RUTHFULLY YOURS

TEL AVIV—Three Palestinians carrying knives, guns and explosives attacked Israeli security forces at an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday, killing an officer and seriously wounding another.

The attack happened after Israeli security forces stopped the Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. Police later said the trio opened fire on the police before being shot and killed. The dead officer was identified as 19-year-old Hadar Cohen.

The attackers were found to be carrying explosives, and were planning a larger attack, according to Israeli authorities. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Jerusalem has been at the center of a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians that began in September and spread across Israel and the Palestinian territories. Increased security in Jerusalem has reduced the numbers in recent weeks.

Israel’s military is coordinating with forces from the Palestinian Authority to calm the violence, Nitzan Alon, the Israeli military’s head of operations, told reporters in Tel Aviv, though he warned it could continue.

MELLITAH TERMINAL, Libya—A 9-foot-high wall built of fabric, sand and steel that can withstand a car bomb surrounds this seaside oil-and-gas complex, a barrier against militant attacks that many in Libya hope will soon be fortified by a national army under a central command.

Two rival factions that have spent years fighting for control of Libya are now locked in a political battle to form a unity government capable of defending their country and its oil industry against escalating attacks by Islamic State.

The political standoff has swelled U.S. worries of Libya turning into a hub for international Islamic State operations. Top national security advisers met last week with President Barack Obama over Islamic State as military leaders increasingly point to the need for stepped-up operations against the militant group, including in Libya.

Libya’s National Oil Co., among the country’s last functioning institutions since the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, issued a “cry for help” last month amid killings, car bombings, gas line sabotage and the burning of oil storage tanks by extremists. The attacks appeared aimed at undermining the peace process and Libya’s oil industry, which supplies 95% of state revenues.

Islamic State “fills the void” left by the lack of a unified government, said Fathi Ali Bashaagha, a Libyan lawmaker helping negotiate a United Nations-brokered power-sharing agreement between the two rival factions. Libya’s fight against extremists has fallen largely to militias with varying allegiances.

Pope Francis gave his first-ever interview on China and the Chinese people on Jan. 28 to Asia Times columnist and China Renmin University senior researcher Francesco Sisci. The Pope urged the world not to fear China’s fast rise in a historic one-hour interview at the Vatican. He said the Chinese people are in a positive moment and delivered a message of hope, peace and reconciliation as an alternative to war, hot or cold. The pontiff also sent Chinese New Year’s greetings to the Chinese people and President Xi Jinping, the first extended by a Pope to a Chinese leader for the Lunar New Year in 2,000 years.

Sisci’s exclusive interview took place in a Vatican hall decorated with a painting of the Holy Mary Undoer of Knots, in which she performs the miracle of untying impossible knots.

ROME–He felt it immediately, or so I sensed, and he tried to put me at ease. He was right. I was in fact nervous. I had spent long hours hammering down every detail of the questions I was going to ask, and he had wanted time to think and churn them over. I asked for an interview on broad cultural and philosophical issues concerning all Chinese, of which over 99% are not Catholic. I didn’t want to touch on religious or political issues, of which other Popes, at other times had spoken.

I hoped he could convey to common Chinese his enormous human empathy by speaking for the first time ever on issues that worry them daily – the rupture of the traditional family, their difficulties in being understood and understanding the western world, their sense of guilt from past experiences such as the Cultural Revolution, etc. He did it and gave the Chinese and people concerned about China’s fast rise reasons for hope, peace and conciliation with each other.

The Pope believes the Chinese are in a positive movement. He says they should not be scared of this, nor should the rest of the world. He also believes the Chinese have a great legacy of wisdom that will enrich them and everybody and will help all to find a peaceful path forward. This interview is, in some respects, the Pope’s way of blessing China.

Sisci: What is China for you? How did you imagine China to be as a young man, given that China, for Argentina, is not the East but the far West? What does Matteo Ricci mean to you?

Amjad Sakari made no effort to hide his feelings and intentions towards Israel. The soldier in the Palestinian security forces filled his Facebook page with paeans to Saddam Hussein. Last weekend he published two posts indicating his imminent plan to carry out a terrorist attack.

In other words, if the PA forces he served had been serious about preventing their members from carrying out terrorist attacks, they could have easily prevented Sakari from driving to an IDF checkpoint between Ramallah and Beit El Sunday morning, opening fire and wounding three soldiers – one critically. Sakari, who was killed in the course of his attack, was the third member of the US-backed PA security forces who engaged in terrorism in the past two months.

On December 3, Mazen Ariba, an officer in the PA’s US-sponsored Preventive Security Forces opened fire on Israelis at the Hizma checkpoint north of Jerusalem. Ariba wounded two Israelis – one critically – before he was shot and killed.

Ariba, was PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat’s nephew. Erekat made a very public condolence call to Ariba’s home. Ariba was posthumously hailed as a hero.

Two weeks ago, the Shin Bet arrested Ala’a Barkawi, an officer in the PA’s US-supported intelligence services. Barkawi was a member of a three-man terror cell that carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces operating in Tulkarm earlier last month.

Sunday night Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu demanded that PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemn the terrorism carried out by forces operating under his command. Abbas rejected Netanyahu’s demand and instead doubled down in supporting terrorism.

“ZDF Heute,” a leading news program on German TV, reported, on January 25, 2016, that terrorists are using the asylum channel to enter countries where they plan to carry out terrorist attacks. The German news program mentioned three recent cases. The first case was the terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, 2015. Among the perpetrators were two terrorists who entered Greece as asylum seekers and then traveled to France via the so-called Balkan route. They carried forged Syrian passports in the names of Ahmad al-Mohammad and Mohammad al-Mahmod. They arrived on the Greek island of Leros, on October 3, 2016, where their fingerprints had been taken.

ISIS later glorified the Paris attackers in the manifesto “Black Flags From the Islamic State.” This manifesto, quoted by John Rossomando in IPT News, describes how “the plotters evaded detection by Western intelligence.” “This has shocked the intelligence agencies and many European countries are thinking about closing their borders so future Mujahideen cannot escape to neighboring countries.” The only attacker who survived was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian-Moroccan national from Brussels. John Rossomando adds: “Black Flags From the Islamic State brags that Abaaoud slipped in and out of Europe hiding among the refugees traveling through Turkey into Greece and then deeper into the continent.” This was shortly before the terrorist attacks in Paris.

In recent weeks, Arabs armed with knives and hatchets have struck at dozens of Israelis on the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Afula, Beersheba, and elsewhere. Victims include children, women, and elderly men.

Imagine how the American public would react to a political group that incited supporters to knife people on the streets of New York, Cleveland, Denver, and Seattle. Fear, indignation, and anger would translate into furious insistence that the government put an end to the evil. No political grievance would be accepted as an excuse for the savagery.

Yet in this case, murders spawned by false, fanatical accusations from Palestinian religious and political leaders spawn still more foul words of a different kind: equivocation by U.S. officials who, having completely lost their bearings, sound like apologists for the murderers.

Obama-administration officials urged both sides to exercise restraint. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power invoked the “cycle of violence.” Using the passive voice to cloud the picture, she said that “mistrust has been exacerbated by viral images and videos shared on social media, which further polarize narratives and foster suspicion, and even hatred on both sides.” Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of the murders with a hey-that’s-just-politics tone. Saying (inaccurately) that there’s been a recent “massive increase in settlements,” he then commented understandingly, “Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing.”

If Americans were being systematically knifed on the streets, no American official would be so morally blind as to excuse the attacks as an expression of political frustration. Not a chance.

President Barack Obama took a similarly cool and neutral line. He called on both Palestinian and Israeli leaders “to try to tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger, or misunderstanding.”

The first month of the year is behind us, and so is the season for predictions. But if there’s one thing we can be sure of as this year unfolds, it’s this: 2016 will be the year of the Islamists.

It doesn’t take a Las Vegas handicapper to know it. The State Department’s annual report on terrorism revealed that the number of people killed by terror attacks rose by 80 percent, to nearly 33,000, in 2014. Things weren’t any better in 2015.

This will be the year of the Islamists because they’re facing no competing force. No opponents with the will to fight them — or their ideas. And it’s not just the people of Middle East and Africa who will suffer in this year of the Islamists. It will be Europeans and Americans.

It happened late last year in San Bernardino. And the month before in Paris. And earlier the year before in Paris, when Islamic radicals targeted the creatives at Charlie Hebdo and the patrons and workers at a nearby kosher deli.

These weren’t spectacular mass murders of the 9/11 variety, but they were, in some ways, worse — because they were carried out by lone Islamist wolves, part of a loose network of international killers who report to no one.

In Germany, some extraordinary advice is given to locals on how to live with the 1.1 million illegal immigrants allowed into the country last year:A German town hall meeting turns angry when the local mayor suggests that the easiest way for young girls to avoid Muslim harassment is “don’t provoke them and don’t walk in these areas”:

“It’s technically not necessary for the girls to walk near the refugee shelters, there are alternative routes,” mayor Jens Muller continued, amid rising fury.

More news on the invasion of Europe here.

Two stories from Austria that add up to an underclass and future trouble – and not just in Austria.

Story one:

Compared to the beginning of 2015, the total population has increased by nearly 115,000 people… This increase was most pronounced among Syrians (plus 21,800), Afghans (18,300) and Iraqis (10,000).

Story two:

There has been a further rise in the number of unemployed in Austria, with official figures showing a 3.7 percent increase compared to one year ago… Unemployment among foreigners increased by 17 percent, mainly due to the number of unemployed refugees. 58,000 unemployed foreigners live in Vienna.

As the popular Aussie conservative columnist Andrew Bolt writes in his syndicated column today regarding the Australian Labor Party (ALP):

“The modern Left seems to have a Jew problem. The obsession with Jews even within Labor is extraordinary – and ominous.

What is it with the Left and Jews? What is it with the Left and pandering to Islamists?”

Mr Bolt quotes from a sobering piece on the subject by Sharri Markson in The Australian newspaper, showing the Left faction of the ALP is so saturated now in leftist/Islamist bias against Israel as to be aiding and abetting that old demon, slumbering since the Shoah and now belligerently wide awake: Jew-hatred.

Ms Markson wrote, inter alia:

‘…. The NSW ALP international relations policy committee chairman Michael Forshaw told The Australian yesterday that 39 resolutions had been received concerning Israel and Palestine, compared with 17 resolutions dealing with other international issues, such as the Syrian war, the Myanmar junta, Paris terror bombings, China free trade and foreign aid.

There were none on Saudi Arabia or Iran.

There are moves to recognise Palestinian statehood and to boycott products from Israel that originate in settlement areas, and many concerning banning trips to Israel while Benjamin Netan­yahu is Prime Minister. The move by Labor is partly driven by political motivations to secure the vote from Muslim communities in marginal southwest Sydney seats…..’

She cites the main offenders, and their thraldom to the Muslim vote.

She reminds the reader of the ‘incendiary remarks’ (Jewish advocacy groups are “cancerous” and “malicious” and try to “deny, misinform and scaremonger”) made by NSW Labor politician Shaoquett Moselmane, who felt comfortable enough broadcasting … anti-semitic sentiment within the walls of the NSW Parliament’ despite having ‘ ironically decried racism’ in his maiden speech:

‘He was not shouted-out of the high office he holds for racist commentary. On the contrary, Labor continues to support him and Moselmane is now a vocal advocate behind a push to ban Labor MPs from visiting Israel on trips funded by Jewish organisations…

As Hamas’s power increases, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security services are gradually losing their control of the West Bank.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians know that if the PA falls, the best case scenario is that Hamas will take over the West Bank. The worst case scenario is a welcome mat for ISIS.

After Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas threatened yet again that he would end security coordination with Israel, not only has he not ended it, but — luckily for him, as it turned out — it is now stronger than ever. The Israelis, it seems, exposed two separate Hamas networks in the West Bank, both of them planning a mass-casualty attack on Israel and the destruction of the rule of Mahmoud Abbas.

Mahmoud Abbas’s other threat, that he will dissolve the Palestinian Authority (PA), and force Israel to fill the resulting vacuum and incorporate its residents and territories into Israel, also turned out to be cow plop.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians know that if the Palestinian Authority falls, the best case scenario is that Hamas will take over the West Bank, and the worst case scenario is a welcome mat for ISIS. The West Bank will either turn into an Islamic emirate, like the Gaza Strip, or another ISIS province. In both cases, whatever “achievements” the Palestinian Authority has made will be gone forever. The entire Palestinian national consensus government, including Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, will be executed before the day is out and all the property they have amassed over the years will be distributed as spoils to the victor.

Mahmoud Abbas is fully aware that the last thing the West wants is yet another Islamic emirate. Many inhabitants of the West Bank are also fearful of falling victim to the Islamic religious fanatics who will set them fourteen hundred years back.