RUTHFULLY YOURS

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was on official business in Morocco when informed of the jihad attack against a free speech meeting in Copenhagen. He immediately flew to Denmark where he joined his personal friend François Zimeray, French ambassador to Denmark. Zimeray, who attended the “Art, Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech” event at the Krudttønden Café organized in reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, put it succinctly: “I went to the meeting by bicycle and left in an armored car.”

All- news channels BFM TV and I Télé went into Special Edition, reporting on the attack non-stop from Saturday afternoon to Sunday night, and then some. Frequent zaps to other available stations—CNN, SkyNews, BBC, France24—yielded low to negligible interest in the story…aside from the BBC recording of Inna Shevchenko’s speech. The Ukrainian Femen, commenting on the current state of press freedom in the West, asked “Why do we say we have freedom of speech, but…?” As she repeated for emphasis the “freedom but” her words were brutally punctuated by the sharp crackle of gunfire.

Message N°1

When you witness an event like this, an expression of collective opinion and determination on a scale never seen in the nation’s history, you can’t simply dismiss it. Of course you can, you are free to dismiss it. But I don’t. And that’s based on what I saw and heard.

Message N°2

What explains the mobilization of 3.7 million people in France?

Media discourse has changed, government discourse has changed, measures are being taken. Why? In response to the will of the people. The Hollande government did not create this collective movement, it is trying to keep pace with it.

How many hundreds of thousands had never made the connection between jihadis who attack Jews and those who ram shoppers at a Christmas market, attack the London tube, or plot to blow up la Tour Eiffel? The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly made the connection for them.

Message N°3

I am still wondering how you can scoff at the millions of French people who stood up to be counted that day (the latest estimate is a total of 4.5 million), and look on Marine Le Pen with such benevolent respect.

We know what the perversions of antiracism have wrought. Is anti-jihad going to play the same tricks?

Nidra, is a superb journalist and novelist and dear friend who lives in the belly of the beast known as Paris. We usually agree on all critical issues so This is her take…… I said:

“The Parisian show of shows will accomplish no more than a five minute “warm feeling”…..rsk

Nidra’s response

I don’t think so, amiga. And I am certainly not gushing.The Arab” spring” showed its face immediately. There was no mystery, just mystification. This unprecedented show of hands and feet in Paris yesterday shows a face that was not visible over the past fourteen years.

When you witness an event like this, an expression of collective opinion and determination on a scale never seen in the nation’s history, you can’t simply dismiss it. Of course you can, you are free to dismiss it. But I don’t. And that’s based on what I saw and heard.

The Je Suis Charlie slogan is not a simple trendy message. It’s the slogan around which the movement developed, so people expressed it in those terms. If they held up posters saying “Je suis contre le jihad” it might have been closer to the truth of what sent them into the streets. For 14 years I have been puzzling over what seemed like passive or willing acceptance of Islamization. For 14 years I have been wondering how a nation could resist if there were no press freedom, no reliable reporting.

The answer was given yesterday. There would be a tipping point. Now the cards are on the table.

In the early hours of the Charlie massacre, journalists and commentators were saying that Marine Le Pen would reap the benefits. As it turns out, she didn’t. The most unpopular François Hollande pulled off something that switched attention from a major security failure to a spectacular popular demonstration of force.It can go either way. But it can’t go the same way it has been going.

I’m following it in detail, in all its nuance. I’ll report as always honestly and carefully.

Nidra

Clash of civilizations, star wars, the big bang, a certain idea of France was murdered in cold blood on January 7th. An allahu akhbar commando stormed into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, executed twelve people, wounded another twenty; four of them critically. It is painfully difficult to sort out nuggets of accurate information from the sound and fury that fills the airwaves and the streets of Paris. [12 noon, one minute of silence has been decreed by the government, outside my window I hear car horns furious at someone blocking the street, rumbling machines working on a nearby building, almost drowning out the dirge sounded by the church bell on the corner, icy rain pelts on hurried passersby…].

On September 20, 2000, a day after Yasser Arafat launched his war of terror, euphemized as the al-Aqsa intifada, state-owned France 2 Television broadcast a news report, filmed by a Palestinian cameraman, of the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian identified as Muhammad al-Dura. The dramatic voiceover commentary by the station’s longtime Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, described how the boy and his father Jamal were pinned down by Israeli gunfire at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. The father pleaded frantically with the soldiers to stop shooting, to no avail. “A last burst of gunfire,” intoned Enderlin, “the boy is dead, his father critically wounded.”

This event, which came to be known as the al-Dura affair, is the starting point for Nidra Poller’s 288 page intellectual journey, Al-Dura: Long Range Ballistic Myth.

Poller, an American writer based in Paris, traces the repeated attempts by the state-owned French television station to intimidate via legal measures anyone who publicly questioned the authenticity of the event. The French courtroom thus becomes the stage where an obvious fabrication, masquerading as earnest journalism, is transformed into an indisputable fact.

Although the repeated stifling of objectively sound criticism helped to reveal the true nature of French journalism, especially in its biased depiction of Israel, the damage caused by the original incident in Netzarim was already done and the results were deadly. Poller writes:

The bloodless images of Jamal and Muhammad al-Dura were instantly seared into the public mind. Distributed free of charge to international media, repeated endlessly like a raucous war cry, the Dura video provoked anti-Jewish violence in Israel and, on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, throughout Europe.

Nidra Poller

“Now look what they’ve done!” That sums up the reaction, in certain quarters, to the November 18th slaughter at Kehilat B’nei Torah. They who? Palestinians? Israeli Arabs? Terrorists? Mujahidin? Activists? Résistants? No. The Jews. Israel = the Jews, look at what they’ve done now. Will they never learn?

The massacre is condemned, that’s the first step. Then the condemnation makes a U-turn and aims at Israel. like one of those killer cars unleashed since… when? Since the Protective Border operation pushed back the all-out attack from Gaza, leaving Hamas with phony victory celebrations in the rubble and Israelis with a hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. The cease fire in Gaza was directly followed by a new double-pronged phase of the ongoing assault on Jews in their State: random assassinations and a “diplomatic” campaign to create a fake Palestinian State that can be used as a real weapon.

But that isn’t enough. Because there is something so atrocious about attacking men in prayer with a meat cleaver, knives, and a gun, there is something so unbearably eloquent in the sight of thick red blood on prayer books and tallit, there is something so barbaric about smashing into a synagogue to butcher pious rabbis, that certain commentators feel a need to defend themselves from accusations of bias. The campaign to create a cardboard Palestinian State is buffered by a communications offensive. Media coverage? It’s faultless, they say, and we are tired of your complaints. The creation of a Palestinian State by European parliamentary fiat is the appropriate response to “lone wolf” attacks by hopeless Palestinians, they opine, in unison with lawmakers, leaders, and anointed specialists. Extremists on both sides are spinning this political & territorial conflict into a religious war, they warn, and that must be nipped in the bud.

Russians are stupid. They should send Hamas fighters into the Ukraine: they’re undetectable.

Media attention has shifted from Gaza to the Ukraine where more than 2000 people have been killed since April. How many civilians, soldiers, children? No breakdown is deemed necessary. But the situation is troubling, Russia is accused of invading, economic sanctions are traded like gunfire, the image of pan-European peace is tarnished.

And then there is DAESH. The mother of kidnapped journalist Steven Sotloff appealed by video to the Caliph, begging for mercy, pleading with the Caliph not to punish her son for acts of a government over which he has no control. Declaring that she has learned much about Islam, she asks the Caliph to follow the example of the prophet Mohamed who protected the People of the Book. Similar appeals have been made in the past, many kept private, others made public. Is there a single example of one that was successful? Allow me to express my doubts. [September 2–Steven Sotloff was beheaded, as promised] What works is money, prisoner release, arms, safe passage. Not appeals for mercy, not misconceptions about Islam.

The Daily Mail reports that a guard from one of the prisons where James Foley had been held was executed the day after Foley was beheaded. Was Abu Ubaida Almaghribi really guilty of giving information to British intelligence or was John-the-knife pissed off because the Brits identified him so quickly?

Meanwhile, some journalists were still foaming at the mouth in Gaza. A recent issue of Libération fell into my hands the other day. After reading a human interest story from the ruins of Shujaiyeh, I had a fleeting thought of inviting the author, Luc Mathieu, to face me in an honest public debate. That’s probably as hopeless as the heartfelt plea from Sotloff’s mother. Mathieu’s double-page spread of bitter complaints against a background of rubble is a variation on the theme of “Why did they destroy my house? I’m not Hamas…” No one is Hamas, no Hamas fighters were anywhere in reach, no rocket launch pads were on the rooftop and no tunnel entrances at ground level. Well, ok, maybe a little tunnel entrance, but it’s no reason to bomb us to smithereens. The stink of putrefaction and the smell of raw hatred rise in crescendo, accusations mount skyward against the unfair air raids and land with disgusting details of desecration by Israeli soldiers bivouacked in the al Mghani home during the operation. They made a hole in the wall for their sniper, smashed up everything in the kitchen, left their excrements in the room with the birdcages… the cages are empty now. There is no attempt at verification, no other side of the story, no hard facts… it’s not journalism. It’s take my word for it because the victims are howling in pain. So what is it doing in a newspaper and what is its purpose? To fuel hatred of Israelis. And, since there aren’t so many of them here in France, Jews will do. The article ends with an implicit justification for future attacks. “Saïd” (who requested his real name not be used) says he tried to enlist in Hamas but was rejected because he doesn’t know how to shoot. The journalist asks Saïd’s 17 year-old son if he’d join up. “I have just one thing to say: look around, look at our houses bombed to rubble. You’ll understand what I’m going to do.”

The truth is hanging by a thread. Beheaded journalist’s father: “I didn’t know how brutal they were.”

This is what I wrote a month ago, in the first dispatch in this series:

“Western media fervently defend the fighting forces of a jihad movement that would just as easily behead them as enslave them but would never ever allow them to report freely as they are doing today. Even though they abuse that freedom, they enjoy it.”

This week we were treated to the stark beheading video of American reporter James Foley. It is normal that the bereaved family would pay tribute to Foley’s courage maintained “up to the last minute.” He was on his knees. His last words were an indictment of his native land for conducting offensive air strikes against the Caliphate. It is fair to assume that if he had stood tall and faced the man who was preparing to saw off his head the video would not have been broadcast. If he had tried to wrest the knife out of the hands of his executioner we would never have known. Only videos of submissive victims are offered for the world’s contemplation.

That’s Da’esh [I don’t use ISIS or IS, I call them what they call themselves]. In another frame, in Gaza, we have surly black-hooded Hamas executioners pushing around some pathetic men accused of collaborating with the Israelis and shot on the spot. The condemned have what looks like paper bags on their heads.

The truth hangs by a thread from Da’esh to Hamas. But the journalists, who could find themselves one day on their knees, mouthing accusations, ready for beheading, won’t make the connection. They are already parroting the words of their eventual captors. Western journalists in Gaza, submissive to Hamas, report on the summary executions with eerie approval. For example, Ian Lee for CNN. Yup! Collaborating in wartime is serious business. Some of the executions were public. Hmph! It’s a warning to anyone that might think of giving information to the Israelis.

In Paris as in Gaza, human shields are the way to go!

Journal du dimanche correspondent Paul Guyonnet, reporting from the 5,000-strong banned demonstration at Place de la République on Saturday July 26 noted, at 5 PM: “Many peaceful pro-Palestinians have left the Square despite pressure from the more virulent, who tried to block their way.” The JDD reporter says the prayer session [that other sources place at the beginning of the rally] called by an imam at 6:30 PM, magically calmed the assembled mass.
Shortly afterward the violence resumed as punk jihadis pelted riot police with fire bombs, stones, paper bags filled with broken glass, and the rest of their standard arsenal.
A video by Guy Sauvage embedded in an editorial on the site of Riposte Laïque shows the early stages of the demonstration: http://ripostelaique.com/
Here is the best footage I’ve seen so far of the insurrectional climax – LTL News.
Talk about misreporting—mainstream journalists who were on the spot when these videos were shot somehow managed to estimate the unruly element at three to five hundred. It looks more like one thousand to me. This selective tally is part of the narrative. The demonstration is always good-natured, the violence is always on the edges, never in the center, always disconnected never an integral part, necessarily paradoxical not squarely in the logic of everything that went before, and committed by a minority rejected by the good-natured majority.
Guyonnet tweeted this slogan, “Hamas résistance, jihad résistance” @Pauluskupa

What is “jihad résistance?” Might it be this exhibition of severed heads on stakes, posted by Walid Shoebat? Does it include the destruction of Jonah’s tomb in Mosul? The planned Rosh Hashanah massacre in southern Israel? The murder of four civilians at the Jewish Museum in Brussels? Public executions in the squares of Iraqi cities and towns brought under the black flag of the Caliphate? Is that the “jihad résistance” these people are preparing for us? France, a nation so proud of its Résistance to the brutal Nazi occupation now stands down as the Hamas/jihad résistance violates the Marianne, symbol of the République. Unopposed, this neo-résistance would deliver us into the hands of the Caliphate.
Where is the Front National when Islam assaults the Republic?

5,000 attend banned demonstration Place de la République (see my earlier post here with photos.)

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve set forth, in a solemn address to the nation, a severe warning to organizers and potential demonstrators. The right to demonstrate is indeed respected in France. Over 60 demonstrations of support for the Palestinians have been held in France, only 5 have been banned. The ban is based on a thorough examination of all available evidence from social media and other sources. The risk of disturbing the peace is too great. The organizers have not given convincing proof of their ability to control the crowd. The ban was upheld by the court. It is the law of the land. We cannot tolerate expressions of anti-Semitism masked in support for Palestinians. Synagogues were attacked, Jewish property was destroyed, public property was smashed and riot police were attacked.

Approximately one half hour later the crowd started to gather at Place de la République. By 3 PM it was estimated at 3,000 and at the height of the demonstration, at 5,000. Journalists tweeted, cameramen filmed, riot police stood firm, and nobody rounded up the lawbreakers and carted them away. As the story always goes, it started out as a good-natured gathering, lots of women and children, nothing objectionable, well almost nothing. A jihad flag is clearly visible at the foot of the monument to the République alongside the “moderate” Palestinian flag. Israel was called dirty names. The media were accused of pro-Israel bias. You have to understand jihad to know that these guys are dead serious.

Unless you present their Islamically pure version, unless you display the same slogans, repeat the same war cries, show the same hatred as they demonstrate, you are a pro-Zionist puppet. Prime Minister Valls is capped with a kippa, President Hollande waves an Israeli flag. As the afternoon wore on journalists were kicked, threatened, pushed around. Mike and camera were grabbed away from an I-Télé crew.

That was the good-natured part of the demonstration. It went on for about two hours and, surprise, as it was dispersing, some 500 (maybe it was more like a thousand?) tough guys started to attack the police. A rumor reportedly triggered the change in temper—the Jewish Defense League was on its way. Or already there. In which case it would be logical to attack the police, don’t you see?

The battle went on for two hours. The security detachment provided by the organizers was a pushover. The usual smashing was enjoyed by all. Teargas filled the square. It is reported that 50 people were pulled aside and about 30 of them actually detained.

The police surrounded the mob, pushing them gradually…to the metro station. Yes, that is how it was described. They evacuated the smashers by sending them into the metro station. And on their merry way.