RUTHFULLY YOURS

BERLIN—Three explosions hit a soccer team’s bus just ahead of a major game in the German city of Dortmund on Tuesday, seriously injuring one player in what authorities described as a targeted attack on one of Europe’s most prominent sports clubs.

Officials said that that three bombs hidden in a hedge went off as the bus pulled out of the Borussia Dortmund team’s hotel in a suburban neighborhood to carry the players 6 miles to their stadium for a quarterfinal game in the most prestigious tournament in club soccer.

Marc Bartra, a Spanish defender on the team’s roster, had surgery after injuries to a hand and arm as a result of the blast that shattered the bus’s windows, officials said.

“It’s not anything that is life-threatening in any way,” Borussia Dortmund Chief Executive Hans-Joachim Watzke said. “The team is, of course, completely in shock.”

As the police combed the crime scene Tuesday night, they found a letter claiming responsibility for the attack, Dortmund prosecutor Sandra Lücke said. She declined to provide more details about the letter or to comment about possible motives.

“We must assume that this was a targeted attack on the BVB team,” Dortmund Police Chief Gregor Lange said, using Borussia Dortmund’s acronym.

Borussia Dortmund’s scheduled quarterfinal game against AS Monaco in the UEFA Champions League later Tuesday evening was postponed to Wednesday.

A police spokesman said later in the evening that while authorities were still analyzing what exactly caused the blasts, their initial analysis showed it was a “serious attack” that could have cost lives.

Mr. Eid, who often uses a pseudonym, Qusai Zakarya, that he adopted while opposing the regime in Syria, now lives in Germany.
I know how painful it is to suffocate from nerve gas. I know the devilish terror that it triggers in the victim’s mind. I know because I am a survivor of the Syrian regime’s chemical massacre of Aug. 21, 2013.

On that morning, I nearly died after inhaling the deadly perfume that Bashar Assad unleashed upon my hometown of Moadhamiya, in the western suburbs of Damascus. I struggled to breathe as this silent killer hugged my chest and pressed my lungs until my heart stopped beating out of pain. The doctors gave up on me and left me for dead. I woke up 30 minutes later screaming in agony and surrounded by corpses.

But an even worse moment came when President Obama canceled his “red line” that had promised consequences for the use of chemical weapons. At the time I was gassed, I was a local media activist for the Syrian Revolution against Assad’s brutal regime. For two years, I was trapped in Moadhamiya as the town endured government siege, starvation and savage bombardment.

I escaped Syria and came to the U.S. in 2014, hoping that my testimony would help persuade Mr. Obama to stop the genocide. But after two years of speaking to the media, think tanks, universities, the State Department, Congress, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, I was sure that nothing would change the president’s mind—not me, not the “Caesar report” published that year on the industrial-scale torture in Syria’s prisons, and not the millions killed and displaced by Assad’s genocide.

I left the U.S. a year ago out of disappointment and frustration. Even though I was a refugee who had made it to America, I was disgusted with myself for living a comfortable life while thousands of Syrians were still being slaughtered each day by Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and Islamic State. I now live in Germany among other Syrian refugees.

As I watched footage of the nerve-gas attack last week that killed more than 100 people, including children—Assad’s worst chemical massacre since 2013—I could not help but cry and feel outraged at each and every person who could have saved them but didn’t.

BERLIN—In mid-2015, German prosecutors say, Iran set in motion a spying operation that targeted a prominent pro-Israeli politician and a Jewish newspaper in Berlin.

Details of the alleged plot—which authorities said appeared aimed at gathering information for “possible attacks” on them—emerged during a trial in Berlin’s highest court that ended late last month with the conviction of a 31-year-old Pakistani man, Syed Mustafa Haider, on espionage charges.

Prosecutors said Mr. Haider was guided by a person believed by German intelligence to be part of the Quds Force, an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. He spent months tracking Reinhold Robbe, a former lawmaker who was then chairman of the German-Israeli Society, they said.

Mr. Haider, who was sentenced to four years and three months in prison, denied the charges and has instructed his attorneys to appeal the verdict against him, his lawyers said. The lawyers declined to comment further.

The Iranian embassy in Berlin said in a statement that Tehran “officially and categorically denied any link with this issue.” The embassy blamed “enemies of diplomacy” for “using any possibility and means to advance their bellicose goals.”

No attacks have taken place against the objects of Mr. Haider’s surveillance.

The revelations come at an awkward time for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ms. Merkel, under pressure from German companies that want to do business in Iran, has been resisting U.S. President Donald Trump’s tougher stance toward Tehran.

The government said it would wait until Mr. Haider’s appeal has been heard before commenting.

Based on evidence gathered by Germany’s police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency, prosecutors said Mr. Haider gathered 600 photos, 32 videos and other information detailing Mr. Robbe’s movements between July and October of 2015.

In addition to his work on Mr. Robbe, he was asked to compile dossiers on the Berlin headquarters of Mr. Robbe’s Social Democratic Party, the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper and a Jewish professor in Paris, Daniel Rouach, they said.

Prosecutors alleged the material was “meant to enable his intelligence employer to establish a direct way to the person under observation as they prepared an attack.”

They noted that the spying focused on what “safety precautions” were in place to protect the targets under surveillance and how to “navigate” in locations they were likely to visit.

The court didn’t publish a written verdict. A spokeswoman said it found prosecutors’ case “fundamentally convincing.”

Mr. Haider, a student studying engineering in Germany, received instructions from his alleged Quds Force handler, identified only by the initial M., via WhatsApp in mid-2015, prosecutors said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Muhammad Abu Rumman, a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and a writer for the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, published an article highlighting 10 notable Western scientific achievements from 2016, including the detection of gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein, and the discovery of a ninth planet in the solar system, and compared them to 10 notable “achievements” in the Arab world during that year, including the perfection of the car bomb, the “development” of the concept of lone wolves and barrel bombs, and the destruction of archaeological sites. Abu Rumman implicitly invites readers to compare these achievements and draw their own conclusions.

The following are excerpts from the article:[1]

Muhammad Abu Rumman (ikhwansyria.com)

“The BBC website published the 10 biggest scientific achievements of 2016, which include: the discovery of the gravitational waves that Einstein discussed 100 years ago; the arrival of the [Juno] probe to Jupiter; the discovery of a ninth [planet] in the solar system nicknamed ‘Nine’;[2] the discovery of a 99 million-year-old dinosaur tail preserved in amber; the finding of the largest prime number [yet discovered], which has 22 million digits; the development of a tiny disc that can store 360 terabytes of data and last for 14 billion years; stem cell injections for patients who suffered [a stroke due to] blood clots in order to restore motor function; the discovery of a new type of blind cave-dwelling fish that can climb walls; the first landing by a rocket [at sea after completing its mission]; and transplanting a chip in a paralyzed patient’s brain, enabling him to move his fingers.

“Now, let us think of the prominent Arab achievements, both scientific and non-scientific, during 2016:

“1. The car bomb tactic, which ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra excel at, which transforms basic primary materials into a devastating mechanism of killing, without the need to develop inventions and carry out complex scientific research as is done in the West. It is enough to pack a large amount of explosives into a car, don an explosive vest, and embed yourself in the ranks of the ‘enemy’ in order to injure and kill dozens and cause horrid destruction. ISIS has announced that, according to a recent study [it conducted], in the recent period there have been 1,112 martyrdom operations, all of whose perpetrators obviously died, and that during that period, they killed a large number of people on the other side.

Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, we have a piece by Jay Nordlinger on Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy leader. This week in his Impromptus, Mr. Nordlinger is expanding that piece. For yesterday’s installment, Part I, go here.

So, as we’ve said, Boris Nemtsov was murdered — shot in the back on February 27, 2015, about 200 yards from the Kremlin walls. Who killed him? Who did it?

Kara-Murza gives a long answer. But it comes down to this: He can’t tell you who pulled the trigger or triggers — who the triggerman or triggermen were. But, in his mind, there is no doubt about who is ultimately responsible: Putin and his regime.

I ask a very awkward question: Did they make a mistake? Did Nemtsov’s murder backfire on them? Kara-Murza says that he will return a very awkward answer: No, they did not make a mistake. “They knew whom they were killing. From their point of view, they did exactly the right thing.”

Nemtsov was by far the most effective opposition leader in Russia, Kara-Murza explains. He could talk to anyone, from heads of state to the man on the street — most any street. He could enter a hall full of people hostile to him, and come out with many new friends.

“There is a saying that no one is irreplaceable,” Kara-Murza notes. “But Boris was unique. It’s hard to imagine that he can be replaced.” Nemtsov’s murder was a huge blow to the Russian democracy movement, and to Kara-Murza personally.

“My life is divided into before and after February 27, 2015,” he says. Before and after Nemtsov’s murder.

Three months after the murder, Kara-Murza was poisoned. One by one, his organs shut down. The experience was, needless to say, terrifying and brutal. Kara-Murza was shuttled from hospital to hospital, as doctors tried to figure out what was going on.

Finally, they realized that Kara-Murza had been attacked by a poison — one of an extremely sophisticated nature.

When he was able, Kara-Murza resumed his work. Yet there was always a threat over his shoulder. In early 2016, for example, Putin’s man in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, did something charming. He posted to his Instagram page a video showing two men in the crosshairs of a sniper. Those men were two Putin critics: Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, and Kara-Murza.

The motives of Muslim terrorists are such a mystery. First police sought the motive of the Muslim terrorist in London. Now they’re searching for the motive of the Muslim who murdered a Jewish woman while shouting, Allahu Akbar, a cry that originated with Mohammed’s attacks on Jews, which means Allah is Greater.

​Paris police are checking suspicions that a 27-year-old Muslim murdered his Jewish neighbor, Sarah Lucy Halimi, following a confrontation in her apartment.

According to a report in Yediot Aharonot, 66-year-old Halimi was attacked by the terrorist as she slept in her bed. He stabbed her and pushed her from her third-story apartment to her death while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

During the police investigation, the terrorist asserted that the Koran had commanded him to murder her.

Which indeed the Koran does. Islam is a fundamentally anti-Semitic and anti-everyone ideology. Islamic teachings preach violent hate toward Jews. Mohammed was a mass murderer of Jews.

But the police are going with the standard excuse for Muslim terrorists these days… mental instability.

French police continued Sunday to investigate the murder of Sarah Attal-Halimi, a 67-year old Jewish woman from Paris, who was hurled to her death from her apartment window last week.

A 27-year-old Muslim man who lived on the floor beneath the victim was detained shortly after the incident. Following a preliminary investigation, the suspect – apparently known to the police as a small-time criminal – was sent for psychiatric evaluation.

The incident has caused a storm within the Parisian Jewish community, with many claiming that the act was motivated by antisemitism. Joel Mergui, president of the Consistoire, said Tuesday that the community must allow the police to investigate the incident before branding it antisemitic, though he described the circumstances of the incident as “troubling.”

The prosecutor informed the Jewish leaders that at this stage, they do not have any evidence that the crime was antisemitic.

Or of Islamic terrorist. Just another case of Jihad mental illness. Nothing to see here folks. Now let’s welcome in some more Muslim migrants and settlers. Try not to hear the screams of their victims.

A source who spoke with Jewish media said the suspect stabbed the victim as she lay in bed sleeping, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”. The source told the Hebrew-language Hadrei HaHaredim the victim was heard begging and screaming for her life as the killer dragged her to the window, and then was seen pushing her from the third floor to her death.

There could hardly be a metaphor for Europe. And this is what the anti-Semitic collaborators of Muslim migration, like HIAS and the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, are bringing to America.

Jewish News has managed to contact one of the victim’s children, Yonathan Halimi. Residing in Israel, where the family has respected since Thursday the week of mourning, he agreed to answer our call, “Because everyone must know that it was an anti-Semitic act,” introduced his wife Esther.

Yonathan Halimi expresses himself slowly. In a posed voice, he alternates French, which he perfectly knows, and Hebrew. “She was killed al pi kiddoush hashem,” hhe said.

What does he know about him? “He has lived in the building for 20 years in a family known for anti-Semitism”. Yonathan Halimi remembers the snags in the stairwell between the Jewish family on the 4th floor and his neighbors on the 2nd.

“One day, one of the killer’s sisters pushed my sister down the stairs, and the next time she called her a dirty Jew.”

A few hours before the Shabbat, he asks that one pays tribute to her who, as a director of Jewish nursery, “always sought to elevate and elevate others.” “Do something good in her memory.”

This is what Islamic migration and settlement means.