RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Sunday after the shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, I attended Mass at a Catholic church in a very conservative suburb in a Western state where gun rights are in the main unquestioned. As he spoke about the massacre in Charleston, the priest, who showed no sign of indulging himself in ecclesiastical theatrics, grew genuinely angry — that such a thing had been done at all, and that it had been done in a sanctuary among Christians at prayer. Later I asked him what he would have done if it had been his church. “This congregation?” he asked with a little smile that was meaner than you want a priest’s to be. “Probably administer his last rites.”

I thought about that good pastor as reports of the horrors in Paris came in. There was the usual sentimental outpouring on social media, the tricolors and the invocations of the Marquis de Lafayette and the Empire State Building lit in honorary blue, white, and red. Professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania chidingly reminded no one in particular to report anybody who was engaging in anti-Muslim rhetoric on Twitter. All of that is useless, of course, but one feels the need to do something. But the only thing one can really do is the one thing that Parisians cannot do: shoot back.

By constantly endorsing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli policies, France has obviously been seeking to appease Islamic countries. France seems convinced that such policies will keep Muslim terrorists from targeting French nationals and interests. The French are now in grave danger of mistakenly believing that the November 13 attacks occurred because France did not appease the Muslim terrorists enough.

When the terrorists see that pressure works — increasing the pressure should work even more!

The French and Europeans would do well to understand that there is no difference between a young Palestinian who takes a knife and sets out to murder Jews, and an Islamic State terrorist who murders dozens of innocent people in Paris.

The reason Muslim extremists want to destroy Israel is not because of the settlements or checkpoints it is because they believe that Jews have no right to be in the Middle East whatsoever. And they want to destroy Europe because they believe that Christians — and everyone — have no right to be anything other than Muslim.

The terrorists attacking Jews also seek to destroy France, Germany, Britain and, of course, the United States. These countries need to be reminded that the Islamist terrorists’ ultimate goal is to force all non-Muslims to submit to Islam or face death.

Security procedures and background checks were top topics on news programs after Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed October 31 shortly after taking off from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, destined for St. Petersburg, Russia.

Yesterday’s attacks in Paris, believed to have been conducted by ISIS terrorists, have now eclipsed coverage of the downing of the Russian airliner, but this post will focus on the airline disaster, also believed attributable to ISIS.

The most recent speculation is that a bomb had been planted onboard the airliner before takeoff which, if true, begs the question how the bomb was put on the doomed airliner. There are two apparent ways that this could have happened. A passenger could have secreted the device in luggage (either in checked luggage or in something brought into the cabin of the airliner), or someone who serviced the airplane before departure might have hidden the device in the cargo hold beneath passengers’ feet.

Immediately news programs turned to the question of how carefully airport workers with access to aircraft are vetted, both overseas and inside the United States.

Clearly terrorists want to bring down airliners, so those who have access to airplanes must be effectively vetted. We must not lose sight, though, of the fact that a terrorist who enters the U.S. is not unlike a child turned loose in a toy store with a platinum credit card. Airplanes may be obvious targets but hardly the only vulnerability.

Just as people in Paris were murdered one day last week, Jews in Israel are murdered virtually every day.

Undoubtedly, Rabin wanted peace — virtually all Israelis want peace — but not at any price. He never envisaged the creation of a Palestinian state: the Oslo Accords provided for the establishment of a “provisional self-government,” not a state.

Rabin did not contemplate infinite and unconditional negotiations: the Oslo Accords call for a five-year period of negotiations, and include the possibility of breaking off the talks if one of the parties does not respect the spirit in which the Accords were to be implemented.

In addition, Rabin, seeing the rise of violence, wanted during the last weeks of his life to break off the talks. If the Oslo talks did not live up to their expectations, it was in continuing to pursue the vain and useless negotiations — exactly the opposite of what Rabin had envisioned.

Palestinian leaders have an overwhelming responsibility for what has happened during the last twenty years. Not only have they continued to make the very demands that Rabin rejected — and that no leader in a comparable situation could ever accept; they have done worse.

Israel cannot make peace, because there is no one to make peace with.

Peace implies conditions. One of the first is that those with whom a country intends to make peace also want to make peace. Nothing, however, indicates that Palestinian leaders have the slightest intention of making anything that even resembles peace.

One hopes the French will not surrender to terrorists; neither should the Israelis.

First, let me say how much I sympathize with the Parisians. I lived there for 16 months, in the 12th arrondissement (district), doing odds and ends, helping out a couple of churches.

We all sense it, and AT has posted blogs about it. Here’s the chain of responsibility for the Paris massacre, in causal order, as far as the U.S. is concerned:

1. The proximate cause: the eight or so killers who pulled the triggers.

2. Then come Islamic planners behind the scenes (obviously a military hit squad that came into France recently, but with homegrown help).

3. ISIS, who swept into the void and conflict, taking territory the size of Indiana.

4. Obama policy and his campaign promise, coming out of his misguided beliefs, that said Iraq is at peace so we can withdraw from the region. Do I need to mention the red line that got blown away by the desert sands and poison gas? Iraq may have been at peace, but his generals told him not to withdraw.

5. The left’s ideology that consistently misreads the world.

PARIS—One of the assailants in Friday’s deadly attacks in and near the French capital recently entered Europe as a Syrian migrant, people familiar with the matter said, exposing gaps in the continent’s security as it copes with the biggest refugee crisis in decades.

French investigators were able to match the remains of one of the suicide bombers who attacked France’s main stadium to a Syrian passport that was used to enter Europe’s free-travel area and apply for asylum, the people familiar with the matter said.

European security officials have worried that Islamic State operatives would bring terror by mixing with the cohort of Iraqi and Syrian migrants who are fleeing war each week.

Screening migrants represents a formidable security challenge at a time when European intelligence agencies are straining to keep track of thousands of their own nationals who have rallied to Islamic State, officials say.

PARIS—French police on Sunday named a 29-year-old French national as one of the seven attackers who killed at least 129 people in the brutal onslaught in Paris that has sent shockwaves around the world.

Police said that Omar Ismail Mostefai was identified from a severed finger found at the Bataclan concert hall, where gunmen killed at least 89 people before blowing themselves up using explosive belts when police moved in.

The man, born in a Paris suburb, had eight convictions between 2004 and 2010 for petty crime and was on a watch list since 2010 for his alleged radical beliefs, Paris prosecutor François Molins said Saturday. French police haven’t yet named any of the other attackers.

Police detained seven of the Frenchman’s friends and family for questioning, including his brother and his father. Under France’s counterterrorism rules, they can be held in custody for 96 hours before prosecutors have to press charges or release the men.

Bashing the Bishops and Free Speech Too. Australia’s bishops are being dragged before Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commission for allegedly “crossing the line” by asserting that, on the whole, a child will do best with a mother and a father. The real offence is the agency’s government-funded violation of common sense.
Tasmanian Greens candidate Martine Delany who used to be Martin, has had struggles with her sexual identity. I would imagine that to be a difficult thing to live with and overcome. Well done to her if she has now reached a stage in her life where she happy about who she is. Apparently, she has a female partner and they are caring for a young child. She has strong views on (so-called) marriage equality, as well she might in view of her situation.

I think she has the right to express her views strongly, openly and often. But she doesn’t have a right, in my view, to prevent others from expressing contrary views. When I say ‘right’ in this context, I mean the right of freedom of speech as, for example, set down without a rider in the first amendment to the US Constitution in 1791. Now, of course, in some jurisdictions, Tasmania included, that right comes with the rider that speech must not be ‘offensive’. Voltaire wept.

Australian Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter to all Australians on the ‘same-sex marriage’ debate titled: “Don’t Mess with Marriage”. This was distributed in the form of a booklet to parents of Catholic high school students throughout Australia. Ms Delaney complained to Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commission that the Catholic Church had been offensive. And the Commission in its wisdom (no guffawing) decided that there was a case to answer.