RUTHFULLY YOURS

In a new video, ISIS threatens to murder Westerners through a wide range of new means, including poisoning of food and drink and hit-and-run attacks. This marks an increase in ambitious threats as ISIS (also known as Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh) calls on Muslims to wage “jihad in the path of Allah” using easily accessible weapons.

The seven-minute video, entitled, What Are You Waiting For, opens with a group of Francophone ISIS fighters denouncing the West and throwing their French passports into campfire. French is the spoken language in the video, which also contains Arabic and English subtitles. One jihadi known as Abu Osama Al-Faranci, states: “This is a message from your French brothers who have made Hijra, to the Muslims who are still living in the land of Kufr.” In other words, it is an appeal by ISIS fighters who have emigrated to lands controlled by the Islamic State to Muslims living in the land of the infidelity.

Though the fighters in the video mostly speak to Muslims living in France, they also have a broader audience in mind; for instance, Abu Maryam al-Franci addresses “those Muslims in France and elsewhere.”

The jihadis featured in the video implore Muslims to make “Hijra” and emigrate to lands controlled by the Islamic State. But if Muslims do not emigrate, Abu Maryam (holding a machine gun and a machete) reminds them, “Indeed you have been ordered to fight the Kafir [unbeliever/non-Muslim] wherever you find him” and encourages Muslims in the West to attack civilians in their home countries.

The annual White House tradition of sparing the life of a turkey on Thanksgiving by way of a “presidential pardon” may seem peculiar to people who did not grow up in the United States.

It is a gesture that provides a few minutes of comic relief to Americans of all stripes, regardless of political affiliation. This year, U.S. President Barack Obama elicited laughter when he quipped about giving amnesties to two turkeys named Mac and Cheese. This was a veiled reference to his controversial move last week to wave his wand and legalize 5 million undocumented immigrants.

Still, while journalists may have been chuckling, members of Congress, now dominated by Republicans generally appalled at the president’s repeated abuse of his executive powers, were not amused.

As an expat American living in Israel, for whom the issue of illegal aliens in the U.S. is as abstract as celebrating Thanksgiving is distant, I have a different bone to pick (no pun intended) with Obama right now. But it involves Turkey the country, not the bird.

On Thursday, while families across America were cooking yams and pouring cranberry sauce, Israel’s Shin Bet security service announced that it had uncovered an extensive Hamas terror network in Judea and Samaria, and had thwarted a plan to carry out a series of coordinated terrorist operations against Israelis. These operations were to include abductions of Israelis at home and abroad; car-bomb detonations; roadside shootings, and a mass attack on Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem’s 34,000-seat soccer arena.

For this blessing of prevention, all Israelis owe a prayer of thanksgiving.

Following last Tuesday’s jihadist massacre of four rabbis and a police officer at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered law enforcement bodies to act immediately to destroy the homes of the two terrorist murderers who carried out that attack. He also directed them to destroy the homes of the terrorists who carried out the three other recent attacks in Jerusalem.

The following day, police destroyed the home of one terrorist murderer. Two more homes were supposed to be destroyed in short order.

But then the EU-funded radical leftist NGO Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual petitioned the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, opposing the orders.

Wednesday the court issued an injunction prohibiting state authorities from carrying out the house demolition orders.

In directing law enforcement officials to carry out the home demolitions, Netanyahu argued that the move serves as a deterrent to future would-be terrorists. Whether or not he is correct is a matter of debate. But certainly the Supreme Court can’t determine the effectiveness of the move better than the IDF can. And the IDF’s official position is that destroying the homes of terrorists deters potential terrorists from attacking.

And yet, rather than recognize the limitations of their own wisdom, Supreme Court justices acted on the behalf of an EU-funded radical organization that represents no significant constituency in Israel, and overruled the democratically elected government, curtailing its power to take the measures it deems necessary to protect the public.

This of course was just the latest move by the court to arrogate to itself the powers duly conferred on the public’s elected representatives in the government and the Knesset.

Nidra Poller

“Now look what they’ve done!” That sums up the reaction, in certain quarters, to the November 18th slaughter at Kehilat B’nei Torah. They who? Palestinians? Israeli Arabs? Terrorists? Mujahidin? Activists? Résistants? No. The Jews. Israel = the Jews, look at what they’ve done now. Will they never learn?

The massacre is condemned, that’s the first step. Then the condemnation makes a U-turn and aims at Israel. like one of those killer cars unleashed since… when? Since the Protective Border operation pushed back the all-out attack from Gaza, leaving Hamas with phony victory celebrations in the rubble and Israelis with a hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. The cease fire in Gaza was directly followed by a new double-pronged phase of the ongoing assault on Jews in their State: random assassinations and a “diplomatic” campaign to create a fake Palestinian State that can be used as a real weapon.

But that isn’t enough. Because there is something so atrocious about attacking men in prayer with a meat cleaver, knives, and a gun, there is something so unbearably eloquent in the sight of thick red blood on prayer books and tallit, there is something so barbaric about smashing into a synagogue to butcher pious rabbis, that certain commentators feel a need to defend themselves from accusations of bias. The campaign to create a cardboard Palestinian State is buffered by a communications offensive. Media coverage? It’s faultless, they say, and we are tired of your complaints. The creation of a Palestinian State by European parliamentary fiat is the appropriate response to “lone wolf” attacks by hopeless Palestinians, they opine, in unison with lawmakers, leaders, and anointed specialists. Extremists on both sides are spinning this political & territorial conflict into a religious war, they warn, and that must be nipped in the bud.