful similarities, which can help us understand the threats and develop solutions to counteract them.”
As in Europe, the vast majority of U.S. residents linked to terror plots and other activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology in 2015 acted in support of ISIS. ISIS and other terrorist groups continue to take advantage of technology to mobilize followers, spread their messages and expand their influence worldwide. While in-person networks are stronger and more prevalent in Europe, and particularly in Belgium, than in the U.S., the internet and social media sites remain a pivotal element of the modern radicalization process worldwide.
The ADL report uncovered terror plots across 22 states, with the largest portion occurring in New York, Minnesota and California. The report found that these US resident-terrorists engaged in plotting attacks and furnishing material support for attacks. Key aspects of the report found that 20 of the terror-linked US residents converted to Islam and came from a diverse array of ethnic backgrounds:
“Understanding the backgrounds, demographics, and aspirations of U.S. residents engaged in activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology can provide valuable insights into the trends and nature of terrorism we currently face and how we can best be equipped to combat it,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “As we saw the events tragically unfold in Brussels, ISIS terror has far reaching influence across the globe. And the risk is not only from ISIS members themselves, but from those who might be radicalized by their hateful message.”
The way we can combat it is by abandoning our obsession with multiculturalism and political correctness. Crucial to that is purging the invented term “Islamophobia” from the popular lexicon. Further, our intelligence and law enforcement communities must not be impeded in their responsibility to monitor all mosques and Islamic centers for hate speech and questionable practices among congregates and faith leaders. Nor should they be barred from monitoring self-segregated communities that have refrained from assimilation or engaging in profiling whenever and wherever applicable.
Most important, we must exhibit strength — not capitulation — in our foreign and domestic policy concerning terrorism or the infiltration of any values anathema to our own. We must not turn on our allies. We must not tamp down any regime, however repugnant, that aids us in crushing Islamic extremism. The Islamic world bows only to the iron fist. Diplomacy works on those with whom there is leverage, not on those who aren’t even afraid of losing their own lives or the lives of their children.
Self-Criticism In The Arab World Following Brussels Attacks: Muslim Justification Of The Attacks Is Unacceptable; We Must Recognize That Most Terrorism Is Carried Out By Muslims
March 30, 2016Following the March 22, 2016 Brussels terrorist attacks that killed 35 and wounded over 300 others the Arab press featured numerous articles accusing the West and various opponents in the region of supporting terrorism.[1] However, several notable articles expressed self-criticism, laying the responsibility for the creation of suicide bombers and for horrific terror attacks on the prevailing cultures and perceptions in the Muslim and Arab countries of origin. They harshly criticized the Muslims for not standing up against terrorism or doing enough to eliminate it and for justifying or even praising the attacks while disregarding any Muslim responsibility for terrorism.
(Al-Nahar, Lebanon, March 23, 2016)
Following are excerpts from these articles:
Al-Hayat Editor: We Have Failed, We Flee Our Countries And The World Attempts To Flee The Wave Of Suicide Bombers Produced By Our Culture
In an article titled “We Have Failed Indeed,” the editor of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat, Ghassan Charbel, attacked the Arabs and Muslims for sowing destruction and fear in the very same European countries that had agreed to take them in after they had fled their failed countries. Charbel argued that the Arabs and Muslims had not managed to build states and citizens that could integrate into the modern world, and that they must recognize their failure and start from scratch. He wrote: “Are we [the Arabs and Muslims] simply part of this world, or are we perhaps an explosive charge implanted in [this world’s] entrails? Are we a normal neighborhood in the global village, or are we maybe a neighborhood of suicide bombers in [that village]? Are these massacres that move [from place to place] aimed at annexing the Arab and Muslim communities in the West to the lexicon of slaughter and suicide? Are we part of the world’s present and future, or are we a dark tempest that seeks to send [the world] back to the caves that it abandoned when it chose the path of progress and human dignity?
“Do we seek to defend our character, right, or identity? Or do we [actually] seek to impose this character on others? Is our option for the other essentially that he will either be like us or we will blow him up, so that his body parts mingle with ours? Is it accurate [to say] that we are calmed only by seeing the streets of the other’s world full of barricades of corpses and broken glass? Who was it that allowed Muslim fanatics to kill a Turk on the streets of Istanbul, a Frenchman on the streets of Paris, and a tourist on the streets of Brussels?
“Has a man who came as a refugee or immigrant to a foreign country that took him in and provided him with a roof over his head, an address, social assistance, and medical care the right to blow himself up on its streets because it did not embrace his character, his interpretation, and his mode of thinking and way of life? Does the discourse regarding unemployment and non-integration in Western society detract from [the horror of] the crime? Has a spiteful person the right to kill the other merely because he does not drink with him at the same fount? Have we have the right to continue delving into historical sources in order to rely on past wrongs done to us and use this to justify the slaughter of innocents in a country whence we fled because of a tyrant or a civil war [in our own countries]? Who gave us the right to dictate to others the nature of their regimes, their values, and their lifestyle?
“We have failed indeed.
“This is the truth that can no longer be concealed or condoned. We have failed at building a normal state – a state that lives within its borders. a state of institutions that strives its utmost to obtain progress and development and provide its citizens with work opportunities and involvement, a state that cooperates with its neighbors and the world without being panic-stricken or fettered by spite. We have also failed to build a normal citizen, [one] who belongs to the current stage of development in a rapidly developing world.
“We have failed indeed.
“For decades and centuries, we have been gripped by negligence. We feared, and we closed ourselves off. We punished the oppositionist. We obliterated those who cast doubt, and accused anybody who raised questions of treason. We imprisoned the throats, the fingers, and the dreams. And thus our institutions rotted away – if they ever existed at all. The schools, the universities, and our educational curricula rotted away. Children graduate from our schools with sick imaginations and inflexible emotions… The student has become a number… and a bomb. We stood still on the world’s platform, as it [the world] moved ahead, further and further, and we became sadder and angrier. We continued to feel that the world was being built without us, and in our absence – that it was being built against us. And this was how we readied our bodies and the explosive charges and blew ourselves up.
“We have failed indeed.
“These feelings overpowered me when I listened to Syrians in Berlin recounting how they had crammed into the death boats in the hope of casting themselves and their children [ashore] into the bosom of a European country; when I listened to the Iraqis who had used the Syrians’ passports; and when I saw the tragedy in the eyes of the Yazidis, who were fleeing the hell of the [Islamic] State of [Abu-Bakr] Al-Baghdadi. This is frightening. How much we have read about our homelands and their deeply planted historical roots, while now we can only dream of escaping them, letting them die and writhe in agony around the sectarian anthems and victories by the militias. How we deluded ourselves that we were one people – and then our compatriots in this one people murdered us. We are left only with the death boats to flee our drowning countries…
“We have failed indeed.
“The world is seeking the best way to evade the throngs of refugees that we are sending, and the waves of suicide [terrorists] that are arriving from our territory and culture. The world treats us today as the source of peril to its security, progress, democracy and stability. The only solution remaining to us is to acknowledge this comprehensive and resounding failure, this terrible collapse. We must start from scratch, like a city devastated by a deadly earthquake. Continuing to hide behind lies and fallacies will [only] prolong our stay in the caves. We cannot progress to the future with our antiquated concepts and tattered garments. We cannot board the train without paying the fare [exacted] for our stagnation, our delusions, and our inflexible perceptions.”[2]
Jordanian Writer: Justifying Terrorism Is Worse Than The Attacks Themselves; We Are Responsible For The Terrorism In Our Own Countries
Tareq Masarwa, a writer for the official Jordanian daily Al-Rai, criticized how some Arabs are attempting to justify terrorist attacks by claiming that European countries are racist and marginalize Muslims. He wrote: “… [According to] some analyses [of the Brussels attacks,] the terrorists grew up in the outskirts of European cities and were angry at being marginalized! We hear these same excuses here. However, other analyses responded [to these claims] with a wise comparison: They [the Muslim terrorists in Europe] chose terrorism. Otherwise, why aren’t there millions of [South] American terrorists in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, since they too are poor and grew up in the outskirts of big cities?! According to another analysis, Europe does not give immigrants from North Africa, and specifically from Africa itself, the same opportunities that it gives European immigrants. This constitutes a justification of terrorism, since Europe gives the immigrant the opportunity for a free education, and thousands of Jordanians have attended French and German universities for free… and had an easy time becoming citizens of those countries… How are France, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium expected to promote immigrants who are illiterate? And under what social conditions can a 10-person Arab or African family [hope to] exist?!
“It is shameful that we demand that the world treat us justly as we drive away our sons by killing them, imprisoning them, or failing to provide them with proper education, healthcare, and employment, and with a dignified life. The sight of people flocking to Europe’s borders, including Syrians, Iraqis, Kurds, Afghans, and Iranians, is heartbreaking, especially when they are carrying their children or pushing them in front of them – but all we do is curse the Europeans as racists who hate Muslims and foreigners, and consider it our right to murder them in their airports, trains, and theaters.
“Did the Europeans take over our countries? Yes. But they left over 50 years ago, and we now call on them to bring down our tyrants, and accuse them of dragging their feet [on this issue].
“Terrorism is a crime, and justifying it is an even worse crime. What is happening in the cities of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, and Tunisia is terrorism, and we are responsible for its formation, its arming, and its funding. It is pointless to justify the murder of Europeans and Americans out of a desire to justify our own crimes.”[3]
Kuwaiti Writer: The Muslims Are Not Doing Enough Against Terrorism – And Some Are Even Praising It
Kuwaiti writer and author Khalil ‘Ali Haidar wrote in the Bahraini daily Al-Ayyam that the Muslims are not doing enough against terrorism and are shirking their responsibility for it. He wrote: “What are we doing here in our countries, or in Western countries in Europe and America, while these terrible blows of terrorism land on us and them, one after the other? … In fact, we do not know how to act against these terrorists. Is it sufficient that following each of these terrorist actions, which take place in merciless rapid succession and are all perpetrated by young Muslims… that we say ‘they aren’t Muslims’ and ‘they do not represent true Islam’ and are misguided khawarij[4] and apostates? And will the world be satisfied with [such statements]?
“Is it normal that while terrorism succeeds in recruiting hundreds and even thousands of Muslims, we are satisfied to persuade ourselves that their numbers ‘are still negligible’ compared to the global Muslim population? Must the number of terrorists swell to tens or hundreds of thousands before we realize that a thunderous pounding torrent [is headed] towards us, and that this means that we must stop, convene, and give intellectuals the freedom to examine the reasons [for this] and the freedom to publish the results of their studies?
“What if we had been citizens of France, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., and had given Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens, and others all these benefits [that have been given to the Muslims in Europe], including job opportunities, the option of citizenship, salaries, and subsidies – and then they became terrorists who murdered us?! …
“The religious culture of the Islamic world during this era is afflicted with innumerable ills. We turn the world upside down over various matters, such as an article that offends us, or issues regarding the niqab, Halal meat, Christians using the word Allah – which Muslims in Malaysia, for instance, claim as their exclusive right. [Furthermore,] many leaders of Pakistani and other immigrant [groups] expend all their efforts in the sectarian campaign against the Ahmadi movement, to the point where they have no time to examine this terrorist urge among their young people, including among the educated, engineers and [other] experts.
“Unfortunately, the Muslims do not yet unanimously condemn ISIS. Some Muslims praise them [ISIS members], think the media wrongs them, and join them at the first opportunity, and even carry out the first suicide mission they are offered anywhere in the world!
“One reason for the immaturity of Muslim young people in Britain, France, and the U.S. is that the leadership of the religious institutions, and all religious activity, still remain in the hands of Arab, Pakistani and other activists and leaders who have fled to the West [and continue to] support political Islam parties. These leaders may not [themselves] carry out terrorist attacks, but they also do not truly take a stand against the terrorist religious culture. Moreover, most of their writings, ideas, and strategic positions regarding an Islamic system and the caliphate state share [this religious culture].
“We say that ‘terrorism has no religion and no homeland.’ But we must confront the fact that most terrorist attacks in the Arab and Muslim world itself are not carried out by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Ahmadis, or Baha’is – but by Muslims and the sons and daughters of Muslims. Some are not satisfied with carrying out their crimes in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, but carry them out in Western countries. And even if they believe that terrorism in Europe and the U.S. is justified because of [these countries’] ‘colonialist past’ and ‘hostile positions’ against the Arabs and Muslims – of what crimes are the Egyptians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Nigerians guilty? Do those countries also have shameful colonialist pasts?”[5]
Endnotes:
[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6360, Arab Press Reactions To The Brussels Attacks: Blaming The West, Enemies In The Region For The Spread Of Global Terrorism, March 23, 2016.
[2] Al-Hayat (London), March 28, 2016.
[3] Al-Rai (Jordan), March 24, 2016.
[4] The Khawarij was a group that broke away from the forces of Caliph ‘Ali bin Abu Taleb and formed Islam’s first religious opposition group.
[5] Al-Ayyam (Bahrain), March 23, 2016.
After Brussels, it’s Time to Revisit Enhanced Interrogation
March 29, 2016After Brussels, it’s Time to Revisit Enhanced Interrogation, Power Line,
(Why hasn’t Trump suggested something like that? Oh. Wait. He did and was widely criticised for it. — DM)
According to reports, the terrorists who carried out last week’s attacks in Brussels acted sooner than originally planned because they feared that captured terrorist Salah Abdeslam would inform authorities of the attacks. Apparently, they need not have worried.
Belgian officials questioned Abdeslam only lightly, and not at all about possible new attacks. Instead, using the discredited law enforcement model, they focused on the Paris attacks of last November, presumably hoping to obtain a confession.
Back in the days of the controversy over waterboarding, there was talk about a “ticking time bomb” scenario. The question was: When we know there’s time bomb ready to go off, but don’t know the location, is it okay to waterboard a captured terrorist who likely has knowledge of the impending attack?
Opponents of waterboarding, having no satisfactory answer, tended to pooh-pooh the question. It was based on an unrealistic scenario, they insisted.
Tell that to the victims of the Brussels attacks.
In reality, most captured terrorists present a variation of the ticking time bomb scenario. These days, organizations like ISIS are constantly planning new attacks. A captured terrorist who has been active recently might very well know something about upcoming attacks in his locale.
It’s unlikely that even in the Age of Obama, the U.S. would have handled Abdeslam as ineffectively as the Belgians did. One can imagine our people declining to question the terrorist for 24 hours because he was hospitalized and then questioning him only for a fairly short time because “he seemed very tired” after surgery. But I doubt that we would have failed to ask about future attacks.
But how far we would have gone to obtain answers? Marc Thiessen suggests we might not have had to go far. He says that “in the CIA’s experience, two-thirds of detainees cooperated without any enhanced interrogation techniques at all.” That’s because “just the experience of disappearing into secret detention — with no idea where they were and no lawyer present — was enough to get them talking.”
But would the Obama administration have “disappeared” Abdeslam following his highly visible capture? And if it had, would he have started talking in time to enable authorities to act on his information?
Finally, and this is key, what if Abdeslam proved to be among the one-third of detainees who don’t cooperate without enhanced interrogation?
In that scenario, no one with a decent regard for innocent human life could object to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on a terrorist like this. Abdeslam was the mastermind behind the Paris attacks. According to Thiessen investigators had found detonators and weapons in a safe house with his fingerprints. This was a ticking time bomb scenario.
It’s time to revisit the question of enhanced interrogation, a question that the U.S. answered incorrectly during a lull in the terrorist threat.
The Sinai Insurgency is Spiking
March 29, 2016The Sinai Insurgency is Spiking, Israel Defense, Dr. Shaul Shay, March 29, 2016
(Please see also, Sisi asks Obama for military intervention to save Egypt from ISIS. — DM)
Photo: AP
On March 19, 2016, a terrorist attack on a checkpoint in the Safa neighborhood in southern Arish city resulted in the death of 15 police personnel. The victims were two police captains, a first lieutenant, and 12 conscripts. A police officer and two conscripts are still missing after the attack and the whereabouts of the three “missing” police officers are still unknown. Egyptian security forces killed five of the terrorists after violent clashes that lasted for two hours.
This attack is the last among a series of terrorist attacks that have targeted army and police centers in the Sinai Peninsula. The attack was the biggest in Sinai this year and the deadliest since July 2015. It could mark the return of Wilayat Sinai (Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis) to large-scale coordinated attacks after a period of limited operations against checkpoints and security personnel.
Wilayat Sinai has claimed numerous deadly attacks in the region recently, targeting mainly security forces. Earlier this week, an Egyptian soldier and police officer were killed during two separate attacks in the northern Sinai Peninsula. Gunmen affiliated with Wilayat Sinai shot and killed the officer outside his home in el-Arish. A soldier was also killed by a sniper in Sheikh Zuweid, which is not far from el-Arish.
The attack
The terror attack was carefully organized, suggesting it had long been planned. Wilayat Sinai surveillance personnel had probably observed the checkpoint for some time and that automatic weapons and an RPG were stashed nearby.
The checkpoint was close to a valley and olive farm, providing ground cover that the terrorists probably used to crawl undetected on the ground as they hid their weapons. When the suicide bomber struck, his cohorts were then able to fire on any survivors using their cache of weapons.
According to the prosecutor-general, the incident took place at 6.30pm on Saturday (March 19). Prosecutors say checkpoint personnel were subjected to mortar and RPG fire. Ambulances attempting to reach the scene of the attack also came under heavy gunfire.
Wilayat Sinai claimed responsibility
The Wilayat Sinai, which is affiliated with the Islamic State group, claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement on Twitter, the group said the attack was “part of a series of operations in response to the humiliation and searching of Muslim women at checkpoints.”
The statement said a suicide bomber – Abul-Qaaqaa Al-Masri – drove an explosive-laden car into the security force and detonated it. The statement threatened more attacks in the future.
The response of the Egyptian security forces
President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi held a security meeting attended by the ministers of interior and defense, the army chief of staff and senior army and police commanders. Presidential spokesperson Alaa Youssef said Al-Sisi ordered the army and police to coordinate fully in the field.
Security forces were placed on high alert, and the decision was taken to continue targeting terrorist and criminal dens while simultaneously prioritizing the safety and security of civilians.
Egypt’s North Sinai prosecution began investigations into the attack. The prosecution has inspected the site of the attack and will later listen to the testimonies of eyewitnesses and officials in the checkpoint, judicial sources said.
A few days later, Egypt’s army executed an operation to get revenge for the army and police martyrs. The forces destroyed a number of militant hideouts in Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid cities in raids. An Egyptian Army spokesperson has said that 60 Islamic State group militants were killed after fighter jets targeted the group’s positions in North Sinai.
In a Facebook post detailing the outcome of the operation, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir said, “counterterrorism units backed by the air force” had “killed 60 terrorists, wounded another 40 and destroyed 27 four-wheel (drive) pick-up trucks south of Rafah and Sheikh Zayed.”
Egypt’s war against terror
A new report of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) think tank, shows Egypt suffered more than 100 attacks on average per month from January to August 2015, compared to around 30 attacks per month in 2014.
The attacks are also spreading around the country. Until June 2013 violence was mostly contained to North Sinai, but after the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi by Egypt’s military, reports of militant strikes are coming in from all over the country. In particular, Greater Cairo (the provinces of Giza and Cairo), Fayoum and Sharqia have seen a spike in incidents.
The insurgency in North Sinai has transformed into near-daily attacks, often with use of advanced weaponry. Civilians account for the majority of casualties in these strikes.
Another report of the Regional Center for Strategic Studies – the Cairo index of stability, confirmed that terrorist organizations in Egypt in 2015 have become more aggressive than ever before. The number of terrorist attacks reached 617 in 2015, compared with 349 in 2014. According to the same index, Sinai’s statistics are among the worst in Egypt, as the number of terrorist attacks there reached 90 in 2015.
Yet details of the index confirmed there was a crackdown on terrorist organizations following the attacks on Sheikh Zuweid (July 2015): The total number of terrorist attacks in Egypt from August to December 2015 dropped significantly to 64, compared with 170 in the same 2014 period. The escalation in the attacks in recent weeks indicates that Egypt’s efforts to eliminate terrorism in Sinai has not been successful.
According to Maha Abdel Azim (Egyptian streets, March 13, 2016), an estimated 2100 people were killed in North Sinai in 2015, including roughly 1800 described by the military as terrorists, 150 civilians, 40 police officers and conscripts, and 140 military personnel. Many civilians are direct victims of militant attacks or are killed by often unidentified shelling. Others were killed in the crossfires during clashes between the military and militant groups. The estimate is a roundup based on statements by the military spokesperson as well as reporting from Aswat Masriya and Ahram Online.
In January 2016, Islamic State wrote in its weekly magazine Naba’, which runs news from the group’s various branches, that the Sinai branch had killed 1,400 people – members of the military and police as well as collaborators and tribal fighters – in the previous 15 months. The Egyptian military has disputed this figure and said only 69 military personnel were killed in that period.
Summary
Egyptian forces are grappling with an Islamist insurgency based in North Sinai governorate, which spiked following the 2013 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. The insurgency has killed hundreds of Egyptian security forces, while the armed forces have said their operations have killed Thousands of militants in the area.
One of Wilayat Sinai’s largest attacks came on July 1 ,2015, when car bombs targeted security checkpoints in Sheikh Zuweid. According to a statement from Egyptian army officials issued shortly after the attacks, 17 soldiers and more than 100 militants died.
The challenge of the ongoing terror attacks in Sinai demand a comprehensive response of military and civilian counter measures. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced last year to spend 10 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.28 million) on developing the Sinai Peninsula. Additionally, the current government has said that it recognizes the need to work with the local population and provide a development program for the region.
Egypt urgently needs to come up with proper long-term social, political, and economic strategies. Only a well-coordinated plan of dialogue with the local population, social and economic development and military and security crackdown on terrorism will return security and stability to the Sinai region.
Op-Ed: EXPOSE: Belgium accepted Islamization for electoral reasons
March 29, 2016Op-Ed: EXPOSE: Belgium accepted Islamization for electoral reasons, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, March 29, 2016
The conversation opens with a proverb: “In the land of the blind the one-eyed is a king, but not in Belgium, where those who have tried to raise the alarm have been left alone.” These are the words of Alain Destexhe, a prominent figure among the liberals in Brussels, former secretary of Médecins Sans Frontières and president of the International Crisis Group.
He is also author of “Lettre aux progressistes qui flirtent avec l’islam réac” (a letter to the progressives who flirt with reactionary Islam – Editions du Cerisier), a letter-pamphlet that Destexhe dedicated to Philippe Moureaux, the man considered responsible for the transformation of a large suburb of Brussels into the European hub of Islamic holy war.
Two days ago, the Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, said that Moureaux bears a “huge responsibility.”
“For twenty years, he reigned in a sort of conspiracy of silence” continues Destexhe as he talks to us. “At the heart of this system was the powerful Philippe Moureaux, mayor of Molenbeek, media darling, who has had a real moral and political domination over Brussels’ policy. He has created a climate of intellectual terror against the few who dared to stand up. Philippe Moureaux had realized that the future of socialism would depend on the immigrants who would become, symbolically, the new proletariat”.
But who is Moureaux? Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liege, Senator, Director of the Institut Emile Vandervelde (the think tank of the Socialist Party), deputy prime minister in the Martens government, but since 1983 city councilor and then, more importantly, mayor of Molenbeek for twenty years (1992- 2012). Son of minister Charles Moureaux, Philippe has long been the darling of the anti-racist left. The “loi Moureaux”, the Moureaux law, is in fact the rule that in 1981 criminalized acts inspired by xenophobia.
Nicknamed “Moustache” for his mustache, married to a Muslim Tunisian woman, Philippe Moureaux, even before becoming mayor of Molenbeek, had always boasted of defending the rights of immigrants. He included, for the first time in the history of Belgium, Muslim representatives in municipal and regional lists. This scion of the Belgian policy has been the mayor of Molenbeek for so long that the strategic suburb has come to be embodied in Isis’ plans.
His pro-Arab sympathies date back to the war in Algeria, when Moureaux defended the representatives of the Algerian National Liberation Front, also secretly hiding them in the heights of Lustin, in the Namur region.
Merry Hermanus, activist of the Socialist Party in Brussels for decades, also has accused Moureaux: “Without the immigrant populations, the Socialist Party would have been reduced to eight percent of the electorate in Brussels. We have become prisoners.” A few days ago, Moureux published his book, “The Truth About Molenbeek”. He wrote it after the massacres of November 13, in Paris, when the political class began to question his leadership of the Brussels ghetto. In the volume, Moureaux refers to “my Muslim brothers,” writes that one of the engines of jihadism is our “Islamophobia” and punishes “a society that treats immigrants like the Jews before the war”.
“Multiculturalism has failed because we have allowed them to exclude themselves without integrating communities, causing a fragmentation of society,” tells me Alain Destexhe, former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders. “We’re talking about Belgian citizens who reject the values of our country. Salah Abdeslam is a typical example of a guy who could lead a comfortable life. He had a decent salary and a guaranteed job for life “.
Why did you write the Lettre aux progressistes qui flirtent avec l’islam réac? To denounce the left that you could not criticize, while we were becoming the first country in Europe in number of jihadists and Brussels the weakest link in the fight against this reactionary Islam.
It was an electoral strategy: Moureaux used immigrants to stay in power. Today half of the officers in local councils and in Parliament of the Socialist Party are of foreign origin.
Why did they never demand conditions to give citizenship to immigrants? “It was a political electoral pact. Legal immigration (and illegal) was encouraged. Family reunification was facilitated. There was the granting of voting rights to foreigners, the fight against racism became the new paradigm of political discourse. And more: frequent visits to mosques, subsidies to Muslim associations, the provision of services to the Koranic schools, participation in the festival Eid El Kebir, anti-Israeli marches”.
When he was mayor, Moureaux also urged people to avoid driving during Ramadan, so as not to offend Muslims.
“Most politicians chose not to listen to sermons that became increasingly radical and in this climate radical organizations such as the Belgian Islamic Centre and others have prospered freely. Molenbeek has thus become the fastest growing area of the Brussels region of Belgium. The population of the district increased by 12 percent in 5 years and 30 percent in 15 years. The Islamization is taking place before our eyes. Already 30 percent of Brussels is Islamic”.
And there’s not only Molenbeek: “There are Anderlecht, Brussels City, Schaerbeek, Saint-Josse and Forest. When I was Secretary of Doctors Without Borders, in the ’90s, I often worked in Molenbeek. The population was already largely of immigrant origin, but nobody was trying to assert its own Islamic identity, like today. Women were not wearing the veil, no one asked halal food in schools, few went to the mosque. For this reason, if I look at Belgium today, I am very pessimistic. Perhaps it is too late”.
Secrets and Lies: Turkey’s Covert Relationship With ISIS
March 29, 2016Secrets and Lies: Turkey’s Covert Relationship With ISIS, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, March 29, 2016
With the aid of Turkish officials, Islamic State fighters’ have been able to travel through Turkey to reach Syria (Photo: Video screenshot)
A hot warning received by intelligence officials revealed that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is planning an “imminent attack” on Jewish children in Turkey. Officials believe the most likely target is in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, where a Jewish school is attached to a synagogue and community center.
The information was obtained after Turkey arrested six ISIS operatives in the southern city of Gaziantep last week.
“This is a more than credible threat. This is an active plot,” a Turkey source said.
Less than 10 days ago, a suicide bomber stalked Israeli tourists in Istanbul before blowing himself up near them, killing five people (four of them Israelis) and wounding many more.
“The so-called Islamic State is believed to be behind both sets of attacks and the organization continues in determined efforts to perpetrate further attacks in Turkey and elsewhere,” reported Sky News, quoting from an intelligence report seen by the news outlet.
In addition to the six arrested, another three ISIS operatives were arrested last week. Turkey, it seems is scrambling to protect itself from attacks the terror group has threatened to execute all across Europe.
After the Brussels attacks, Turkish President RecepTayyip Erdogan shocked the world by saying that Turkey had captured one of the perpetrators of the massacre last June and send him back to his country. Erdogan specifically said that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the suicide bombers in the Brussels airport, was detained in Turkey and sent back to Belgium with a warning (that was ignored) that he was a militant.
Yet, new documents obtained by Kurdish YPG fighters (People’s Protection Units) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who are fighting together, refute the claim made by Erdogan that Turkey is preventing ISIS and Al-Nusra (Al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria) from travelling through Turkey to reach Syria.
The documents seized from Islamic State headquarters in seven locations, including Kobane, show that ISIS fighters from all over the world – and particularly from Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and Tajikistan — were given passage through Turkey to Syria.
The Firat News Agency (ANF), a Kurdish outlet whose websites have been repeatedly blocked in Turkey by Turkish courts, reports that the hundreds of documents show that since 2013, ISIS fighters have used the Istanbul and Adana airports and have received permits from the Turkish government to reside in Turkey until they cross over to Syria.
The documents also include bus tickets, electronic Turkish visas, residency permits, and documents with stamps from Turkish immigration officials.
Chillingly, the documents show that chemical and explosive materials was transferred from Turkey to Syria. One such document was signed by the manager of Istanbul’s Police Foreigners’ Department Erkan Aydoga. Manuals in Turkish as to how to use these materials were also given to the jihadis.
A sample of the documents can be viewed here.
Turkey, as has been previously reported, is playing a dangerous and duplicitous game with the West. As Clarion Project has wrote, Turkey’s arms transfers to al-Qaeda-linked Islamist jihadis in Syria have been long-documented, yet largely ignored by the Western media. A major raid by the U.S. on an Islamic State safe house in Syria in the summer of 2015 gleaned large amounts of intelligence undeniably linking Turkey to the Islamic State.
Similarly, the fact the Turkey has been the top financial sponsor of Hamas since 2012, with Erdogan arranging for the transfer of $250-300 million to this U.S.-designated terrorist group annually, is another oft-ignored inconvenience. Similarly, the West has brilliantly avoided confronting Turkey on its abysmal human rights record.
Using air-tight documentation, Nafeez Ahmed, editor of InsurgeIntelligence, writes about the many reasons the West has chosen to look the other way while Turkey facilitates oil sales for the Islamic State, which guarantees its strength and viability.
“There are many explanations,” writes Ahmed, “but one perhaps stands out: the West’s abject dependence on terror-toting Muslim regimes, largely to maintain access to Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asian oil and gas resources.”
Since 2013, the Turkish government has been building a $100 million mega-mosque in Lanham, Maryland, taking Turkey’s“outreach” in America out of the realm of the subtle. This week in America, U.S. President Barack Obama will join Erdogan at the opening of the mosque, the largest in the U.S.
The show, it seems, must go on.
Cartoons of the Day
March 28, 2016
Pakistan on the Mediterranean
March 28, 2016Pakistan on the Mediterranean, Washington Free Beacon, Michael Rubin, March 28, 2016
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey, Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned Europe that it, too, could fall victim to attacks by Kurdish militants following a terror attack in Ankara that killed 37 people. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP)
President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.
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On March 18, European and Turkish diplomats signed off on a comprehensive deal on migrants pouring from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East through Turkey and into the European Union. Under the terms of the deal, for every illegal migrant the E.U. returns to Turkey, Turkey would send one refugee for resettlement in Europe. Additionally, Turkey and Europe agreed to re-open discussions concerning the Muslim country’s efforts to join the E.U., and Europe agreed to allow Turks visa-free travel throughout the Schengen zone.
Two days after the deal was announced, a Turk who had joined the Islamic State blew himself up among tourists on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street, one of the city’s major shopping and tourism districts. Two days after that, ISIS suicide bombers killed dozens in two separate attacks in Brussels. ISIS called what occurred in Belgium “a drop in the sea” compared with what the terrorists have in store for “nations of disbelief.”
Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have used the growing threat to argue that the West must better conform its policies to Turkey’s desires. In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu chided Europe. “Europe has no partner other than Turkey to provide its regional security,” he declared, adding a subtle threat: “They should see this reality and act accordingly.” Meanwhile President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.
The reality Davutoğlu deliberately ignores, however, is his own country’s role in allowing ISIS to develop and metastasize. The Turkish government is adept at pulling the wool over Western officials’ eyes. Erdoğan pays lip service in meetings with European and American officials to the importance of both democracy and the Turkish partnership with the West, for example, declaring, “Secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions.” He speaks differently to his Turkish audience. As mayor of Istanbul, he described himself as “the imam of Istanbul” and declared, “Thank God almighty, I am a servant of Shari‘a.” He is famous for his quip, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” In recent years, he has declared his goal to be to “raise a religious generation.”
This “religious generation” is flowing into the cauldron of Syria and Iraq. More than 30,000 foreign fighters from as many as 100 countries now fight with the Islamic State. The bulk of these soldiers—perhaps 90 percent—crossed into the Islamic State from Turkey. Turkish visa policy contributes to the problem. A direct correlation can be drawn between foreign fighters serving ISIS and those nationalities from which Turkish authorities require no visa or provide waivers: Several thousand more Moroccans and Tunisians, who need no visas to transit Turkey, fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq than Algerians and Libyans, who do. If Erdoğan simply required visas in advance for those under the age of 40 coming from countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan—or, for that matter, from Russia, the United Kingdom, and Australia—the flood of recruits into the Islamic State would slow to a trickle.
ISIS terrorists regularly traverse the Turkish border, not only for medical care but also for rest and relaxation. Some merchants in Istanbul openly sell ISIS propaganda and promise that proceeds from their sale will benefit the group’s fight in Syria and Iraq. Smugglers peddling contraband oil to fund ISIS rely on Turkey to bring the oil to market, paying off local and perhaps even national officials of the AKP, Turkey’s governing party, along the way.
Turkey has done more than lend passive support to Islamist radicals. In his 13 years in power, Erdoğan has transformed Turkey from a Western-leaning democracy into Pakistan-on-the-Mediterranean. There was, for example,the leak of documents from the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT), Turkey’s intelligence service, showing Turkish support of the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria. And, rather than give medals to the Turkish soldiers who intercepted truckloads of weaponry destined for Syrian radicals, Erdoğan ordered their arrest.
Likewise, when Turkish journalists exposed—with photographic evidence—the transfer of munitions and other supplies from the Turkish border to ISIS, Erdoğan’s response was not to applaud the media but to seize the newspaper and arrest its editors and many of its reporters.
There is also evidence that, as Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani in 2014 began to turn the tide against the radical group, Erdoğan and Turkish intelligence officials allowed ISIS fighters to pass through Turkey and attack Kobani from across the border, a flank the town’s largely Kurdish residents assumed was secure.
From the beginning, Erdoğan has looked at the Syrian refugee crisis not as a humanitarian tragedy but an arrow in his quiver. Inside Turkey, he has offered Sunni refugees Turkish citizenship if they settle in Turkish provinces currently dominated by the Shi‘ite offshoot Alevi sect. And, whereas the world condemns ISIS “genocide” against the Yezidi, the Yezidi who sheltered in Turkey were then victimized, again, by local AKP-run municipalities who refused to provide services offered to Sunni refugees.
Allowing Turkey to choose which refugees to send to Europe and promising to eliminate visa restrictions for Turks only rewards Erdoğan for his behavior and gives him additional leverage in his dealings with the West. Nor is this the type of policy Erdoğan’s neighbors would support. Earlier this year, King Abdullah II of Jordan told Congress, “The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.” He added that, “radicalization was being manufactured in Turkey.”
Abdullah’s message fell on deaf in ears in Washington, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin. It is Erdoğan who has the initiative as he pursues the Islamicization of Turkey and neo-Ottoman imperialism. He has built a Pakistan on the Mediterranean: an incubator of terror that markets itself as the only available partner of the West, with tragic results.
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