RUTHFULLY YOURS

This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist.

Recently I spoke with an acquaintance of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the conversation quickly turned, as conversations about Ms. Merkel now always do, to her decisions on immigration. Last summer when Europe was engulfed with increasing waves of migrants and refugees from Muslim countries, Ms. Merkel, moving unilaterally, announced that Germany would take in an astounding 800,000. Naturally this was taken as an invitation, and more than a million came. The result has been widespread public furor over crime, cultural dissimilation and fears of terrorism. From such a sturdy, grounded character as Ms. Merkel the decision was puzzling—uncharacteristically romantic about people, how they live their lives, and history itself, which is more charnel house than settlement house.

Ms. Merkel’s acquaintance sighed and agreed. It’s one thing to be overwhelmed by an unexpected force, quite another to invite your invaders in! But, the acquaintance said, he believed the chancellor was operating in pursuit of ideals. As the daughter of a Lutheran minister, someone who grew up in East Germany, Ms. Merkel would have natural sympathy for those who feel marginalized and displaced. Moreover she is attempting to provide a kind of counter-statement, in the 21st century, to Germany’s great sin of the 20th. The historical stain of Nazism, the murder and abuse of the minority, will be followed by the moral triumph of open arms toward the dispossessed. That’s what’s driving it, said the acquaintance.

It was as good an explanation as I’d heard. But there was a fundamental problem with the decision that you can see rippling now throughout the West. Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.

Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.

The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”

And so the great separating incident at Cologne last New Year’s, and the hundreds of sexual assaults by mostly young migrant men who were brought up in societies where women are veiled—who think they should be veiled—and who chose to see women in short skirts and high heels as asking for it.

Cologne of course was followed by other crimes. CONTINUE AT SITE

The militant group has forced thousands to become child jihadists. As many escape, Nigeria wonders what to do with them.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—In a forest of thorn trees somewhere far outside this city, the Boko Haram insurgency ran a boot camp for about 100 boys. Children as young as 5 years old learned to handle assault rifles and march through the woods in flip-flops. Their teacher was only 15.

“I was terrified if I didn’t do it, they would kill me,” said Idriss, the teenage instructor, in an interview. He said he was kidnapped by the militants in 2014 but has since escaped.

While the world focused on Boko Haram’s mass kidnappings of women and girls, the Islamist group was stealing an even greater number of boys. Over the past three years, Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 10,000 boys and trained them in boot camps in abandoned villages and forest hide-outs, according to government officials in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, and to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group.

Abubakar was abducted by Boko Haram and forced to participate in the violent terrorist group’s campaign in northeast Nigeria. He managed to escape a year later. Video: Gabe Johnson/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/WSJ

Child soldiering was a big problem in various collapsing states in the 1990s, including some in Africa. What is happening here in northeastern Nigeria is part of a disturbing rise in child jihadism. Young boys and at times girls are being indoctrinated into violent fundamentalism and used as fighters, suicide bombers and spies.

Something similar is happening in other countries battling Islamist insurrections. Commanders of al Qaeda’s branches in Yemen, Somalia and Mali have deployed youngsters. Islamic State has used children in combat, suicide bombings and in execution videos in Iraq and Syria.

Interviews with 16 young Nigerians who escaped from Boko Haram captivity and with other witnesses, soldiers, researchers, officials and diplomats in Nigeria and Cameroon provide a picture of the harrowing life endured by the children who wage jihad. The Wall Street Journal isn’t publishing their surnames.

Witnesses said the boys were trained and sent into battle, at times unarmed and often numbed with opiates. Many of the boys were beaten and some died of starvation or thirst, these people said. Their individual accounts couldn’t be independently verified but are consistent with information gathered by researchers and military officials, both in terms of timing and specific details.

“They told us, ‘It’s all right for you to kill and slaughter even your parents,’ ” recalled Samiyu, a former captive who said he witnessed a beheading on the first day of his 11 months with Boko Haram. He said other boys helped hold down the victim. “They said, ‘This is what you have to do to get to heaven.’ ”

People displaced by fighting between Nigerian troops and Boko Haram militants have settled in a camp on the outskirts of Maiduguri, Nigeria.

Witnesses recounted Boko Haram using fleets of passenger vans to move child fighters through the forests of northeastern Nigeria. Some have described camps of more than 1,000 boys and adolescents training to fight, with very few adults present.

“If you go there, you can see 12-year-olds talking about burning down a village,” said Fatima, a 20-year-old former hostage. “They have converted.”

As more such boys escape from the group and others are captured by government forces, West African officials are debating whether the boys can be returned to their families—and how.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Nigerian peacekeepers helped end the civil war in Liberia, and thousands of young boys were disarmed and returned to society. Some of those peacekeepers are now ranking officers. They must confront a new generation of child combatants raised on an ideology more apocalyptic than anything offered by the warlords of 1990s Liberia.

Boko Haram recruited children from the earliest days of its insurgency. First it tapped them as spies and couriers before shifting toward front-line mobilization, according to Nigeria’s military and Human Rights Watch. CONTINUE AT SITE

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was not able to attend last week’s Arab League summit in Mauritania, because he was in mourning for his brother, Omar, who died in Qatar a few days before the event. He therefore traveled to Doha for the funeral and sent PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki to Nouakchott in his stead.

Though Abbas has made it clear in word and deed that he will never make peace with the Jewish state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned him to extend condolences over the loss of his brother. This gesture was not merely a display of good manners. Like many relatives of Palestinian bigwigs bent on Israel’s annihilation, Omar Abbas had been undergoing regular cancer treatments at Tel Aviv’s Assuta Medical Center.

In Mauritania, Malki conveyed his bereaved boss’s message to the Muslim-Arab honchos who had gathered to discuss Middle East “issues.” The PA, he said, was planning to file a lawsuit against Britain for the Balfour Declaration, which has its 100th anniversary in 2017. Abbas, Malki explained, wanted to enlist the support and assistance of his brethren in this endeavor.

It is not clear whether any of them guffawed into their robes at the absurdity of the proposed move — or whether they were impressed at the way in which Abbas manages to outdo himself in audacity. But one thing we do know is that this year they devoted a bit less time and lip service to the plight of the Palestinians. It has always been the case that the only use they have for Abbas is tactical; as long as they echo his yammering about Israel’s being the root cause of instability in the region, they can go about plotting against and killing one another without Western focus. But things are really on a downswing for them right now, so their heart and rhetoric are not really in it for Abbas and what they know to be his — and their — phony cause.

Back on the ranch in Ramallah, Abbas has kept busy engaging in laughable behavior, without batting an eyelash or working up a blush.

Hamas has had a lot on its plate this week. While engaging in the routine activity of honing its members’ military skills, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip is also busy preparing for the Palestinian Authority’s municipal elections, scheduled for Oct. 8.

Unlike its rivals in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, who enjoy unwarranted international recognition and support for false moderation, Hamas has a thankless job.

On the one hand, it does all the literal and figurative heavy lifting: operating summer camps to train Palestinian kids how to commit mass murder, smuggling weapons, and constructing tunnels through which to kidnap and kill Israelis. On the other hand, it has to persuade the residents of Gaza that life there is simultaneously good (under its rule) and horrendous (due to Israel’s blockade and previous war, which left swaths of the enclave in ruins).

This is no easy feat in general. But this week it was particularly difficult, as news emerged that Hamas operatives, employed by foreign charities, have been posing as humanitarian aid workers and stealing many millions of dollars out of the mouths of Gaza babes.

Just as this story broke, Hamas released an election propaganda video portraying Gaza as an affluent wonderland — lush, plush and full of facilities for family fun. The clip is only partially lying, because Hamas honchos do own villas equipped with swimming pools and spas. And though Israel’s military operations against the terrorist group’s rocket bases and death tunnels were responsible for collateral damage, the amount of money that has been poured into the area for rehabilitation could have covered the cost of very luxurious living for everyone, had Hamas not appropriated it for other purposes.

To deflect voter attention away from this inconvenient revelation, Hamas pulled another public relations stunt: On Wednesday, one of its unnamed representatives told Israel Radio that it was engaged in prisoner-swap negotiations with the Israeli government.

This announcement came on the heels of Tuesday’s memorial service for the Givati Brigade’s Lt. Hadar Goldin, who was killed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014, and whose remains — along with those of Golani Brigade Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul — are being held as bargaining chips for the release of hundreds of Hamas terrorists.