RUTHFULLY YOURS

UPDATE AUGUST 1

Why does it matter to get things straight, even seemingly small details? Why does it matter to say, again, that Abdelmalik Petitjean was not a flagged security risk when he got hired, through an interim employment agency, as a baggage handler at the Chambery airport? It was not a full-time job. He worked weekends. He was finishing his studies. It matters because he is not an example of flagrant negligence in the hiring of airport personnel; he’s an example of a nearly undetectable risk that was to all intents and purposes smoothly integrated into French society. He’s one more element of proof against the sociological argument about discrimination breeding resentment and sharpening the slaughterer’s knife. So, if you don’t think the free world will live or die on the toss of a coin, then you might agree that we are in the early stages of a process. And it matters how we present the facts. Democracies will learn, improve, and defend themselves. There is no reason for despair.

Abdelmalik Petitjean wasn’t an ex nihilo jihadist with nothing but the Net for inspiration His cousin, identified as 30 year-old Farid K., has been charged and imprisoned; preliminary investigations have concluded that he knew a murderous attack was imminent. Jean-Philippe J. a twenty year-old who had tried to reach the caliphate with Petitjean in June has also been charged and jailed.

Charitable Christianity

We didn’t get news this weekend, we got preached at: We will not answer hatred with hatred and violence with violence. They wish to divide us, we will stick closer together than ever. We always loved, respected, admired and hung out with our fellow men of the cloth. Now we are inseparable. The media surfed on giant waves of peace & love. We drowned in it, suffocated, strangled, choked and nothing could stop it. We were like geese stuffed to make foie gras. You would think the entire French population that would normally be reeling from an unending series of attacks and atrocities (I don’t have time or space to list the “minor” incidents that have occurred over the past month) has only one wish in its collective mind: Christian-Muslim communion. Correspondents stood in front of little churches, big mosques, majestic cathedrals, swooning over fraternity in the pulpit, in the congregation, on the doorsteps, and in the churchyards. Muslim and Christian spokesmen stood shoulder to shoulder, outdoing each other in interfaith devotion, overflowing with kindness in their hearts and in their places of worship. Some Catholic clergy went as far as merciful forgiveness for the executioners.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Turtle dove reporters cooed over the presence of “many” Muslims in the cathedral but the camera didn’t find the right angle to prove the point. A bit of truth slipped into an article in the Journal du Dimanche: the Christians at Ste. Thérèse Church in St. Etienne du Vouvray didn’t quite make it into the neighboring Yahya mosque for Friday prayers as planned. They were put off by “all those women in long black robes and the men with long beards.” The service was led by Abdellatif Hmito, the imam from Oissel, known for his eloquence in French, in the absence of the mosque’s regularly officiating imam, who does not speak French at all.

Adel Kermiche was the black sheep of a respectable family. His older sister is a surgeon, all his siblings have degrees and successful careers. His mother is a teacher. There has been no mention of a father. Though the family does not worship at the mosque, the mother sought help for her radicalized son. Mosque president, Mohammed Karabila, regrets that he had to curtail his deradicalization efforts because of a lack of subsidies.

My dear friend Nidra is a respected French journalist, commentator and novelist and has sent updates and commentary and reporting from France….in the belly of the terrorist beast….rsk

Prior To Attack, Adel Kermiche, Killer Of French Priest, Wrote On Social Media: ‘In A Very Short While… There Will Be Big Things [i.e. News] On This Page’

From MEMRI, our goldmine of information, ample details about the social media production of Adel Kermiche. I have seen none of this information in French media. Kermiche used various noms de plume, including Abu Jayyed, for his accounts. Since June, the real Abu Jayyed has been running a program called “Jihad from A to Z” on the Telegram channel. It’s on the model of advice to the lovelorn…but aimed at the jihad fighter seeking clarification, for example, of the rules of combat. Well, our real Abu Jayyed recently announced that he was giving classes at the St. Etienne du Rouvray mosque!

Did you even think to wonder who is the St. Etienne of the sorrowful Normandy church? I just learned, from Edouard Tertreau in le Figaro, that Saint Etienne (Stefanos or Stephen), who was Jewish, is the first Christian martyr. I can’t find his Hebrew name. [http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2016/07/27/31001-20160727ARTFIG00272-face-aux-mecreantsde-daech-l-heure-du-devoir-pour-l-islam-de-france.php

According to l’Annuaire chrétien, [http://www.annuairechretien.com/etudes/0217-etienne-le-premier-martyre.php] St. Etienne is known for his vigorous efforts to prevent the backsliding of early Christians into Judaism. “He announced the end of the ‘old alliance,’ insisting on the difference between Judaism and Christianity, making impossible all compromising between the church and the synagogue.” So here we are, in a Normandy town with 2000 years of history in our hands!

And speaking of shameful compromising, here’s another admirer of Marion Maréchal Le Pen, la petite chérie of her grandfather who was, among other compromissions, a close friend of Saddam Hussein. The article ends with the bit about the killers “giving a sermon at the altar” before slaughtering the priest. Could Ruthfully Yours be the only English-language outlet that says they took an oath? Oath, as in oath to the caliphate? http://www.meforum.org/blog/2016/07/france-lepen-we-must-kill-islamism .

DEBATE

The government pursues its rear guard combat against the Opposition. But PM Valls did finally concede that it was a mistake to let Adel Kermiche out on parole. If the Le Pens, Aunt & Niece, were the only ones identifying the enemy and calling for résistance, I suppose the president and his allies would direct all their rebuttals against the Front National.

On the contrary. The report of the bipartisan Parliamentary Commission investigating the November 13th massacre was made public just before the Nice attack. It concludes with concrete proposals for improved security. Dismissed with hardly a blink by the Prime Minister and Interior Minister at the time, the proposals are snapping back with renewed punch today.

Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the parliamentary opposition (Les Républicains) outlined his vision in a full page interview with le Monde, July 28, 2016

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..

Adel Kermiche made his first attempt to join the caliphate in March 2015. Alerted by his family, authorities picked him up in Germany and sent him back to France where he was placed under surveillance. In May 2015, he left again, this time using his cousin’s ID. He was picked up in Turkey, sent back to France via Geneva , and placed in detention awaiting trial on terrorist charges. He reportedly shared a cell with a 32 year-old Salafist. In early March 2016 the investigating judge responded favorably to his request for parole. The higher judicial authority objected, a 3-magistrate appeals panel overruled the authorities and released him on parole with the array of restrictions and requirements detailed above. (correction: he only had to report to the police once a week, not every day.)

One could write in advance the first reports about this jihad attack or the next one. The perpetrator(s) is always a nice guy, maybe a bit rough around the edges but friendly, likes music and partying. Nothing but absolutely really I mean completely totally nothing would have even slightly hinted that he might commit such untold violence. He wasn’t even religious! N.B. Islam is a religion of peace, has nothing to do with jihad, sharia, throat-slitting and other mass murders. But the sign that the suspect wasn’t suspicious is…he wasn’t religious. And what happens, two days later, when reporters get to the ‘hood? A year ago or two years ago, x changed. Grew a beard. Talked about nothing but jihad, sharia, Daesh, the koran, hung around the mosque, acted scary.

The second church killer is almost identified. They say it took this long to verify his identity because his facial features were obliterated by commando gunfire, he has never been fingerprinted because he has no criminal record. Though he was flagged as a security risk. Described as “brilliant,” he just earned his baccalauréat degree in business. He was living with his family in Aix les Bains. His mother swears he is not a terrorist but for some reason the specialized terrorist unit had been frantically trying to locate him a few days before the church attack. The “wanted” bulletins described him as dangerous and likely to go into action. Imminently. He left home on Monday, telling his mother he was going to visit a cousin in Nancy. Called home on the eve of the church slaughter. Then nothing. Named by sources as Abdel Malik P. he is probably the accomplice seen in a video testament sent by the pair to the Daesh agency (AMAQ) and proudly displayed.

Debate, as I said yesterday, is raging, and everything that can be said within the limits of decency is being said. The government is on the defensive, inside information is spilling out on all sides, the president, the PM, and the Interior Minister go from TV studios to church services to stand-up declarations in front of their palatial ministries but nothing will stem the tide.

UPDATE MIDNIGHT

The correct spelling of the killer’s name is: Adel Kermiche.

Precisions on the judicial structure: for the past 30 years, all cases involving terrorism are theoretically handled by a specialized anti-terrorism section in which all the personnel, judges, magistrates, investigating judges, and the Procureur (prosecutor) are theoretically expert at handling these cases. The parquet, then, would be the chamber of the Procureur de Paris, François Molins, that opposed the liberation of Adel Kermiche.

But let us not get into the complexities of the French judicial system. And let us agree that “terrorism,” meaning jihad, is a challenge to all our democracies.

Debate is raging today and will continue to generate a mixture of light and noise for many days to come. All opinions, within the limits of decency, are aired. The government defends its position, its decisions, its management and leadership from top to bottom. Every proposal for strict measures and more rigorous application of those that already exist is rejected as an insult to the Constitution. The opposition is accused of grandstanding, flexing its muscles and bellowing out war cries, ignoring the values of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Le vivre ensemble [getting along together…but it really means getting along with Muslims]is constantly set forth as a kind of ultimate value that we must protect at all costs. All sorts of vague projects are attributed to Daesh and its ilk. They want to create divisions in our society, turn us against Muslims, spoil our diversity, provoke a religious war, make us relinquish our democratic principles and become autocratic and violent like they are.

Marine Le Pen said: they don’t want to divide us, they want to kill us

UPDATE 3:30PM
A third person has been taken into custody. No further information on his identity but this is presumably the person that was picked up near the church right after the attack.
Precisions on the informally identified killer:
According to la Tribune de Genève, A.K. the 19 year-old Frenchman involved in the church attack, was arrested at Geneva airport on May 14, 2015, after he was sent back from Turkey. He had made two unsuccessful attempts to reach Syria, first via Munich, then via Geneva. He spent a few days in prison there before being extradited to France.
BACKGROUND
The Interior Ministry is currently embroiled in controversy about security, or its absence, at the site of the July 14th fireworks display in Nice, that ended with the murderous attack by a jihadist at the wheels of a 19-ton truck.
Sandra Bertin, a municipal police officer in charge, that fateful evening, of monitoring CCTV images claims the was pressured by someone from the Interior Ministry to falsify her report, by indicating that the better-trained better-armed national police were guarding the entry to the closed zone of the Promenade des Anglais. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who denies the accusation, is suing her for libel. The policewoman has not backed down. Libération daily published video allegedly showing that no national police were at the entry point, and the police cars that supposedly blocked traffic on the Promenade were in fact lined up along the road, not parked horizontally to physically block traffic.
The municipality refused a demand by government officials to erase all its CCTV images for the 24 hours surrounding the attack. (Copies of those images were already in government hands.)
Calls for stricter measures from the parliamentary opposition, les Républicains, are systematically dismissed by the government as playing politics. Journalists seem to like this scenario because they repeat it constantly to fill in the gaps in new developments and information. The Républicain primary will be held next fall so, wink wink, the various candidates want to show how tough they are.
The Front National curses both houses, blaming them for disastrous policies over the past 30 years.
Former president and future hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy enjoins the government to implement proposals his party has made for improved security. François Hollande says we are at war, Nicolas Sarkozy says we are at war: they don’t mean the same thing and don’t propose the same measures: Hollande raises constitutional arguments to oppose Sarkozy’s demand for administrative detention of flagged terror suspects. The president is convoking representatives of “all” confessions to make an umpteenth show of unity in the face of diversity.
Meanwhile, the annual festive Paris Plages operation is underway on the banks of the Seine. Last year’s invited “beach,” Tel Aviv on the Seine, provoked controversy, placated by authorization of a Gaza beach, animated by the BDS movement, right next to the Tel Aviv sector. This year the guest is Jasmin Beach, and the beachfront city of Sousse is honored. No protests, no complaints. The jihad truck driver came from M’kasen, a hotbed of Islamism a short drive from Sousse where 38 infidels were gunned down on the beach not long ago.
Daesh has threatened the same treatment for French beaches.
French churches had been warned that they were a target.
UPDATE 17:10
One of the nuns that was in the church when the killers arrived testified on BFM TV:
The killers recorded the whole scene. They forced the priest to kneel, they pronounced what seemed like a ceremonial in Arabic. When they started to slit his throat, she escaped, and notified the police.
According to some official sources, they arrived “quickly”…within 20 minutes.
N.B. Hollande says we are at war, meaning in Syria and Iraq. Sarkozy includes France. There’s the difference. The opposition is calling for a quasi-military domestic response to a war that the government is treating as a criminal affair.
One of the proposals made by the opposition and rejected by the governing party last week was to prohibit early release (for good behavior?) or parole of prisoners sentenced for terrorist acts or plots. Prison terms in France are generally reduced by one half. The prisons are overcrowded!

It may not be crafted by the media that encourage it, it’s not the fault of the kind souls that pour out their hearts in flowers and candles at each mass murder, but together they compose a distressing symbolic discourse.

How many flowers would it take to stifle the screams of a child in his stroller targeted by a man at the wheel of a 19-ton truck? “Même pas peur [not even scared],” is the slogan of the improvised memorials but we saw terrified people running in all directions when the truck attacked on the Promenade des Anglais. They hid in restaurants and ducked under the waters of the sea. Unverified whispers say some of the victims were crushed in the stampede.

Backtracking on the promised termination of the state of emergency the president hastily vowed to extend it as mournful Parisians trekked back to Place de la République, to lay flowers and peace & love messages at the feet of the Marianne statue sullied with hateful graffiti after three months of occupation by the Nuits Debout.

This softly floral reaction is not engineered by the media but it is blessed to the exclusion of more sober more combative emotions. A motorcyclist tried to stop the massacre with his bare hands. It’s not a rumor, it’s a fact attested by authentic video footage of the man hanging on to the door of the murderous truck. Did anyone try to identify this hero killed in battle? Or still alive? Would they even want to contemplate his courage, congratulate him posthumously for his gesture? [update July 21: the hero did go public with an account of his exploit]. At the other extremity and at the very bottom of the scale of human qualities crouches the recipient of a text message sent just before the attack: “Bring more weapons.”

So which is it? Did Bouhlel have one or several accomplices, or was his plan to fool the police into thinking the truck atrocity was the first event in a multiple-stage massacre? A 13th of November for the sunny South.

In fact, suspected accomplices are currently detained. Newscasters dutifully convey the information… with words as gentle as a rose petal, as if the truth could startle a tender congregation immersed in tears and compassion. For once, authorities state the naked radical Islamic truth of the atrocity, but commentators prefer to focus on the killer’s psychological problem, as if Daesh soldiers passed tough exams like cadets at St. Cyr Military Academy. They recite ad nauseam the rosary of signs of non-compliance, as if the fact that Bouhlel didn’t go to the mosque could resuscitate the dead. Or acquit Islam. Pitiful ignorance! Don’t they know that totalitarian movements always enlist thugs? Bouhlel was not a good Muslim, they repeat, citing pork, alcohol, sex, and salsa.

This text, commissioned by the online revue Midah, was published in Hebrew translation on July 16, 2016]

The 14 juillet National Holiday fireworks were over, the horror began in Nice. A 19-ton semi-trailer truck went around the barrier and barreled down the famous beachfront Promenade des Anglais. The monster truck drove 2 kilometers, zigzagging to make direct hits, deliberately picking off babies in their strollers, before the driver was stopped in a shootout with police. At this writing the toll stands at 84 dead; 50, including 10 children, with life threatening injuries; and 150, including 54 children, less seriously injured. The mass murderer has been identified as a 31 year-old Tunisian, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, living in Nice on a residence permit, recently licensed to drive big trucks, father of three, separated from his wife since 2014. Bouhlel’s criminal record, including assault and battery, theft, and domestic violence, dates back to 2010, one year after he was granted a 10-year residence permit. He is under a restraining order obtained by his wife who has sued for divorce. He is described by several of his neighbors as a mean loner, with the exception of one who found him to be a nice guy, not at all religious, didn’t say his prayers, liked to dance the salsa and go out with the chicks.

On March 24th, Bouhlel was given a six-month suspended sentence for assaulting a motorist who had asked him to move his truck that was blocking traffic. The victim, Jean-Baptiste Ximenes, posted on Facebook his indignation that the man who had violently beaten him with a baseball bat, was left free…to commit mass murder.

An irascible young Tunisian armed with a 19-ton truck killed more than 80 civilians and the toll is expected to rise. In the truck he rented on July 11th –and was supposed to return on the 13th– Bouhlel was carrying two fake machine guns, a pierced grenade, a fake handgun and a real one that he used in the final shootout with the police. The death toll of the November 13th jihad attacks at the Bataclan, sidewalk cafés, and stadium in Paris is 130. That operation, masterminded from Syria, involved dozens of fighters trained in the caliphate or handling logistics in Europe. They traveled by complicated routes, some joined the “refugees” in Greece and snaked up to Belgium with them, probably recruiting a few shahids in the lot. They had safe houses, false passports, money, weapons, ammunition, explosive vests … Vastly disproportionate weapons and planning, give ghastly similar results Eighty-four dead, fifty maimed for life, the blue waters of the Côte d’Azur trembling with horror and outrage; 130 dead, countless maimed and marked for life, Parisian joie de vivre stunned….

But all of that may be nothing compared to what is coming next. Only the other day Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned that the “terrorists” might switch from “suicide” attacks to other methods like truck bombs and IEDS. The root motivation that inspires these mass killings passes through myriad disparate channels and achieves significant results. The focus on anecdotal details obscures that single source and delays our understanding of the war waged on the free world. It must be granted that the Hollande government, ineffectual as it may be, did not call for stricter control of semi-trailer truck rentals in the wake of the Nice attack. The investigation was handed over to Paris Prosecutor François Molins, and classified as a terrorist attack committed in collusion with a terrorist organization. In his first public declaration Molins explained: whether or not Bouhlel was in direct contact with Daesh, his heinous act responds to instructions given by the organization. Subsequently PM Manuel Valls maintained that Bouhlel was in fact connected to a radical Islamic movement.