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July 2016

Jihadi Terrorism: You Think It’s Just the Jews? Think Again. by Giulio Meotti

Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded.

Whether you are pacifists or warmongers, gays or heterosexuals, atheists or Christians, blasphemers or devout, French or Iraqis, jihadi terrorism does not discriminate. Every one of us is a target: Islamist terrorism is genocidal.

When Islamist terrorists target Muslim dissident bloggers, faraway Yazidi women or Israeli girls, it should concern us in the West. Islamists are just sharpening their knives on them before coming for us.

If we do not speak out today, we will be punished for our indolence tomorrow.

Last night, at least 84 people were murdered in the French city of Nice by a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist, with dozens more victims wounded. The attacker drove a 19-ton truck into a large crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, France’s national holiday, running down men, women and children over a 2km stretch of road and sidewalk.On July 2, nine Italian citizens were butchered by Islamists in the assault at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They were tortured and killed with “very sharp blades” wielded by smiling terrorists who spared the life of those who knew the Quran. For almost a year already, poor Bangladeshis have been experiencing similar shocking massacres. But hose victims were not wealthy non-Muslim foreigners — they were anonymous Muslim bloggers, accused of “blasphemy” and murdered out with “sharp blades” — five victims in 2015 and a law student in 2016, as well as a Christian priest hacked to death.

The same cycle took place in Syria, where the beheaders of the Islamic State first targeted many Western journalists, then expelled and killed Christians in Mosul, and then landed in Paris to exterminate Western civilians.

Two weeks ago, a 13-year-old Israeli girl was stabbed to death while sleeping in her bed. As in Bangladesh, the Palestinian Arab terrorist used a knife to kill Hallel Yaffa Ariel. That is not a simple act of murder; it is a slaughter that wrongly equates building a home with murdering a child. Italian newspapers even deprived her of identity. Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s second largest newspaper, wrote: “West Bank: 13-year-old American killed”.

After Nice: How can we be surprised by terrorist attacks anymore? By Tiberiu Dianu

1. The Bloody Gift for the National Day

On July 14, 2016, in the Mediterranean city of Nice, at approximately 10:40pm local time (4:40pm EST), at the 227th anniversary of Bastille Day, its national day, France witnessed yet another terrorist attack, resulting in over 80 dead and more than 100 injured. The attacker, a truck driver, drove his vehicle at a high speed into a large crowd of people gathered on the Promenade des Anglais of the French Riviera city for a fireworks display. The driver, who was eventually killed by the police, was zigzagging his vehicle for 1.2 miles (over two kilometers) at the crowd, so that he could hit as many people as possible, and was firing on the crowd as he drove. The authorities found the truck loaded with arms and grenades.

2. Some Good Stats to Wake Us Up

This attack continues a long list of terrorist attacks in France since the beginning of the 21st century.

From 2001 to 2016, France has been confronted with 18 terrorist attacks on its territory, 16 of which were related to Islamist terrorists and two to European radical groups (the National Liberation Front of Corsica, in 2003, also in Nice, and the Basque ETA separatist group, in 2007, in Capbreton, near Biarritz). The majority of the attacks, organized by Muslim jihadist militant individuals or groups, have increased in a geometric progression frequency and number of casualties year after year.

Between 2004 and 2013, there were 3 attacks (1 bombing, 1 shooting, and 1 stabbing), with a total number of victims of 7 dead and 16 injured.

During 2014, there were 3 attacks – all in December, around Christmas (1 stabbing, and 2 vehicle ramming), with 1 dead and 24 injured.

During 2015, there were 6 attacks (2 shootings; 1 shooting and stabbing; 1 event involving shootings, hostage taking, and suicide bombings [the November 13-15 Paris attack], 1 stabbing, and 1 beheading), with 152 dead (including 130 in the Paris November attack) and 383 injured (including 352 in the Paris November attack).

During this first half of 2016, there were 4 attacks (2 stabbings and 2 vehicle ramming events, including the Nice attack), with at least 83 dead (including 80+ in the Nice attack) and at least 103 injured (including 100+ in the Nice attack).

The figures from the Nice attack are not final. But obviously, in terms of number of dead and injured (80+ dead and 100+ injured, respectively), the Nice attack is in solid second place, after the Paris attack in November in the Bataclan club, the national stadium Stade de France, and elsewhere in the city and surpassing the other Paris attack, on January 7-9, at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine office.

It has become noticeable also that some attacks have been scheduled during major celebrations (national days and Christmas).

We Need to Hate By Eileen F. Toplansky

Quite frankly, Western civilization is losing the capacity to hate hatred. Far too many Europeans and Americans are engaging in outright denial of the most heinous and evil occurrences across the globe. Too many people will not truly acknowledge “the age old fact that God’s children are capable of the most horrid things.” Consequently, the West refuses to articulate a message of resistance, mobilize itself, and destroy the evil.

In his essay titled “Home Is Where to Learn How To Hate” Leo Rosten lays out a compelling argument asserting that denying evil is a result of “never having been taught to hate properly: that is (a) relevantly; (b) in proportion, fitting the thing or person hated; (c) without blind rage; and (d) without guilt.” Thus, we find a young woman smiling and holding a sign that says “will trade racists for rapists” and calling for women to cover up so as not to offend. What an odious acceptance of evil. That the horrific crime of rape is accepted in order to avoid the alleged appearance of racism against the perpetrators is mind-boggling. Such sanctimonious depravity needs to be called out. And ignoring Islamic jurisprudence which permits sex-slavery, destruction of pre-Islamic antiquities, and pedophilia merely paves the way for our eventual enslavement if we continue to be meek bystanders.

In fact, Rosten maintains that “not ever to hate is to surrender a just scale of decent values. Not ever to hate is to drain love of its meaning. Not to hate anyone is as crazy as to hate everyone.”

Furthermore, “a world of automatic indiscriminate loving is suicidal — for the good and loving are enslaved or exterminated by those who gratify their cruelty and their lust.” Consider the rapacious cruelty of ISIS and the moral cowardice of a world that will not admit that “neither truth nor justice nor compassion can possibly survive unprepared and unarmed.”

Instead we see an ardent desire to literally disarm law-abiding people while simultaneously and deliberately erasing the facts about our enemies’ intentions. Iran can chant “Death to America” and Kerry superciliously lectures Americans and ignores genuine concerns. Obama dismisses beheadings, amputations, boiling of humans, sexual assaults, kidnapping, stoning, burnings, burials of live human beings, and genocide with mealy-mouthed word games and double talk. He divests the peace warriors of the vital information needed to understand our enemies’ intentions. His flights from truth do not mitigate the intentions of our enemies. Ending the blacklisting of U.S. Islamic charities that are helping to finance terrorist activities is unconscionable. Bribing journalists to paint a favorable coverage of the Iranian nuclear deal is reprehensible. How can we defeat what we cannot identify if their wicked objectives and actions are deliberately camouflaged?

Where Are the Peaceful Muslims? By Amil Imani

Once again, Islamic terrorists attack yet another Western city. This time in France.

A truck crashed into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the city of Nice on July 14, 2016. In my opinion, Islam is the problem, because there are Muslims who take its scripture as gospel and carry out its divisive and deadly provisions.

The barbarity and variety of actions of Islamic extremists are seen daily around the globe, committed under the banner of Islam, and have become so commonplace that the world has come to view them as part and parcel of a troubled humanity. From time to time, the world is shocked into a passing and momentary realization of the evil deeds these Islamist robots commit…and quickly gets over it and does nothing to seriously address this affliction of humanity.

The Islamic State – also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh, has taken credit for a number of unconscionable, brutal attacks. “ISIS has actually killed more Muslims than certainly members of any other religion,” noted Democracy Now via Amy Goodman after the Paris attacks. Muslims are the victims of “Between 82 and 97% of Terrorism-Related Fatalities,” according to the U.S. government.

Based on the above premises, a Muslim has a greater chance to become prey of ISIS than to join it, and the huge majority of the group’s victims are fellow members of the belief. This is due to the political motivations behind ISIS rather than religious ones, where it’s receiving arms and funding from nations like Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikhdom. Can the incomparably larger number of Muslims in the world who are so rightly terrified today come together with their own vision – which includes denouncing the extremists? I don’t know.

A common and repeated mantra among experts is that Muslims haven’t bluntly condemned the extremism committed in Islam’s name. How many times we have heard “Where are the moderate and peaceful Muslim voices in condemnation?” “Why aren’t Muslims speaking up against extremists like ISIS?”

If Muslims want to live in peace and harmony with the infidels, they must work together and respect our laws. Let us not forget that religious high authorities play a critical role in steering the masses toward or away from hate. Fatwas – religious decrees – by Islamic muftis and ayatollahs carry considerable weight with their respective followers. Sadly, most decrees and adjudications of these high Islamic authorities are exclusionary and even hostile toward the out-groups.

People are familiar with Islam’s classification of the world into the Dar-ul-Solh, the house of peace, meaning the house of Islam, and the Dar-ul-Harb, the house of war, meaning the house of non-Islam. Ironically, the self-proclaimed house of peace, from its early years, has waged war against the house of war.

Also there is a little-known third “house” according to Islam: Dar-ul-Aman, the non-Islam house of safety where Muslims find refuge. We already know which of the three houses America is to al-Qaeda, the Iranian mullahs, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their ilk.

A Trump Economy Beats Clinton’s His plans that would get the U.S. back on track include the biggest pro-growth tax cut since 1981 and repeal of ObamaCare.By Andy Puzder and Stephen Moore

Certain business leaders and prominent conservatives have denounced Donald Trump’s economic policies and even argued that Hillary Clinton would be a better choice in November. This is hard to fathom. Although we disagree with him on some issues, we have both signed on as economic advisers to Mr. Trump because we are confident in the direction he would take the country.

What could possibly be the economic case for Mrs. Clinton? She has vowed to defend President Obama’s “legacy” and double down on job-killers like ObamaCare. Even Bill Clinton knows that the status quo hasn’t worked: In March he told a crowd that it is time to “put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us.”

Since the end of the recession, economic growth has averaged an anemic 2.1%, producing the weakest “recovery” since the Great Depression. That has slowed to 1.4% in the last quarter of 2015 and 1.1% in the first quarter of 2016. The middle class is shrinking, and median household income today, in real terms, is lower than when Mr. Obama took office. By more than two to one, Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.

What does Mr. Trump offer as an alternative?

• The biggest pro-growth tax cut since Ronald Reagan’s 1981 reform. Mr. Trump would simplify the tax code and significantly reduce marginal rates, encouraging investment and economic expansion. His proposed corporate tax rate of 15% would make it easier for American firms to repatriate earnings, bringing capital home and making the U.S. a more hospitable place to invest. Mr. Trump’s tax plan would do more for working-class and middle-class families than any scheme to redistribute income.

Don’t believe the phony claim that it will cost $10 trillion over a decade. As Americans will see when he reveals the entire plan in the next few weeks, any revenue loss would be a fraction of that amount.

• The repeal of ObamaCare, the fastest-growing entitlement program of all. Mr. Trump promises to replace the law with a consumer-choice health plan. He also wants to immediately repeal dozens of President Obama’s antibusiness executive orders.

• A pro-growth energy policy. Mr. Trump wants to employ all of America’s abundant resources—oil, natural gas and coal. His plan could make America the world’s No. 1 energy producer within five years, producing millions of new jobs and trillions of dollars of extra output—along with new royalty payments to the government. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, brags that she would put “a lot of coal miners” out of work.

The Convention Revolt Peters Out Anti-Trump forces have failed to unbind delegates. What if Donald had agreed? Kimberley Strassel

In the lobby of a downtown building here, the security guard had stopped inquiring about names or destinations. “You going up to 1615?” he asked, pointing at an elevator. “Everybody’s going to 1615.”

That’s because up on the 16th floor, in a temporarily rented office, was Delegates Unbound, one of the nerve centers of the rebel movement against Donald Trump. Volunteers with phones stuck to their ears jockeyed for a quiet office, looked over the latest delegate counts, and hunted for food among piles of takeout boxes. The media never stopped calling.

That’s over now. The fight to unseat Donald Trump as the Republican nominee was the last, great unknown of next week’s GOP convention. Its outcome was decided Thursday night, as it collapsed under the overwhelming might of Republican National Committee power brokers.

The makings of potential fireworks began Thursday evening, when a GOP committee voted down a proposal to add a “conscience clause” to the convention rules. It would have freed delegates to vote for their preferred candidate on the first ballot. The clause had been the goal for months now of Free the Delegates, a group led by Kendal Unruh, an activist and Colorado delegate. To force a floor vote on a conscience clause by the full convention next week, Ms. Unruh needed one quarter of the rules committee (28 delegates). She didn’t get it, thanks to last-minute RNC deal making.

Kerry Says Nice Attack Underscores Need for End to Syria Crisis Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov says dialogue with U.S. on Syria has become even more urgent By Felicia Schwartz see note

Would Kerry, who sits on his brains, explain…if Syria is a hotbed for terror, then why is Obama escalating the admission of Syrians to the United States.???

MOSCOW—At the start of a second day of discussions on a U.S. proposal for closer military cooperation with Russia in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry invoked the attack in Nice to emphasize the urgency of bringing about an end to the crisis in Syria.

“Nowhere is there a greater hotbed or incubator for these terrorists than in Syria,” Mr. Kerry said Friday, at the top of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “People all over the world are looking to us and waiting for us to find a faster and more tangible way of them feeling that everything that is possible is being done to end this terrorist scourge.”

Mr. Lavrov began the meeting with a moment of silence for the victims of the attack in Nice that killed dozens late Thursday.

He said the attacks in Nice made the dialogue with the U.S. “even more urgent and relevant” and said the discussions Thursday night with Russian President Vladimir Putin would allow for “an intensification of efforts to find a solution to the crisis and boosting efforts for more effective work,” according to Interfax news agency.

At the start of the meetings Friday it was unclear if the U.S. and Russia would agree on a deal to increase military cooperation in Syria in exchange for Russia using its influence to ground Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s air force.

Mr. Kerry described three hours of meetings with Mr. Putin on Thursday evening as “extremely frank and serious.”

Islamic State Backers Cheer Attack in Nice Truck attack in France hasn’t been claimed by any group yet

Supporters of Islamic State on social media cheered the truck attack in the southern French city of Nice that killed at least 80 people, though the extremist group hasn’t yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Late on Thursday, a truck driver slammed into a crowd packed with families that had come to see the Bastille Day celebratory fireworks at the seaside promenade, killing and injuring scores of people. President François Hollande said the attack had “undeniable traits of terrorism.”

Pro-Islamic State accounts on social media celebrated the attack, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity. Related messages—many of which were made in a coordinated fashion—expressed the belief that the extremist group was responsible for the attack, though the attack has so far not been claimed by any group, SITE said.

As it suffers setbacks in its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq that have made it harder for recruits to join the group on the battlefield, Islamic State has increasingly called for more attacks elsewhere. In recent weeks, supporters with suspected or confirmed ties to Islamic State have launched deadly strikes in Turkey, Iraq and Bangladesh.

The attack in Nice came after a series of deadly terrorist attacks in France over the last two years, including one of the bloodiest assaults in the country’s history in November, when a series of attacks in Paris left 130 people dead. Last month, a man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State killed a police captain and his companion in a suburb of the French capital.

ANDREW HARROD: TUNISIA THE ONLY BEACON OF HOPE

This was another enlightening Hudson Institute panel examining Tunisia’s unique, shaky experiment in Arab democracy.
Expert Eric Brown discussed the “historical convulsion which shows no sign of ending anytime soon across the region” in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during a June 29 Washington, DC, Hudson Institute panel. In this upheaval, as his Hudson Institute colleague Samuel Tadros examined with the panelists, the sole democratic success of the “Arab Spring,” Tunisia, forms an unsteady “beacon of hope” amidst the region’s few positive developments.
Brown described MENA’s “implosion of the state-based order” following the 2011 “Arab Spring” outbreak of popular revolts against undemocratic regimes across the region. Washington Institute for Near East Policy expert Sarah Feuer particularly cited “how to cauterize Libya,” a failed state riven by sectarian fighting, as a key North African stability issue. As Tadros noted, one million Libyan refugees in neighboring Tunisia, about ten percent of the country’s population, have seriously strained housing and education resources there.
The “Arab Spring,” by contrast, “was relatively tame” in Morocco, Feuer stated, a country that has pursued under its monarchy a “tried and true preference for a very gradual type of reform.” She cited the expanded parliamentary powers and human rights provisions of the 2011 constitution, while Brown credited Morocco with MENA’s most “comprehensive Countering Violent Extremism strategy.” Morocco’s security sector, anti-corruption, and rule of law reforms demonstrate that the government has attempted to “find chinks in its armor” and “close the doors that predatory groups in the region have managed to use,” he stated. “The monarchy in Morocco has managed to stay ahead of the curve” of political unrest, Tadros concurred.

The panel focused on the problems confronting what others have previously described as Tunisia’s unique post-2011 “fragile success” in creating Arab democracy, described by Feuer as “tiny Tunisia hanging in there.” Despite Tunisian organizations having won a Nobel Peace Prize for their success in guiding the country’s democratic transition, “Tunisia is facing real trouble” and “serious divides within society,” Tadros stated. Tunisia’s coastal region, for example, is far more developed than the interior long neglected by Tunisia’s deposed dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
Tadros and the other panelists particularly noted Tunisia’s conflict between secularists and Islamists like the Ennahda Party. Comparing Tunisia’s dictatorship with Iraq and Egypt, Brown analogized that Ben Ali “was much more of a Saddam Hussein than a [Hosni] Mubarak” and brutally tyrannized Tunisians, leaving behind deep societal distrust. During Brown’s recent visits to Tunisia, secularists referred to Ennahda members as “animals,” while they reciprocated by suspecting trade unionists of being French defense ministry agents.
Tadros noted improved cooperation between Tunisian secularists and Islamists while Feuer credited Ennahda with a stabilizing role by having “swallowed some very difficult decisions along the way” during Tunisia’s democratization. Yet he wondered whether the youth would follow the moderate path taken by aging party leaders like Ennahda’s Rashid Ghannouchi and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, head of the secular Nidaa Tounes party. He had attended Ennahda’s 2016 congress where Ghannouchi announced a party of “Muslim democrats.”

Terror Attack in Nice on Bastille Day Kills Dozens Forensic investigators comb through debris after truck plowed through promenadeBy Mike Bird and Sam Schechner

http://www.wsj.com/articles/terror-attack-in-nice-on-bastille-day-kills-dozens-1468569739

NICE—The death toll from the truck attack in the French Riviera rose to 84 people, with another 18 people critically injured, the interior ministry said Friday morning, as the nation reeled from its third major terrorist attack in the last 18 months.

The ministry said there were “several children” among the dead in Nice after a truck driver late Thursday barreled for more than a mile through a seaside promenade thronging with revelers celebrating Bastille Day. The promenade had been cleared of vehicles for a fireworks display.

Much of the waterfront was barricaded by police officers Friday morning, and the usually bustling beachfront was silent. Dozens of residents and tourists surveyed the area in shock, many in tears.

Young people sat wrapped in blankets outside the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, which had been used for psychological counseling overnight.

Gilles Giordani, a musician who performed at Bastille Day celebrations Thursday evening, said he had escaped the onrushing truck.

“I heard people screaming and running, and saw the truck coming behind me as the second band was starting to play,” he said. “I followed them. I ran and jumped onto the beach to save myself.”

Mr. Giordani said he was waved into a beachfront restaurant, which the owners locked with dozens of people inside to protect them from the attack. CONTINUE AT SITE