RUTHFULLY YOURS

“I am not an Islamophobe. Women have the right to wear headscarves, but I do not understand why we are embracing this religion [Islam] and those manners that are incompatible with the freedoms that are ours in the West.” — Pierre Bergé, French fashion mogul.

French security officials rejected an Israeli company’s offer of terrorist-tracking software that could have helped them identify the jihadist cell that carried out the attacks. “French authorities liked it, but the official came back and said there was a higher-level instruction not to buy Israeli technology,” a well-placed Israeli counter-terrorism analyst revealed.

Jacques Hamel, the priest who had his throat slit by two Muslims in Normandy, had donated land adjacent to his church to local Muslims to build a mosque, and they had been given use of the parish hall and other facilities during Ramadan.

At least five of the jihadists who carried out the attacks in Paris and Brussels financed themselves with social welfare payments: they received more than €50,000 ($53,000).

Muslim employees at Air France have repeatedly attempted to sabotage aircraft, according to Le Canard Enchaîné. “Concerning Air France, we have seen several anomalies before the departure of commercial flights,” an intelligence official said.

“There will be no integration until we get rid of this atavistic anti-Semitism that is kept secret. It so happens that an Algerian sociologist, Smain Laacher, with great courage said that ‘it is a disgrace to maintain this taboo, namely that in Arab families in France and elsewhere everyone knows that anti-Semitism is spread with the mother’s milk.'” — Georges Bensoussan, sued for alleged hate speech against Muslims for having made that statement.

The Mayor of Beziers, Robert Menard, was charged with incitement to hatred for tweeting his regret at witnessing “the great replacement” to describe France’s white, Christian population being overtaken by foreign-born Muslims. “I just described the situation in my town,” he said. “It is not a value judgement, it is a fact. It is what I can see.”

The Muslim population of France was approximately 6.5 million in 2016, or around 10% of the overall population of 66 million. In real terms, France has the largest Muslim population in the European Union, just above Germany.

Although French law prohibits the collection of official statistics about the race or religion of its citizens, Gatestone Institute’s estimate of France’s Muslim population is based on several studies that attempted to calculate the number of people in France whose origins are from Muslim-majority countries.

What follows is a chronological review of some of the main stories about the rise of Islam in France during 2016:

LONDON—Prime Minister Theresa May is set to declare Tuesday that the U.K. wants a clean break from the European Union, in a closely watched speech in which she is expected to lay out her plans for the divorce.

Mrs. May is expected to say that Britain doesn’t want “partial membership” in the EU “or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out,” according to excerpts of a speech released by her office on Monday.

Previous such comments, interpreted to mean that Britain is heading toward a looser relationship with the EU and could lose access to the bloc’s common market, sent the pound tumbling. The currency dropped to three-month lows against the dollar in European markets Monday.

“We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave,” Mrs. May’s prepared remarks said. Instead, Britain will seek a new type of relationship with the EU, according to the remarks. The prime minister is to deliver the address to a group of diplomats and other officials in London on Tuesday.

The prime minister has repeatedly said London wants to control immigration. EU leaders have said the U.K. can’t impose restrictions on EU citizens’ ability to live and work in the U.K. and retain its existing economic relationship, which includes unfettered access to the EU’s market of 440 million consumers.

The speech excerpts released by her office made no reference to the single market.

Politicians who campaigned for Brexit said the U.K. will be better off once it is outside the single market and can negotiate its own trade deals with countries elsewhere. They say the U.K. will thrive if it is no longer bound to EU regulations and required to abide by the bloc’s free movement of people principle.

Tim Farron, leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, said that Mrs. May is delivering “a destructive, hard Brexit and the consequences will be felt by millions of people through higher prices, greater instability and rising fuel costs.”

In recent weeks, Mrs. May has come under increasing pressure to spell out details of her vision for Britain’s exit as the country prepares to give formal notice at the end of March that it will leave.

Mrs. May has broadly outlined her priorities. In addition to immigration, she has said she wants to remove the U.K. from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, while maintaining good trading terms with Europe. She hasn’t said whether she wants to stay in Europe’s single market.

“We want to buy your goods, sell you ours, trade with you as freely as possible, and work with one another to make sure we are all safer, more secure and more prosperous through continued friendship,” Mrs. May will say, according to the excerpts. She will also say she wants the U.K. post-Brexit to be “a magnet for international talent.”

“I want us to be a truly global Britain—the best friend and neighbor to our European partners, but a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe too,” she is expected to say.

Negotiations between Britain and the remaining 27 EU governments are expected to be lengthy and contentious. CONTINUE AT SITE

A German regional court has ruled that an attempt by three Muslims to burn a synagogue was motivated by ‘anti-Israelism’, not anti-Semitism. The perpetrators will not be jailed.

The ruling is akin to a “carte blanche for attacks on Jews,” and is itself anti-Semitic, according to the European Jewish Congress. The organization reacted with “outrage and disbelief” to the decision.

The German court in the city of Wuppertal, affirming a lower court decision, ruled that a violent attempt to burn the city’s synagogue in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies in Gaza. The attack took place on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a Nazi pogrom which left almost a hundred Jews dead and where over 1,000 synagogues – including the original synagogue in Wuppertal – were burnt and destroyed.

“It is unbelievable that attempts to burn a synagogue have been equated with displeasure of Israeli government policies,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC. “This court decision equates to open season on Jews.”

The local Wuppertal court panel said in its original 2015 decision that the three Muslims wanted to draw “attention to the Gaza conflict” with Israel. The court deemed the attack not to be motivated by anti-Semitism, and handed down suspended sentences for the three.

“This court decision can also lead to anarchy across Germany,” said Kantor, “because it provides a legal justification for the targeting of any minority, religion and nationality on the basis of a conflict that they could be in some way connected to because of religious or national ties. Is it possible that when Arabs are targeted by far-right groups, it could be claimed they are reacting to the bloodshed and violence in the Arab world? That of course would be absurd, but like in many other areas, there appears to be a separate rule when it comes to Jews and anti-Semitism.”

German politician Volker Beck, a leading Green Party MP, agreed. “This is a mistaken decision as far as the motives of the perpetrators are concerned,” he was reported to have said. He noted that the burning of a synagogue in Germany can only be defined as anti-Semitism.

“What do Jews in Germany have to do with the Middle East conflict? Every bit as much as Christians, non-religious people or Muslims in Germany, namely, absolutely nothing. The ignorance of the judiciary toward anti-Semitism is for many Jews in Germany especially alarming,” said Beck.

When just about every other magazine in the free world fails to uphold the values of free speech and the right to caricature and offend, who could expect a group of cartoonists and writers who have already paid such a high price to keep holding the line of such freedoms single-handed?

Most of the people who said they cared about the right to say what they wanted when they wanted, were willing to walk the walk — to walk through Paris with a pencil in the air. Or they were willing to talk the talk, proclaiming “Je Suis Charlie.” But almost no one really meant it.

If President François Holland and Chancellor Angela Merkel had really believed in standing up for free expression, then instead of walking arm in arm through Paris together with such an inappropriate figure as Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, they would have held up covers of Charlie Hebdo and said “This is what a free society looks like and this is what we back: everyone, political leaders, gods, prophets, the lot can be satirised, and if you do not like it then you should hop off to whatever unenlightened hell-hole you dream of.”

The entire world press has internalised what happened at Charlie Hebdo and instead of standing united, has decided never to risk something like that ever happening to them again.

For the last two years we have learned for certain that any such tolerance is a one-way street.

This new submission to Islamist terrorism is possibly why, in 2016, when an athlete with no involvement in politics, religion or satire was caught doing something that might have been seen as less than fully respectful of Islam, there was no one around to defend him.

The 7th of this month marked two years to the day since two gunmen walked into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered twelve people. This period also therefore marks the second anniversary of the period of about an hour during which much of the free world proclaimed itself to be “Charlie” and attempted, by walking through the street, standing for moments of silence or re-tweeting the hashtag “Je Suis Charlie” to show the whole world that freedom cannot be suppressed and that the pen is mightier than the Kalashnikov.

So two years on is a good time to take stock of the situation. How did that go? Did all those “Je Suis” statements amount to anything more than a blip on the Twitter-sphere? Anyone trying to answer such a question might start by looking at the condition of the journal everyone was so concerned about. How has it fared in the two years since most of its senior editorial staff were gunned down by the blasphemy police?

“[U]nlike America, Europe is inherently anti-Semitic. This anti-Semitism is spread more or less evenly across the political spectrum and, therefore, it translates into widespread hostility to Israel. Europeans hate the Jews. Consequently, they hate the Jewish state.” — Robin Shepherd, A State Beyond The Pale: Europe’s Problem With Israel.

No “Palestinian” leader has publicly disavowed jihad against Jews. Instead, every aspect of engagement by “Palestinians” with Jews and Israelis is considered an obligation for advancing this jihad until its final expected objective of pushing the Jews out of “Palestine” has been reached.

The doublespeak of the Palestinian leadership made no difference within the UN. Since the June 1967 war, the UN began to tilt away from being fair and balanced toward Israel, and extended support to Arabs of the “occupied” West Bank and Gaza as an indigenous “Palestinian” people supposedly wronged by Jews.

“The long march through the UN has produced many benefits for the PLO. It has created a people where there was none; an issue where there was none; a claim where there was none. Now the PLO is seeking to create a state where there already is one.” — Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the UN (1981-85).

All of this occurred with the complicity of member states of the once-Christian West in the UN against one single and much maligned Jewish state, Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab and Muslim states in the Middle East.

The passage of the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 just before Christmas 2016, with the United States abstaining, was an IED-wrapped Chanukkah gift that lame-duck President Barack Hussein Obama delivered to Israel. It was another signal to Palestinians that they may continue their “rejectionism” of Israel, and stage another round of jihadi terrorism providing the UN the excuse to deliver pre-packaged condemnations of any Israeli reaction to the maiming and murder of Jews in the so-called “occupied” territories.

The U.S. abstention was an appalling betrayal of a people wrongly maligned by a sitting American president who for the past eight years went about assuring American Jewry, especially liberal Jews loyal to his party, that he was the most pro-Israel occupant of the White House. Instead, Obama’s decision, as a parting shot before he left office, not to veto Res. 2334 lifted the veil over the unspoken animus that he not only harbors within himself but also one that still stirs many within Western nations against Israel despite their solemn public denunciations of anti-Semitism.

This is evident in the language of Res. 2334. It exclusively condemns Israel stating: “settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has [sic] no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law”. It also effectively revokes Security Council Res. 242 of 22 November 1967.

There was no pretense in Res. 2334 to be fair, and hold Palestinian Authority (PA) and with Hamas equally responsible for inciting terrorist violence against civilians within Israel, thus poisoning any diplomatic effort required for a negotiated settlement between the parties. The adoption of Res. 2334 was a “gang up” by France, Eurabia, the US and the 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) against Israel. It was reminiscent of the long, shameful history of Jews as a minority people, abused and tormented by the majority among whom they resided.

For the past half century, Res. 242 was the keystone in the UN framework for peace in the Middle East. It laid out the process envisaged in the “land-for-peace” formula between parties in conflict following the June 1967 war. And on the basis of this formula Israel reached peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan in the aftermath of the October 1973 war.

But Res. 2334, instead, categorically states, the UN “will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.” In other words, the demand is on Israel to return to the 1949 armistice lines an outcome pre-determined by Res. 2334.

If Israel cannot now trade “land-for peace”, since land held after June 1967 war is deemed “illegal,” then there is no further reason for any negotiated settlement.

Israel cannot simply accept a status quo ante bellum that would be untenable for Israel’s security — Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Abba Eban called then the “Auschwitz borders” — and the PA, with backing of the UN.

Res. 2334 is then a formula for continued terrorist violence by Palestinians against Israelis. The adoption of Res. 2334 — not unintentionally — has driven a nail into the promise of the “two-State solution.” The Security Council was warned ahead of the December 23 vote by President-elect Donald Trump that the United States under his administration will not accept this blatantly anti-Israel resolution.

It needs to be asked — political correctness set aside — of the other four permanent members of the Security Council (Britain, China, France, and Russia): Why, at this time — when the situation in the Middle East has gone from bad to worse — has the Security Council decided to weigh in against Israel, the only democracy and oasis of sanity in the region that has imploded through an excess of Arab-Muslim bigotry and fanaticism?

And, why did the Security Council, whose record in the Middle East is one of abysmal failure in providing “peace and security” to people most in need — the beleaguered Christians, Yazidi, and Kurdish minorities of Iraq and Syria — decide to revoke the long-standing Res. 242 on the patently false excuse of “salvaging the two-State solution”, when the Palestinian leadership has continually refused to engage with Israelis in direct negotiations?

These questions require credible answers, but none can be given.