RUTHFULLY YOURS

I am deeply honored that my essay, “Does Have Europe Have a Future?,” elicited such substantial responses from four distinguished writers. All four have not only entered fair and useful comments on the essay but also contributed their own answers to the question posed in my title.

Peter Berkowitz and Wilfred McClay agree with me that the nation-state is not the source of Europe’s ills. And I agree with Berkowitz, following Alexis de Tocqueville, that European nations need to recover their tradition of freedom, just as I agree with McClay that such liberty must be limited by law, human or divine. It is refreshing to hear Americans encouraging Europeans to take pride in their patriotism and their national identities; in this respect, McClay rightly contrasts the grand traditions of European civilization, which gave birth to the United States and to so much else, with a European Union that is anything but united.

On this point, I part company with Claire Berlinski even as I’m grateful for her superb tour d’horizon and the weight she properly gives to the threat posed to Europe by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. To her, the only answer to the external threats menacing Europe is a single foreign and defense policy, which means strengthening and indeed uniting the European Union. I beg to differ: however much some European leaders may dream otherwise, the EU is not a military alliance. Nor do I recognize her description of German, French, and other EU military officers “eager” to “unleash” their forces against Europe’s enemies. That was not the case even during the cold war, much less now.

The only effective alliance we have is NATO, which implies an acceptance of U.S. leadership that the French still find unpalatable. France is indeed adept at launching policing operations in its former African colonies, but it is no more eager to support U.S. military operations in the Muslim world now than in 2003, when it refused to join the coalition against Saddam Hussein, or in 1986 when it denied President Reagan permission for American bombers to fly over France en route to Qaddafi’s Libya. True, the French are now bombing Islamic State (ISIS) forces in Syria and Iraq, but that is because ISIS poses a direct threat to France itself.

ISIS’s brutality knows no bounds. Early medieval style beheadings, crucifixions, enslavement and rapes of women and young girls are ISIS’s calling cards. They have slaughtered or abducted thousands of civilians and have committed systematic genocide against Yazidis and Christians. Yet when reports of such acts of barbarism began to emerge in 2014, the progressive left either ignored the worst demonstrations of pure evil in our time or pooh-poohed them.

For example, the far left feminist Naomi Wolf, pretending to be an objective journalist, has demanded proof of ISIS transgressions. She questioned whether the videos of beheadings by ISIS jihadists were real. “So much about ISIS seems hyped/spun,” she said on her Facebook page in August 2014. In response to accounts of ISIS jihadists’ sexual exploitation of women, she bizarrely warned us to “remember the fake accounts of ‘the HUN’ raping Belgian women that drove everyone else into World War One.” Recall that Naomi Wolf has argued in the past that Muslim women veiling themselves are doing so as an expression of their own free choice.

The proof of ISIS’s barbarism is told both in staggering numbers and heart rendering first person accounts of women beaten and raped by the ISIS predators. An estimated 3,500 people are being held by ISIS as sexual slaves in Iraq alone, according to a United Nations report issued on January 19th by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN human rights office. “Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yezidi (sic) community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities,” the report said.

Controversy is growing in Switzerland over an alleged secret deal, made almost 50 years ago, between the Swiss government and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

The agreement, detailed in a new book, was apparently designed to prevent terrorist attacks on Swiss territory.

In return, Switzerland would offer diplomatic support to the PLO.

It followed a series of attacks in 1969 and 1970 by Palestinian groups that caused huge concern in Switzerland.

In February 1969 gunmen opened fire at Zurich airport on an El Al plane, whose pilot died in the attack. The Swiss arrested the attackers

In 1970, a bomb on board a Swissair flight to Tel Aviv brought the plane down just outside Zurich, killing all 47 passengers and crew

In September 1970, a Swissair flight on its way to New York was hijacked. Two other airliners, one British, one American, were hijacked at the same time. All three ended up at Dawson’s Field airstrip in Jordan, where more than 300 passengers were held hostage

The Council of the European Union (EU) has disqualified itself from influencing any resolution of the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict following the release of its “Council conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process” on 18 January.
Continuing its partisan support of Arab demands the EU has reaffirmed its July 2014 position:
“The EU recalls its willingness to engage further with regional partners on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative which provides key elements for the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the opportunity for building a regional security framework.” Key elements of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative included:
1. “Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights to the lines of June 4, 1967 as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.” 2. “The acceptance of the establishment of a Sovereign Independent Palestinian State on the Palestinian territories occupied since the 4th of June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital” Israel’s agreement to negotiate with the PLO on the basis of the 2003 Bush Roadmap was contingent on the removal of all references to the Arab Peace Initiative from the Roadmap along with 13 other detailed reservations.

American Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave the following assurances to Israel on 23 May 2003:
“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.” This fundamental disconnect between the EU and Israel over the Arab Peace Initiative continues to detrimentally impact on their relationship.

“Around 700 Christian women in Pakistan are abducted, raped and forced into Islamic marriage every year – that figure is almost two a day and the world does nothing.” — Wilson Chowdhry, human rights activist, citing the Muslim non-governmental organization, “Movement of Solidarity and Peace.”

“Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.” – Local residents, Pakistan.

Three Christian girls in Pakistan, who rejected the advances of some wealthy Muslim young men, were recently mauled by them. One of the girls died.

The London-born Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) and human rights activist, Wilson Chowdhry, who broke the story, reported that one of the men had said: “Christian girls are only meant for one thing, the [sexual] pleasure of Muslim men.”

The incident occurred on January 13 in Lahore. The three girls—aged 17, 18, and 20—were walking home after a hard day’s work. Four Muslim youths in a vehicle followed the girls and accosted them. The men “misbehaved,” yelled “suggestive and lewd comments,” and harassed the girls to get in their car for “a ride and some fun.”

The girls declined the “invitation,” and added that they were “devout Christians and did not practice sex outside of marriage.”

ISIS released a new video today with statements from the Paris attackers, vowing to kill westerners in their homes and chiding Muslims to join jihad now.

The 17-minute film, “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them,” was released in English, Arabic and French by Al-Hayat Media Center, the ISIS media arm that recently produced a new issue of Dabiq magazine. ISIS hinted at more on the Paris attacks in last week’s issue with a page featuring the faces of the terrorists over a backdrop of the French capital and the words “Just Terror.”

“Let Paris be a lesson for those nations that wish to take heed,” the page noted.

The highly stylized video begins with news footage and the voices of CNN and Fox News anchors narrating the Paris attacks as they unfolded on Nov. 13. Red crosshairs are superimposed on victims and police in the news footage.

Brahim Abdeslam, aka Abul Qa’Qa al-Baljiki, a French ISIS member who was living in Belgium and was one of the shooters at bars and restaurants the night of the attack, is shown firing a gun at targets painted on a wall.

Belgian restaurant attacker Chakib Akrouh, aka Abu Mujaed al-Baljiki, is shown viciously beheading a man in a desert setting, as are Frenchmen and Bataclan gunmen Foued Mohamed-Aggad (aka Abu Fu’ad al-Faransi) and Ismaël Omar Mostefai (aka Abu Rayyn al-Faransi).

Belgian restaurant gunman Abdelhamid Abaaoud, aka Abu Umar al-Baljaki, speaks in what looks like a home video shot with an ISIS flag and two guns for a backdrop. Samy Amimour, aka Abu Qital al-Faransi, the third Bataclan gunman, gives a wicked smile for the camera.

BEIRUT—Syrian regime forces backed by Russian airstrikes seized control of a rebel stronghold on Sunday, the latest in a series of gains in northwestern Latakia province aided by Moscow’s intervention in the conflict.

The advances in the heartland of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority put the regime within striking distance of neighboring Idlib, the only province almost entirely under rebel control. Just a few months ago, rebel fighters were advancing through the Idlib countryside toward Latakia and looked poised to deal more blows to the regime. But the Russian intervention in late September has given the regime’s military the upper hand there.

These gains have given the regime a stronger hand ahead of peace talks that had been set for this week in Geneva, if they go ahead as planned.

“All of the regime and Russian plan and all of the operations that the Russian officers are overseeing are with the goal of advancing before the talks,” said Fadi Ahmad, a spokesman with the U.S.-backed First Coastal Division, a faction of the Free Syrian Army rebel group, which has received training from the Central Intelligence Agency and American antitank missiles.

Secretary Kerry’s Sunday visit to Riyadh to diffuse the tension between the Saudis and Iran tried reassuring the Saudis that “Nothing has changed because we worked to eliminate a nuclear weapon with a country in the region.” But that has done little to lessen the Saudi Kingdom’s anxiety regarding Iran’s new status in the region and their resentment of the Obama administration for strengthening their sworn enemy, Iran.

On the same day, Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters that Iran has to stop its hostilities against the Arabs. It should “change its 35 years old policies meddling in their Arab neighbors’ internal affairs, sowing sectarian strife and backing terrorism as confirmed by numerous strong evidence.” Only then “the path will be open to building better relations with its neighbors,”

Some watchers of the growing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia predict further escalation. But most are venturing to predict no open war,
According to the ICIT, Iran’s encouragement of “Shi’ite separatism and its relentless subversive activities in neighbouring countries contributed to the worsening of its relations with the Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, which also seeks regional hegemony. Ever present are the age-old Sunni-Shi’ite religious rift, the ethnic-cultural conflict (Arab vs. Persian). But the nuclear agreement between Iran and the West and the lifting of the sanctions on Iran, are making the Gulf States more fearful of Iran’s growing power. In addition, the significant changes in the Saudi leadership resulted in transforming Saudi Arabian regional policy from passive to active, and clearly anti-Iranian.

In the eyes of many devout Muslims, tolerance seems to be a one-way street.

“The relation between Islam and the rest of the world is marked by asymmetry. Muslims may and do enjoy all kinds of freedoms and privileges in the lands of the Kuffar [infidels]; however non-Muslims are not granted the same rights and privileges when they live in countries governed by Muslim governments… In our globalized world, this state of affairs should not continue.” — Jacob Thomas.

The West, coming as it does from the Judeo-Christian culture of love and compassion, would seem to have a moral responsibility to help first the Christians, the most beleaguered and most benign of immigrants.

Around 45,000 Armenian and Assyrian Christians (also known as Syriac and Chaldean) who fled Syria and Iraq and have settled in small Anatolian cities in Turkey, are forced to hide their religious identity, according to the Hurriyet daily newspaper.

Since the Islamic State (ISIS) invaded Iraqi and Syrian cities, Christians and Yazidis have become the group’s main target, facing another possible genocide at the hands of Muslims.

The National Anti-Corruption Unit has decided to open a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding an apartment that Foreign Minister Margot Wallström obtained through the biggest labor union in Sweden, Kommunal. The prosecutor told Swedish public radio that, “it concerns suspicions on bribe-giving and bribe-taking.”

Member of Parliament Caroline Szyber said that the committee should investigate whether Wallström opened herself up to a situation where she could easily be influenced by signing the apartment contract.

Margot Wallström has shown no remorse; whether her proud and unapologetic attitude will once more save her career remains to be seen.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is in trouble again. This time it has nothing to do with her hostile statements towards Israel. Rather, it concerns the apartment she rents in central Stockholm — an arrangement that could lead to charges of bribery and standing trial. The National Anti-Corruption Unit has decided to open a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding an apartment she obtained through the biggest labor union in Sweden, Kommunal.

The story exploded in Swedish media on January 13 when the daily, Aftonbladet, revealed that Kommunal’s management had speculated with hundreds of millions of kronor of union members’ money on a prominent conference hall and a restaurant operation. So far this business venture has cost Kommunal over 320 million kronor ($35 million) in losses.

The labor union owns a luxury restaurant, Metropol Palais, in central Stockholm, and the exclusive conference facility, Marholmen, in the Stockholm archipelago. Although these facilities are bleeding money, Kommunal has continued to pump funds into them. By running Metropol and Marholmen as general partnerships (“handelsbolag”) instead of limited companies, the union avoided public transparency into the accounts.