RUTHFULLY YOURS

BEIRUT—The attack on a French church signals the arrival in Europe of a type of intimidation long familiar to Christians in the Middle East, whether from religious extremists, other armed groups or even secular governments.

In areas of Syria and Iraq under its control, Islamic State has seized churches, dismantling crucifixes and vandalizing paintings depicting scenes out of the Bible—considered to be idolatry in their hard-line interpretation of Islam. Many Christians flee when the militants sweep their areas; thousands escaped from northern Iraq when Islamic State took over in summer 2014.

Its branch in Libya killed 21 Egyptian Christians and 31 Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians in two separate massacres last year, slitting their throats and recording their deaths for Islamic State propaganda, which highlighted their religion as justification for the slaughter.

Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, Sinai Province, in late June claimed the shooting death of a Christian priest in the north Sinai city Al Arish. The group said the priest was targeted for being a “disbelieving combatant.” It has attacked hundreds of police and military personnel in the area since 2014.

Egypt’s Coptic Christians have long claimed they are treated as second-class citizens by the country’s secular but authoritarian governments, and peaceful protests against discrimination have been met with brutality by security forces, resulting in dozens dead and injured.

There also have been attacks by other extremist groups and unknown actors in Syria and Iraq.

Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian Jesuit priest who lived in Syria for three decades, went missing in 2013 in the city of Raqqa, shortly after it was captured by Islamic State. His fate remains unclear.

In 2014, 13 Syrian nuns and other women captured by al Qaeda-linked rebels and released three months later in exchange for a hefty ransom. They had been abducted from their monastery in the ancient Christian town of Maaloula, north of the Syrian capital Damascus.

When claiming attacks across Europe in recent months, Islamic State has claimed they targeted “Crusaders”—a reference to Christian armies that battled Muslims in the Middle Ages, used to denote Western intervention in the Mideast—and members of the U.S.-led military coalition striking its positions, rather than citing specific religious motives. CONTINUE AT SITE

ATHENS—Greece took a major step toward approving the construction of the first officially sanctioned mosque in Athens, after decades of objections that were often colored by the country’s fraught relationship with neighboring Turkey.

Greece’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, this month dismissed objections from some local residents to the planning application to build a mosque, clearing the way for the issuance of a building permit.

The development now goes to the environment ministry and interior ministry for procedural approvals, a process that could take weeks or over a year as it winds through Greece’s bureaucracy.

A spike in refugees fleeing the Middle East has swelled the capital’s Muslim population, already on the rise over the past decade from immigration from Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Asian countries.

The political mood has also shifted under the left-wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, only a few years after the rise of the anti-immigrant fascist movement Golden Dawn. The government supports the mosque and plans to cover the €1 million ($1.1 million) construction costs.

“The refugee crisis has increased the pressure for the mosque to be built,” said John Dimakis, political analyst at Athens-based communications consultancy STR.

The planned building, on state-owned land in the western Athens neighborhood of Elaionas, is an inconspicuous low-rise complex with no minaret and a prayer hall for up for 350 people.

Athens is one of the few capital cities in the European Union that has no purpose-built mosque, despite being home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims, according to a senior government official.

Until now, Muslims have worshiped in unofficial locations such as private homes, basements, and abandoned warehouses. Greek government officials estimate there are 70 to 80 unauthorized mosques in Athens and the surrounding region. Four such sites have been given a license, but none is a purpose-built mosque. All places of religious worship need a permit in Greece.

Mr. Prosor is Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations and the United Kingdom. He is currently the Aba Eban Chair for International Affairs at the IDC Hertlzliyah and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute.

After the horror of Nice, Israelis stand in solidarity with the people of France. When we see children and loved ones mowed down during an evening of celebration, our hearts break. We pray for the speedy recovery of the injured and mourn with the families of the victims.

But expressions of sympathy and solidarity aren’t enough. As the terrorist threat evolves, so, too, must our response. In Nice, the use of a truck as the murder weapon shows how terrorism is constantly developing new ways to inflict mass casualties.

Israel has bitter experience of this. The devastation in Nice was on a vast scale, but the method of attack is painfully familiar. Since October, 44 terrorist attacks have used motor vehicles as a weapon against Israelis.
In recent months, a new generation of terrorists radicalized on social media has launched more than 300 attacks in Israel using knives, guns and vehicles. Palestinian social media, and sometimes even official media, have published a flood of material glorifying the knife and the car as a weapon. The same is true of the jihadist groups murdering civilians in France and elsewhere around the world.

No longer do these people need training camps, bomb-making expertise or even an order. All they need is an internet connection, incitement and the desire to kill.

In this digital age, terror cannot be met with an analog response. We need to keep up, and Israel has experience and expertise to share.

When Palestinian terror groups pioneered plane hijacking, Israel pioneered rigorous security procedures for our airports and airlines. At the time, we were accused of undermining freedoms and criminalizing the innocent. Few would question the need for those procedures today.

When Israel first used drones to target terrorist leaders, we were accused of “extrajudicial killing.” Today these techniques are widely used in the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda.

We’ve also modified our built environment, discreetly but deliberately, to protect civilian life. When, in 2014, a Palestinian terrorist attempted to ram his car into Israelis at a bus stop, he was stopped by a concrete bollard. Getting out of his car, the attacker still managed to kill one victim using a knife. But the body count could have been far higher.

Other countries now place bollards outside high-profile targets—at the White House in Washington, Westminster in London and high-risk embassies in major cities around the world. But when the enemy views children watching fireworks as a target, we need to adapt again. CONTINUE AT SITE

Two terrorists entered a village church in Normandy at morning Mass on Tuesday, slit the throat of an elderly priest and critically wounded another person before police shot the pair dead. Islamic State claimed credit, adding to a list of recent atrocities that includes a suicide bombing and knife attack in Germany and the Bastille Day murder of 84 people in Nice. President François Hollande says France is at “war” with Islamic State, and we’d like to believe he means it.

Mr. Hollande has been sounding the war theme since November’s terror attacks in Paris, and to that end French planes have been dropping bombs on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq. The President has also approved a modest increase in defense spending, again extended a state of emergency, and is considering measures to improve intelligence gathering and interagency coordination, along the lines of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.

All of this is helpful at the margin. Yet France had a robust intelligence service long before the rise of Islamic State. The Normandy church was mentioned on an Islamic State hit list discovered by authorities last year, and one of the attackers seems to have been on bail and under electronic surveillance for seeking to go to Syria.

All this proves again that a war on terror can’t be won merely with better police work or the “intelligence surge” proposed in the U.S. by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Proper surveillance of a single suspect requires 20 or so agents, which means France would need some 200,000 officers to monitor the people already on the government’s terror list before November’s attacks. The real number of French jihadists has surely grown.

The proper response to Islamic State is to go on swift and decisive offense, beginning with the eradication of its strongholds in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Mr. Hollande may have declared war on Islamic State, but so far the fight has been more symbolic than strategic. Unless that changes, Tuesday’s attack in Normandy will merely be one more of many horrors to come.

In north-western France yesterday, in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du Rouvray, Muslims stormed a church, took hostages and shouted “Daesh” while beheading 84-year-old Fr. Jacques Hamels.

While media outlets like The Telegraph are telling us that the attackers’ “motives are still unknown,” The Glazov Gang has a bit of a hunch as to what may have motivated the Jihadists to behead Fr. Hamels.

In response to this latest horrifying manifestation of Islamic terror, and to bring understanding to why Fr. Jacques Hamels had to suffer the terrifying death that he did, The Glazov Gang is running its special episode with Dawn Perlmutter, the Director of the Symbol Intelligence Group and one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in symbols, symbolic methodologies, unfamiliar customs and ritualistic crimes.

Ms. Perlmutter discussed Why ISIS Beheads, taking us into the dark world of Jihad’s key tactic and signature.

Don’t miss it.

UPDATE MIDNIGHT

The correct spelling of the killer’s name is: Adel Kermiche.

Precisions on the judicial structure: for the past 30 years, all cases involving terrorism are theoretically handled by a specialized anti-terrorism section in which all the personnel, judges, magistrates, investigating judges, and the Procureur (prosecutor) are theoretically expert at handling these cases. The parquet, then, would be the chamber of the Procureur de Paris, François Molins, that opposed the liberation of Adel Kermiche.

But let us not get into the complexities of the French judicial system. And let us agree that “terrorism,” meaning jihad, is a challenge to all our democracies.

Debate is raging today and will continue to generate a mixture of light and noise for many days to come. All opinions, within the limits of decency, are aired. The government defends its position, its decisions, its management and leadership from top to bottom. Every proposal for strict measures and more rigorous application of those that already exist is rejected as an insult to the Constitution. The opposition is accused of grandstanding, flexing its muscles and bellowing out war cries, ignoring the values of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Le vivre ensemble [getting along together…but it really means getting along with Muslims]is constantly set forth as a kind of ultimate value that we must protect at all costs. All sorts of vague projects are attributed to Daesh and its ilk. They want to create divisions in our society, turn us against Muslims, spoil our diversity, provoke a religious war, make us relinquish our democratic principles and become autocratic and violent like they are.

Marine Le Pen said: they don’t want to divide us, they want to kill us

When priests have to fear their throats will be slit while celebrating morning Mass, no one is safe in France.
But did 85 years old Rev. Jacques Hamel had to die?
The murder of Father Hamel in a Catholic church at the center of St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray in Rouen, Normandy, could have been prevented. The French security forces knew this church was targeted by ISIS when they captured some ISIS hit-lists months ago. Also, the attackers were known for their affiliation with ISIS.
The latest Islamic terrorists’ attack in France demonstrates without any doubt the complete incompetence of the French authorities at all levels. It illustrates either the total disdain for its own citizens or its inability to understand and act on the threat that is destabilizing the French society. This time, a Catholic church was the target. Previously there were attacks on synagogues, Jewish Kosher stores, a newspaper, concert halls, night clubs, sporting events and national celebrations including the mass killing in Nice during Bastille Day fireworks. These, in addition to many other smaller, unreported or underreported attacks throughout the country.
But the French authorities have done worse than nothing. Why the incompetence?
When public or private institutions are threatened, the first step is to try and eliminate or neutralize the source of the threat. If this fails, strong security is put in place to protect the threatened sites.
Regarding perimeter security, this church was left entirely unprotected. There were no guards. The two terrorists (there could be more, this is what we know about now) entered the church through an unlocked back door. Why was the door unlocked? Why didn’t the church have any protection? Responsibility for this falls on the shoulders of the French authorities and, perhaps, on the church if the warnings were passed to them, which is not known at present. Clearly, the congregants in the Church, and those who were taken hostage, including nuns, had no inkling they were on a hit list
Next; at least one of the terrorists was known to the police, and should have been on their terrorist watch list. He was arrested and sent to prison for an attempt to join ISIS in Syria. His computer contained the list of churches targeted for attacks, including this one. He was released from prison last March under parole to live with his parents and was wearing an electronic tag. But, under the terms of his release, he was allowed to do anything he wanted during the morning hours. Thus, his electronic tag was not monitored from 830 until 1230 every day. The attack at the church, nearby his parents’ home, in the center of Saint-Etienne du Rouvray took place at 9:45 am.
Why would the French judicial system parole a known terrorist? Why would they disregard extremely worrisome intelligence and not provide adequate protection to the church, and to their citizens?