RUTHFULLY YOURS

How is your Merkelsommer going? For now, Britain seems to be missing the worst. True, a couple of men of Middle Eastern appearance tried to abduct a soldier near his base in Norfolk for what was unlikely to have been an interfaith dialogue session. But Britain’s geographical good fortune, relative success in limiting weapons and our justified scepticism of the undiscriminating ‘open borders’ brigade mean that we have so far been spared the delights of what Angela Merkel’s growing army of critics refer to as her summer of terror.It is now a fortnight since Mohammed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ploughed a truck along the Nice seafront, killing 84 people. The following Monday Mohammed Riyad, who said he was from Afghanistan but almost certainly came from Pakistan, screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ while hacking with an axe at his fellow passengers on a Bavarian train. The next day another Mohammed, this time Mohamed Boufarkouch, shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and stabbed a Frenchwoman and her three daughters (aged eight, 12 and 14) near Montpelier. Mixing things up a little, that Friday’s shooter in Munich was a child of Iranians called Ali David Sonboly. Skip forward a couple of days and a ‘-Syrian asylum seeker’ with a machete was hacking a pregnant woman to death in Stuttgart. The next day another ‘Syrian asylum seeker’, Mohammad Daleel, carried out a suicide bombing outside a bar in Ansbach, Bavaria. And a little over 24 hours later two men shouting the name of Isis entered a church in Rouen during Mass, took the nuns and congregation hostage and slaughtered the priest with a knife.

Although the public know what is going on, the media seems loath to find any connection between these events. Indeed, the same papers that blame an exaggerated spike in ‘hate crime’ on everyone who voted for Brexit seem unwilling to put the blame for these real and violent attacks on the individuals carrying them out. ‘Syrian man denied asylum killed in German blast’ was the Reuters headline on the Ansbach story, neatly turning the suicide bomber into the victim and the German asylum system into the perpetrator. As Reuters went on: ‘A 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when a bomb he was carrying exploded outside a music festival.’ How terrible for him to lose his bomb in such a way.

The point is that the US aid deal is really a deal for Lockheed Martin, not for Israel. And we need to say no.On Monday, acting head of the National Security Council Yaakov Nagel will sit down with his US counterpart, Susan Rice, and try to conclude negotiations about a new, multi-year defense assistance package.

We must all hope that he fails.On Monday, acting head of the National Security Council Yaakov Nagel will sit down with his US counterpart, Susan Rice, and try to conclude negotiations about a new, multi-year defense assistance package.

We must all hope that he fails.No clear Israeli interest will be advanced by concluding the aid deal presently on the table.

Indeed, the deal now being discussed will cause Israel massive, long-term economic and strategic damage. This is true for a number of reasons.

First, there is the issue of the deal’s impact on Israel’s military industries, which are the backbone of Israel’s strategic independence.

Under the current defense package, which is set to expire next year, a quarter of the US aid Israel receives is converted to shekels and spent domestically.

Reportedly, the deal now under negotiation will bar Israel from using any of the funds domestically.

The implications for our military industries are dire. Not only will thousands of Israelis lose their jobs. Israel’s capacity to develop its own weapons systems will be dangerously diminished.

Then there is the problem of joint projects.

Today, Israel receives additional US funds to develop joint projects, including the Iron Dome and David’s Sling short range missile and rocket defense programs. These programs were undertaken in response to threats that weren’t foreseen when the current deal was negotiated a decade ago.

According to reports, the deal now being negotiated denies Israel and the US the ability to fund jointly new projects or to provide supplemental funding for existing projects. All funding for all projects will be covered by the lump sum that is currently being negotiated.

Not only does this preclude new projects, it prevents Congress from exercising oversight over administration funding of existing joint projects with Israel. President Barack Obama has consistently tried to slash funding of missile defense programs, only to be overridden by Congress. Under the deal now on the table, Congress will be denied the power to override a hostile administration.

Programed as they are in feminist myth-making, journalists, young and old, often ask incredulously, “Why would western girls travel to join ISIS fighters?” “ISIS men don’t believe in equality between the sexes.”

At heart, neither do women. Not when hormones rage.

Islamic State projects strength. Strength is an aphrodisiac. Women are biologically programmed to be attracted to powerful men. That’s one reason some girls willingly put on black nose bags and flock to become ISIS brides.

Brainwashed to think biology is incidental, and that men and women are essentially interchangeable; younger readers will likely find it harder to grasp something as primordial and important as the male-female biological category.

Sheikh Muhammad Ayed has no such problem. Speaking in a deep, sonorous voice; in what sounds like classical Arabic, this imam can be observed on YouTube delivering a sermon from East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. The object of Sheikh Ayed’s coruscating derision is the emasculated West. It is primed for a muscular, Muslim takeover, he argues.

Said Ayed (as translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute):

“But they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in their midst. We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries—whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you.”

On its side, Islam has ascetic evangelists such as Ayed, who bow to no one.

On our side we have Father Michael Pfleger! He’s the too-hideous-to-behold, standard issue, Western preacher-cum-Obama idolater.

Pray tell: Who looks and sounds more impressive to the young and the impressionable? The impassioned, unapologetic, manly imam in flowing, Lawrence-of-Arabia robes, who channels the Word of his Prophet? Or, Father Pfleger, the soft face of the West’s ultra-liberal faith; a tool of liberal public administration; a man more eager to prostrate himself to Caesar than to serve a higher authority?

Pfleger’s ilk—the West’s priesthood—are in the four corners of the earth preaching hate for their own kind. Thus, in a week in which fifteen blacks wielding Kalashnikovs killed two white farmers in KwaZulu-Natal; another excuse-for-a-man—man-of-the-cloth Michael Vorster—was at a South-African pulpit puling about the controlling ways of “whiteness.”

Chancellor Merkel said she knows that Germans are worried about their personal safety: “We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure security in Germany,” she noted, but added, “Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions.”

“The chancellor remains committed to her current course of action. A classic Merkel refrain follows: ‘There must be a thorough analysis.'” — Thomas Vitzthum, political editor of Die Welt.

“The country is split, its citizens deeply insecure? ‘We can do it!’ Sexual assaults on women in swimming pools and at festivals? ‘We can do it!’ Terrorist attacks by Islamists in Germany? ‘We can do it!’ Growing frustration and rising political apathy among the population? ‘We can do it!’ But who are the ‘we’? … Not a word to the citizens who for a year have had to deal with the consequences of the asylum onslaught. Not a word to the local communities that are unable to cope with the financial and burdens of accommodating asylum seekers.” — Editorial in the newspaper, Junge Freiheit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected criticism of her decision to allow more than a million mostly Muslim migrants to enter Germany last year.

Speaking at an annual summer press conference in Berlin on July 28, a defiant Merkel ignored critics of her refugee policies and insisted there would be no change to her open-door migration stance. She also said she bears no responsibility for a recent spate of violent attacks in Germany.

Germany has been rattled by an axe attack on a train in Würzburg, a mass shooting in Munich, a machete attack in Reutlingen and a suicide bomb in Ansbach — all within a week.

The attacks, which left 13 dead, were all carried out by Muslims: Three of the attacks were carried out by asylum seekers and one by a German-Iranian who harbored a hatred of Arabs and Turks.

Merkel, who interrupted her summer holiday to attend the 90-minute press conference, which was pushed forward by a month, reiterated her credo: “We can do it!” (“Wir schaffen das!”). She has repeated the phrase over and over since Germany’s migration crisis exploded on September 4, 2015, when she opened up the German border to tens of thousands of migrants stranded in Hungary. She said:

“We decided to fulfill our humanitarian obligations. I did not say it would be easy. I said back then, and I will say it again now, that we can manage our historic task — and this is a historic test in times of globalization — just as we have managed so much already, we can do it. Germany is a strong country.”

Israel’s growing diplomatic, military, and economic ties across the Middle East, Africa and Asia should shatter an enduring myth: that the Israel-Palestinian conflict will make Israel an international pariah.

These ties reflect not only the foresight of Israel’s leaders, the doggedness of its diplomacy and the strength of its economy, but also the rise of Iran in the region and the spread of terrorism beyond it.

Consider the irony. Israel’s ties to the United States and Europe are strained over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, particularly with Washington, the Iranian nuclear deal – even though Israel is the lone nation in the turbulent Middle East that shares the West’s values of freedom and democracy.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ties to regional states, African nations and Russia and China are growing due to shared military challenges or economic opportunities – even though Israel has little in common with them.

To be sure, the U.S.-Israeli relationship remains a paramount concern in Jerusalem. Israel relies heavily on U.S. aid as well as America’s backing at the United Nations and other global bodies. The two nations share intelligence and work together on mutual concerns in the region and beyond.

Nevertheless, Israel’s growing global network is enhancing its flexibility on the world stage and reducing Washington’s leverage over Jerusalem. That’s good for Israel at a time of strained U.S.-Israeli relations, and it leaves America and Europe looking obsessed with an issue of reduced global concern.

Consider the contrast. Early this month, the Quartet (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations) warned that Israeli settlements threaten the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, echoing the repeated warnings of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande, who hosted 28 nations in Paris last month as a “first step” toward organizing an international conference to restart peace talks, told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week that he’s committed to leading global efforts to find peace.

Hervé Morin said it’s time to Israelize the French security apparatus. Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas accuses Nicolas Sarkozy of trying to Guantanomo-ize it. In the July 29th update, I will give a brief outline of the range of debate in France, touching on the secular “high ground,” marked by exquisite concern for democratic principles and the sensitivities of the Muslim community; the Catholic position of pardon and pacifism; opposition proposals for increased security, represented by an interview with the former and potentially future President Sarkozy.

In a condescending article about “bleeding heart France,” Stephen Brown [http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263652/frances-bleeding-heart-stephen-brown] assures us “the only French leader who appears not to have surrendered is Marine Le Pen.” Confusing the president of the Front National with her niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen—who has indeed announced she will join the National Guard —he blithely delivers us into the hands of the Le Pen party. There is much to be said on this subject, but I already said it in 2014. [Dispatch International, NER]. And, by the way, the Daesh soldiers did not “do a sort of sermon around the altar in Arabic.” They swore an oath [serment]. It matters. At least to me, it matters to get things straight.

And now, two days after the atrocity committed in the St. Etienne du Vouvray church, the answers keep turning into questions. I do not have boots on the ground. I sift through the widest range of secondary sources, doing my utmost to sift out nuggets of reality from the sludge of approximations.

For example: the longwinded centrist François Bayrou (who supported François Hollande in 2012) is outraged at the absence of protection of the targeted church, situated, he says, right near a Salafist mosque. But, objects a journalist reporting on the affair, Professor Bayrou is mistaken: the mosque near this church is not Salafist. It’s another mosque near another church in the town that, sadly, had donated a piece of its land for construction of the mosque. God’s little acre? So there are two churches and two mosques for a population of 30,000? Latifa ibn Zlaten whose son Imad was executed by Mohamed Merah in 2012, lives nearby, the memorial service for her son was held in that mosque, built on land donated by the churchand, she says, it’s not extremist. Christians and Muslims get along beautifully. Mohammed Karabila, president of the mosque is absolutely disgusted by these accusations. Everything is done in his mosque, he says, to encourage worshippers to be good citizens, good neighbors, respectful and diligent..

Europeans have delegated to the State the exclusive right to use violence against criminals. But Europeans, especially in France and Germany, are discovering that some kind of “misunderstanding” seems actually to be at work. Their State, the one that has the monopoly on violence, does not want to be at war with its Islamist citizens and residents. Worse, the State gives off the feeling that it is afraid of its Muslim citizens.

“The concept of the rule of law means that the citizen is protected from the arbitrariness of the State. … Currently, the rule of law protects the attackers above all”. — Yves Michaud, French author and philosopher.

If a group of Jewish or Christian terrorists in Algeria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia had committed the same kind of stabbings, car-rammings, throat-slittings and shootings that France and Germany are suffering now, they would have provoked an immediate reaction. Tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of enraged Muslims would have rushed into the streets to kill, stab or eviscerate the first group of Jews or Christians they met. Within 24 hours, no church or synagogue would be able to open its doors: all of them would have been burned to cinders.

These words are not to stigmatize anyone; they are meant to explain what terrorists want.According to Gilles Kepel, professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and a specialist of Islam, “ISIS calls for stabbing dirty and evil French people… because they want to trigger a civil war.” Muslim terrorists behind the wave of terrorist attacks apparently assume that thousands of French, Germans or Belgians will rush out into the streets, as they would do themselves, to kill, stab or eviscerate Muslims. Muslim sponsors of terrorism may not even be able to imagine that Europeans may not wish to participate in the pleasure of bloodthirsty riots.

The fact is that even if millions of Arabs and Muslims live in Europe today, Europeans are not Arabs and do not act as Arabs do. Westerners in Europe have delegated the “legitimate use of physical force” — commonly, if controversially, known as the “monopoly on violence” — to the State.

Max Weber, in his 1919 essay, “Politics as a Vocation”, claims that the State is any “human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” In other words, Weber describes the State as any organization that succeeds in having the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory (“Gewaltmonopol des Staates”).

For French and Germans citizens, the mission of the State is to fight Islamist terrorists — harshly if necessary. But today, instead of the “legitimate violence” of the State, German and French citizens are encountering only denial. The State keeps denying that Islamist crimes are being openly committed in its territory. This denial comes in different forms:

The mass rape of hundreds of German women mostly by Muslim migrants last New Year’s was recently revealed to be far worse than originally acknowledged. Authorities now believe that more than 1,200 women were sexually assaulted – more than twice the original estimate of 500. While more than 2,000 men were allegedly involved, only 120 suspects — about half of them recently arrived migrants — have been identified.

One explanation for why it took half a year for the full extent of the crime to be revealed is the German police’s effort to avoid a public backlash against refugees. But ultimately, Holger Munch, president of the German Federal Crime Police Office, acknowledged to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that there is “a connection between the [sexual assaults] and the rapid migration in 2015.”

Denial is not a strategy. Western countries that cherish women’s rights must wake up to the fact that many migrants could challenge those values. Most of the mass migration comes from violence-plagued, Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa, where women are second-class citizens subject to honor killings and various legal restrictions, and where the local culture often condones rape, encourages wife-beating, and treats women as sexual objects (with 72 virgins promised to Muslim men who reach heaven).

Thus, just as the mass migration from the Middle East and North Africa raises the specter of regular Islamist terror on European soil, it also augurs the kind of sexual abuse that those regions have traditionally tolerated. German officials implicitly seemed to acknowledge as much with their laughably impotent campaign to re-educate migrants using signs that explain acceptable behavior towards women.

Seventy-five years ago, the world blew up in just six months.

World War II ostensibly started two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland. In truth, after the rapid German defeat of Poland in September 1939, the conflict was mostly confined to Western Europe for nearly the next two years. By summer of 1940, only Britain had survived Hitler’s European victories.

The dormant European war only went global on June 22, 1941, when Germany suddenly surprise-attacked the Soviet Union, its former partner.

America and Asia were still not directly involved in the 1941 expansion of the war until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and British Malaya on December 7–8.

Yet the war was even then not truly global until Germany and Italy inexplicably declared war on the United States on December 11.

America was suddenly mired in a two-front war on land, sea, and in the air against the Axis powers — from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert, and from the coast of Florida to China.

These three calamitous events of 1941 marked the real beginning of World War II, in which some 65 million perished, more than 60 percent of them civilians.

Hitler had no need to attack the Soviet Union, a vast country that even Napoleon could not successfully invade and one that was supplying vast amounts of natural resources to his German war machine.

Japan likewise had no reason to bomb the British and Americans in the Pacific. Neither democracy was planning to start a war with the Japanese.

Industrial Japan could have gotten most of its oil from the Dutch East Indies, modern Indonesia. Its colonial master, the Netherlands, had been conquered by Germany and was no longer a colonial power.

An aggressive Japan likewise could easily have had all of Indochina and other orphaned European colonies without triggering a war against the world’s two largest navies.

Had Germany not declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor, it is likely that America would have focused on Japan and left Britain alone to fight Germany — just as it had done since 1939.

So why did the three Axis powers commit such blunders that would lose them the new global war in less than four years?

For centuries, France has always proudly borne the title “Eldest Daughter of the Church.” But two days ago, the Roman Catholic Church’s beloved child was barbarically violated and desecrated in a manner probably unseen since Clovis I was baptised in Reims on Christmas Day in 496 C.E.

Striking at France’s religious heart and traditional roots, two Islamic terrorists invaded the sixteenth-century St. Etienne church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a town of about 30,000 near Rouen in Normandy, Tuesday morning after 9:00 a.m during mass. Eighty-four year-old priest Jacques Hamel was presiding over the ceremony with several nuns in attendance when the two entered the church by a back entrance armed with knives and “fake explosive belts.”

With reported yells of “Allahu Akbar,” present at all such horrifying Islamic undertakings, the two terrorists forced Father Jacques to his knees and proceeded to slit his throat before the terrified onlookers attending morning mass.

One nun, Sister Danielle, reported the “shocking details” of Father Jacque’s murder.

“They forced him to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that’s when the tragedy happened,” she said. “They recorded themselves doing it. They did a sort of sermon around the altar in Arabic. It is a horror.”

More shockingly, Sister Danielle said the terrorists told her: “You Christians, you kill us.”

One nun, however, managed to slip away and notify authorities.

“I left when they began to attack Father Jacques,” she said. “I do not even know if they realised that I was leaving.”

The Islamic murderers used two nuns “as human shields” for about an hour inside the church, during which time security forces had surrounded the building. When they exited the holy place, both terrorists were shot and killed. An elderly parishioner was also critically injured, but the circumstances concerning this person’s wounding are unclear. Three other hostages were reported unharmed.

The Islamic State (IS) was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, calling the two murderers its “soldiers.”