RUTHFULLY YOURS

Europe has voluntarily begun the process of giving up its liberal and hard-fought-for freedoms. Free speech no longer exists, only — straight out of totalitarian ideologies — “responsible” free speech: “free” only if it does not “offend” anyone.

The desire of many Europeans and other self-declared devotees of “human rights” to cover up, downplay or explain away what is happening in Europe, in fact represents the opposite of respect for others and equality before the law.

Absolving such criminal behavior is not only the very opposite of justice, it is also a kind of “inverted racism” — against its own native Europeans.

The statistics in other countries are similar. In 2014, Jews in Europe were murdered, raped, beaten, stalked, and chased, for being Jewish. Signs in the street read, “Sale Juif” (“dirty Jew”), “Death to the Jews,” and “Jews to the gas.” None of these side effects of Muslim immigration seems to concern the liberals, the media, or the purported defenders of human rights — who so loudly claim to be against “racism.” Or, once again in Europe, does “racism” not include Jews?

After the mass sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in the European cities of Cologne, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Bielefeld, Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Vienna, Salzburg, Zürich, Helsinki and Kalmar, it is clear that something profoundly disturbing has occurred in Europe. By Sunday, in Cologne alone, 516 women had filed criminal charges — around 40% of them relating to sexual assaults.

The initial reactions to the sexual assaults from German authorities, the media, as well as feminists and others have not been less disturbing.

The German police first claimed, in a surreal statement the morning of Jan. 1, that the situation on New Year’s Eve had been “relaxed.” Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers later admitted “this initial statement was incorrect” and, for his role in what appeared as a cover up, has since been forced into early retirement.

“Cultural enrichment” has brought us a new word: Taharrush. Remember it well, because we are going to have to deal with it a lot. Taharrush is the Arabic word for the phenomenon whereby women are encircled by groups of men and sexually harassed, assaulted, groped, raped. After the Cologne taharrush on New Year’s Eve, many German women bought pepper spray. Who can blame them?

A culture that has a specific word for sexual assaults of women by groups of men is a danger to all women. The existence of the word indicates that the phenomenon is widespread. Frau Merkel, Prime Minister Rutte and all the other open-door politicians could and should have known this.

The Islamic world is steeped in misogyny. The Koran explicitly states that a woman is worth only half a man (Suras 2: 228, 2: 282, 4:11), that women are unclean (5:6), and that a man can have sex with his wife whenever he wants (24:31). The Koran even says that men are allowed to have sex slaves (4:24), and that they have the right to rape women whom they have captured (24:31).

The hadiths, the descriptions of the life of Muhammad, the ideal human being whose example all the Islamic faithful must follow, confirm that women are sex objects, that they are inferior beings like dogs and donkeys, and that there is nothing wrong with sexual slavery and raping female prisoners.

At this point, it’s a sad joke — a form of gallows humor shared in times of trouble. When there’s a shooting, and the hours tick by without any identification of the suspect, one can presume that it’s a jihadist. When there’s a riot in Europe, and the perpetrators are described as “youths,” one can presume it’s Muslim men. When an Islamist goes on a shooting spree or stabbing spree or beheads a coworker, authorities will latch onto any explanation but the obvious.

But now even gallows humor is inappropriate. Western denial of Islamic crimes is so common, so systematic, that we can no longer have any confidence that we understand the true dimensions of the jihadist threat. Consider the following:

In Germany, police actively “tried to obfuscate” what happened on New Year’s Eve, when thousands of Muslim men systematically sexually assaulted hundreds of German women — an act that my colleague Andrew McCarthy has aptly termed a “rape jihad.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that Swedish authorities now stand accused of covering up a wave of sexual assaults at a concert last summer. A Swedish newspaper wrote today that national media refused at the time to report factual accounts from the concert assaults, claiming they were nothing but far-right “propaganda.”

A preview by Benghazi security officer Kris “Tanto” Paronto of 13 Hours, the block-buster Michael Bay film that premieres on Thursday, raises dramatic new questions about the refusal by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to authorize a military rescue of the besieged U.S. diplomatic facility and the nearby CIA Annex on Sept 11-12, 2012.

In a presentation at a conference organized by the Maryland Citizen Action Network last weekend, Paronto revealed that two AC-130H “Spectre” gunships were “on call” that night, both within range of Benghazi.

One of them was a six-hour flight away, co-located with a U.S. special operations team in Djibouti.

The other was at Naval Air Station Sigonella, in Sicily. “That’s a 45-minute flight,” Paronto said.

The Spectre gunship with its 25mm rapid-fire gatling guns, its 40 mm precision Bofors gun, and its 105mm canon is “good in urban warfare because you have little collateral damage,” Paronto explained.

In fact, it was just what the beleaguered security team needed. They could see the jihadis advancing on the Annex compound throughout the night and lit them up with lasers, which the airborne crew could have used for precision targeting purposes. On-line videos of the Spectre gunship in operation show that it can walk its cannons up narrow streets, killing fighters while leaving the surrounding buildings intact and people inside them unharmed.

The hype for the last State of the Union address had been building for months. There was a countdown, special Muslim guest stars and a pre-show featuring a mediocre indie band and Joe Biden.

And all Iran had to do to steal the show was take two Navy boats and ten sailors hostage.

Then, when Obama puffed out his chest and declared, “No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin”, it took good manners not to laugh.

That would come as news to Iran which three days ago fired rockets near the USS Harry S Truman and then decided to seize two American naval vessels, or to North Korea, which celebrated the State of the Union early with a major nuclear test, or to China, which threatened us with war in October.

Never mind Russia, which invaded and annexed part of one of our allies. Or all the Islamic terrorists.