RUTHFULLY YOURS

Disillusionment with Barack Obama coupled with concern that his legacy could help put Donald Trump in the White House has now entered respectable European political discourse. The notion reflects profound doubts at Europe’s core about a country with both a president who broke his word and failed to attack Syria for its use of poison gas—damaging American credibility as the West’s ultimate recourse to justice by military intervention—and a leading candidate for the White House whose campaign resounds with brutality, bigotry and ignorance of the world.

Norbert Roettgen, chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign-affairs commission, pointed to a possible Obama-begets-Trump link last week. Mr. Roettgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, said the situation meant U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere were right to express their serious concern about America.

“Paradoxically, Trump is completely inward-looking,” Mr. Roettgen told me. “But he touches on a question of American pride. It’s there that many voters, in terms of the U.S. role in the world, feel that the country has lost considerable ground under Obama. What they see is Obama’s weakness. For example, his allowing the Russians to militarily establish the upper hand in Syria.”

Although polls late last year showed strong French support for sending ground troops within an international coalition to fight Islamic State, and Mrs. Merkel has said “military efforts” are needed as the first step in defeating the Islamist terrorists, Mr. Obama hasn’t dealt convincingly and head-on with the challenge.

“The damage is done,” said a senior European security official during an hour’s conversation after the murderous March 22 terrorist attacks in Brussels. Over these past years, he made clear to me, America’s credibility as a reliable guardian against chaos has been broken.

“The United States’ relative power has decreased in relation to Russia and China,” the official said. “You can only play the American [guardian’s] role when you have communality at home. But I’m not sure the United States is ready to restore this or is able to. Vladimir Putin is present at the places where America and Europe are weak.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22% in Germany to 29% in Spain, 35% in Britain and 42% in France, according to a Pew poll. In the UK, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate. Today more British Muslims join ISIS than the British army. In the Netherlands, a survey shows that the 80% of Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong” in ISIS.

Even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic jihad in Europe and the Middle East. We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding and affinity with the ideology and goals of ISIS.

How many Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone”? The answer will determine our future.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Europe was terrorized by a war declared by Communist armed groups, such as the Germany’s Baader Meinhof or Italy’s Red Brigades. Terrorists seemed determined to undermine democracy and capitalism. They targeted dozens of journalists, public officials, professors, economists and politicians, and in Italy in 1978, even kidnapped and executed Italy’s former prime minister, Aldo Moro.

The big question then was: “How deep is the ‘gray zone’?” — the sympathizers of terrorism in the industrial factories, labor unions and universities.

In the last year, the Islamic State’s henchmen slaughtered hundreds of Europeans and Westerners. Their last assault, in Brussels, struck at the heart of the West: the postmodern mecca of NATO and the European Union.

Saturday marked one year since the framework agreement for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the nuclear deal with Iran—was announced. At the time, President Obama said this agreement would make “the world safer.” And perhaps it has, but only in the short term and only when it comes to Iran’s nuclear-weapons proliferation.

Sadly, behind all the talk of change, the Iran we have long known—hostile, expansionist, violent—is alive and well, and as dangerous as ever. We wish it were otherwise. In the United Arab Emirates, we are seeking ways to coexist with Iran. Perhaps no country has more to gain from normalized relations with Tehran. Reducing tensions across the less than 100-mile-wide Arabian Gulf could help restore full trade ties, energy cooperation and cultural exchanges, and start a process to resolve a 45-year territorial dispute.

Since the nuclear deal, however, Iran has only doubled down on its posturing and provocations. In October, November and again in early March, Iran conducted ballistic-missile tests in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

In December, Iran fired rockets dangerously close to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz, just weeks before it detained a group of American sailors. In February, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan visited Moscow for talks to purchase more than $8 billion in Russian fighter jets, planes and helicopters.

In Yemen, where peace talks now hold some real promise, Iran’s disruptive interference only grows worse. Last week, the French navy seized a large cache of weapons on its way from Iran to support the Houthis in their rebellion against the U.N.-backed legitimate Yemeni government. In late February, the Australian navy intercepted a ship off the coast of Oman with thousands of AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. And last month, a senior Iranian military official said Tehran was ready to send military “advisers” to assist the Houthis. CONTINUE AT SITE

Good news: The PEGIDA Movement – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West – is growing in Europe and leader Tommy Robinson, who has led the charge against Muslim sex grooming/enslavement of British girls, appears to have recovered from a recent assault in which he sustained head injuries. (He is definitely on the Muslim “Hit” Parade). Bad news: Police cordoned off yesterday’s PEGIDA demonstration in Birmingham to keep it out of the purview of the public. Only a few hundred people showed up for the demonstration. Janet Levy

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom – Hundreds of ‘anti-Islamisation’ protesters descended Birmingham today for the second march of the PEGIDA UK movement, fashioned on the German marches that have attracted up to 18,000 people to the streets of Dresden.

Organiser Tommy Robinson appeared alongside anti-Sharia campaigner Anne Marie Waters amongst others. But the real star of today’s proceedings was Lutz Bachmann, the founder of the global PEGIDA movement which now has branches in 27 countries.

The march began at Birmingham International Airport’s train station, where the crowd amassed under banners opposing mass migration into Europe, as well as flags from a number of different countries, include Israel and the Czech Republic. The LGBT ‘Rainbow’ Flag also flew.

WHILE a growing number of fashion brands are creating fashion collections aimed at Muslim women, Pierre Bergé has taken issue with designers creating Islamic clothing.

“I am scandalised. Creators should have nothing to do with Islamic fashion,” the 85-year-old told French radio station Europe 1 yesterday, reports The Guardian. “Designers are there to make women more beautiful, to give them their freedom, not to collaborate with this dictatorship which imposes this abominable thing by which we hide women and make them live a hidden life. These creators who are taking part in the enslavement of women should ask themselves some questions.”

Bergé went on to say that the only reason that labels – which include Marks & Spencer, Uniqlo and Dolce & Gabbana – create such collections is “to make dough and nothing else”, and he would tell them to: “Give up the dough. Have convictions. Defend your convictions.” The French businessman – who founded Yves Saint Laurent alongside the eponymous designer, who was also his life partner – stressed that his comments are not Islamaphobic. “I live in Morocco most of the time, I am really not Islamophobic,” he said.

His comments come as Laurence Rossignol, France’s women’s rights minister, criticised Marks & Spencer’s full-body swimsuit, suggesting that the British retailer is “bowing to religious conservatives,” according to The Daily Telegraph.

“What’s at stake is social control over women’s bodies,” she told RMC radio. “When brands invest in this Islamic garment market, they are shirking their responsibilities and are promoting women’s bodies being locked up. It is irresponsible on the part of these brands. All those who participate in how society is represented have a responsibility.”

Marks & Spencer responded to the comments, saying that it “provides a wide range of quality swimwear”, and that it has sold the full-body swimsuit “for a number of years and it is popular with our customers internationally”.

The European Union has been increasingly expressing its growing antagonism towards Israel by

1. imposing specific labelling laws for goods produced by Jews emanating from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)

2. building structures in Area C of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) without consent or authorisation by Israel – which exercises full administrative and security control over this area under the Oslo Accords to which the European Union is a signatory.

Positions such as these taken by the European Union – coupled with a growing tide of Jew-hatred in Europe during the past decade – create an atmosphere of hostility towards the Jewish State and can legitimise public expressions of opinion in Europe that would otherwise have been deemed politically incorrect and subjected to widespread criticism.

A case in point seems most likely to have occurred following the tragic events in Brussels on March 22 when 32 people were killed and 340 wounded in two terrorist attacks at Brussels Zaventem airport terminal and the city’s underground metro system.

Belgium’s federal hotline – set up by the Belgian Interior Ministry to take calls after these attacks – has fired an operator who told a caller that Israel does not exist and should be called Palestine instead.

The caller told the operator that he was a volunteer for the city of Antwerp’s Jewish Coordination Committee. Their message was recorded and the full English translated transcript follows:

XXX: Good afternoon, my name is XXX. I am a volunteer in the Jewish Coordination Committee of Antwerp. We are contacted by persons… we have two persons of the Jewish community that were hurt in the attacks in the airport.

Crisis Centre: Yes sir.

XXX: They are prepared to be transported back to Israel. Our volunteers are busy with it and take care of everything but we received information from the hospital that we need special papers from the police that they can be released. Is this correct and to who should we ask that? Can you tell me more about that?

People who reflexively blame the wrong party for criminal acts are either misinformed or disingenuous.

The sad truth is that in the Palestinian territories, Christians are forced to live like dhimmis — second-class citizens who survive largely by the protection-money they are required to pay to buy their daily safety. These barely-tolerated citizens exist only at the whim and pleasure of the ruling Muslim majority. Muslim Arab discrimination against non-Muslims includes economic and socially prejudicial behavior that makes it difficult or impossible for Christian Arabs to run a profitable business or for their families to be fully integrated into society.

It is also appropriate for Catholics to raise with Vatican authorities the issue of Father Twal’s continued representation of the Faith in the Holy Land: Who is he serving first, God or man?

No one of good will, especially Catholics, wants to accuse a prominent member of his faith of being knowingly untruthful. The truth rarely is found in the Palestinian public narrative. But in case of the latest repetition of Father Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, falsely blaming Israel for the ongoing spate of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, it appears certain from his consistent record of non-nuanced criticism of Israel, that he is motivated by a political bias.

Twal proclaimed that Israel’s alleged “occupation” of “Arab Palestine” is the cause of the murderous violence visited on Israeli civilians by Arab attackers — apparently “forgetting” that the Jews have lived in the region for nearly 4000 years. He was also apparently forgetting that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have been glorifying such “acts of resistance” since the autumn of 2014. How can Twal ignore the reality that Palestinian media has been glorifying these knife attacks as “glorious feats.” In Palestinian schools, in fact, the attackers are hailed as heroes.

Professional criminals convince the children’s parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given between two and five thousand Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as “bride price” – an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family.

“Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon.” — End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT)

“The most important question is why the refugee camps are not open to civil monitoring. Entry to refugee camps is not allowed. The camps are not transparent. There are many allegations as to what is happening in them. We are therefore worried about what they are hiding from us.” — Cansu Turan, a social worker with the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV).

Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into the Western culture. Many seem to have the aim of importing to Europe the culture of intimidation, rape and abuse from which they fled.

Although the desperate victims are their Muslim sisters and brothers, Arab states do not take in refugees. We have not seen any demonstrations with signs that read “Refugees Welcome!” The people in this area know too well that asylum seekers would bring with them problems, both social and economic. The only way they can think of helping women is to “marry” them.

On International Women’s Day, March 8, Turkish news outlets covered the tragic life and early death of a Syrian child bride. (source: )

Last August in Aleppo, Mafe Zafur, 15, married her cousin, Ibrahim Zafur, in an Islamic marriage. The couple moved to Turkey, but the marriage ended after six months, when her husband abruptly threw her into the street. With nowhere to sleep, Mafe found shelter with her brother, 19, and another cousin, 14, in an abandoned truck.

On 8 March, Mafe killed herself, reportedly with a shotgun. Her only possession, found in her pocket, was her handwritten marriage certificate.

Mafe Zafur is only one of many young Syrians who have been victims of child marriage. Human rights groups report even greater abuse which gangs are perpetrating against the approximately three million Syrians who have fled to Turkey.

The British still don’t understand that the UK and Europe have long funded and connived at not just Palestinian terrorism, but the incitement that causes it.What is that unfamiliar rustling in the British cultural undergrowth? It’s the sound of people suddenly acknowledging a problem with anti-Semitism.

For years, anti-Semitism in Britain was the prejudice that dared not speak its name. The hostility toward Israel endemic in educated circles was emphatically declared to have nothing whatever to do with hatred of Jews. Anyone who claimed a connection was denounced as “waving the shroud of the Holocaust” to silence legitimate “criticism” of Israel.

Jewish students have long run the gauntlet of vicious Israel- and Jew-hatred. “Israel apartheid” weeks, BDS motions and campus conferences declaring Israel is a “settler-colonial state” have morphed into intimidation, stigmatization and discrimination against Jews at university.

VIRTUALLY NO ONE outside the Jewish community has paid this any attention.

Now, though, unease has begun to seep into British national consciousness.

The reason is a shift in perspective. Israel is no longer seen as the world’s major flashpoint. The TV news is instead pumping images of Syrian atrocities and floods of displaced migrants into the living rooms of the nation.

Security officials repeatedly warn of the likelihood of coordinated Islamist attacks in Britain. The terrorist atrocities last year in Paris and most recently in Brussels have ratcheted up anxiety levels.