RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272907/dealing-europes-isis-returnees-bruce-bawer

“Seven hundred German citizens have gone to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. It’s not what they’re doing over there that scares us. It’s what happens when they come back.”
– Astrid, German intelligence officer, Homeland, season 5, episode 2.

Now that ISIS has been reduced from a caliphate to a cipher, the question arises: what to do with its former members who traveled from the West in order to crush the West – and who remain in the hands of the U.S. military and its local allies? Ship them all to Guantánamo so that the European media can paint them as victims of American abuse? Set them free to fight another day?

Early on Sunday morning, President Trump addressed this issue on Twitter. He wrote:

The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them….

….The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much – Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/19/no-female-isis-members-not-get-free-tickets-back-civilization/

Superficially, the father of the ISIS bride interviewed by the BBC might seem like any other father grieving for his daughter. In a typical softball BBC interview, breaking down in tears he said the British state should ensure that this woman safely comes back to British land.

Not only that, he said, the government shouldn’t prosecute or jail her, because she’s arguably a youthful teen who made a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes. The mask slipped momentarily when he was asked whether he ever took part in an Islamist demonstration against Americans and British. The answer is anybody’s guess.

Apparently, that might have pushed this girl to join the Islamic State, a murderous death cult raping, pillaging, and enslaving in a land that once stretched almost from Tehran to Tartous. This woman, who left her privileged London lifestyle with full knowledge of the people she was joining, in the age of internet and mass media where no stories of ISIS atrocities are censored, declared war on her own countrymen and is now sitting at a camp in the Middle East, demanding to come back. The word treason is thrown around a lot, but if there’s one example where it fits, it is declaring war against your own country.

This is by no means the only sympathetic portrayal of ISIS brides that has flooded Western media recently. These women left the West to marry and commit jihad, and not just in the United Kingdom (UK). CNN wrote a sympathetic portrayal of one British female ISIS supporter who is pregnant and wants to return to the country she spurned to give birth.

A Canadian woman said she was clueless about the ISIS atrocities but has no regrets because, even though she wants to come home, she still believes in Sharia and wants it established. When asked about ISIS’s mass murder and enslavement of the Yazidis, she defiantly commented there might have been “a few” executions.

A German woman was featured in a Guardian tearjerker, saying she “just wants to go home.” Another British woman misses “fish and chips” and free health care, a German now has two children of her own and worries about an “uncertain future,” and a Moroccan married to a British/Australian jihadist “bonded over television shows.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jewish-graves-vandalized-in-france-ahead-of-macrons-march-against-anti-semitism-11550592868

PARIS—Dozens of Jewish graves in eastern France were vandalized amid a recent rise in anti-Semitic acts and days after yellow-vest protesters were filmed accosting a prominent Jewish academic.

Marches against anti-Semitism were due to take place across France on Tuesday, including one led by government ministers, as President Emmanuel Macron seeks to distance himself from the protesters who have dogged him for months.

Nazi swastikas were daubed on more than 80 graves in Quatzenheim, a small village near the city of Strasbourg, close to the country’s border with Germany, French authorities said on Tuesday, prompting a visit by the French president.

“I’m here to show the support of the entire nation,” Mr. Macron said. “We will take actions, we will pass laws, we will punish,” he added.

For several minutes, he stood silently in front of the Quatzenheim graves beside the chief Rabbi of France, Haim Korsia, who spoke a prayer. The president then took a walk around the cemetery alongside members of the Jewish community.

The vandalism is the latest in a spate of anti-Semitic acts that have triggered outrage from leaders across the political spectrum and Jewish organizations in France, home to the largest number of Jewish people in Europe.

“These repugnant acts are an insult to our country’s collective memory,” French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said in a tweet.

In December, several dozen Jewish graves were vandalized in another town near Strasbourg.

In recent weeks, many anti-Semitic incidents have also accompanied France’s yellow-vest or gilets jaunes demonstrations that began as protests against fuel-price rises and have escalated into a wider antigovernment movement.

On Saturday, yellow-vest protesters were filmed accosting Alain Finkielkraut, a prominent public academic, as he walked with his mother-in-law on the street in Paris, calling him a “dirty Zionist s—” and other insults.

Earlier this month, someone spray painted “Juden” on Bagelstein, a French chain of bagel restaurants. A Nazi swastika was also tagged on a portrait of Simone Veil, a French Auschwitz survivor, who became president of the European Parliament and who died in 2017. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-challenge-is-decline-not-trump-11550519599

The greatest mistake Europeans can make is to believe that their biggest problem is Donald Trump.

To be fair, it’s an easy error to make. In the long annals of American diplomacy, there’s no previous instance of an American president treating close allies with anything approaching the Trumpian mix of critique and contempt.

But it’s not only Mr. Trump and his supporters whose attitudes should worry Europe. Some of Europe’s closest friends are also increasingly discouraged.

The American intellectual class once rang with inspired and sometimes envious praise of a rising Europe. In 2002 an influential Atlantic essay argued that the “rising challenger” to American primacy was “not China or the Islamic world but the European Union, an emerging polity that is in the process of marshaling the impressive resources and historical ambitions of Europe’s separate nation-states.” It warned Americans to prepare for the emergence of a new superpower on the world stage.

This is not what Europe’s friends see today. Philanthropist George Soros—one of Europe’s keenest observers and strongest defenders—predicted last week that unless things change, “the European Union will go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991.” He is far from alone among the EU’s supporters in bewailing the bloc’s inability to master its growing difficulties.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13750/post-caliphate-isis

This ISIS penchant for high-profile cruelty is likely to continue, even against Muslims who already account for most of its victims. ISIS justifies this brutality against fellow Muslims by judging them as insufficiently orthodox in their Islamic faith, a theological tactic of attacking a fellow Muslim’s commitment to Islam that is called “takfir.”
In the foreseeable future, ISIS, because of its loss of a territorial Caliphate, will likely limit its battlefield operations to guerrilla warfare. Nevertheless, the overall thrust of ISIS propaganda will probably remain oriented to appeal to young male Muslims who feel isolated or are searching for meaning in life.

The disintegration of the Islamic State’s Caliphate — which once included large portions of Iraq and Syria — may be a strategic defeat for ISIS, yet the jihadi terrorist group is very much alive. Its ideology, tactics and objectives have not altered. ISIS remains steeped in the ideology of “salafiya jihadiyah” (Salafi jihad), which requires every Muslim to wage “holy war” in some fashion against the “infidel.”

The ideological vision of ISIS and the extremist acts which flow from that vision, such as its iconoclastic destruction of graves, sacred shrines, and cultural sites, closely resembles that of Sunni Wahhabi extremism with origins in Saudi Arabia, the source of the ISIS’s ideological conflict against the values shared by freedom loving nations. An example of this ideological affinity is ISIS’ destruction of the alleged graves of the Prophets Daniel and Jonah in the area of Mosul, Iraq in July 2014. As early as 1802, Wahhabi marauders acted similarly, destroying many shrines, graves and sacred sites in Shia Islam’s holy city of Karbala, while massacring hundreds of Shia Muslims in the process. This behavior closely resembles the comportment of ISIS operatives throughout their Caliphate territories in Iraq, where they destroyed Christian churches in Mosul, Iraq and in Syria where they demolished ancient ruins in Palmyra.

Today, ISIS remains a most brutal jihadi terrorist network, known in the West for posting horrific execution videos online. The unearthing of several mass graves in regions of Iraq and Syria once under ISIS control underscores its willingness to murder large numbers of innocents. By spreading paralytic fear, they can presumably more easily control local populations.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/venezuela-crisis-historic-lessons-spanish-civil-war/

What history tells us about the future of the crisis in Caracas

Today Venezuela is at an impasse, a term allegedly coined by Voltaire to refer to a situation devoid of exits. It has infinite inflation, four immobilized branches of government, two presidents, and the worst humanitarian crisis to hit the Americas in decades. There is sporadic violence on the streets and in improvised prisons hidden away from YouTube. What today resembles a civil war without weapons could easily escalate into bloodshed. Yet it is foreign powers and not domestic actors that will determine the country’s fate.

The Bolivarian divide runs so deep that the republic now has two presidents: Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó. Maduro, elevated to power by the late Hugo Chavéz, insists that he has begun his second constitutional term, sworn in by the Supreme Court, backed by the courts and, crucially, the country’s armed forces. Guaidó is recognized by the National Assembly, the unicameral legislature that Chávez himself created when he wanted to do away with a Senate keen on opposing his accumulation of power. Hundreds of thousands of exiled Venezuelans, including former Chavista officers and representatives, support him, too.

The international media have paid scant attention to Venezuela. With rare exceptions, the crisis has seemed far away, complex, and entirely domestic to the outside world. Yet that perception is misguided: Venezuela’s crisis is no longer a mere constitutional battle; it is a power struggle among international powers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-ally-against-islamic-state-urges-trump-to-leave-troops-in-syria-11550520213

AN AIRBASE IN NORTHEAST SYRIA—The Kurdish commander leading the fight against Islamic State in Syria urged the U.S. to reconsider its decision to withdraw all its forces and instead leave a small contingent in the country.

Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which has seized all but the last remnants of Islamic State-held territory, said on Monday that the U.S., France and Britain should aim to leave as many as 1,500 troops from at least double that now.

Such a residual force, Gen. Abdi said, could safeguard Kurdish forces from Turkey and help eliminate Islamic State militants, who are increasingly retreating underground. Turkey views the Kurdish YPG militia—a part of the Syrian Democratic Forces—as a threat.

“I feel that American forces must remain sided with us,” he told reporters. “We don’t want them to leave Syria, but in the end it is an American decision.”

Some Islamic State militants over the weekend sought to negotiate a deal for safe passage from their last remaining territory, as they held civilians hostage.

Since President Trump in December ordered all of the more than 2,000 American troops out of Syria, many observers have speculated that the SDF, feeling betrayed by the U.S., would seek to ally itself with the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime or with Moscow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/party-that-promised-to-clean-up-italian-politics-find-it-a-messy-business-11550574383

ROME—Italy’s 5 Star Movement rose from a grass-roots campaign against political corruption to an election-winning party. The realities of life in government since last summer, however, are putting it under growing strain.

A vote by the party’s members on Monday to block the criminal prosecution of far-right coalition ally Matteo Salvini posed a sharp dilemma: Preserve the 5 Star’s commitment to allowing the investigation and prosecution of politicians, or protect the governing coalition with Mr. Salvini’s League.

Prosecutors want to put Mr. Salvini, who is also Italy’s interior minister, on trial for allegedly kidnapping 177 undocumented migrants last summer, when he refused to let them disembark from a ship in a Sicilian port for five days. Italy’s Senate would have to lift Mr. Salvini’s immunity from prosecution for a trial to proceed.

A Senate subcommittee is expected to recommend Tuesday that Mr. Salvini keep his immunity. A full Senate vote is expected in March.

The 5 Star Movement, which holds the balance in the Senate, had passed the decision to its grass-roots activists, more than 50,000 of whom voted on Monday on a party website. About 59% heeded the call of 5 Star leader Luigi Di Maio to protect Mr. Salvini from prosecution. Mr. Di Maio argued that Mr. Salvini acted to protect the interests of the state.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/labours-split-corbyns-decline/

Seven anti-Corbyn politicians break from the Labour party over concerns of anti-Semitism — but Brexit implications lurk in the background.

Seven members of Parliament have quit the British Labour party, citing anti-Semitism, far-left thuggery, and Brexit mishandling under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The Conservative party may be increasingly shambolic, but polling shows that Labour is even less popular. The seven defectors have named themselves the “Independent Group,” and they hope more MPs will join them. Time will tell.

“I cannot remain in a party that I have today come to the sickening conclusion is institutionally anti-Semitic,” said Luciana Berger, who has endured sustained anti-Semitic attacks and accordingly had a bodyguard at the party’s annual conference last year. Chris Leslie added, “We did everything we could to save it, but it has now been hijacked by the machine politics of the hard Left.”

Jeremy Corbyn expressed his disappointment “that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together.” But even his own deputy, Tom Watson, conceded, “I love this party but sometimes I no longer recognize it.”

Since April, the Labour party has received 673 official complaints, according to its National Executive Committee, of anti-Semitism and has suspended 96 individuals. Much of this is visible at the grassroots level, for instance, in the movement Momentum (Jeremy Corbyn’s unofficial fan club), which was described last year by a Labour backbencher as “a party within a party” full of “Trots, Stalinists, Communists, and assorted hard-left” activists for whom “anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is fundamental to their politics and their values.”