RUTHFULLY YOURS

BERLIN—When Syrian terror suspect Jaber Albakr escaped a police raid in the Eastern German town of Chemnitz in October, authorities posted an Arabic version of their wanted notice online 30 hours later.

By then, hundreds of Syrians had already shared their own translation on social media. Two days later, it was three Syrian refugees who captured and turned in the suspect.

“I came from a place where many people were killed; I don’t want anyone to die here,” said Abdalaziz al-Hamza, one of the first Syrians to post his translation of the notice on Facebook.

Refugees from the war-torn Middle East have been banding together to hound suspected terrorists and war criminals hiding among the nearly two million who have settled in Europe over the last two years, most of them in Germany.

The help, which ranges from tipoffs in immigration interviews to networks of amateur investigators, has been both a blessing and a burden for officials.

In Frankfurt, a Syrian human rights activist is collecting files on suspected war criminals and Islamists. In Bavaria, a refugee is sharing information on his former Islamic State captors. Online, refugees are posting pictures of suspected war criminals at a pace authorities can barely keep up with.

Some of the information from refugees is invaluable, security officials said, given authorities are often investigating crimes rooted in distant and inaccessible countries. But many of the tips are vague or unsubstantiated, evidence that is too thin to justify an investigation let alone a trial.

And some have been found to be false alarms based on personal agendas, leading at times to a fruitless strain on already tight resources, the officials said. The patchy effectiveness of the efforts has frustrated both the refugees offering the help, and officials still figuring out how to best use it.

“We have to be careful, we can’t simply go after someone just because one person thinks he did something,” said Jochen Hollmann, head of the state intelligence agency in Saxony-Anhalt.

In Germany, authorities have received 445 tips on potential terror and Islamist supporters over the past 18 months, and another 1,250 on suspected war criminals alone this year, according to the federal criminal agency BKA. Of the 445, 80 have led to in-depth investigations, the BKA said.

Islamic State has boasted of directing three attacks in Germany this year—two by refugees this summer and a murder by an unidentified knife-wielding suspect in Hamburg in October. The militant group claimed the Hamburg attack last weekend, and authorities said they are looking into the claim. CONTINUE AT SITE

Lawmakers in Beirut agreed to elect Lebanon’s next President on Monday, breaking a deadlock that had crippled government for 29 months. The decisive vote was cast in Tehran. Iran wanted a Lebanese President who would be an ally of Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group that its chief proxy in the country. It found one in the 81-year-old former general Michel Aoun.

Under Lebanon’s explicitly sectarian political system, the President must be a Maronite Christian, while the Prime Minister is a Sunni and the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite. But in recent years Hezbollah has exercised a veto over Lebanese politics and tilted the balance in Tehran’s favor. It helps that Iran funds Hezbollah to the tune of around $200 million annually and supplies it with tens of thousands of missiles, making the group the strongest armed force in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon allows Tehran to threaten Israel and defend Syria’s Assad regime, pillars of Iranian regional strategy. Mr. Aoun, though a Maronite, enjoys close ties with Hezbollah and isn’t likely to press the group to disarm. His Free Patriotic Movement party signed a memorandum of understanding with Hezbollah in 2006, and his rhetoric and positions are usually aligned with the Shiite group.

Mr. Aoun’s election marks a détente between Hezbollah and many in the Maronite community who have come to view the group and its Iranian backers as protectors amid a Syrian civil war that has flooded Lebanon with more than a million refugees, most of them Sunnis. It also represents a personal humiliation for Saad Hariri, who will again serve as Prime Minister under the deal. Hezbollah and agents of the Assad regime assassinated Mr. Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in a 2005 car bombing.

The engines of anti-democratic subversion have been grinding away for decades. The signs and portents all around us. The emergence of the scourge of political correctness and the lockstep leftist agitprop of the mainstream media, for example, are sure indicators of advancing democratic collapse. According to Reporters Without Borders, Canada ranks 18th and the U.S. 41st in its World Press Freedom Index — a rather shabby performance for ostensibly enlightened democratic nations. Political disinformation has come to supplant journalistic integrity in a sustained effort to steer the electorate toward the socialist agenda of anti-individualism, bigger government, state welfarism and bureaucratic expansion.

Another important way of facilitating the leftward drift is to mutilate the historical archive or reject the value and influence of history altogether. The historical register which binds a nation to its past and creates a holistic sense of national identity thus becomes a non-factor in the political and cultural zeitgeist. In Canada, for example, we have a postcolonial prime minister who believes that Canada is not determined by its history — “There is no core identity… in Canada,” Justin Trudeau bloviates, ignorant or dismissive of the institutions developed by classical British liberalism in the country, namely “freedom to associate, speak, create, and to be entrepreneurial.” Similarly, Title IX in the U.S. has materially watered down school curricula to the extent that students no longer have a secure grasp of their country’s history, or any grasp whatsoever — although the process of epistemic decay dates back many years.

In line with this movement of social engineering, importing third-world refugees with no experience of democratic institutions, particularly from the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, and seeding these immigrants in vote-sensitive regions guarantees loyalty to the progressivist, anti-democratic project and renders the eventual destination of one-party rule increasingly probable. The Hart-Celler 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, promoted by Ted Kennedy, and Canada’s policy of multiculturalism, adopted by former PM Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1971, opened the floodgates. The flood is now in full tide.

There is yet another weapon in the ideological arsenal of the left which has been extremely effective in forcing compliance with and muzzling opposition to its homogenizing diktats. Official and quasi-official bodies that purport to defend “human rights” and that enjoy legal recourse to implement their decisions are perhaps the most potent agencies enforcing conformity to the prevalent ideology. This is because they have the power to levy onerous fines and judgments sufficient to damage and even lay waste the lives and careers of those who run afoul of their manifold proscriptions. They are the ringwraiths of the dark kingdom. Their websites, however, are golden; after all, protecting “human rights” sound like a noble endeavor. But there is a clandestine flavor to them too. Few know the trivial nature of many of the complaints and the drastic penalties levied for even inadvertent misdemeanors or honest mistakes. Passive or unsuspecting individuals will feel the wrath of these ersatz magistracies. At the same time, those who are cognizant of their sway and peremptory intent make sure to keep their heads down and act as they are expected to, cowering beneath the shadow of punitive reprisal. Compliance with the progressivist orthodoxy is thus assured.

As a coalition of disparate forces – including the Iraqi military, Iranian-supported Iraqi Shiite militias, Kurdish forces, Turks, and Iranian militias – closes in on Mosul, Iraq, ready to oust ISIS from the capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate, it is easy to overlook events hundreds of miles away in Beirut. But events in both places are related.

At only half the size of Israel and with half the population, it is easy to overlook Lebanon altogether. Once a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and diverse country – Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East – it broke down into its constituent parts decades ago and now lives in sulky (if no longer generally violent) enclaves. Christians are separated into Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic; Muslims into Sunni and Shiite; and the Druze are a separate entity. In theory, the president, chosen by Parliament, is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the Parliament a Shiite Muslim. In practice, Hezb’allah owns the south (including approximately 130,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel) and now, apparently, the government in Beirut.

After 45 rounds of balloting beginning after the election of 2014, the Lebanese Parliament has chosen retired Maronite General Michel Aoun as president. An enemy of Syria during the Lebanese civil war, in 2005, he made peace with Assad in Damascus and then forged an alliance with Hezb’allah at home. His ascension to the post – over Maronite Suleiman Franjieh, favored by Saudi Arabia – puts a point on Iran’s influence in Lebanon, and Iran cheered. Ali Akbar Velayati, Ayatollah Khamenei’s top foreign policy adviser, said, “The election of Michel Aoun as president shows new support for the Islamic resistance [against Israel].”

Perhaps, but it was at least as much a cheer for nailing down the eastern end of the long sought Shiite Crescent and enhancing Iran’s reach across the region.

Iran established Hezb’allah in 1983 as the anchor of the Crescent. It has financed the organization and supplied weapons and training, including those missiles in the South. Iran has taken more and more direct control of Hezb’allah activities and pulled it into the Syrian civil war, where it has taken tremendous casualties and lost some of its luster at home. (Even Shiite Lebanese object to their sons dying in Syria; they prefer the anti-Israel “resistance” meme.) In response to Iranian and Hezb’allah warfare against Sunni Muslims in Syria, as well as Iran’s role in the Houthi uprising in Yemen, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, labeled Hezb’allah a terror organization and cut off aid to Lebanon in March.

This, as much as anything, may have tipped the scales in favor of Iran’s candidate.

Anti-Israel protesters who crashed a pro-Israel event in London last Thursday targeted female students planning to attend the event, physically attacking Jewish girls both on the way to and inside of the venue.

The event, held at the University College London, featured a talk by former IDF soldier Hen Mazzig.

As previously reported, BDS activists stormed the event, trapping participants in a room. Police ultimately intervened, warning those trapped not to attempt to leave the room before officers gained control of the situation.

The protesters, however, apparently did far more than merely trap those participating in the event.

According to The Algemeiner, the pro-BDS activists targeted female students both outside of and inside the event, physically attacking them in a scene a senior official at the Simon Wiesenthal Center said was reminiscent of pogroms by Nazi street gangs in the 1930s.

The guest of the event, Hen Mazzig, a former IDF officer and veteran who served in Judea and Samaria, said he was shocked by the assault.

“I don’t think that even in my days in the IDF it was as bad as it is right now. It’s really scary. I hear that they have been attacking some girls, Jewish girls that came to support and to [hear] my talk.”

Several female students, including Devora Khafi, director of the local Stand With US branch, and Liora Cadranel, co-president of the local Israel Society, told the Jewish Chronicle that protesters “weren’t afraid to hurt girls.”

Khafi said while she was accustomed to aggressive opposition by anti-Israel groups, the incident on Thursday “was unbelievable.”

“I go to a lot of Israel events. This one was very different. These people are not afraid to do anything. It was unbelievable. This was the worse experience I’ve ever had at an Israel event on campus.”

Later, in a letter obtained by The Algemeiner, the Simon Wiesenthal Center international relations director Shimon Samuels described the attacks to the UCL’s Vice Chancellor, writing that the scene was “redolent of a 1930s Nazi storm-trooper ‘pogrom,’ or of budding Jihadi volunteers serving ISIS on a British university campus.”

“The thugs first attacked female students on their way to the event…Their screams. ‘Intifada, Intifada, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ bore witness to their violent intent in championing the cause of a ‘Palestine’ built on the ruins of the state of Israel.”

For those who believe in a “one-world” thesis – the union of people in a harmonized legal system – these are unsettling days. Rather than singing kumbayah each morning, tribes are displaying a form of loyalty bred in the bone. In fact, tribalism is alive and well and driving political judgments across the globe.

Whether it is Brexit or the manifestation of the post Sykes-Picot Middle East geography, tribalism reigns. If tribalism is defined as variable combinations of kinship, reciprocal exchange, economic circumstances, then the desire to impose an overlay of internationalism or globalization is bound to face formidable opposition. Intense feelings of common identity promote tribal connections.

While a full-scale analysis of the Brexit vote has not yet occurred, my suspicion is that tribal factors, namely class and station, had a profound effect on the vote. There was a union of culture in Britain, a subterranean belief that the elitists working in financial emporiums in London didn’t have the foggiest idea of how ordinary people are obliged to deal with the migration issue or even the pettifogging matter of requirements for electric product use.

Globalization has hastened the reemergence of tribalism, in large part, because of a public refusal to accept homogenization. The obvious point that people aren’t all the same is lost on supra-democrats who believe they can and should impose their will on an uninterested and ignorant populace.

Although the setting is different from the UK, tribalism was and remains the definitive character of the Middle East. Attempts to impose national structure on tribes only works to the extent each of the tribes believes it is being treated fairly. It turns out that appeals to nationalism rest on this thin reed. When consensus breaks down, as it did in Iraq and Syria, tribal warfare ensues.

LONDON—Terrorist plots averted by U.K. authorities over the past two years have increasingly involved would-be attackers trying to get firearms to carry out Paris-style mass shootings, a senior police officer said Monday.

“Of the attack planning plots that we have disrupted since 2013, nearly half of these have involved a firearms angle to some degree,” said Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the U.K.’s top counterterrorist policeman, told reporters.

Wary of illegal weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, British authorities are trying to cut what they say is a link between organized criminals and Islamic extremists by calling on informants to come forward. Groups like Islamic State have recruited successfully from Europe’s prisons and among former criminal gang members, potentially opening a new gateway to heavier weaponry like automatic rifles and submachine guns toted by bank robbers and drug dealers.

In April, a group of young Muslim men from a tough West London housing project were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for planning Islamic State—inspired assassinations on the streets of the capital using a silencer-equipped pistol and a motorbike as a getaway vehicle.

While Britain’s strict gun-control laws have helped in the past to protect the country from the kind of Islamist-inspired random shooter attacks that struck Paris in November last year, Mr. Rowley warned the landscape was changing amid a spike in gang-related gun crime in major U.K. cities.

BAD NEWS ALL AROUND…RSK

BEIRUT—Lebanon’s parliament ended more than two years of political deadlock in the country, electing as president a former army general who is the main Christian ally of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Michel Aoun, 81 years old, won 83 out of the 127 votes cast on Monday, restoring the most powerful political office held by a Christian in the Middle East as the sect faces persecution across the region but enjoys rare security and power-sharing in Lebanon. Under longstanding political agreements, a Maronite Christian is always president while the prime minister is a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker is a Shiite Muslim.

“Lebanon, which is walking among land mines, still hasn’t been touched by the flames surrounding it in the region, and we will prevent any spark from reaching it,” the new president told lawmakers after he was sworn in.

Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah ally Iran have jockeyed for influence over Lebanon since 2005, when Syria’s 29-year occupation ended.

For years, the Saudi monarchy and its Sunni Lebanese allies opposed the idea of Mr. Aoun as president. But as Riyadh became mired in protracted wars in Yemen and Syria, Saudi officials quietly acknowledged that Lebanon was no longer a priority, leading the way for Mr. Aoun’s ascent.

SCHIPHOL, the Netherlands—Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders went on trial for discrimination and inciting hatred, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the political discourse in the Netherlands ahead of general elections.

The weekslong trial, which formally began on Monday, comes as Mr. Wilders is expected to become a front-runner in the March vote amid a rise in populist movements across Europe. His trial will address a fundamental question: Is the right of free speech for politicians absolute, or should it be restricted to protect against discrimination?

Mr. Wilders is being charged over comments he made during local elections in 2014. At a party rally in The Hague, he asked supporters if they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the country. The crowd responded by chanting: “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” Mr. Wilders replied: “Well, we’ll take care of it then.”

More than 6,400 people filed complaints with the police after the speech was broadcast on national television, including many citizens of Dutch-Moroccan origin who accused the politician of sowing hatred and fueling ethnic tensions.

“Parliamentarians have great freedom to say what they stand for,” Dutch prosecutors said. ”However, it does not exempt them from the responsibility of complying with the law.”

Mr. Wilders, who didn’t attend the opening of the trial, has argued that he was only talking about specific problems and that he didn’t want all Moroccans to leave the country.

“This trial is a farce,” he said according to a statement read out by his lawyer. “Political statements should be discussed in parliament and not in court.”

On the first day of the trial, which took place in a high-security courtroom close to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, the court sought to establish the events surrounding the speeches and the validity of the complaints.

If he is convicted, Mr. Wilders could theoretically be sent to jail, although he is more likely to receive a fine or a community-service sentence. The trial will take more than three weeks and a ruling is expected in December.

Mr. Wilders, 53 years old, is one of Europe’s most prominent and controversial anti-Islam politicians. He has described the religion as a fascist ideology that should be removed from Dutch society.

In his one-page election manifesto he calls for a “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands. He wants to ban the Quran, shut mosques and close the borders to migrants from Islamic countries. An average of polls shows his Party for Freedom is slightly behind the center-right Liberal Party of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

It is the second time Mr. Wilders has faced prosecution on hate-speech charges. In 2011, a court acquitted him on the grounds that freedom-of-speech laws protected such rhetoric in the Netherlands. Dutch prosecutors say the latest charges are different because this time “an entire population group is now lumped together.” CONTINUE AT SITE