RUTHFULLY YOURS

There’s a whole world of woe out there, a world of persecuted Christians and ISIS, al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Al-Shabaab, plus Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping. But that’s where the rest of us reside. The chattering classes are different. In their world there is only one peril, Donald J. Trump.
I hadn’t tuned-in before. Dateline London is a weekly BBC news program. There is a presenter and four panellists drawn from foreign correspondents based in the UK. They discuss issues of the day. In the latest program President Trump’s Syrian attack bulked large understandably, with North Korea and China also part of the discussion.

I’m mentioning this program because the panel was evenly balanced between progressive and conservatives, Trump supporters and Trump ridiculers. Just kidding! Of course, the panel comprised one hundred (and ten) per cent progressives and Trump ridiculers. One woman panellist put herself in the position of the Chinese wondering how to deal “with the lunatic in the White House.”

It was business as usual, in other words. I am sorry I didn’t catch any of their names. Does it matter? Pick any four or five appearing on the BBC or from the mainstream media generally and you would likely get the same supercilious pap.

The presenter and panellists to a woman and man (three to two or was it four to one? It hardly matters and was hard to tell) were concerned about Trump acting erratically and plunging the world into turmoil. They alarmingly confessed to having no idea what he would do next. Surprisingly, he hadn’t brought them into his confidence.

Trump’s supposed erratic disposition is a figment. In fact he is doggedly pursing the agenda that he laid out in his campaign. Let’s face it; Trump isn’t the right sort of chap – not like, say, that nice, politically correct, Mr Trudeau. The talking heads want him to fail so badly they can taste it. It is nauseating to watch. One woman panellist revealingly expressed particular concern that some progressives had applauded Trump’s actions in bombing the Syrian airbase. That simply wouldn’t do.

But look, I get it, they don’t like Trump. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the panellists had just occasionally, just occasionally, left off their preoccupation with Trump’s disposition and discussed the unholy alliance between Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Assad in Syria and what it means; or the risks of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, or of North Korea fitting IBCMs with nuclear tips. Oh that’s too hard. Let’s concentrate on Trump’s latest tweet or on an purported dust-up between Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.

Trump Derangement Syndrome means that the media has become besotted with psychoanalysing Trump, and also his family. Or sensationalising disagreements among his advisers; which, for the information of those who have not worked at senior levels in organisations, is both par for the course and often healthy. A lot healthier than groupthink.

The media have to be dragged into covering real issues. Look, I’m a Trump supporter. This biases my view. I appreciate that. So help me. Where exactly has the man stuffed up since becoming president?

Having an executive order on refugees stayed by hopelessly compromised activist judges does not count for much. Healthcare is notoriously difficult to handle. Trump’s first go failed. It will be time to dance on the grave of this campaign promise if he fails to repeal and replace Obamacare in the next year or two.

In the meantime, Neil Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court. What an outstanding achievement for a Republican president. He may get a chance to pick another one or two from his list of twenty-one conservative judges before his time is up. That would do more to preserve Western civilisation than anything else he could possibly do.

France’s financial support goes beyond the French government’s November 2016 decision to support labeling products produced in the settlements and instead supports the boycott of such products.

Officially, France prohibits any form of boycott against Israel. In 2015, the Court of Cassation confirmed a 2013 decision regarding the illegality of boycotts and the call for boycotts in France. Under the law, in 2013, BDS France was fined €28,000 (USD $30,000) by a local French court, after a call made in 2010 by 14 activists to boycott Israeli products in a supermarket. In addition, each of the 14 activists was fined €1,000.

However, according to a report recently released by NGO Monitor, the French government continues to fund NGOs openly hostile to Israel and to fund NGOs that support and promote boycott campaigns against Israel.

The French government’s financial support for boycott campaigns embraces:

The Made in Illegality campaign — which includes The Platform of French NGOs for Palestine, International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), as well as the French Union La CGT. France’s financial support goes beyond the French government’s November 2016 decision to support labeling products produced in the settlements and instead supports the boycott of such products.

The campaign’s goals include “prohibiting the import of settlement products,” “excluding the settlements from their bilateral agreements and cooperation with Israel,” and “excluding companies which are active or located in the settlements from public markets and public procurement procedures…”

The French government (Agence Française de Développement, AFD) provided the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine with €46,560 in 2009, €199,000 from 2011-2014, and €225,000 from 2014-2017. The Council of Île de France Region provided the Platform with €62,000 in 2013, €22,000 in 2014, and €20,000 in 2015. Claude Léostic, President of The Platform, was denied entry to Israel, and compared Israel to Nazi Germany: “…The people of France resisted the Nazi barbarians… But you have been suffering for more than 40 years, as incredible as it seems in this modern world, and that came after the Nakba…”

According to NGO Monitor, “40% (€225,000) of The Platform’s 2014 project “Mieux agir pour le respect du droit en Palestine” (Improved Action for the Respect of Rights in Palestine) was funded by the French government (AFD). This project was partnered with Ittijah. In 2010, the head of Ittijah, Amir Makhoul, was sentenced to nine years in prison for spying for Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war. The Platform of French NGOs for Palestine and Ittijah were also partners on a project supported by the French government (€43,560 from AFD) in 2009, while Makhoul was still the head of the organization.

Catholic organizations are also extremely active members of the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine and open supporters of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Among these Catholic organizations are: Secours Catholique-Caritas France (SCCF); La Cimade; Pax Christi France; Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement–Terre Solidaire (CCFD).

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.

Will last Friday’s terror attack in Stockholm change Swedish attitudes toward Islam? Not likely. Pretty much all of Europe has spent the last few decades undergoing (steady) Islamization, but the invasion has progressed so much further in Sweden than in almost every other country on the continent – and has occasioned so much less frank reportage, commentary, and criticism, that brave souls in Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbors, Denmark and Norway – routinely make disparaging reference to “Swedish conditions.” What this term refers to is not only the drastic social and economic changes currently underway in the country that once proudly called itself Folkhemmet, “the people’s home,” but the mentality – a mentality not unique to Sweden, but certainly more fully developed there, in the government, media, academy, police, and the public at large, than anywhere else in Europe – that has made this dread transformation possible.

A few recent news items provide illustrative examples of what it means to be living under “Swedish conditions”:

On March 10, it was reported that despite longtime plans, there would not be a new police station in Rinkeby, a notoriously unsafe immigrant neighborhood in Stockholm. Not a single construction firm had put in a bid for the project. Why? Because, as several police officers told SVT News, “it’s much too dangerous to build a police station in the area.”
On March 12, Sweden’s Minister for Culture and Democracy, Alice Bah Kuhnke, said in a TV interview that the 150-odd jihadists who have returned to Sweden after fighting for ISIS should not be investigated, let alone prosecuted, but should instead be welcomed back and encouraged to integrate – by which she seemed to mean offering various welfare incentives and assorted freebies. (Such enticements, incidentally, would be perfectly in line with Swedish practice.)
On April 5, after Sweden’s TV4 reported that a Muslim school in Vällingby was forcing girls to sit in the back of the school bus, Victoria Kawesa, head of a party called Feminist Initiative, blamed it not on Islam but on the “global patriarchy.”

But no recent event or telecast provided a more illuminating picture of “Swedish conditions” than the April 3 episode of Horisont, a 60 Minutes-type series on Danish TV. (The fact that Danish TV airs such programs while Swedish TV does not is itself, of course, a telling reflection of “Swedish conditions.”)

The central figure on the Horisont episode was Eva Ek Törnberg, an ethnic Swede who not only lives in Seved, an immigrant-heavy district of Malmö, but is known as the “Queen of Seved” because of her decades-long efforts to cozy up to her Muslim neighbors and help them become full members of Swedish society.

On Horisont, however, she admits that her attitudes have changed over time. She used to call herself a “citizen of the world” and to champion open borders – now she looks around and finds herself thinking: “What has happened to my little Sweden?” She once thought it was “nonsense” to expect newcomers to learn Swedish – now she feels otherwise. Yes, she still believes in letting these people in by the truckload – but she no longer warms as she once did to the idea of a “multicultural society.” She perseveres in her attempt to bring Muslims into the Swedish fold – but she’s increasingly frustrated and confused by her lack of success. As she puts it, she’s curious about these people’s lives – why are they so indifferent to hers?