According to a report in le Figaro the UN is disturbed by a fatwa from the Caliphate ordering excision (genital mutilation) for all women. Don’t expect the world’s cameras to take positions inside the clinics—or above dirty blankets spread on the ground—to witness the mutilation of a potential 4 million victims. Unless and until Western media, civil rights organizations, thinkers and governments understand that this fatwa will spread like the jihad conquest of the Middle Ages and put the knife to the cherished sexual freedom of the free world, there will be no peace worthy of the name. Not in the Middle East, not in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo.
From the general to the particular: there was no cluster of journalists in front of the Pitzman restaurant Thursday morning. No visible police presence either. On the surface, everything was back to normal. I stopped by to verify the information heard that morning on Radio J, one of the best Jewish radio stations broadcasting from Paris. Yes, that’s how it happened. About 40 men apparently split off from the “good-natured” demonstration that dispersed at les Invalides on Wednesday and headed for the restaurant. Warned by someone who saw them running down the rue de Rivoli, the personnel lowered the metal shutter that protects the front door. The windows are bullet-proof. I asked how much time they had to batten the hatches. “Two minutes.”
The restaurant was filled. Diners could hear the raucous cries for Jewish blood as the assailants hammered the shutter with iron bars and baseball bats and tried to pry it open. One of the owners slipped out the back and came out through the synagogue where he was able to rescue two Jews trembling in fear.
Think of it: if or when these Jews make Aliyah and the young men don the uniform of the Israeli Defense Forces, they will become the heartless monsters portrayed in the soap opera that has been running successfully for 14 years. They will not cower, they will not wait for French riot police. They will defend themselves. And the media, and this and that human rights league, and the UN, and the pro-Hamas proto-caliphaters will deplore their use of “disproportionate force.” Supplications will mount to the high heavens. Ceasefire! Immediate ceasefire. Humanitarian ceasefire.
The crash of an Air Algérie plane on its way from Ouagadougou to Algiers and points north with 54 French citizens on board was a coincidence, unrelated to the FAA ban on flights to and from Israel. There is no reason to believe that the passengers tragically killed on that flight would have gone to Tel Aviv instead. That would be ridiculous. So there is no reason to believe that the city of Paris decided to repair the botched paving on the rue des Rosiers this very week, when the heart of the old Jewish quarter is the target of those “good-natured pro-Palestinian demonstrators.”
The Christians of Mosul had 24 hours, the infidels of the West have a bit more time.
The just and merciful caliph gave the Christians of Mosul 24 hours to convert, leave, or die. The payment of the jizya (= dhimmitude) option, initially included in the multiple choice injunction, was withdrawn. A church dating back 1800 years, before the advent of Islam, was burned to the ground before the Christians left. The infidels of the West were too busy decrying the “massacre” in Gaza to ask for whom the bell tolls.
Ali Khamenei proposes the elimination of Israel by referendum. Former French MFA Dominique de Villepin thinks an imposed peace plan enforced by UN peacekeepers would do the trick. Hamas leaders, safely hunkered down in tunnels or abroad, exult in victory. Western media launch lethal narratives from morning to night and Jews look for the nearest shelter. Israel’s bosom buddy, the United States of America, wants an imposed ceasefire, presumably before joining in on an imposed peace plan, while slapping a brief but telling blockade on air travel to and from Israel. Did you get the message, haverim? Do unto the blockaders as they do unto Gaza.
In the aftermath of the shocking violence unleashed last weekend in Barbès and Sarcelles, benevolent French judges smiled upon the meager handful of culprits who were arrested after the Barbès operation. Suspended sentences of 4, 6, or 10 months were handed down like feeding candy to the wolves. The justice ministry has exercised its right to appeal these lenient sentences. Those arrested for mayhem in Sarcelles will theoretically go to jail, but perhaps not. Short sentences rarely lead to actual imprisonment here. It’s hard to prove that a given actor in an enraged mob actually committed this or that infraction. And it’s hard to have confidence in the government when thousands of punk jihadis show up for a banned demonstration and are not immediately dispersed. All the more so when a political party, the anti-capitalist NPA formerly led by the phony mailman Besancenot, brazenly maintains its call to demonstrate.
62% of French people polled said the pro-Palestinian demonstrations should be banned. But who’s listening?
Under pressure from interested parties, the Hollande government decided to authorize demonstrations on the 23rd and 26th of July… because every possible guarantee had been given by the organizers that there would be no débordements [literally, “overflow”]. The Communists had by then joined the NPA in fronting for the Brotherhood. Jean-Luc Mélenchon was there under the banner of the Front de Gauche that is part of the governing coalition, along with a handful of Socialist deputies. PM Manuel Valls had tried to stick to his guns. All last week he defended the ban, refuting claims that the ban was the cause of the violence. Note the lethal narrative: An authorized demonstration on July 13th replete with Death to the Jews culminates in attacks on synagogues. Therefore, demonstrations banned the following weekend yield 50 times more incitement and violence. Logical, n’est-ce pas? If I park in a no-parking zone and you tow my car away, it’s only to be expected that I will burn down the city hall and invite the assassination of the mayor.
It’s on all the lips, in all the media: burning Jewish shops in Sarcelles is anti-Semitic. PM Manuel Valls declared, in an excellent speech at the commemoration of the rafle du Vel d’Hiv [mass roundup of Parisian Jews in 1942], that anti-Semitism was trying to hide behind anti-Zionism. Florian Philippot, VP of the Front National (FN) accused the PM of promoting French self-hatred. Because he acknowledged the dishonor of Vichy France’s compliance with orders from the German occupation that resulted in the deportation of 76,000 Jews from France to the death camps; 2,000 returned alive. Valls added a long tribute to the honor of the Résistance and courageous French people who risked their lives to hide Jews. Why would Philippot, speaking for the party that was supposedly going to liberate France from Islamization, prefer to lash out at the PM than to condemn the Islamic thugs? Valls defended the decision to ban further pro-Palestinian demonstrations that deteriorated into attacks on synagogues, in the Marais where Jews had been rounded up and sent to the death camps, and on rue de la Roquette, not far from the Japy Gymnasium where Jews were held before being sent to the Vel d’Hiv. Making the junction between the dishonor of 1942 and the intolerable assaults of 2014, the PM accurately measured the level of the threat hanging over the French Republic today.
Why is the FN so skittish? Who is the blatantly pro-Putin anti-American FN trying to protect? At the other end of the political spectrum, aging militants from the NPA or even more obscure fringe groups pop up in the media to defend the right to demonstrate. While videos of the authorized July 13th operation are freely available to refute all apologetics, these gentlemen place the blame on a repressive government. By denying the right to demonstrate they kept us from providing our own security service that would have prevented these unfortunate marginal acts of violence [like you did when they rushed to the synagogues last week?] No journalists were on the TVscreen to question the rationality [sic] of this discourse thrown at the public like a rock. The balding apparatchik warns us: You have to understand their anger.
The other day, Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius flew to the Middle East with stops in Jordan, Egypt, and Israel, determined to impose an immediate ceasefire. He emerged, disappointed, from a half-hour conversation with Israeli PM Netanyahu. The French plan apparently is based on some kind of security guarantees that would reassure the Israeli government and convince it to lay down its arms and retreat, leaving Hamas victoriously intact. French forces can guarantee security at the Erez Crossing? Riot police in Paris can’t even thwart a crowd of 3,000 punk jihadis in Sarcelles! Dozens of police were wounded, a pitiful handful of assailants have been arrested, shops were looted and torched. French authorities cannot prevent an anti-communist party from defying a perfectly legal ban and leading violent attacks on French citizens, their property, and law enforcement.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/55180#.U8xixZD7uuk.yahoomail
Lethal Narratives
Many of you are drowning in floods of information, can’t keep up with your email correspondence, don’t have time to read the best compilations let alone the middling ones, not even time for the “must reads” sent by trusted sources… But I encourage you to buy and read my book, Al Dura: Long Range Ballistic Myth. It sheds original light on events that are turning our world upside down, with the Middle East as the pivot. While Israeli civilians run for the bunkers to escape the murderous intentions of Hamas rockets and Israeli soldiers confront Hamas mujahidin on their own territory in the confines of the Gaza Strip, “international opinion” has mobilized for another round of lethal narrative warfare. On the third day of an all-out Hamas offensive against Israeli civilians, the lethal narrative kicked in. Today it has reached the height of frenzy. And Western media have gone berserk, in step with the raging crowd.
Metula News Agency [Cessez-le-feu humanitaire (info # 022007/14) ] reports today that several journalists that wanted to leave Gaza were blocked at the Erez Crossing by Hamas operatives. Why? Might they fear that once outside Gaza, journalists would report the truth about what is happening there? Western media fervently defends the fighting forces of a jihad movement that would just as easily behead them as enslave them, but would never allow them to report freely as they are doing today. Even though they abuse that freedom, they enjoy it.
The question is not “why do they act against their own interests”? It’s like asking a gun why it shoots bullets at this or that target. A gun is a weapon in the hands of a gunman. The media, academia, international organizations, charities…the list is endless of entities and institutions that have become weapons of 21st century jihad conquest. Israel, a democratic nation, is the target of an all-out genocidal assault from the Hamas branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and one week after it mobilizes in self-defense, Kill-the-Jews stampedes are on the march worldwide, and the facts have disappeared from mass media. We are assailed by something that is not reportage. It is not biased, one-sided, twisted; it is non-existent, and it fills the eyes and ears for hours on end. It’s not news, not journalism, it’s lethal narrative. A weapon. And it works.
Kill-the-Jews stampede in Paris on July 13, 2014
My brief article published in Tablet http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/179169/anti-israel-protestors-attack-paris-synagogues was based on information available at the time. When the July 14th holiday weekend ended I started to receive eyewitness accounts from Web sites, Jewish radio, and my own sources. It became apparent that the original Agence France Presse release, used by outlets worldwide, was concocted in lethal narrative format. Now we have videos of the “demonstration” from start to middle to semi-finish at Place de la Bastille that reveal its true nature. It was not a peaceful gathering slightly tarnished by a few rowdies at the last minute. [annotated links to videos below] Distinguished members of the Jewish community who were in the synagogue, including the Chief Rabbi of France, testified to the violence of the attempted intrusion. A [bad] translation of a text by a member of the congregation is posted on Tablet.
Interviewed on radio Communauté Juive, a peace & love novelist, Valerie Zeccati, eloquently described the mobs that fanned out from the Bastille into the nearby Marais: they were filled with murderous rage, they wanted to kill, they were thrilled by their own blood lust, the masses of demonstrators applauded them as they ran screaming, “We’re going to smash the Jews!” The “imam” on the sound truck declared “No provocation, and segued to a resounding allahou akhbar followed by other blood lust cries.
Gaza-Israel: it doesn’t add up
English version of an article written in French
Israel, they say, harumph, has the right to defend itself, but… But not entirely. Both sides are asked to act with restraint. Not exactly both. Because the conflict is lopsided: 37 then 58, 102, and now more than 200 Palestinians killed. The vast majority, according to Palestinian sources, are civilians. Women, children and the elderly, to say nothing of the thousands of wounded. On the other side, zilch. That’s it, the stage is set, the lethal narrative has wheels and it’s going to be fueled daily, automatically, unapologetically.
How might Hamas act with restraint? Its goal is to kill all the Jews and occupy all the territory from the Jordan to the sea. Whereas the Israelis want zero dead, zero wounded, and the pursuit of a productive life in an intact nation. So what would restraint amount to? Hamas would kill half the Jewish Israelis? There is no justification for this cooking-the-books vision of a confrontation with worldwide ramifications: The frontier between civilization and savagery runs along the Gaza-Israel border.
The Israeli army could crush Hamas in the space of 24 hours, simply by disregarding the fate of civilians caught in the interstices of a war machine built instead of a decent place for living creatures. Israel doesn’t use its power that way.
If the heroic Iron Dome were struck with a malediction and all eight batteries suddenly went dead, if ever Hamas got the upper hand, the rockets launched from Gaza could quickly balance the books. Would that be okay? 200 victims on each side. A draw? The competing teams shake hands and go home happy to have played a good game? No. Hamas would pursue its genocidal enterprise without the slightest restraint. What would they say then? The president of the United States, his secretary of state, European leaders, the General Secretary of the United Nations, journalists and readers eager to comment on the “conflict.” If ever Israel became weak like the helpless people of Iraq or Nigeria, what would public opinion say? Sorry, guys. It turns out you should have hit the enemy with all your might. Contemporary public opinion has taken a strong stand on that old-fashioned genocide, the Shoah. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out: it was a terrible tragedy that is sincerely regretted Or almost.
Thirty-seven killed on the Palestinian side in the first days of the operation and nothing on the opposite team, how dare they? Genocide, dixit Mahmoud Abbas. From then on, every day has its lot of tribulations, the toll is rung up at the end of each newscast on channels all over the world, the proportion of civilians increases from many, to more than half, to almost all. Where do these figures come from? Palestinian sources. Who can verify them? Don’t bother. Every confrontation involving Israel uses the same accounting methods. A man who launches a rocket–from someone’s patio– aimed at civilians in Israel becomes, if hit by the counter-attack, a civilian. While all Israelis, all Jews, including the three students assassinated in June, are soldiers.
Anti-Israel Protesters Attack Paris Synagogues Congregants trapped in building as Bastille Day demonstration turns violent
Traditionally French people dance in the streets and fire stations on the eve of the Quatorze Juillet, known in English as Bastille Day. This year, however, anti-Israel demonstrators took control of the monument in the center of the Bastille circle Sunday, brandishing Palestinian flags and cardboard replicas of scimitars [1] and Kassam rockets. Described in AFP releases as a well-mannered demonstration except for a few incidents, it was in fact a hate-fest against Israel and the Jews. “Death to the Jews,” “Murderous Israel,” “One Jew Some Jews All Jews are Terrorists” figured loudly among the slogans [2] hurled by kefiyyeh-clad marchers.
According to the police, the 7,000 demonstrators (organizers claimed 30,000) began in the northern quartier of Barbès, which has a large African and Maghrebi population, and marched to the Bastille, where they remained for several hours. A small contingent started to attack the police, and was quickly brought under control. At the same time, hundreds of protesters raced up rue de la Roquette—street of the rocket—and surrounded [3] the Don Isaac Abravanel [4] synagogue, which is protected by a tall metal gate. Security guards from the SPCJ (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive), Beitar, and the Jewish Defense League faced assailants reportedly armed with knives, axes, and iron bars.
Five riot policemen stationed in front of the synagogue, where some 200 congregants happened to be attending a prayer service for Israel’s safety, were unable to handle the crowd. It took a half hour for reinforcements to arrive, and another two hours during which law enforcement combed the surrounding streets before members of the congregation were told it was safe to leave. The chief rabbi of Paris, Michel Guggenheim, was at the synagogue during the incident.
Another synagogue [5], on the rue des Tournelles near the Place des Vosges, was also targeted, though details of that incident have not yet emerged. Two weeks ago I attended a joyful ceremony there for the more than 1,500 French Jews making aliyah [6] this summer, in the presence of Natan and Avital Sharansky, as well as the Israeli ambassador to France and newly elected [7] chief rabbi of France Haim Korsia.
Jewish radio stations were abuzz Sunday evening and Monday with testimony from people who had been inside the synagogue and statements from Jewish community leaders. Mainstream media coverage, however, focused [8] largely on the 14 Juillet military parade, with the day’s “death to the Jews” chants neatly overlooked.
Roger Cukierman, the president of CRIF [9], the umbrella organization of French Jews, and Joël Mergui, president of the Consistoire [10], met with Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve yesterday, and asked for an outright ban on anti-Israel demonstrations due to their blatant disregard for law and order.
American banking authorities are threatening to slap a 10 billion dollar fine on France’s top bank, BNP Paribas, accused of handling transactions in dollars from 2002-9 for customers from Iran, Cuba, and Sudan, in violation of an American embargo. What does this have to do with the Front National? Would an anti-Islamization party be shocked by the Iranian ties of our flagship bank? Or perhaps the Front National, sworn enemy of Big Finance, will be pleased to see a money-grubbing bank get its fingers slapped and its stockholders deprived of one year’s dividends?
Probably not. Marine Le Pen accuses the United States of imposing sanctions to prevent French companies from trading with Iran the better to allow American companies to prepare a bright commercial future there. At the same time she accuses France of joining the US in a veritable war on Iran.
Aymeric Chauprade has been Marine Le Pen’s foreign policy advisor since she became party president in 2011. Elected this month EU deputy from the district that includes Paris, he is expected to pilot the Group that Le Pen is striving to put together. Chauprade is eminently presentable, handsomely academic, poised and soft-spoken. He calls himself a “dissident,” replacing the Soviet Union with oppressive Western democracies. His carefully constructed discourse has all the marks of the accomplished geostrategist with a solid academic background and broad international experience. Except that it veers off into riffs about the machinations of the “Atlantico-Zionist conspiracy” alternating with lyrical passages in praise of Vladimir Putin. As he spins his fascinating tale about the real forces at work in our world, the balance of power, the sources of conflict, the causes of violence, the historical realities—e.g. Islamic jihad and its scriptural foundations—are metamorphosed into marionettes manipulated by imperialist America.
Keeping in mind that Marine Le Pen needs 2 more allies to form a 7-nation Group at the European Parliament, we may justifiably extend our inquiry into the words and deeds of her foreign policy advisor, Aymeric Chauprade. To what extent are his policies acceptable to the leaders of the four parties already allied with the Front National—Geert Wilders, Harald Wilinsky, Gerald Annemans, and Matteo Salvini?
Revelations about the Front National are often but not always found in media that could be labeled “leftwing” or “anti-fascist.” The anti-jihad discourse adopted by Marine Le Pen at the beginning of her presidential campaign led to uncritical acceptance of the Front National by thinkers and activists concerned with the dangers of 21st century Islamic conquest. Many, if not the great majority of these people were awakened to this issue by the 9/11 jihad attack against the United States. They do not appreciate being rejected as right wing racist xenophobic Islamophobes. Is the triumph of the Front National good news for them?
I endured a seven-hour TV marathon yesterday, beginning with Marine Le Pen’s press conference at the EU Parliament press center in Brussels, hopping from station to station, from newscast to debate, and ending with a 2-hour documentary on the Front National.
The Press Conference: a triumphant Marine Le Pen at the center and in the lead, flanked by Geert Wilders (PVV Netherlands), Harald Wilimsky (FPÖ Austria), Gerald Annemans (Vlaams Belang, Belgium), and Mateo Salvini (Northern League, Italy). Certain that her victory in France’s European elections has radically changed the face of Europe—“nothing will ever be the same”—she is supremely confident that she’ll find the two missing nationalities to complete her group and exert a strong influence in the EU Parliament as in domestic politics. The prospect is appetizing: if she can form a 7-nation group, she’ll get an operating budget of as much as 4 million euros, plus countless privileges and facilities. It’s not exactly equivalent to a seat on the UN Security Council, it will have little or no effect on the sluggish workings of the EU Parliament, but it will be hard cash and a sounding board to boost her French presidential ambitions.
The press conference was—theoretically—broadcast on the all-news BFM TV… except that they slipped coverage as soon as Geert Wilders began to speak… in English. I zapped, finally caught up with the event on France 24 / English in time to hear the last words of Wilders’ contribution. Then Wilinsky started to speak in German. No translation. And I haven’t been able to find a video of the entire press conference online.
From what I can gather, Marine is the Leader, the guys played supporting roles. L’Express cites a telling remark by Matteo Salvini: he says he is perfectly comfortable with Marine Le Pen even though members of the [Italian] Jewish community told him if he sat with her he would be outside the limits of democracy.
As it happens, President François Hollande was also in Brussels yesterday for a meeting of the EU Council (scheduled well in advance, not a crisis meeting as Marine Le Pen gleefully claimed). Hollande, known for his inveterate optimism, used his party’s disastrous score as leverage to warn the EU that it must heed the message and address the grievances of European citizens. This is a logical conclusion to the Socialist party line during the brief, pale, and unprofitable campaign. The problem with the EU, they argued, is not essential it’s partisan. Dominated by conservative parties, it produces austerity, inequality, injustice. When Europe-wide voters send a left wing majority to the EU Parliament, the people will have the Europe they want and need.
Having outdone the major opposition party—UMP—and trounced the governing Socialists in last week’s European elections, Marine Le Pen went off to Brussels today, looking for allies. If she can form a block of at least 25 deputies representing seven different countries, she will drastically improve her chances to influence EU policy while sharing in the perks: funding, chauffeur-driven cars, offices, legislative privileges, etc. The Front National itself has 24 Eurodeputies; the problem is finding the 7 nations. More or less assured of her alliance with Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, the Austrian FPO, Belgium’s Vlams Blang, she is hard put to find the missing allies. Both UKIP and the Danish People’s Party have ruled out any alliance with the FN. On the other hand, Marine Le Pen can’t risk alliances with blatantly anti-Semitic antidemocratic parties like Golden Dawn, Jobbik, and other minor parties of similar persuasion.
What do committed and potential allies know about the Front National? Apparently not much. Marine Le Pen has pursued a forceful normalization strategy to rid the Front National of the sleazy image shaped by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen and upheld by party leaders and rank & file over the past 40 years since its founding. For some mysterious reason this window dressing has been respected by French media and gone unnoticed, with rare exceptions, in international media.
One of these exceptions, Gatestone Institute, links to Marine Le Pen’s foreign January 22nd foreign policy press conference, where she presents a superficially reasonable foreign policy and a seemingly brilliant advisor, Aymeric Chauprade, political scientist, author, professor, advisor, world traveler, and more. You don’t have to understand French to see how professional it looks. But you have to listen very carefully to Mme. Le Pen’s presentation to recognize the underlying values, affinities, logic, passion, and motives. (summarized in the Gatestone article http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4160/marine-le-pen-chauprade)
Does it have anything to do with the anti-jihad hopes pinned on the Front Natinal by well-informed thinkers with no hateful undertones? Does it have anything remotely concerned with the hopes of Europeans for relief from Eurabian oppression?
Rejection by Nigel Farage, head of Britain’s UKIP, and Morten Messerschmidt, lead candidate for the Danish People’s Party in the up-coming European elections effectively dashes Marine Le Pen’s hopes of presiding over an influential 7-country Eurexit group at the EU Parliament. The main issue is anti-Semitism.
While granting that National Front leader Marine Le Pen has shown courage and perspicacity on some crucial issues, Nigel Farage says she has failed to rid the party of its endemic anti-Semitism.
In a mail to Dispatch International, MEP Morten Messerschmidt writes that from the beginning he has distanced himself from theNational Front.
“As I read the party and its history, it has deep anti-Semitic roots. Regrettably it seems to attract support. This can only be explained by the fact that the other French parties have failed the French people, who only have the National Front to vote for if they want to express their criticism of the EU,” says Messerschmidt.
“At the election in 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy managed to appeal to EU-skeptical Frenchmen by criticizing the EU’s immigration policy and open borders. But today they have been forced into the arms of Le Pen. That is a bad omen for France and Europe. I will not cooperate with a party like the National Front,” says Morten Messerschmidt.
