RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dismay, frustration, exasperation. Three months after Sarah Halimi was savagely murdered by Kobili Traoré, the suspect is still out of reach in a psychiatric hospital, leaving the criminal investigation at a standstill. An update and action plan were presented at a July 4th press conference organized by the Comité de soutien / Vérité et Justice pour Sarah Halimi, under the auspices of the CJFAI (Conféderation des Juifs de France et des Amis d’Israël) at a restaurant in the heart of the Invalides station. Mr. Gilles William Goldnadel, counsel for the victim’s brother William Attal, Samy Ghozlan former police commissioner and president of the BNVCA (Bureau National de vigilance contre l’antisémitisme), and MP Meyer Habib presented the facts as known to date.

Despite the horrors of the case, the presentation, moderated by Richard Abitbol and André Added, was respectful, dignified, and determined. No whining, no wild accusations. The support committee counts 7,000 members, including distinguished thinkers Georges Bensoussan, Pascal Bruckner, Luc Ferry, Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Marty and more.

I was in Israel on the 22nd of May when lawyers representing Sarah Halimi’s adult children – attorneys Jean-Alexandre Buchinger and David-Olivier Kaminski – presented their position at a press conference. Without stoking controversy, let it be understood that they favor a prudent “loyalist” approach, whereas Maître Goldnadel, a mince-no-words editorialist and former president of the France-Israel Association, is more forthrightly combative. At issue: the failure of law enforcement to intervene while Traoré was beating and torturing Sarah Halimi. The autopsy concludes that the victim was still alive when she was pushed off her 3rd floor balcony. At least six policemen were in the building, waiting for reinforcements before attempting to apprehend the assailant. Too late.

A brief review of the facts as corroborated by the police report

Twenty-seven-year-old Kobili Traoré, of Malian origin, a repeat offender with at least twenty convictions for theft, violence, and drugs, has no psychiatric history. As far as can be known at this stage of the investigation, no defense of mental instability has ever been presented in the various criminal proceedings and/or prison sentences. On the 3rd of April, after allegedly spending the afternoon smoking marijuana with friends, he came home in an agitated state and made so much trouble that his mother threw him out in the middle of the night. Apparently she did not seek medical help or police protection. No interviews with or statement by the family have been made public to date. Traoré sought refuge with Malian neighbors, the Diara family, that took him in unsuspectingly. But he was so aggressive that they barricaded themselves in a room and called the police. Three agents arrived within minutes and stood outside the door of the Diara apartment. Traoré was pacing around, loudly reciting koranic verses. Three more policemen arrived but did not enter the apartment because, according to the police report, they suspected they were dealing with a terrorist (the koranic verses).

While they waited for reinforcements, Traoré climbed from the Diara balcony to the next balcony, smashed the window, and fell upon his orthodox Jewish neighbor Sarah Halimi, a 65 year-old retired M.D. Shouting allahu akhbar, shietan (devil), he battered and tortured her, interjecting koranic verses with unspeakable barbaric acts. A neighbor across the courtyard called the police and recorded several minutes of the incident. But the police were already there and still did not intervene.

No matter how many times this fact is stated, repeated, corroborated, I cannot report it without a feeling of utter dismay. By the time the elite forces arrived, 50 minutes after the first response to the Diara’s call, Sarah Halimi lay dead in the courtyard and Kobili Traoré was back in the Diara apartment, calmly reciting koranic verses and boasting “I killed the neighborhood shietan.” He was arrested and placed in psychiatric confinement. To date, the court-appointed psychiatrist has not turned over his report to police or judicial authorities, and Traoré has not been questioned by police investigators. The anti-Semitic motive has not been included as an aggravating circumstance of the charges he faces.

You expect the Left’s scribblers to work themselves into a foot-stomping lather about Donald Trump — outrage is, after all, what the Left does best. But what of your normally more sensible commentators? If he doesn’t fit the presidential mould, so what! His policies are terrific.

Donald Trump’s magnificent Warsaw speech was discussed on CNN and MSNBC as being white nationalism in disguise for, among other things, citing symphonies as an achievement of Western civilisation. You couldn’t make it up. Except that leftist hacks can make up anything once a fall guy has been thoroughly demonised as human vermin. They are practised at the dark art.

I have heard Trump described by media commentators as a schmuck, buffoon, pig, crass, grotesque, mentally unstable, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, vulgarian, narcissistic, coarse, egotistical, shallow, horrible, one-dimensional, an embarrassment, and much more beside; some much worse. How about this from our own Nikki Sava: “Ruts deep in mud.” Even the otherwise estimable Andrew Bolt agreed with Richard Alston[i] that Trump might not “pass the character test.”

No one, apparently, can resist virtue signalling. Just when did media commentators become self-righteous arbiters of good taste and character? And just when did manners trump policies? Pun intended. When Trump became president, that’s when. This brings me to Greg Sheridan

Recently Sheridan offered his opinion that “Trump is a poor president.”[ii] As you would appreciate, this is very mild-mannered when set against most of the personal barbs aimed at Trump. Why have I picked it out? I have picked it out because unlike the rest it is a serious charge. It can be construed as being policy-related, rather than fitting into the usual script of gratuitous insults.

Trump’s policies matter to over 300 million Americans and, in fact, to all of us. His supposed personality flaws not so much; particularly as none of us should cast the first stone. The question is simple. Is Trump a poor president; and, to boot, after only six months in office? Put it this way. What egregious things has he done? What egregious things does he intend doing?

First things first. If he is a poor president it must mean that he is poor compared with a number of others. Is he poor when compared with, say, Barrack [ISIS, Iran nukes] Obama, George [Iraq] Bush, Bill [North Korean nukes, Monica Lewinsky] Clinton, or with Jimmy [Iran hostages] Carter? It’s too early, you might say, to form any kind of judgement. You’re darn tootin’ it is. At the same time, it is possible to assess what he has done so far, and intends to do, and give him a provisional mark.

I don’t have a complete list of his actions. But try these for size. He has appointed an accomplished cabinet, including Rex Tillerson (State) and General Mattis (Defence). He has succeeded in getting a conservative constitutional judge (Neil Gorsuch) appointed to the Supreme Court.

He has visited Saudi Arabia and urged representatives of the fifty-four Muslim countries who were present to drive out Islamic extremism. He has given his military commanders freedom on the ground to take effective action against ISIS and the Taliban. He is trying (if so far unsuccessfully) to persuade China to do something about North Korea. He has leant on NATO countries to meet their defence obligations; with some success. He has stood up to al-Assad and Russia in Syria. He has improved the US relationship with Israel. He has begun the process to rebuild America’s armed forces. Contrast all of this with Obama’s appeasement and passivity.

He has reduced and removed a host of regulations hampering industry and mining. He is working valiantly with a motley and divided crew of congressional Republicans to get better health insurance, to markedly reduce taxes, and to renew America’s infrastructure. He is taking concrete steps to improve the delivery of health services to veterans. He has appointed talented and committed people to improve schooling (Betsy DeVos) and housing (Ben Carson) for those in depressed inner-city areas. He has tightened border security.

BRUSSELS—European diplomats say they are increasingly concerned the Trump administration will stretch out its review of the Iranian nuclear deal, undermining the agreement by curbing the economic benefits designed to ensure Iran’s compliance.

President Donald Trump has attacked the agreement, reached in 2015, as a “terrible deal” for the U.S.

European officials have remained publicly upbeat about the U.S. remaining a party to the deal, but diplomats privately voice serious concerns about where the U.S. review is headed. They say Washington is providing little feedback, has given no firm end-date for the review and hasn’t made clear who is shaping the process.

European officials still believe the Trump administration won’t abandon the nuclear deal, but many fear Washington will keep it under a rolling review. That, they say, would crimp economic benefits Iran expected from the agreement by persuading already cautious Western banks and investors to stay away—whereas President Barack Obama’s top officials urged engagement with Tehran. European diplomats also worry that if the U.S. commitment remains uncertain, Iran may respond by attempting limited violations.

Trump administration officials have raised concerns—echoed in some European capitals—that the deal doesn’t curtail Iran’s nuclear activities once its key commitments expire over the next 15 years. Washington has also repeatedly criticized the deal for not committing Iran to change its behavior in the region, where it has intervened to support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and moved to increase its influence elsewhere through proxy forces such as Hezbollah.

While Obama administration officials toured Europe to encourage companies to take advantage of the lifting of most sanctions, the new administration has taken the opposite approach. White House Deputy Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that Mr. Trump used last weekend’s Group of 20 leaders meeting in Germany to press his counterparts “to stop doing business with nations that sponsor terrorism, especially Iran.”

The limbo over the deal could strain U.S. ties with Europe, where the governments of France, Germany, and the U.K., as well as the European Union, helped negotiate the deal and strongly support it. They argue the deal averted a military conflict over Iran’s nuclear program and is now allowing the continent to start rebuilding investment ties with Tehran. CONTINUE AT SITE

With America’s global attention largely focused elsewhere, Iran continues to expand its military capabilities – legally and otherwise – forcing the question of what Washington and its regional allies plan to do about it.

Iran’s military expansionism of late encompasses a host of activities: pursuing illegal means to expand its nuclear and ballistic missile technology and expertise; continuing to test its longer range and increasingly sophisticated ballistic missile; and building underground facilities in Lebanon to manufacture missiles and other weapons for its most powerful terrorist client Hezbollah.

This expansionism is boosting the capacity of Iran, a Shiite nation, to threaten Israel and the region’s U.S.-backed Sunni states – most notably Saudi Arabia – raising the stakes for a U.S. administration that has wisely discarded President Barack Obama’s efforts at U.S.-Iranian rapprochement but not yet enunciated a comprehensive alternative.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently articulated the broad elements of a strategy: “Our policy towards Iran,” he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in response to a question, “is to push back on [its regional] hegemony, contain their ability to develop, obviously, nuclear weapons and to work towards support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government.”

The question now is whether Tillerson was speaking for an administration that agrees on those elements and, if so, whether it is serious enough to put the building blocks of a comprehensive strategy in place – e.g., a close monitoring of Iranian compliance with the 2015 global nuclear agreement; greater U.S. economic sanctions in response to both Iran’s violations as well as its continuing terror-related efforts; closer U.S. military cooperation with its regional allies to counter Iran’s hegemonic ambitions; and a serious effort to engage with an Iranian populace that, to a great extent, finds the regime repugnant and yearns for more freedom and democracy.

In three recent reports, German intelligence and other authorities have revealed that Tehran is working to illegally acquire technology and expertise to advance both its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The reports revealed, for instance, that three German citizens were charged in connection with “the deliveries of 51 special valves to an Iranian company” that Iran could use for its Arak heavy water reactor – a reactor that can develop plutonium for nuclear weapons and that Iran was supposed to dismantle under the nuclear agreement. They also revealed that Iran was seeking the “products and scientific know-how” to develop “weapons of mass destruction as well [as] missile technology.”

Meanwhile, Tehran dismissed Friday’s call by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that it stop its ballistic missile testing that he said violates the spirit of the nuclear agreement. That’s because Iran is testing missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead, reinforcing concerns that – despite its statements to the contrary – it plans to pursue nuclear weapons either by violating the agreement or waiting until it expires over the next decade or so.

According to an Ipsos survey, commissioned and published by Le Monde, 65 percent of French people believe that there are “too many foreigners” in France, while 60 percent say that they “don’t feel at home as they did before.”

Also, over 60 percent said that migrants “in France do not make the effort to integrate,” and 46 percent believe that integration isn’t a complicated process.

The percentages vary depending on the political views of the respondents, with 95 percent of far-right National Front supporters saying that there are too many foreigners in France. The figure for Republicans is 83 percent (up seven percent since last year), while the left-leaning Socialists’ figure is 46 percent.

Similarly, social divisions remain clear; 77 percent of laborers think that there are too many foreigners in France, compared with 46 percent of managers.

Islam also remains a hot topic for the French. Another Ipsos annual survey, ‘French Fractures 2017,’ indicated that 60 percent of the respondents believe Islam is incompatible “with the values of the French Republic.”

In another question, an overwhelming 78 percent of the French regard Islam as a religion “seeking to impose its way of life on others.”

About 46 percent said that “even if it is not its main message, Islam still contains within it the seeds of violence and intolerance.” The figure is five percent up from the previous year.

The surveys were conducted amid a state of high alert, following two years of jihadist attacks. In November 2015, 130 people were killed in Paris; in July 2016, 86 people died in a truck attack in Nice.

France has been engulfed by disputes over Islam – one particularly hot topic being burkinis, an Islamic piece of beachwear.

Last summer, it was forbidden for a while to swim in burkinis on French beaches, though the Supreme Court ruled the measure unconstitutional in August. This year, the row has been renewed. A few days ago, the mayor of Lorette in central France banned the full-body swimsuit from a new leisure park, despite a high court ruling the bans illegal last year. Also, an activist tried to arrange a burkini beach party during the Cannes Film Festival, and the city administration pulled the plug on the plan.

Last Thursday, Dressed in battle fatigues and adopting a martial tone, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi entered the remains of the historic al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul to announce the end of ISIS.

“The return of al-Nuri Mosque and al-Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the Daesh state of falsehood,” Abadi asserted.

The prime minister took part in a number of photo-ops, including several with the famous al-Hadba (The Hunchback), the 850-year old minaret as background.

Al-Hadba looked like an apt symbol for Iraq today, a nation bent down by decades of tyranny and war.

Iraqi Army commanders and soldiers in Mosul, Iraq on June 23, 2017. (Photo by Martyn Aim/Getty Images)

The question is: will the “hunchback” straighten up its back? In other words, are the Iraqi leaders capable of offering their people a chance to build a better future?

“The liberation of Mosul will be a new birth for Iraq,” Vice President Ayad Allawi told us in conversation last April. “A pluralist, non-sectarian Iraq is possible. We must all work together to make it a reality.”

Abadi’s triumphal speech in Mosul contained no hint of future moves apart from continuing to hunt down ISIS fighters and, presumably, sleeping cells across Iraq and, perhaps, even beyond in Syria.

Abadi is right in telling Iraqis that though the false caliphate is over, the fight against ISIS isn’t. Many Iraqis wonder what ISIS might do?

Citing reports by Iraqi Intelligence, Allawi says that ISIS has already opened “a dialogue” with its original “mother”, Qaeda, about a possible merger or at least coordination at tactical operational levels.

That view is partly shared by US and British intelligence analysts who report “intense debates” within the global Jihadi movement regarding future strategy.

However, though a child of Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS developed its own strategy. Qaeda was not interested in control of territory and had learned to live under the protection of others, the Turabi-dominated government in Sudan in the early 1990s, the Taliban emirate in Afghanistan until 2001, and tribal chiefdoms in South Waziristan after that Qaeda focused its energies on fighting the “distant enemy” including with spectacular attacks on the United States.

In contrast, ISIS, cast itself as a state with a distinct territory, an economy, an army and an administration. ISIS was focused on “eliminating” the “near enemy” including non-Muslim minorities or “deviant Muslims” who had to be massacred. The attacks made in ISIS’ name in Europe and the United Sates were ad-hoc operations, often prompted by copycats and endorsed by ISIS after the fact.