RUTHFULLY YOURS

This talk we hear of inter-faith amity and understanding, how does Islam meld with that kumbaya narrative? Not well, or so it strikes me. As Mohammed denied Christ’s divinity, the Trinity and Resurrection, what common ground is it possible to find?
Francis Kalifat, the newly elected president of France’s Jewish communities, said this: “The fight against anti-Semitism is our main cause because French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experienced since World War II.” I wonder why? My goodness, don’t we need to build religious harmony!

Who could possibly object to building harmony? Well, unless I am mistaken, harmony is what appeasers have sought down the ages. So count me as one of those who retains a healthy degree of scepticism about pursuing harmony. Don’t misunderstand me. I am all for harmony between those of goodwill. It’s harmony with the bad guys and the perpetually precious that worries me.

Interfaith dialogue is about harmony. One description of the process is Christians kowtowing to discordant Muslims. What else is it about? Without Muslims, interfaith dialogue these days would be a movement with a substantive cause. Here are just a few of the many examples of Christian overtures:

Established in 2003 by the National Council of [Christian] Churches in Australia, the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews provides “opportunity for the national bodies of each faith to come together to build understanding and harmony in the Australian context.”

In 2014 Pope Francis called for interfaith dialogue to help end fundamentalism and terrorism during his first visit to Turkey. And only with considerable distaste is it possible to bring to mind Pope John Paul II kissing the Koran in 1999 at the Vatican. No doubt this was observed with satisfaction by his Muslim visitors.

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the European Union’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours — as “Orwellian.”

“By deciding that ‘xenophobic’ comment in reaction to the crisis is also ‘racist,’ Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people… into ‘racist’ views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as ‘racist.'” — Douglas Murray.

In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation.

The European Union (EU), in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, has unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online in Europe.

Proponents of the initiative argue that in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, a crackdown on “hate speech” is necessary to counter jihadist propaganda online.

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the EU’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the European Union itself.

Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours, and replaced with “counter-narratives” — as “Orwellian.”

The “code of conduct” was announced on May 31 in a statement by the European Commission, the unelected administrative arm of the European Union. A summary of the initiative follows:

“By signing this code of conduct, the IT companies commit to continuing their efforts to tackle illegal hate speech online. This will include the continued development of internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that they review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

“The IT companies will also endeavor to strengthen their ongoing partnerships with civil society organisations who will help flag content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct. The IT companies and the European Commission also aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives [emphasis added], new ideas and initiatives, and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.”

Excerpts of the “code of conduct” include:

“The IT Companies share the European Commission’s and EU Member States’ commitment to tackle illegal hate speech online. Illegal hate speech, as defined by the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and national laws transposing it, means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin….

Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad.
Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.

But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.

So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.

To understand why, consider two events of the past week.

Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.

On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.

When standing today at Hadrian’s Wall on the border between Scotland and northern England, everything appears indistinguishably affluent and serene on both sides.

It was not nearly as calm some 1,900 years ago. In A.D. 122, the exasperated Roman emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of an 80-mile, 20-foot-high wall to protect Roman civilization in Britain from the Scottish tribes to the north.

We moderns often laugh at walls and fortified boundaries, dismissing them as hopelessly retrograde, ineffective, or unnecessary. Yet they still seem to fulfill their mission on the Israeli border, the 38th parallel in Korea, and the Saudi-Iraqi boundary: separating disparate states.

On the Roman side of Hadrian’s Wall there were codes of law, habeas corpus, aqueducts, and the literature of Cicero, Virgil, and Tacitus — and on the opposite side a violent, less sophisticated tribalism.

Hadrian assumed that there was a paradox about walls innate to the human condition. Scottish tribes hated Roman colonial interlopers and wanted them off the island of Britain. But for some reason the Scots did not welcome the wall that also stopped the Romans from entering Scotland.

The exasperated Romans had built the barrier to stop the Scots from entering Roman Britain, whether to raid, trade, emigrate, or fight.

Refugees welcome.

All the complainants said they were “surrounded” by their tormentors before being “touched and fondled” improperly at the annual free Schlossgrabenfestes music festival.

The three arrested men are aged between 28 and 31 and are Pakistanis seeking asylum in Germany. All have been charged with sexual crimes as the hunt continues for their accomplices.

Media reports said that at least 15 more women are expected to come forward to file criminal complaints after they were groped at the festival on Sunday where around 100,000 people were in the crowds over the four-day event.

Officers say the victims are receiving counselling while authorities try to cool rising tensions between migrants in the area.

The tensions aren’t between migrants. The tensions are caused by migrants.

The Pakistanis will face deportation to their homeland if found guilty when brought before the courts.

Last Wednesday, just two years and a day after the deadly terrorist attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, and barely more than two months after the twin attacks on the Brussels airport and metro, Belgian police arrested a group of Muslim youth planning yet another attack, this time in Antwerp. Aiming “to kill as many kufar,” or non-Muslims, as possible, the group is believed to have been planning to bomb Antwerp’s Central Station. The group also is believed to have made previous plans to assassinate right-wing politician Filip Dewinter, the leader of the Vlaams Belang party. Those plans were put on hold, however, in favor of a larger-scale attack.

The suspects were members of a group of radicalized Muslim teens believed to have kept contact with Antwerp native Hicham Chaib, who is now a high-ranking leader of the Islamic State. It was Chaib who informed the public that the March 22 attacks on Belgium’s Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station “were just a taste of what’s to come.” And it is Chaib, the former second-in-command of Shariah4Belgium who left Antwerp for Syria in 2012, who now actively recruits other Antwerp-based youth to join ISIS or to execute terrorist attacks in their homeland.

The four arrests followed a series of raids by Antwerp police into the homes of several suspects in the Borgerhout district. Two suspects have been released, but other members of the group, some arrested previously, remain in custody. All suspects are said to be between the ages of 16 and 19, confirming earlier Dutch reports that European Muslims under the age of 20 are increasingly becoming involved in Islamic State activities and jihadist plots.

According to some accounts, the Antwerp group is comprised of nine youths, at least five of whom are minors. At least two members tried to join the Islamic State in Raqqa in March, but were stopped by officials en route and sent back to Belgium.

With security and counter-terror investigations heightened in Brussels after the March 22 attacks there, it is unsurprising that jihadists might be moving their activities and focus to nearby Antwerp. The city has a long history of Muslim unrest, with riots as early as 2002 and the founding, by Hizballah-linked Lebanese immigrant Dyab Abou Jahjah, of the Arab European League (AEL) in 2000. An organization with pan-Arab aspirations, the AEL aimed to create what Jahjah called a “sharocracy” – a kind of combination of democracy and sharia – that would eventually become European law.

There is bound to be tension in any political party with the contradictory name “Progressive Conservative,” but it appears that in Ontario – Canada’s largest province and home of nearly 14 million people having a largely undefended border with the United States – there is little evidence of the “conservative” wing.

Party leader Patrick Brown is actively campaigning against the proposed cuts to socialized medicine by the governing Liberal Party, led by Kathleen Wynne. The party that is supposed to be to the political right of the radical left-wing Liberals is now working with health care unions to oppose a reduction in public health care spending. Under Brown’s leadership, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is also a keen supporter of carbon taxation.

Even more troubling is that Brown is apparently supporting a highly controversial Islamic charity. On May 30, he spoke at Islamic Relief Canada’s Ramadan Launch Event. This doesn’t appear to be Brown’s first connection to Islamic Relief Canada. According to the charity, he also participated in the 2015 Nazem Kadri Golf Classic.

In December 2014, the Financial Post removed Islamic Relief Canada from its list of recommended “Charities of the Year” because “its international arm has been banned elsewhere for allegedly funneling funds to the terrorist organization Hamas.” The issues appear unresolved, as the charity was apparently not added back into the 2015 list.

In mid-2014, Israel banned Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) because of its linkages to Hamas. According to Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, “[t]he IRW is one of the sources of Hamas’s funding and a means for raising funds from various countries in the world[.] … We do not intend to allow it to function and abet terrorist activity against Israel.”

In January of this year, banking giant HSBC revealed that it had cut ties with Islamic Relief because of “concerns that cash for aid could end up with terrorist groups abroad.”

If Brown wasn’t aware of these connections and potential problems, he should have been.

Sports stadiums and big music events are especially vulnerable: “This is where you put a small town into a small area for a couple of hours.” — Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London.

“We know that the Islamic State has the European Championship in its sights.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

According to Patrick Calvar, head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, at least 645 French nationals or residents, including 245 women, are currently with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Another 200 individuals are “in transit,” either on their way to Syria or returning to France. Around 244 jihadists have already returned to France.

British police chiefs are struggling to recruit enough officers who are willing to carry a firearm, because many fear they will be treated as criminal suspects if they use their weapon in the line of duty.

European security officials are bracing for potential jihadist attacks at public venues across Europe this summer.

In France, officials are preparing for possible attacks against the European Football Championships. The games, which start on June 10, comprise 51 matches involving 24 teams playing in 10 host cities across the country.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that more than 90,000 security personnel will be on hand to protect the 2.5 million spectators expected to attend the games, as well as the hundreds of thousands more who will watch the matches on big screens in so-called “fan zones” in major cities.

Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) is in crisis. Three major university student associations — Newcastle, Lincoln and Hull — have disaffiliated themselves from the organization.

Bouattia’s role is meant to entail representing the best interests of students in the UK. How does endorsing and legitimizing terrorist attacks in Israel the best way to improve conditions for students in the UK? Is Bouattia trying to radicalise students in the UK?

When students need representation, the voice often heard is that of the NUS. Is it any wonder that when this voice has a history of endorsing terrorism, including sharing platforms with convicted terrorists, that students may want a different voice?

The United Kingdom’s National Union of Students (NUS) is in crisis. Three major university student associations — Newcastle, Lincoln and Hull — have disaffiliated themselves from the organization, and more are set to follow. NUS is struggling even to retain its previous strongholds, such as Exeter’s Student Association.

The Exeter University campaign to leave the NUS managed to increase the number of votes to defect from roughly 200 to 2546. This stampede occurred despite the massive protests by the “stay” campaign, including text messages to thousands of students and visits to the school by more than 10 senior NUS officials, including two Vice Presidents-elect and the President-elect.

Why are students from so many British universities fighting to leave the NUS? Well, take for example statements by its new president-elect, Malia Bouattia.

Tents of African migrants that are popping up under bridges in Paris look nothing like Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s tent (pic on the right) that was pitched in the garden of Hôtel de Marigny, the government’s official guest house, opposite the Elysée Palace in December 2007. But Gaddafi’s tent was the foretaste to today’s African illegal immigrants’ makeshift camps littering the French Capital. Their spread forced the Mayor Anne Hidalgo, to announce the creation of the city’s first refugee camp.

In 2010, Qaddafi warned the Europeans of the growing threat of African illegal immigration. On August 30, 2010, as he ended his visit to Italy, the Libyan leader packed his tent and demanded that the European Union pays Libya €5 billion a year “to ensure its co-operation in preventing illegal immigration from Africa.”

Gaddafi warned: “Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration; it could turn into Africa. There is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe, and we don’t know what will happen. What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion.”

Qaddafi urged the Europeans to “imagine that this could happen, but before it does we need to work together.” But the Europeans, despite the already increase number of African refugees, accused Qaddafi of blackmail. And when Libyan Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated rebels joined the “Arab Spring”, European and American forces intervened militarily in March 2011 to remove Qaddafi.