RUTHFULLY YOURS

UPDATE AUGUST 1

Why does it matter to get things straight, even seemingly small details? Why does it matter to say, again, that Abdelmalik Petitjean was not a flagged security risk when he got hired, through an interim employment agency, as a baggage handler at the Chambery airport? It was not a full-time job. He worked weekends. He was finishing his studies. It matters because he is not an example of flagrant negligence in the hiring of airport personnel; he’s an example of a nearly undetectable risk that was to all intents and purposes smoothly integrated into French society. He’s one more element of proof against the sociological argument about discrimination breeding resentment and sharpening the slaughterer’s knife. So, if you don’t think the free world will live or die on the toss of a coin, then you might agree that we are in the early stages of a process. And it matters how we present the facts. Democracies will learn, improve, and defend themselves. There is no reason for despair.

Abdelmalik Petitjean wasn’t an ex nihilo jihadist with nothing but the Net for inspiration His cousin, identified as 30 year-old Farid K., has been charged and imprisoned; preliminary investigations have concluded that he knew a murderous attack was imminent. Jean-Philippe J. a twenty year-old who had tried to reach the caliphate with Petitjean in June has also been charged and jailed.

Charitable Christianity

We didn’t get news this weekend, we got preached at:  We will not answer hatred with hatred and violence with violence. They wish to divide us, we will stick closer together than ever. We always loved, respected, admired and hung out with our fellow men of the cloth. Now we are inseparable. The media surfed on giant waves of peace & love. We drowned in it, suffocated, strangled, choked and nothing could stop it. We were like geese stuffed to make foie gras. You would think the entire French population that would normally be reeling from an unending series of attacks and atrocities (I don’t have time or space to list the “minor” incidents that have occurred over the past month) has only one wish in its collective mind: Christian-Muslim communion. Correspondents stood in front of little churches, big mosques, majestic cathedrals, swooning over fraternity in the pulpit, in the congregation, on the doorsteps, and in the churchyards. Muslim and Christian spokesmen stood shoulder to shoulder, outdoing each other in interfaith devotion, overflowing with kindness in their hearts and in their places of worship. Some Catholic clergy went as far as merciful forgiveness for the executioners.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Turtle dove reporters cooed over the presence of “many” Muslims in the cathedral but the camera didn’t find the right angle to prove the point. A bit of truth slipped into an article in the Journal du Dimanche: the Christians at Ste. Thérèse Church in St. Etienne du Vouvray didn’t quite make it into the neighboring Yahya mosque for Friday prayers as planned. They were put off by “all those women in long black robes and the men with long beards.” The service was led by Abdellatif Hmito, the imam from Oissel, known for his eloquence in French, in the absence of the mosque’s regularly officiating imam, who does not speak French at all.

Adel Kermiche was the black sheep of a respectable family. His older sister is a surgeon, all his siblings have degrees and successful careers. His mother is a teacher. There has been no mention of a father. Though the family does not worship at the mosque, the mother sought help for her radicalized son. Mosque president, Mohammed Karabila, regrets that he had to curtail his deradicalization efforts because of a lack of subsidies.

Petitjean and Kermiche were virtual comrades on Telegram, the coded jihadi message board, before they met in reality four days before going into action. There’s speed dating, and now we have speed slaughtering. But no one can come up with speed detention. I said it would require a reorganization of the penal system. That’s an understatement. It will require a geometrical expansion, and even then, how will the system handle thousands of dangerous inmates with genocide in their hearts and jihad in their heads? When they are sent to prison like common criminals, they multiply and become fruitful. The Salafists rule like divine right monarchs. Infidels are converted, Muslims are intensified, the young are hardened, the inexperienced learn from those that have already seen action in the caliphate.  There is a dearth of Muslim chaplains and no reliable vetting system. This is why judges sometimes opt for the electronic bracelet. They think it is a lesser evil.

So, imagine a detention center entirely populated by security risks. Where will authorities find the intrepid prison guards to face up to them? If the truth about Guantanamo were told here, instead of lies peddled by released inmates who, before going back into active duty, tell how they were tortured, they would know how difficult it is to run a detention center with this kind of population.

 The moderate Muslims speak up

Forty-one Muslims speak up! Did it have to come to this, the slaughter of a priest in his church, before the voices of these Muslims could be heard? These are the Muslims you say you want, n’est-ce pas? Dr. Rahmene Azzouzi, chief of the urology service at the university hospital of Angers, was invited by I Télé to speak (by telephone) about the manifesto published in le Journal du Dimanche.  He reserved his anger for the French government and the media that had conspired for decades to prevent the emergence of an authentic, honorable, peaceable French Islam. They only invite extremist, calculating, dishonest Muslim “leaders” to speak, to represent, to advise them. Dr. Azzouzi submitted an op-ed to le Monde last winter; it was accepted and never published. The nonplussed news reader practically laughed at her earnest guest.  You could hear her thinking: What? The media guilty of something? Ha ha ha.

I bought the paper edition of JDD to read the declaration: “We, French and Muslim, are ready to assume our responsibilities.” Great! And then…what a disappointment! The fatal flaw is in the first lines, where the modern, well-integrated, successful French Muslims give a brief summary of victims of assassination…from cartoonists to the priest. Without mentioning the Jews killed by Mohamed Merah at a day school in Toulouse or the Jews murdered by Koulibaly at the Hyper Cacher outside of Paris, not to mention Ilan Halimi, Sébastien Selam…

It’s not just a question of leaving out a distinct category—Jews—in the lineup of victims, it is the exclusion of an essential element of this jihad that is striking France: antisemitism. That was the trigger in September 2000, it was the focal point, the wedge issue, the Trojan horse, if you will, of jihad atrocity in France. And our friends, the right kind of French Muslims, simply excluded it from the responsibilities they are ready and willing to assume.

The Jewish Question

The biggest public demonstration of opposition to antisemitism in France and terrorism in Israel marched behind a banner that warned: “Synagogues brûlées, République en danger.” I’ve taken it for the title of my next release, scheduled this fall: Torched Synagogues Scorched Democracy. This chronicle of the dark dawn of the 21^st century traces the development of genocidal Jew hatred in France, its ramifications and international context. We warned them: it won’t stop with the Jews. They didn’t have to listen to us, they could have listened to the enemy. First the Saturday people then the Sunday people. The response was “Palestinian suffering.”

Did I expect retroactive appreciation? Not at all. But this? This Christian/ Muslim harmony that obliterates us from the burning question of terrorism? When we were the first in lin? The forward-looking French Muslims didn’t forget antisemitism, they obliterated it. And how did they react when the CRIF,l’UEJF,  the chief rabbi, and dozens of others expressed their dismay at the blank space where Jewish victims should be? They were offended. How could we make such a fuss over nothing? Of course they did not mean to exclude, to deny, to overlook. That should be obvious to any thinking person.

So here we go again. It’s our fault. So touchy! And a bit arrogant to boot.

The media, too, are born yesterday when it comes to covering jihad attack stories. Authorities, also, act as if hundreds of assaults on Jews by Muslims every year never happened. What counts today is Christian-Muslim harmony. Read Bat Yeor on the strategy of Christians in Muslim lands, throwing the Jews into the fire to feed their Islamic masters and spare themselves…more or less.  French-speaking readers will find a brilliant comprehensive analysis of the current process in a Figarovox text by Shmuel Trigano, soon to be available in English: [http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2016/07/28/31001-20160728ARTFIG00130-terrorisme-on-sacrifie-les-victimes-pour-ne-pas-avoir-a-livrer-bataille-contre-les-bourreaux.php

The Interior Minister and Prime Minister are scrambling to pre-empt the opposition and enforce a slew of measures that have been debated and delayed or rejected for years. They promise to close more Salafist mosques and deport more preachers of hate; to end the pernicious practice of mosque construction with foreign funds (Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and probably Qatar and who knows if Iran doesn’t have a back channel); to train and validate in France imams that will speak our language, understand our culture, respect our laws, and guide young people in the righteous path.

Yes, there’s a problem down that road. The hatred, the” radicalization”, the refusal to integrate and to accept our laws is Scriptural. Whether the imam is trained in France or in Algeria, he’ll be honoring the same koran.

Patience. If they take a few steps in the right direction, they will indeed have to grapple one day with that gigantic contradiction.

Six people are now jailed and in connection with the truck attack in Nice.  The expression “lone wolf,” definitively deleted from the terrorism vocabulary in France, will be hereafter reserved for the four-legged creature…but don’t they run in packs?