RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16733/europe-security-islamist-terror

“I expect an end to the misconceived tolerance, and for all the nations of Europe to finally realise how dangerous the ideology of political Islam is for our freedom and the European way of life.” — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Die Welt, November 3, 2020.

“We see very clearly that terrorist actions can actually be led by some people who use migratory flows to threaten our territory.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, Politico, November 5, 2020.

For once, the sudden upsurge in terror attacks appears to have prompted European leaders to acknowledge the glaring deficiencies in their ability to protect Europe against Islamist-inspired acts of terrorism.

The latest wave of Islamist-inspired terror attacks to strike Europe has yet again exposed lamentable flaws in the ability of European security agencies to provide adequate protection for their citizens.

In all three instances — the attacks in Paris, Nice and Vienna — it has emerged that those held responsible for carrying out the attacks had links to global jihadi networks that went undetected by European security officials.

Moreover, the ease with which some of those involved in the attacks were able to travel freely across the continent has once more raised concerns about Europe’s lax border controls as defined by the European Union’s Schengen Agreement, and the ability of radicalised jihadis to exploit them.

In the most recent attack in the Austrian capital Vienna on November 2, it transpires that the 20-year-old gunman who killed four people and wounded 22 others before he was himself shot dead by police had travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July to buy ammunition.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/shame-for-the-uk-at-the-united-nations?toke

Once again, the British government has chosen a strange way to demonstrate its purportedly close friendship with the State of Israel.

Last week saw another typical episode of Israel-bashing at the UN. Its General Assembly Special Political and Decolonisation Committee passed no fewer than seven resolutions condemning Israel.

One of these denounced it for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, simply because Israel remains in control there. Since the only reason Israel is in the Golan is to repel Syrian aggression, this is clearly absurd.

Three other resolutions addressed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), one of them renewing its mandate.

According to the NGO UN Watch, none of these noted the corruption in the agency that had been exposed by a UN investigation.

Not to mention, of course, the fact that UNRWA’s very existence is designed to perpetuate hostility to Israel, by creating in the classification of Palestinian “refugees’’ a unique category that actually multiplies them over time; nor that most of UNWRA’s staff are under the thumb of Hamas.

As the UN Watch director Hillel Neuer pointed out, the UN stayed silent when the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group recently attacked Israeli civilians with a barrage of rockets from Gaza. Yet two weeks later, the UN bashed Israel instead in this slew of resolutions.

Said Neuer: “While France, Germany, Sweden and other EU states are expected to support most of the estimated 20 resolutions to be adopted against Israel by December, the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, or on 175 other countries. Where’s their supposed concern for international law and human rights?”

The only one of these seven resolutions on which the UK abstained rather than voted in support renewed the mandate of a UN special committee to investigate “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people”. But worse still was one of the seven that the UK did support.

This expressed concern over “the tensions and violence in the recent period throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and including with regard to the holy places of Jerusalem”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16763/western-sahara-showdown

Presently, the Polisario Front appears to be trying to create “facts on the ground” outside of any legal framework, presumably in the hope that the international community will view them as irreversible.

International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

While much of the world was looking the other way, distracted by China’s coronavirus and its economic aftermath, a separatist militia group backed by Algeria, the Polisario Front, have been militarily exploiting the crisis.

For weeks, the Polisario Front have blocked the only road leading southward from Morocco to Mauritania in the buffer zone of Guerguerat. Currently, around 200 trucks find themselves stranded there, while UN peacekeepers (MINURSO), on whom Morocco relies to enforce the tense 30-year ceasefire, apparently feel overwhelmed.

Ever since Spain withdrew from its former colony in the Western Sahara in 1975, the Polisario Front have been trying to claim the territory, rich with phosphates and fishing rights, as an independent state for themselves. Since that time, however, Morocco has served as the sole sovereign, offering the Western Sahara autonomy but not independence.

Last week, on Thursday night, Morocco finally responded to the Polisario Front’s roadblock at Guerguerat by creating a security cordon and promising to “restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic” between Morocco and Mauritania — an act that the Polisario Front called a “provocation.”

The Polisario Front had announced the Monday before that any movement of troops by Morocco to the buffer zone area “will be considered as a flagrant aggression to which the Sahrawi [Polisario] side will respond vigorously in self-defence and to defend its national sovereignty. This will also mean the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a new war across the region.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/austrias-kurz-and-germanys-merkel-collision-course-robert-spencer/

The German-language Austrian publication Kronen Zeitung reported Tuesday that Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz flew to Paris in order to “coordinate ‘on a European level’ with French President Emmanuel Macron on the ‘fight against political Islam.’” This coordination involved a video conference that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union Council President Charles Michel, European Commission President Angela von der Leyen, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. They all “announced that they would join forces and reform the Schengen rules.” But like so many things, it all sounded great until one started to examine the details.

“More far-reaching measures must be taken so that we can live safely in Europe and defend our way of life,” said Kurz, and who could argue with that? “We are in constant danger,” Kurz added, and pointed out that the European Union was full of “ticking time bombs” that is, thousands of “foreign fighters.” No argument there, either. But what did he and his colleagues propose to do about it?

Initially it looked as if the Euro honchos were on the right track: Macron “suggested implementing measures that have already been planned and decided in the fight against political Islam, or accelerating their implementation.”

These would include not only “against hate propaganda on the Internet and a reform of the Schengen rules,” but also “the linking of common databases so that the security services of the individual states can work better together.” Macron declared: “It takes reforms to enjoy our freedom and security.”

Why yes, Mr. Macron, yes it does. But does Europe have the courage to implement the reforms that would genuinely protect Europeans from further jihad massacres, such as immigration restrictions from jihadi hotspots and strict enforcement of the principle of one law for all, which would be a direct challenge to Sharia enclaves? None of that appeared to be even on the table at this video conference.