RUTHFULLY YOURS

Every time a horrendous terrorist attack victimizes innocent victims we wring our hands and promise to increase security and take other necessary preventive measures. But we fail to recognize how friends and allies play such an important role in encouraging, incentivizing, and inciting terrorism.

If we are to have any chance of reducing terrorism, we must get to its root cause. It is not poverty, disenfranchisement, despair or any of the other abuse excuses offered to explain, if not to justify, terrorism as an act of desperation. It is anything but. Many terrorists, such as those who participated in the 9/11 attacks, were educated, well-off, mobile and even successful. They made a rational cost-benefit decision to murder innocent civilians for one simple reason: they believe that terrorism works.

And tragically they are right. The international community has rewarded terrorism while punishing those who try to fight it by reasonable means. It all began with a decision by Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian terrorist groups to employ the tactic of terrorism as a primary means of bringing the Palestinian issue to the forefront of world concern. Based on the merits and demerits of the Palestinian case, it does not deserve this stature. The treatment of the Tibetans by China, the Kurds by most of the Arab world, and the people of Chechen by Russia has been or at least as bad. But their response to grievances has been largely ignored by the international community and the media because they mostly sought remedies within the law rather than through terrorism.

The Palestinian situation has been different. The hijacking of airplanes, the murders of Olympic athletes at Munich, the killing of Israeli children at Ma’alot, and the many other terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists has elevated their cause above all other causes in the human rights community. Although the Palestinians have not yet gotten a state – because they twice rejected generous offers of statehood – their cause still dominates the United Nations and numerous human rights groups.

Other groups with grievances have learned from the success of Palestinian terrorism and have emulated the use of that barbaric tactic. Even today, when the Palestinian authority claims to reject terrorism, they reward the families of suicide bombers and other terrorists by large compensation packages that increase with the number of innocent victims. If the perpetrator of the Manchester massacre had been Palestinian and if the massacre had taken place in an Israeli auditorium, the Palestinian authority would have paid his family a small fortune for murdering so many children. There is a name for people and organizations that pay other people for killing innocent civilians: it’s called accessory to murder. If the Mafia offered bounties to kill its opponents, no one would sympathize with those who made the offer. Yet the Palestinian leadership that does the same thing is welcomed and honored throughout the world.

The Palestinian authority also glorifies terrorists by naming parks, stadiums, streets and other public places after the mass murderers of children. Our “ally” Qatar finances Hamas which the United States has correctly declared to be a terrorist organization. Our enemy Iran, also finances, facilitates and encourages terrorism against the United States, Israel and other western democracies, without suffering any real consequences. The United Nations glorifies terrorism by placing countries that support terrorism in high positions of authority and honor and by welcoming with open arms the promoters of terrorism.

Shielding heads of state from seeing the consequences of the policies that they themselves have forced on the entire European continent represents a staggering new level of hypocrisy.

Why do the citizens of Europe need to ‘broaden their horizons,’ while the people in power protect themselves from the reality they themselves imposed on everyone else? This attitude, far from democratic, borders on the atmosphere prevalent in Europe during the bygone days of Europe’s absolute monarchs.

While it is true that “everyone knows about our prosperity and lifestyle,” the answer to that problem is not fatalistically to sit back and wait for the migrant influx. The answer is, based on a new starting-date, to change Europe’s outdated and unsustainable welfare policies, which stem from a pre-globalization era, and in this way actively work to make it less attractive for millions of migrants to venture to the European continent in the first place.

When the G7 heads of state arrive in Taormina, Sicily, for the G7 meeting on May 26, they will find themselves in an embellished, picture-postcard version of European reality. Italy, the host of the G7 meeting, has announced that it will close all harbors on the island to ships that arrive with migrants ( mainly from Libya) for the duration of the two-day meeting. The reason for the closure of the Italian island to migrants is to protect the G7 meeting from potential terrorist attacks. According to Italian reports, “the Department of Public Safety believes that the boats with illegal immigrants could be hiding an Islamist threat”.

G7 meetings are, of course, always subject to a host of high-level security measures. However, shielding heads of state from seeing the consequences of the policies that they themselves have forced on the entire European continent represents a staggering new level of hypocrisy. Literally altering reality in order to present a whitewashed picture of the influx of migrants into Europe, which happens largely through Italy, is a Potemkin measure, regardless of terror risks. Heads of state, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Italy seeks to protect from a terrorist risk, seem not to care particularly about the very real terrorist risks that European citizens are forced to live with daily thanks to the migrant policies of these heads of state.

In 2015, when asked how Europe could be protected against Islamization, Merkel, who does not move without her own personal security team consisting of 15-20 armed bodyguards, carelessly said: “Fear is not a good adviser. It is better that we should have the courage once again to deal more strongly with our own Christian roots.” In December 2016, she told members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who were asking how to reassure the public about the problem of integrating migrants, “This could also broaden your horizons.”

“There are several hundred square meters of pavement abandoned to men alone; women are no longer considered entitled to be there. Cafés, bars and restaurants are prohibited to them, as are the sidewalks, the subway station and the public squares.” – Le Parisien.

“For more than a year, the Chapelle-Pajol district (10th-18th arrondissements) has completely changed its face: groups of dozens of lone men, street vendors, aliens, migrants and smugglers harass women and hold the streets.” – Le Parisien.

In the heart of Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, Grenoble, Avignon, districts here and there have been “privatized” by a mix of drug traffickers, Salafist zealots and Islamic youth gangs. The main victims are women. They are – Muslim and non-Muslim — sexually harassed; some are sexually assaulted. The politicians, as usual, are fully informed of the situation imposed upon women.

In January, 2015, a week after the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the American television channel Fox News created a scandal in France by claiming that Islamic “no-go zones” were established in the heart of Paris. For the French media, the existence of no-go zones — where non-Muslims are unwelcome and Islamic law, sharia, holds sway — in the heart of the capital was pure nonsense and horrifying “fake news.” Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said she planned to sue Fox News and that the “honor of Paris” was at stake.

By May 2017, however, the tone had changed. The French daily, Le Parisien, disclosed that, in fact, no-go zones are in the heart of the capital. It seems that the district of Chapelle-Pajol, in the east of Paris, has become very much a no-go zone. Hundreds of Muslim migrants and drug dealers crowd the streets, and harass women for wearing what many of these migrants apparently regard as immodest clothing:

“Women in this part of eastern Paris complain that they cannot move about without being subjected to comments and insults from men.

“There are several hundred square meters of pavement abandoned to men alone; women are no longer considered entitled to be there. Cafés, bars and restaurants are prohibited to them, as are the sidewalks, the subway station and the public squares. For more than a year, the Chapelle-Pajol district (10th-18th arrondissements) has completely changed its face: groups of dozens of lone men, street vendors, aliens, migrants and smugglers harass women and hold the streets.”

Natalie, a 50-year-old resident of the area said: “The atmosphere is agonizing, to the point of having to modify our routes and our clothing. Some [women] even gave up going out.”

Aurélie, 38, who has lived in the area for 15 years, said that the café-bar below her apartment had been a pleasant place, but has turned into an exclusively male establishment. “I have to listen to a lot of remarks when I pass by, especially since they drink a lot,” she said. A local 80-year-old woman is reported to have totally stopped leaving her apartment after being sexually assaulted one day as she was returning home. Another woman is said to suffer a flood of insults simply by standing at her window.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/suicide-bomber-kills-22-including-children-at-ariana-grande-concert-in-manchester-u-k-1495529305

MANCHESTER, England—The suicide bomber who killed 22 people and injured dozens of others outside a pop concert in Manchester on Monday night hit one of the softest of soft targets—a mostly young crowd pouring from the exits at the end of the show, police said.

As the fans—including many teenage girls—of American singer Ariana Grande streamed past, a single assailant detonated an improvised explosive device and unleashed carnage, according to the authorities, sending survivors fleeing as panicked parents searched for their offspring amid the chaos.

Children were among the dead, police said.

Manchester’s top police officer, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, said Tuesday morning that authorities were racing to determine whether the attacker, a man who died at the scene, had acted alone or was part of a broader terror network. He described the investigation as “fast-moving.”

It was the second terror attack in the U.K. this year and the deadliest since suicide bombers attacked the London transport system in 2005, killing 52 people. It took place four years to the day after British soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death outside an army barracks in London by two Islamic extremists.

Police escort people from the Manchester Arena after an attack outside an Ariana Grande concert that left 22 people dead. Photo: Getty Images

U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd described the explosion as a “barbaric act.”

Prime Minister Theresa May was set to meet with the government’s emergency “Cobra” committee on Tuesday morning, and security was heightened around the U.K. In Manchester, extra police were deployed and armed officers patrolled the city.

The bombing hit in the run-up to national parliamentary elections set for June 8. Mrs. May’s Conservative Party and its main rival, Labour, said they would halt campaigning on Tuesday. Mrs. May condemned the attack as “appalling.”

President Donald Trump expressed “absolute solidarity” with the people of Britain and condemned terrorists as “evil losers.” Mr. Trump said, “Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed.”