RUTHFULLY YOURS

“My ten months with Isis” – Life as a hostage of Jihadi John’s brutal terror gang

▪ In an exclusive first interview outside France, a freed French Isis hostage says the British and American prisoners remained as cheerful as possible but that their governments could have done more to save them.

I spent three days this week with Pierre Torres, one of the French hostages who was held captive by Isis in Syria for ten months. He was released last year, a short time before his American and British co-captives were beheaded one by one in a series of gruesome videos. He was among the last people to see them alive.

He and I were in Geneva to conduct a question and answer session at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights. A video of it can be seen here, in which he explains why he first went to Syria, and other matters.

But in addition, over a series of coffees and walks around Geneva, Torres, a charming and good-humored but rather shy young man of 30, slowly provided me with additional insights into his time in captivity — his first interview with a non-French journalist.

“We were moved around a lot, kept underground most of the time, sometimes chained together for weeks on end. It was tough and terrible things happened, but we also kept ourselves in as good spirits as possible.”

“We passed the time by inventing quizzes which we played with each other. We also played chess. We created chess pieces out of a discarded milk carton we had. Our captors let us play but were angered when we represented some of the pieces by faces – their interpretation of Islam strictly forbids any depictions of any man or animal. So we had to make the pieces again.”

Fear and anger are synergistic emotions. Combined, they can quickly overwhelm a person’s psyche, as President Obama’s is now. He so greatly fears what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will say to congress tomorrow about his Iranian nuclear weapons deal that he has stopped at nothing to prevent and discredit it.

Obama’s has aimed every political weapon he has at Netanyahu.

His fear and anger are the reasons he sent Jeremy Bird, one of his top political consultants, to Israel to help defeat Netanyahu in the election that will be held two weeks after the speech.

Fear and anger are why he sent National Security Adviser Susan Rice out to say that Netanyahu’s speech is “destructive of the fabric” of America’s relationship with Israel. They are why Secretary of State Kerry said that Netanyahu’s judgment is defective on such matters, giving as proof the fact that the Israeli PM supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. (Kerry was careful to not mention that he voted for the Iraq invasion as a senator and reaffirmed the vote in his 2004 presidential campaign.)

President, London Center for Policy Research

In several press conferences and public statements President Obama has theorized a Middle East strategy that is limited, time sensitive and avoids “boots on the group.” This position is the one he proposed to Congress. Modest but not overwhelming; committed but only in a partial sense. In no sense, not even one advocated by the president, is this a policy for total victory over ISIL or al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization.

Recognizing the limits of resources and what President Obama calls “war fatigue,” what can be done? Surely there is more that the U.S. can do than we are doing at the moment. Ultimately, of course, Middle Eastern states will have to fend for themselves. While there isn’t one nation that has anywhere near the military capability of the U.S., in combination they can constitute a military force capable of defeating extremism. A union of Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait could pool military assets into a Middle East NATO with the U.S. as a member state offering logistics, Special Forces and sophisticated hardware.

Of the many kinds of trains exhibited in Birmingham’s Wonderful World of Trains and Planes, in Birmingham, England, the only display in dispute was the model train set of Auschwitz, noted the Daily Mail. The photos included in the column certainly verify that the set was painstakingly designed to provide authenticity, was sufficiently informative, and respectfully and tastefully executed. Although I have visited Auschwitz, I have seen an authentic and replicas of boxcars in other museums, not to mention in newsreels, so I was dismayed to learn that only this one was considered objectionable.

One such objection came from a Holocaust survivor and while my heart goes out to him, this was an important teaching moment that would not be obtained in a classroom or home environment, and must not be obliterated from collective memory. It is not the presentation, but the Holocaust itself that is offensive. The mass murder of millions of innocent men, women, and children is inconceivably offensive. The obliteration of human beings by fascists – and now by Islamo-fascists – is severely offensive. And last year, I was privileged to edit a book of Holocaust survivors’ memoirs that were immensely offensive, but surely not to be dismissed or disregarded.

There are striking similarities between the objectives of Churchill’s speech nearly 75 years ago and Netanyahu’s today; both with no less purpose than to avert global conflagration. And, like Churchill’s in the 1930s, Netanyahu’s is the lone voice among world leaders today.

There is no doubt about Iran’s intent. It has been described as a nuclear Auschwitz. Israel is not the only target of Iranian violence. Iran has long been making good on its promises to mobilize Islamic forces against the US, as well as the UK and other American allies. Attacks directed and supported by Iran have killed an estimated 1,100 American troops in Iraq in recent years. Iran provided direct support to Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.

Between 2010 and 2013, Iran either ordered or allowed at least three major terrorist plots against the US and Europe to be planned from its soil. Fortunately, all were foiled.

Iran’s ballistic missile program, inexplicably outside the scope of current P5+1 negotiations, brings Europe into Iran’s range, and future development will extend Tehran’s reach to the US.

“Thank you. Wow, 16,000 people. Anyone here from California? Florida? New York?

Well, these are the easy ones. How about Colorado? Indiana? I think I got it. Montana?Texas?

You’re here in record numbers. You’re here from coast to coast,from every part of this great land. And you’re here at a critical time. You’re here to tell the world that reports of the demise of the Israeli-U.S. relations are not only premature, they’re just wrong.

You’re here to tell the world that our alliance is stronger than ever.

And because of you, and millions like you, across this great country, it’s going to get even stronger in the coming years.

Thank you Bob Cohen, Michael Kassen, Howard Kohr and all the leadership of AIPAC. Thank you for your tireless, dedicated work to strengthen the partnership between Israel and the United States.

I want to thank,most especially, Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans. I deeply appreciate your steadfast support for Israel, year in, year out. You have our boundless gratitude.

While under fierce attack from President Obama, the Israeli prime minister defends Western values and speaks the truth about Iran.
The leader of the free world will be addressing Congress on Tuesday. The American president is doing everything possible to undermine him. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a nation surrounded by enemies, a nation so small that it narrows at one point to just 9.3 miles. Yet, in a world where the Oval Office is manned by someone openly apologetic for most American exercises of power; and where Western Europe’s economy is enervated, its people largely faithless, and its leadership feckless; and where Freedom House has found “an overall drop in [global] freedom for the ninth consecutive year,” the safeguarding of our civilization might rely more on leaders who possess uncommon moral courage than on those who possess the most nukes or biggest armies.
Right now, nobody on the world stage speaks for civilization the way Netanyahu does. While Barack Obama babbles about the supposedly “legitimate grievances” of those who turn to jihad, Netanyahu talks like this (from his speech to the United Nations on September 27, 2012): The clash between modernity and medievalism need not be a clash between progress and tradition. The traditions of the Jewish people go back thousands of years. They are the source of our collective values and the foundation of our national strength. At the same time, the Jewish people have always looked towards the future. Throughout history, we have been at the forefront of efforts to expand liberty, promote equality, and advance human rights. We champion these principles not despite of our traditions but because of them.

John Kerry generally enters into diplomacy concerning Israel like a bull in a china shop; or, shall we say, like a Cossack in a sukkeh. (That is a simile that would have been familiar to Kerry’s Yiddish-speaking paternal grandparents, originally named Kohn.) It therefore came as no surprise when, in a nearly apopleptic outburst to a congressional committee on February 25, he assailed Benjamin Netanyahu for having the temerity to accept an invitation from the U. S. Congress to warn of the imminent danger of allowing Iran to acquire the capacity to develop and the ability to “deliver” nuclear weapons, including Special Delivery to Israel.

Kerry alleged that Netanyahu (“the prime minister”) had already shown extremely bad judgment about the Middle East back in 2002 when “the prime minister was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq.” “And,” he snidely added, “you remember how that turned out.” Whether that invasion was wise or foolish, Kerry himself had made exactly the same judgment about it on October 11, 2002 when he voted (as he had also speechified) in favor of the invasion. “Bibi” did indeed in 2002 recommend “taking out” Saddam Hussein, though whether he did it in “forward-leaning” position I couldn’t say. Of course Ariel Sharon was PM at that time, and Bibi had testified, publicly, as a private citizen. But one does not expect fine distinctions from people like Kerry, who first came to prominence in 1971 by accusing the entire American chain of military command of being “war criminals.”

I don’t know what Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is going to say to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. Obama and the sleaze media will try to make this story all about Bibi and phony “violations of protocol.”
Bibi will try to tell the truth.
Who will you listen to? This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. This time it really matters. Life or death, war or peace, lies or the truth.
This time it’s literally life or death -– not just for one person, but for entire nations and ethnic peoples.
If you doubt that, just see what ISIS is doing to the indigenous Christians who lived in the Middle East centuries before Islam.
Here’s what I hope he will say.

Israel is not the problem in the ME. Nor is any concession Israel could make “the solution,” as liberals seem to think, in their amazingly delusional way. If Israel were to surrender to its genocidal enemies tomorrow, it wouldn’t make a smidgen of difference to all the warring cults and regimes over there. ISIS would still be killing all the same people, because ISIS follows Wahhabi (Saudi) war theology, in which all infidels (you and me), heretics (the mullahs), and polytheists (Hindus and Buddhists) deserve to die by “striking at the neck,” as the Koran says, just like those innocent flight attendants on 9/11/01.
The idea that “Israel is the problem in the Middle East” has obsessed liberal foreign policy professors at least since Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. Today the Muslim Brotherhood runs the “Muslim Student Union” at UC Berkeley and its ilk, in active collusion with radical leftists — like Obama.
Last week Admiral James (“Ace) Lyons (USN, ret.) spoke the blunt truth about Muslim infiltration, subversion, and sabotage of the U.S. government.

Chuck Schumer and other liberal fence-sitters will have their reputations stained forever if they let this Iran deal pass.

The Democratic Party is on the cusp of abandoning the state of Israel. That’s a shame, though less for Israel than it is for the Democrats.

The Democrats’ historic support for the Jewish state has always been what’s best about the party. The understanding not only that Jews are entitled to a state, but also that a liberal democracy is entitled to defend itself—robustly and sometimes pre-emptively—against illiberal enemies, is why the party of Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan commands historic respect.

But that party is evaporating. A 2014 Pew survey found that just 39% of liberal Democrats are more sympathetic to Israel than they are to the Palestinians. That compares with 77% of conservative Republicans. During last summer’s war in Gaza, Pew found liberals about as likely to blame Israel as they were to blame Hamas for the violence.