RUTHFULLY YOURS

The State Department said today it’s trying to verify a Saudi report that nine Americans were among 33 swept up in an anti-terrorism operation in the kingdom.

The Saudi Gazette reported Sunday that four Americans were arrested a week ago and five more were taken into custody later in the week. Also seized during that period were 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, an Emirati, a Kazakh and a Palestinian.

It wasn’t clear what their terror links may have been; the Saudis have arrested many suspected ISIS members over the past several months.

On Friday, four people were killed and 36 were wounded in a suicide bombing and shooting at Al-Ridha Mosque in Al-Ahsa province. The casualty count would have been higher had security not stopped the attackers at the gate.

A surviving 27-year-old terrorist at the mosque “sustained major injuries after being thrashed by worshippers,” Arab News reported.

It’s not know if any of the detained Americans were connected to that plot. The Arab News called the terror arrests a “pre-emptive crackdown.”

After the Hitler and Stalin disasters, Europeans swore “Never Again!” over and over again. Never Again to the Holocaust and Stalin massacres, but also to the many occasions of mass bloodshed that began with the wars of the Reformation.

And yet, today we can see Europe’s boastful old narcissism again.

It is a troubling and ominous sight.

I don’t mean to pick on Europe — there are plenty of mad political movements in the world. But Europe has been the source of all major international wars for centuries. Maybe it was only the Industrial Revolution that made Europe so destructive. But its neurotic repetition compulsion goes back at least to the invention of the printing press, which made mass political movements possible.

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,” said the Greeks, and they were right. The very same signs of severe mental pathology seem to show up before every major bloodletting in history. If you look for historical patterns, you can see the signs long before mass violence breaks out again. Today, the most stunning example of pathology is visible in the suicidal policies of the European Union, a grossly dysfunctional family if ever there was one.

Many historians consider World War I to be the greatest disaster of the 20th century, because it killed a whole generation of highly educated men, who could have given constructive political and cultural leadership for decades to come. World War I itself was triggered by a century of tit-for-tat Franco-German wars, and it led directly to Hitler and the Cold War.

The war brought Lenin to power in Russia, followed by the first Marxist Terror. Hitler’s rise was driven by a desire to take revenge for WW I. Without WW I the world would have been spared much suffering.

Every European disaster echoes the previous one, which is why the historical pattern looks so neurotic. Europe’s propaganda line changes, but it always comes down to the same old narcissistic grandiosity, the same glorious rhetoric of Empire. Today the European Union is seriously intent on taking over the world via bureaucratic imperialism, using a network of international “laws” that nobody has ever voted for. Euro-imperialism is the reason behind the global climate fraud.

In the words of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the tunnels are being dug not only to “defend the Gaza Strip, but to serve as a launching pad to reach all of Palestine.” As one can see from any map of Palestine, “all of Palestine” does not mean living in peace alongside Israel; it means supplanting Israel.

To its credit, Hamas has been refreshingly transparent about its ambition, the elimination of Israel. Hamas wants the Palestinians to continue living in misery and bitterness. It is fertile soil for jihad recruitment.

A Palestinian Authority-Hamas unity government would mean tunnels not only along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, but also from the West Bank into Israel.

Forever looming, of course, is the illusion that Abbas will be able to persuade Hamas to abandon its aim to destroy Israel.

The myth that Hamas uses tunnels to smuggle food and other necessities to the “besieged” Gaza Strip has been buried under the rubble of the tunnel that collapsed last week east of Gaza City.

The incident, in which seven members of Hamas’s armed wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, were killed when the tunnel they were working in collapsed, provides further proof that the Islamist movement has stayed true to its charter, which calls for the total destruction of Israel.