21-Jun-17: An explosion in a Belgian train station: Do the news agencies realize this was not someone trying to kill himself?

Brussels: The attacker (in the background) and Tuesday's
explosion [Image Source]

Belgium, which has more reason than most other parts of Europe to be deeply concerned about terror-minded Islamists, is trying today to make sense of an explosion in its most important train station yesterday (Tuesday).

Here's how the events were depicted by one of the world's most influential news packagers:

Belgian soldiers have shot a man suspected of being a would-be suicide bomber at Brussels Central Station, officials say. He was shot after reportedly setting off a small explosion and no-one else is believed to have been injured. Prosecutors later said the man had died. They are treating the incident as a terrorist attack. According to Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, quoting prosecutors, the man who was shot was wearing a rucksack and a bomb belt. He detonated a device when he attracted the attention of soldiers in the station, the paper says. ["Suspected suicide bomber shot at Brussels railway station", BBC, June 20, 2017]

They're careful, the BBC people. But careful readers will be left wondering about what isn't stated.

• If the man was going to commit suicide, why in a public place? Could it be that suicide was not actually his goal? Was he actually a murderer? Or a murder-minded terrorist? If so, why confuse and mislead by saying he was committing suicide? He made himself into a human bomb and that is what we owe to ourselves and victims past and future to call him and those like him. We explain the thinking here: "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs".
• And by the way, the bomb's effect appears to have been enhanced by nails, making it "similar to the bombs used in the attacks at Brussels airport and on the city's metro that killed 32 people in March 2016." That's from Reuters mid-Wednesday morning (here). Those nails, in our view, are far more relevant and important to characterizing the killer than calling him "suicide bomber", a term we utterly abhor. They are put into bombs so as to cruelly rip apart the flesh of  the innocent victims. Our daughter was murdered by terrorists who attacked the patrons of a pizzeria in Jerusalem with a nail-and-shrapnel-enhanced bomb.
• The Brussels killer caused a small explosion, and then "later" he died. Did the explosion do him in? Or was it the Belgian soldiers who, at some point in these presumably fast-moving events, opened fire and shot him? The BBC report doesn't say. But clearly once he was shot dead, no one else was going to be hurt by him. That's a very good thing.
• The word "terrorist" gets into this BBC report only because the BBC was able to quote Belgian "prosecutors" who called it that. Does the BBC lack the discernment to be able to characterize terrorists as terrorists? No, of course not; it's self-imposed "know-nothing"-ness as a careful reading read of the politically-hyper-correct BBC "Editorial Guidelines: Language when Reporting Terrorism" shows. The BBC editors have far less difficulty or reluctance reaching conclusions on how to characterize a million and one other things; that's why we think of them as a news-reporting source.

This morning (Wednesday) there are additional details to ponder.

Numerous sources report that the fast-acting Belgians "neutralized" the attacker; it's a word that when Israel uses it (to mean killing or stopping an attacker in the course of a terror attack) attracts criticism of Israel.

The unnamed attacker, called "a Moroccan national who was not wanted for terror offences" [here] , is reported to have been yelling "Allahu Akbar" as he ran towards a soldier.

Reuters, around day-break today. reported that Belgium's counter-terrorism police are "probing the identity" of the man shot dead yesterday by "troops guarding a Brussels railway station after he set off explosives that failed to injure anyone":

• "We consider this a terrorist attack," prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told reporters, declining comment on witness accounts that the man had shouted Islamist slogans before detonating what witnesses said were one or two devices in luggage...
• The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of Nato and the European Union, has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell organised the attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015. Four months later, associates of those attackers killed 32 people in their home city. Since then, attacks in France, but also in Germany, Sweden and, most recently, in Britain, have been carried out in the name of the Syria-based Islamist militant group by other young men, many of them locals, raising fears of more violence in a city where almost a quarter of the population of 1.2 million are Muslim...
• [S]moke pouring through Central Station and a shared awareness of Islamic State attacks in the city last year and more recently in Britain, France and elsewhere, sent evening commuters racing for cover...
• Witnesses spoke of a man who shouted Islamist slogans, including "Allahu akbar" - God is greater - in Arabic, in an underground area of the station still busy with commuters making their way home and seemed to set off one or two small blasts...
• Rail worker Nicolas Van Herrewegen told Reuters that he was heading downstairs toward the underground platforms that serve long-distance and suburban lines running under the city center. "There was a man shouting, and shouting and shouting," he said. "He was talking about the jihadists and all that and then at some point he shouted: 'Allahu akbar' and blew up the little suitcase he had next to him. People just took off."
• ...As Prime Minister Charles Michel consulted his security advisers, the national alert was maintained at its second highest level. Michel, who convened a National Security Council meeting for 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Wednesday, tweeted his thanks to the security forces and railway staff for their professionalism and courage. Mainline trains were running through the station by the morning rush hour, but not stopping. The adjacent metro station was open as normal, the transport authorities said. ["Belgium investigates station bomber fatally shot by soldiers", Reuters, June 21, 2017]

We agree with Belgium's prime minister: it's good that his country's security personnel opened fire promptly and, acting with "professionalism and courage", killed the man and neutralized the immediate danger.

We hope Israeli diplomats remind Mr Michel of his welcome plain-spokenness the next time Belgium joins with Israel's critics in absurdly - cheaply - accusing the IDF and Israel's other security forces of "extra-judicial execution" and "disproportionate force". The Belgians don't think they engaged in those problematic behaviours yesterday, and they're right. And so is Israel when its security people put the highest immediate priority on stopping an attacker in the shortest time before he achieves his barbaric goal.

Which, to remind ourselves, is never suicide.

The politically-inspired squeamishness of the BBC notwithstanding, everyone with brains in her head understands that attackers like yesterday's in the Brussels train station and Monday's would-be bomber on Paris' Champs-Elysees (killed when he rammed his car, filled with explosive and weapons, into a French police convoy - no innocent people were injured) are motivated by religious doctrine.

And whether they are genuine lone wolves or working in packs, the inspiration, incitement and encouragement for acts of terror in the most-public places possible overwhelmingly comes from Islamic preachers.

Whether this means terrorism does or does not have something to do with Islam is a non-trivial question if we seriously want to defeat the savages and the dangers they pose to our children and our societies. We're convinced the answer is obvious for anyone thinking outside the blinkers of political correctness about those threats.

07-Apr-17: Is lethal rampage in distant corner of New South Wales tied to Islamist terror?

The scene of the killing in NSW [Image Source]

A disturbing spate of violent attacks overnight in Australia may be getting little attention elsewhere but they underscore the assertion that terror doesn't recognize distant, quiet corners. 

Queanbeyan (English approximation of an Aboriginal word meaning "clear waters") is a regional centre with a population of about 38,000 in the Southern Tablelands of south-eastern New South Wales, situated about 15 km from the Australian capital, Canberra, and about 300 km from Sydney. 

Physical evidence found at the scene of a fatal stabbing at a Queanbeyan petrol station has suggested the attack was terror-related, NSW Police say... Two boys, aged 15 and 16, allegedly entered the service station and stabbed Pakistani-born 29-year-old employee Zeeshan Akbar... Police said the two teenagers were arrested following a police chase about 6:30am. Mr Akbar was one of four victims in a violent rampage that crossed the ACT-NSW border allegedly carried out by the two teens. NSW Deputy Police... Local police reassure residents their community is safe. Monaro police commander Superintendent Rod Smith said it appeared the pair, from Queanbeyan, had also been involved in a series of "absolutely horrific" attacks nearby overnight. That allegedly included stabbing another man in the abdomen. He was taken to Canberra Hospital in a serious but stable condition. Police said another man was bashed with a tyre iron in an aggravated break and enter, while yet another was hit with a beer bottle in a nearby park. The pair was also allegedly involved in another attempted robbery at Oaks Estate in the ACT... ["Queanbeyan stabbing: Counter-terrorism police investigate fatal rampage" | Australia's ABC News | April 7, 2017]

And from a Canberra Times report this morning:

Nearby residents Robyn Hunter and her daughter, Maddy, were equally shocked by the reported gory nature of the crimes and the investigation into terrorism links. "I was a bit surprised by that, you don't expect Queanbeyan to be involved in something like that, especially our little area up here," Mrs Hunter said... "I'd understand it happening in Sydney or Melbourne or one of the bigger cities, but not here"...

Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is quoted today saying the circumstances of the lethal stabbing raised ‘sufficient concern’ to warrant the involvement of counter-terrorism bodies. The evidence being hinted at is understandably the subject of media speculation. According to The Australian today:

The letters “IS”, potentially an acronym for the terrorist group Islamic State, were apparently smeared on the wall and window of the Bungendore Road service station where Mr Akbar was killed, police sources said.

15-Feb-17: Things Iran is good at

Genuflecting: The caption to this revealing Iranian news photo is: "Minister
of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi 
and the Swedish Minister of European Union Affairs and Trade Ann Linde
seen in this Feb 11 photo meeting in Tehran" [Image Source]

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("W czym Iran jest dobry") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

There are some striking photos in the news today and yesterday, showing Swedish political leaders - among them, self-avowed feminists - bowing their heads to men, the females donning hijabs and head scarves and generally conveying a sense of deep deference to the Islamist regime ruling Iran with an iron fist - a posture rarely seen in international affairs or among people espousing the views that the Swedes claim to hold dear.

Sweden's prime minister Stefan Löfven led the visiting delegation, and has come under angry criticism from opposition politicians and female rights among others.

“This is disastrous for what is being called a feminist foreign policy,” says Jan Bjorklund of the Liberal Party. According to him, the Swedish government should have demanded not to make the hijab compulsory for the female members of the delegation. And if Iran did not agree to that, then the trade agreements should have been signed in Sweden or a third country. The Swedish government calls itself the “first feminist government”, but Linde has defended her decision to wear the hijab in Iran, saying that the only other option would be to send an all-male delegation. Swedish companies have been lining up to gain access to Iran’s lucrative market after the lifting of international sanctions... ["Sweden defends officials wearing headscarves in Iran", Tehran Times, February 14, 2017]

The Swedish delegation to Iran has had a significant impact outside
Iran. The caption reads: "Sweden's "first feminist government" has been
called hypocritical for wearing the hijab in Tehran"
[Image Source: Screen grab from a Sydney Morning Herald video]

But Löfven would have been heartened by the local reception his team got. They were

greeted with praise from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who hailed the positive relationship between the two countries during a meeting with the Swedish premier in Tehran. "America and many European powers have played a role in causing traumatic events in Syria and Iraq, and the people of the region are aware of this interference and are rightly skeptical," Khamenei was quoted as saying by Iranian television... [Löfven] also met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani... who hailed the "moderation" in Sweden's foreign policy, ["Iran hails relations with Sweden during prime minister's visit to Tehran", DW (German State Radio), February 11, 2017]

The Swedes must have had the case of Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali on their minds while in Tehran. He's an academic physician born in Iran who has taught at universities in Belgium, Italy and Sweden. His field is disaster medicine and he traveled to Iran in April 2016 to take part in a professional conference. With no warning and without any warrant, Iranian Ministry of Intelligence officials arrested him there and charged him with “collaboration with enemy states”. The New York Times reported earlier this week [click] that he is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and faces the death penalty. 

An image from last Saturday in Tehran that has already gone massively
viral: Swedish "feminist" government officials' walk of shame

Djalali's wife and two children live in Stockholm so the case has a higher profile there than in the countries where most of this blog's readers live. His wife is surely wondering what, if anything, those Swedish feminists did that was helpful to his cause during their well-publicized visit with the Mullahs. We were unable to find any reference to it in the media reports of the "feminist: visit to Iran, but we may have missed it.

For the past year, there's been a serious rush of vendor delegations from Europe, Asia and North America visiting, and showing extreme deference to, the Iranian regime along with an impressive flow of cross-border business deals with the Iranians [click here for a Google search results listing]. No doubt that this is a happy time for the people in charge of Iran.

But beyond the embarrassed faces and unmistakable humiliation of the visitors on show, there are significantly more disturbing next-moves emanating from the Iranian regime as flagged, for instance, yesterday by the Washington Times:

Iran’s hard-line Islamic regime has escalated its overseas terrorist operations, establishing a network of over a dozen internal training camps for foreign fighters, the regime’s largest resistance group said at a press conference on Tuesday in Washington. The National Council of Resistance of Iran issued its intelligence report specifying the camps’ locations and the countries represented... The council’s largest member is the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK). It boasts an extensive spy network inside the mullah-run government, including the all-powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its special forces wing, the Quds force, and has a track record of exposing clandestine parts of the Iranian national security apparatus.
The Quds force played a significant role in the Iraq War by training Iraqi Shiites on how to make bombs that killed scores of American troops. The Quds force is now directing thousands of Iraqi Shiite militia members in Iraq, some of whom have gone to Syria to fight for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The U.S. calls Iran the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. However, neither the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps nor the Quds force is on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations. The Treasury Department in 2007 designated the Quds force as a material supporter of terrorism, but National Council of Resistance of Iran officials say the U.S. government should go much further.
“The Iranian resistance has emphasized on countless occasions that the source and the epicenter of terrorism, fundamentalism and regional meddling is the fundamentalist regime ruling Iran,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the council’s Washington office. [“Iran growing network to train foreign terrorists, dissident group says”, Rowan Scarborough in Washington Times, February 14, 2017]

The Washington Times report goes on:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved a directorate inside the Quds force “in order to expand its training of foreign mercenaries as part of the regime’s strategy to step up its meddling abroad, including in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Afghanistan and elsewhere.” “The camps have been divided based on the nationality of the trainees and the type of training,” the council said. “Both terrorist training and also military training for militias are provided, enabling them to better infiltrate and advance the regime’s regional objectives.”

What skills can aspiring jihadists acquire under the Iranian auspices?

The training is divided into two types of courses; a crash-course of 45 days for troops that will be used to fight in paramilitary forces like the IRGC’s Basij force or a full training course which lasts from between 9 and 12 months... The full training course has many different sections: Heavy weaponry; Missile Launches; Marine Training; Theoretical Training (how to spend terror rhetoric); Survival Training; Commando Training; Paratrooper Training; Security Training... The report makes clear that the IRGC is in control of these terror training camps, in an attempt to export terrorism, destabilise other countries and take control in those countries. ["IRAN’S  IRGC’S TERROR TRAINING CAMPS REVEALED", Iran News Update,., February 15, 2017]

Here's something else the Iranians know to do well: fomenting yet more mischief in Gaza. It stems from the choice of a seasoned murdering terrorist to become the new head of Hamas in Gaza [we analyzed this here: "13-Feb-17: Another Shalit Deal milestone: Four terms of life imprisonment but this murdering jihadist now heads Hamas in Gaza"]

The implication of the selection means that Iran has retaken the reins in Gaza after a long hiatus during which Egypt, on one hand, and Turkey and Qatar, on the other, tried to fill the vacuum. Iran chose to take back the reins in Gaza because of the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.  Iran fears that in the upcoming talks in Washington, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu will discuss an aggressive option vis-à-vis Iran. It is doubtful if any “elections” were held in Gaza to choose Sinwar. The result is due to pressure by Hamas’ military wing on the political wing, and the announcement’s timing is Iran’s way of conveying a message before the Trump-Netanyahu talks. If that’s the case, don’t expect that Sinwar’s “election” foretells a new escalation from Gaza against Israel. Just the opposite, Iran will restrain Hamas in order to keep the Gaza front available for Iran’s own needs, and Iran’s alone. ["Iran Grabs the Reins in Gaza", Pinhas Inbari, JCPA, February 14, 2017]

Velayati on Aljazeera this past week [Image Source]

In the interests of fairness, we will point out that Iran does have its fans, and the Iranians don't necessarily see themselves as being the bad guys or in any great trouble. You can get a sense of that deep Persian self-appreciation from published pieces like "World owes Iran debt of gratitude for sacrifices in fight against terror" [PressTV, February 13, 2017] and "Lavrov: Exclusion of Iran from anti-terror coalition is a mistake" [Tehran Times, February 12, 2017].

Also this: Iran doesn't see any reason to discontinue its rapid development of long-range offensive missiles [reviewed here two weeks ago]. As Ali Akbar Velayati (a former Iranian foreign minister and today Supreme Leader Khamenei's Advisor on International Affairs) said three days ago in an Al-Jazeera television interview [translated into English by MEMRI here]:

"If America imagines that threats and sanctions will lead Iran to stop its missile program, this is a misconception, a mere fantasy... America is not strong enough to bring us to our knees... Mr. Trump is fickle and changes his policies every other day... Running a country like America is not an easy thing. All of Trump's predecessors faced similar problems. The most important things is that he has failed, especially with us in Iran. Mr. Trump does not possess special qualifications that would enable him to claim that he wants to take over the world. His policies are immature and have led him to a confrontation with the whole world"

This sounds like bluster - something the Iranians are also good at - but it's more serious than customary bluster given the threats that have emanated from Iranian leaders at various points since the JCPOA, the infamous unsigned "agreement" that has brought such unearned benefits to Iran, came into effect. For instance, this comment which we quoted in an earlier post ["28-Jun-16: Is Iran now threatening more nuclear plotting?"]

Discussing what president Obama has called snapback and "real consequences"] "Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the country will be able to “immediately” reverse its commitments under a final nuclear deal with world powers if it finds out that the other side has breached commitments under the [JCPOA]... Whenever Iran feels the other side has not honored its commitments, the “reversibility” of Tehran’s nuclear program will happen immediately, he said." [Tasnim News Agency, Iran, July 28, 2015]

We think they're good at that sort of thing too.

30-Nov-16: An Islamist mole inside Germany's homeland security office?

A BfV security person [Image Source]

Less than two weeks ago, we wrote here ["21-Nov-16: German experts "discover" that Islamist terrorists are "being trained" to come into Europe as asylum seekers"] about some serious terrorism-related matters that had just been uncovered in Germany.

In addition to being Europe's strongest economy, Germany has the additional distinctions of (a) being home to what has just become Europe's largest community of Muslims and (b) having admitted a seven-digit number of immigrants in the past year under a remarkably flexible and generous asylum-seeker program,

The problems that have followed are life-impacting in a variety of serious ways.

We ran down a list of deeply worrying developments in the context of Germany's embrace of a huge influx of largely undocumented migrants in a single year and expressed our concern that German officialdom seemed to be unsure of what it ought to be doing:

Forgive us, but given the scale of the threat and the indications that serious-minded malevolents with Islamist doctrine as their guide have targeted their towns and public places, these German voices strike us as being sadly indecisive. For their sakes, we hope we're wrong... [That earlier post of ours]

German Salafist Islamists at a spiritual gathering [Image Source]

And for the sake of those who place their faith in the German government's security apparatuses, we hope what has just been uncovered - see the next paragraph - is quickly addressed by decisive and effective action.

This ["Germany Arrests Suspected Islamist Mole in Spy Agency"] comes from today's Wall Street Journal:

A suspected Islamist mole in Germany’s domestic intelligence service has been detained, officials said Wednesday, sparking criticism of an agency that has been on high alert following a string of attacks and foiled plots this year. Prosecutors in Düsseldorf said they had arrested a 51-year-old German national and recent Islam convert on suspicion of preparing an attack on the agency’s headquarters in Cologne and attempting to violate professional secrecy. Officials said the man had offered to help other Islamists launch an attack, but there was no proof he had started work on a plot...
The suspect was intercepted sharing agency secrets in an online chat and offering “fellow believers” access to its headquarters for an attack, the prosecutor’s office said. His chat partner was in fact an undercover agent. The suspect said he was “ready for anything to help his brothers” and that an attack against “infidels” was “in the interest of Allah,” according to the prosecutor’s office. The office said the man had confessed to infiltrating the agency to warn “fellow believers” about investigations into them.

But an AFP report [here] suggests the suspicions are actually more concrete than that: the suspect

is believed to have been planning a bombing at the BfV headquarters in the western city of Cologne, according to the German press [though] there was no immediate suggestion he had any ties to ISIS.

And in Der Spiegel, it's said that the arrested intelligence man had already "made a "partial confession" to the plot".

(BfV stands for Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the domestic intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany. In English, the name translates somewhat ambitiously to "Office for the Protection of the Constitution".)

Germans watched in horror during this past summer as ISIS claimed several mass-terror attacks carried out by so-called asylum-seekers:

• One on train passengers in the vicinity of Wurzburg [see "19-Jul-16: Tentacles in Germany: Again, a train, an axe, a religious war-cry, innocent victims and a search for motives"
• A second - an attack on people at a shopping centre in Munich ["24-Jul-16: In Germany, a gunman with Iranian citizenship kills 9"]
• A third on people at a music festival in Ansbach ["25-Jul-16: German tentacles: An explosion in a wine bar and deepening concern about 'asylum seekers'"].

The Wall Street Journal report says these attacks

most of them by recently arrived refugees, showed the country was a prime terror target. The arrival of well over a million refugees, mainly from the Middle East, since the beginning of last year has stretched the agencies’ already limited surveillance capacity. The domestic intelligence agency started a recruiting drive recently to try to keep up. The suspect was hired in April 2016 after a change of career and was part of a team observing followers of the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam. The number of Salafists in Germany has tripled since 2012.

Putting "tripled" into a concrete perspective, the BfV believes Germany has about 40,000 Islamists today, among them some 9,200 Salafists (ultra-conservative Islamists).

A BfV spokesman says the suspect

hadn’t behaved suspiciously during his recruitment, his training or his work

and even though he

was thought to have pledged allegiance to Mohamed Mahmoud, the Austrian leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorist group [Telegraph UK, November 29, 2016]

the man's wife and family

reportedly knew nothing of his conversion to Islam two years ago and subsequent radicalisation. [Telegraph]

That last line might be the most incredible thing about this newest European encounter with lethal jihad. And in certain ways, the most alarming.

21-Nov-16: German experts "discover" that Islamist terrorists are "being trained" to come into Europe as asylum seekers

Asylumn seekers arrived in Germany [Image Source]

Whether or not there are genuinely new disclosures here, the article published  a week ago on the website of Deutsche Welle ("Germany’s international broadcaster [where] 3,000 employees and freelancers from 60 countries work") is sober and plain-spoken even if its conclusions are emerging a little late.

'Islamic State' reportedly training terrorists to enter Europe as asylum seekers | Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016 | Germany's spy agency has warned that the "Islamic State" (IS) is infiltrating refugee groups to get into Europe. Officials and analysts are now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early. | On November 13 last year, three teams of militants from the so-called "Islamic State" (IS), armed with Kalashnikovs, stormed the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and several pubs in Paris. The rampage left 130 people dead, 85 of them in Bataclan, where the band, the Eagles of Death Metal, was playing.
Meanwhile, investigations have revealed that all nine men involved in the attacks had traveled to Europe together with the stream of refugees that entered the continent in 2015. According to German weekly "Welt am Sonntag," the country's spy agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has warned that IS is specifically training terrorists to merge with asylum seekers looking for safer havens in Europe. The report's authors say that the BND suggests that terrorists train potential attackers on how to answer questions during border interrogations so they can prove their credibility as refugees. The spy agency has refused to comment on this matter. Responding to an email query by DW, an agency press spokesman said: "Basically, the BND communicates its information only to the German government or to responsible bodies of the German parliament in confidential sessions." Many refugees have fled from IS terror in regions like Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq...

A million immigrants arrived in Germany last year, and Muslim organizations assert [here] that "at least" 800,000 of them are Muslim. They keep coming in large numbers that have no precedent even as news stories about the massive influx of 'asylum seekers' disappear from news sites and television screens.

Germany's total population was about 80 million five years ago. It's currently about 82 million. An estimate quoted here suggests that Germany was home, as of the end of 2015, to 5,945,000 Muslims. Pew Research says [here] France has 4.7 million Muslims, and that Germany has slightly more,

The European Commission, aware of how much misinformation and disinformation accompanies this issue, publishes a valuable though laconic document entitled "Asylum quarterly report". Using notably dry language, its most recent issue published [here] in September offers some startling data:

• The number of first-time asylum seekers arriving in the European Union's 28 countries during the month of September 2015 alone was 170,825. (We're selecting September to enable a comparison to be made. Otherwise, September has no special significance.) Of those, 47,185 sought asylum in Germany, representing about 28% of the entire human 'asylum seeking' tidal wave now arriving at Europe's shores.
• The same numbers for the month of September 2016, a year later show a total of 101,765 arrived in all the 28 countries taken together. That's notably down on a year earlier, But of those, no fewer than 76,320 came to Germany. That's 75% of the entire EU number. 
• If that tidal wave of 'asylum seekers' is subsiding, as the greatly diminished amount of news coverage might imply, there's simply no sign of it in Germany. 
• (The numbers for all 28 European countries are on display in this dynamic online table. If these stats interest you, this is an excellent and authoritative source,)

Asylum seekers in Berlin [Image Source: Uriel Heilman/JTA]

When Islamists carried out shocking terrorist attacks in Paris almost exactly a year ago ["14-Nov-15: The Friday 13th terror assault on Paris"], European and German public officials were anxious to downplay - even to deny - any connection between such outrages and the flood of Muslim "asylum seekers".

Thus, for instance, an un-named "source in Germany's federal police" quoted in an Israeli report a few days after the coordinated massacres that took the lives of 130 people and injured an astounding 400 more at the Stade de France, numerous Parisian cafés and restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in the centre of the French capital.

"That is what I fear, people on the right side of political spectrum confusing the refugee problem with the Islamic terrorism problem, even though there is no connection," admitted a source in Germany's federal police... [i24news.tv, November 15, 2015]

No connection, he said? Did he have any actual idea at the time? Does he now? When Germany's government officials say a year later that they are "now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early", the realists among us can only offer them the best of luck.

And for a European reaction, consider this brief extract from a news report published in a respected news source in the wake of the Paris savagery:

The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned Europe against confusing refugees and terrorists, asking the public not to “give in to such basic reactions”. And speaking to the AFP News Agency, a Syrian refugee named Ghaled said he wished the empathy for the scores killed Paris could be translated to empathy for the hundreds of thousands dead in his home country... ["Paris attacks: Syrian refugees put shootings in French capital in perspective", The Independent (UK), November 16, 2015]

A year on and "confusing refugees and terrorists" turns out not to have been such a "basic" reaction.

That DW report we mentioned above goes on to provide a platform for some German voices that don't seem the least bit surprised by what's just been conceded:

Regardless, the fact that IS terrorists have slipped into the continent with hundreds of thousands fleeing from war in the Middle East is nothing new, says Susanne Schröter, expert on Islamic terrorism at Frankfurt University. "This was known since the beginning. I warned about such a possibility even before there were any examples of terrorists slipping in," she told DW. "This is because IS announced that it would send attackers to the continent through the route which refugees were taking. At the time, politicians denied this," she added, referring to over 1 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, who landed in Europe last year. The situation in European countries like Germany, which took in over 840,000 refugees in 2015, was difficult. Border controls had to be given up and many of those coming in could not be registered by authorities properly, compounding the problem, Schröter said... [Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016]

The DW article goes on to provide plenty of exposure to the more conventional sort of European and German viewpoint. For instance (and these bullet points are all direct quotes):

• "The steady flow of refugees at the time also unleashed a sequence of violent attacks against asylum seekers, especially in the states of former East Germany. "Our leaders thought, if we now admit that there could be terrorists among refugees, then it would serve as fodder for right-wing populists and lead to more anti-migrant feelings. So they played it down, but ultimately that was not the right thing to do," the analyst said.
• "Bataclan was not the last target on the list of attacks in Europe. A major attack on Brussels' main airport and an underground station on March 22 this year killed 32 people and wounded many others. 
• "Smaller knife attacks and a suicide explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach shook the country and Europe. 
• "Most of these attackers were refugees themselves or had contacts with asylum seekers, highlighting the fact that the newcomers were especially vulnerable to terrorist recruiters. "There are different kinds of people who come in as refugees. They have different political backgrounds and there are some who are close to IS, and some who have fled from IS," said Schröter.
• "Most of the asylum seekers who come to Europe are young men, who are disillusioned when they land in Europe, because smugglers have promised them something completely different, like more money, a house and a car, Schröter said. 
• "The long registration and waiting process until they finally know what is going to happen to them, adds to the discontent, she explained. Many people simply leave refugee homes and never return, and terror groups and Islamic fundamentalist organizations, like Salafists, use this to their advantage and recruit young people to stage attacks.
• [Schröter says] "the state will have to monitor people more closely. The possibility of terror attacks and cyber invasions has now prompted the German spy agency BND and the domestic intelligence organization, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, to plan a 73 million euro ($78 million) project for supervising internet and telecom messaging services. The agencies have not revealed exact plans, but according to a combined report by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" daily, and public broadcasters WDR and NDR, the BND wants to react faster to messages sent on mobile services like "WhatsApp." 
• "The agencies justify the project, called "Panos," by saying that the "security of Germany and its citizens can no longer be taken for granted. [Can anyone's today?]
• "It is likely that the heightened supervision of communication channels will affect normal citizens and refugees not involved in terrorism. But, as Schröter says, "considering the present situation, there could be nothing worse than a big terror strike, not only because of the possible victims, but also because of the effect it will have. And that is why everything needs to be done so that there is no big attack."

Forgive us, but given the scale of the threat and the indications that serious-minded malevolents with Islamist doctrine as their guide have targeted their towns and public places, these German voices strike us as being sadly indecisive.

For their sakes, we hope we're wrong.

27-Jul-16: Pope "decries" what the Islamist terrorists do - disconnects it from religion

The church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where the priest's throat
was slit by a pair of young Islamists yesterday [Image Source]

Via Wall Street Journal today, this depressing reaffirmation of the confusion at the highest levels over terror and those doing it that keeps counter-terrorism so relatively ineffectual...

Pope Francis Says ‘World Is at War,’ Decries Terrorist Attack on French Church | As he arrives for visit to Poland, pontiff says conflicts inspired by economic, political interests | FRANCIS X. ROCCA | Updated July 27, 2016 11:22 a.m. ET | ...Pope Francis added that the current violence was over economic and political interests rather than religion. “There is war for money,” he said. “There is war for natural resources. There is war for the domination of peoples. Some might think I am speaking of religious war. No. All religions want peace; it is other people who want war.”

Decrying, compared with the alternatives, can be a good thing. But it's not a counter-terror strategy. It will do precisely zero to save lives in the face of murder-minded zealots, many of them shiftless young men freshly admitted to a mostly-unprepared Europe.

Europe is at a loss to formulate strategies for fending off the jihadists. And its security resources have for years already [link] been close to exhaustion.

Pope Francis arrives in Poland today [Image Source]

The WSJ piece refers to yesterday's Islamist terror murder of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, whose throat was slashed by a couple of Islamist teens while he was celebrating Mass at a church in a small town in Normandy, Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray. One of them is a known French jihadist Adel Kermiche, who was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag.

The murderous attack, says the WSJ reporter

broke the pattern of Islamist terrorist strikes in Europe, which have till now been limited to secular targets. Islamic State identified the two assailants, who were killed by police, as its “soldiers.” [Wall Street Journal, today]

Limited to secular targets? How about "07-Jun-15: In France, arrests in wake of an intended Islamist terror assault on a Paris church" and what about the many Jewish targets that have been threatened and attacked and the Jews who have lost their lives in jihadist attacks inside synagogues in France? And in Turkey? In Norway? In Denmark? In the UK?

25-Jul-16: German tentacles: An explosion in a wine bar and deepening concern about 'asylum seekers'

A bag outside the wine bar in Ansbach gets inspected  by
security - long after the explosion [Image Source]

Germans, no matter where on the political spectrum their views fit, must be wondering where the next violent headlines in their country are going to come from.

This morning (Monday), the country is waking up to what seems to be a terror attack on a drinking spot in the town of Ansbach, the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia in the German state of Bavaria and home to about 40,000. It happens also to be where the United States 12th Combat Aviation Brigade ("Wings of Victory”) has its base.

An open-air music festival was being held in the town, but was immediately canceled by local authorities. Thousands of patrons were evacuated by police in the wake of the assault. German radio speaks this morning of 12 people injured, three of them seriously. The human bomb is dead.

The Interior Minister of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, is willing to go on the record with his private speculation about the character of this explosion:

"My personal opinion is that, unfortunately I think, it is very obvious that there has been a real Islamist suicide attack here," Herrmann said early Monday. ["Bavaria bomb blast", RT, July 25, 2016]

The perpetrator is described as a "failed asylum seeker from Syria" [BBC, which in accordance with its guidelines calls this "an attack" but not "terror"] whose "asylum application was rejected last year for reasons that we don't know right at this minute" [Al Jazeera]. He is said by Reuters to have been "carrying a backpack filled with explosives and metal parts that would have been sufficient to kill more people", If they're right, we think the metal parts part of the account might be something of a give-away.

We think it's fair to wonder as well what sort of security was in place at that popular music festival where the man was denied entry for lack of a ticket but where, as it appears, no one checked what must have been a heavy bag on his back to see what use that might be to him. (Israel, this clearly wasn't.)

He won't be answering questions in his current situation. But the trail he left behind during a two year sojourn in Germany (including two attempts to take his own life and getting psychiatric help) en route to his final explosion places him firmly within that million to two million group of recent "asylum"-seeking "refugees" whose presence is reshaping not only Germany but all of Europe. To anyone watching, the influx is much less reported now than a year ago, but continues in full force: about 50,000 undocumented migrants entered Italy from Africa in May 2016 alone [source].

An effort, involving the payment of many millions of Euros to Turkey, was made four months ago but whatever expectations that created have now evaporated:

Under the notorious bargain struck with Ankara on March 18, all those who arrive on the Greek islands were meant to be detained, brought before an asylum tribunal and returned to Turkey in under a week. When the deal was struck, many warned it had pushed international laws governing asylum to their limit. Now, the Greek officials charged with interviewing and approving deportation seem to agree. Aid agencies protested that it violated international law by designating Turkey a “safe third country” for asylum seekers – a controversial premise given Turkey’s record of human rights abuses, reports that it has forcefully deported refugees to the countries they fled, and its only partial ratification of the Geneva Conventions. ["Tension rises among asylum seekers as EU deportation plan falters", Independent UK, March 2016]

Events in Turkey of the past ten days guarantee that efforts to designate it a "safe country" are on ice until further notice.

What we know at this point about the events of last night:

An explosion in the southern German city of Ansbach was a suicide attack, according to the region's interior minister. The bomber died in the blast. A device was exploded by a 27-year-old Syrian national outside a music festival. He had been denied entry into the event due to the lack of a ticket, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said during a news conference early Monday. Twelve people were injured. The man, who has not yet been named, stood around the festival entrance for a short period before he blew himself up. The music festival and surrounding area were evacuated. Authorities said the bomber had previously applied for asylum in Germany but had had his application rejected. He was also known to police in Ansbach for previous offenses. German media outlets reported that he had previously attempted suicide. Herrmann said his backpack contained screws and nails, an apparent attempt to inflict further damage. Officially this attack is not confirmed as terrorism, he said, but there are strong indications it may be. ["Suicide bomb rocks Ansbach, Germany", CNN, July 25, 2016]

A January 2016 Bloomberg report quotes the premier of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, expressing vigorous rejection of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy toward "refugees":

“You have to face the fact that the confusion surrounding the stream of refugees is being exploited to commit crimes,” Seehofer told reporters at Wildbad Kreuth in the Bavarian Alps. “I’m sticking with my demand for a change of refugee policy in all its facets in 2016.” ["Germany Saw 1.1 Million Migrants in 2015 as Debate Intensifies", Bloomberg, January 6, 2016]

It would be surprising to know that the debate he invokes is not growing more intensified this morning. Germans are probably not the only Europeans wondering how many other recently-admitted "asylum seeking" men from places where explosions, stabbings and shootings are rather more common than in Europe are currently getting psychiatric treatment to fight suicidal urges.

Also yesterday, a Syrian "refugee" of 21 - another "asylum-seeker" said to have been "known to the police and... charged in the past with assault" [WSJ] was arrested in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart after hacking to death a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete. He had "arrived in Germany by himself about 18 months ago" [AFP]. The Wall Street Journal notes that "More than 300,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in Germany since January 2015". It doesn't say how many of them are known to the police, or what the police know in general. (Or how sure any of the authorities are that this or that arrival is actually a Syrian.)

Add that and the wine bar bombing to these acts of terror on German soil in the past five days:

• 24-Jul-16: In Germany, a gunman with Iranian citizenship kills 9
• 19-Jul-16: Tentacles in Germany: Again, a train, an axe, a religious war-cry, innocent victims and a search for motives

We're with the Europeans. There is much to fear.

24-Jul-16: Sociopaths, savagery and the seductiveness of Palestinian Arab victimhood

Ben Ehrenreich [Source]

Over at the LA Review of Books, under the title "The Humiliation Machine'", they have a new review by Amy Wilentz of

The Way to the Spring, Ben Ehrenreich’s new book about the Palestinian struggle against the ongoing and seemingly endless Israeli occupation [that] is bound to be a highly controversial work. 

Ehrenreich has been promoting the violent and hateful Tamimi clan of Nabi Saleh, a village of about 550 people located a few kilometers north of Israel's capital, for years. It was the vehicle that enabled him to snag his biggest hit so far - a 2013 New York Times Magazine cover story about the place and its people. Long on romance and bravado and carefully phrased progressive-sounding rhetoric, that piece barely skims the deeply embedded bigotry and long record of acts of murder against Jews that are only too easy to see in the life of Nabi Saleh... if you look. 

Ehrenreich plainly prefers not to look. He's a key player in sanitizing the Tamimi clan's blood-lust and race-based hatred of Jews.

We wrote an angry response when that heavily-marketed New York Times piece appeared ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"]. Here's how it started:

Friends have pointed us to this week’s NYT Magazine cover story, published today. It’s devoted to a Palestinian Arab village set in the hills a few kilometers north of where we live in Jerusalem. It's a place the author calls “spirited”, where “on warm summer evenings, life… could feel almost idyllic. Everyone knows everyone.” He says “a pilgrimage” to this magical place “has achieved a measure of cachet among young European activists, the way a stint with the Zapatistas did in Mexico in the 1990s”.
How can a person not be captivated? 
But there is much wrong with the picture he conjures up. We know this because for years we have been tracking the media’s romance with the community called Nabi Saleh. Sitting here and looking over the online version of it, we are furious with anger about what the article says, and what the writer and his editors carefully avoid saying.

We wanted to be heard by the readers of the New York Times in a more direct manner at the time and tried. If you want to know how that went, we documented that too: "9-Aug-13: Protesting journalism of the amoral sort". 

And for a little more about actual life and real attitudes in the temporal Nabi Saleh, as distinct from the Pallywood fantasies of the talented Mr Ehrenreich, here's another of our past posts on that theme: "01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists".

Ehrenreich's previous major push for the
"struggling" Tamimi clan's campaign
for bigger and more deadly murderous
attacks [New York Times]

It has to be said that Amy Wilentz's LARB review of Ehrenreich's paen to those village monsters includes some sharp insights. And if you're interested in answers to some of the questions she refreshingly poses but doesn't entirely untangle, help can be found in the fine work of the historian Petra Marquardt-Bigman, in particular her November 2015 essay in The Tower focusing on the Tamimi clan: "How a Family Became a Propaganda Machine".

We were struck, though, by how little Ms Wilentz has to say about the vicious, murder-oriented polemic that the Tamimi pack specialize in propagating. Most of their work-product is (naturally) in Arabic and intended for an Arabic-speaking audience, but some of it is easily accessible to English-speaking readers. 

So we sent the following to the LARB editors last night as a comment on the book review. They have just posted it below the Wilentz piece:

Here's some more "poetry of the desert" that Ehrenreich might have included but chose not to. It's some frank opinion-sharing by Nariman Tamimi, whose under-appreciated, explosive bigotry rarely makes it into English publications. 

We translated it from the Hebrew source in our blog last year. The context is important: it appeared at the same time as Amnesty International was spending a small fortune putting Tamimi's husband Bassem into the center of a US roadshow designed to further burnish his entirely bogus "heroism", a process Amnesty had begun a couple of years earlier and continues today, and which was accompanied by a round-the-clock effort to shield him and themselves from the fury of people who understand Tamimi's key role in murderous anti-Jew violence over the past decade.The voice quoted in this extract is that of his wife, Nariman Tamimi: Source: 11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really? 

"Women and children have always been a part of the struggle in Nabi Saleh, as opposed to what has happened in Qadoum, Bil'in and Ni'lin. Here, it’s a cultural thing, something traditional and educational, and also the fact that everyone in our village belongs to the one family numbering about 500 people and in reality there’s no alternative..." One of the major Palestinian murderers who emerged from the village is Ahlam Tamimi who transported the perpetrator of the terror at Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria. [Nariman again] "What she [Ahlam Tamimi] did was an integral part of the struggle. Everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising... 

Ahlam Tamimi, described in inappropriately benign terms here and in Ehrenreich's celebration of the murderous culture of the denizens of Nabi Saleh, is the engineer of the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. She planned it, chose the site, delivered the bomb to the location, and repeatedly - since being set free in the Shalit deal of 2011 - celebrates (in the Arabic-language media) what she says it stands for. Ehrenreich ought to say why this still-young woman is a figure of adulation among the members of the Tamimi clan in Nabi Saleh: not despite the murders she executed but explicitly because of them.  

Nabi Saleh, setting aside the poetry and the pretentious, cultural allusions, has a rich tradition of anti-Jew murder. Failing to put this in the center of the review of Ehrenreich's agitprop is to be complicit in the incitement emanating from that wretched village daily.

Wilentz is thankfully less entranced by the romanticism of both Ehrenreich and his sociopathic subjects than the editors at the New York Times seem to be. She writes:

Because he stands with the Palestinians, Ehrenreich has been called brave and courageous, but as someone who has also tried to do this kind of work in the Middle East, I can say that for a certain type of reporter, it doesn’t take bravery — there is something very seductive about victims, and to follow the Palestinians is simply to follow a reporter’s instinct for a good story... ["The Humiliation Machine", Los Angeles Review of Books, July 22, 2016]

She's being way too generous. And we ought to mention, for those who don't already know, that there's a terribly painful reason we pay attention to what's said about Nabi Saleh and its Tamimis. (Incidentally almost everyone in the dusty town is called Tamimi, with Tamimis routinely marrying other Tamimis in a cultural practice common among Palestinian Arabs and with consequences well-known in Israel's paediatric hospital wards). 

Baby carriages outside the devastated Sbarro pizzeria, minutes
after the Tamimi woman had fled the scene [Getty Images]

We do that because the engineer of the 2001 massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem is a woman called Tamimi. Her husband, who also happens to be her cousin, is another Tamimi. They are a pair of convicted and exultant murderers of Jews. 

He was raised in Nabi Saleh, and she says she has blood ties to almost everyone there, and reputedly lived there very briefly after she made aliyah from her homeland of Jordan in the late 1990's. 

Today the woman is the town's pin-up girl in the literal sense - they adore her there and all the barbaric hatred, bigotry and blood-shed she stands for.  If Nabi Saleh had a municipal symbol, it would probably be the grotesque smile on her face.

This Tamimi couple, both of them convicted murderers of Jews who were serving multiple life sentences in Israeli prisons after being convicted, live perfectly freely today in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, having both been released in the catastrophic Shalit Deal in 2011. 

Life has been awfully good. She has no money problems, having been a recipient of the notorious (and ongoing) Palestinian Authority Rewards for Terror payments scheme [background: "08-Jul-16: Violence, terror, cash and the PA Rewards for Terror Scheme: Congress takes a look"]. Today. she's a full-time propagandist for the Islamists of Hamas. She burnishes her fame on that platform with an active social media presence that includes Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In addition, she travels and does well-publicized personal appearances throughout the Arab world. Indeed she is one of the most widely-recognized, very public faces of the savage Islamist bigotry of Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood. 

And not only in the Middle East: she has her own heavily-promoted Hamas-branded weekly television program (in English, "Breezes of the Free") that's beamed each weekend via satellite and streaming internet video to television screens of Arabic-speaking households on every continent. 

This Tamimi woman also the murderer of our fifteen year old daughter Malki and of 14 other innocent patrons of that pizzeria. She can barely stop boasting about the role she played. She frequently returns to the disappointment she felt that she had not managed to murder yet more Jews and especially Jewish children. [You're doubting us?: "04-Feb-15: The stunningly different fates of two terrorists in Jordan and what they reveal about how the war against terror is going"] 

Her life's work, on constant public display, is devoted to encouraging additional acts of blood-curdling savagery. 

Analyzing Amnesty's culpability at The Tablet

The role of Amnesty International in the marketing of a Tamimi-centric view of terrorism-as-liberation has gotten much less attention in the media than it deserves. 

How any progressive-minded can be aware of that role and still send the occasional support check to Amnesty is totally baffling to us. Withholding support is one sure-fire way of getting its management to stop ignoring the criticism they have drawn from people like us - and ignoring is most assuredly what the Amnesty clique have been doing. 

Click here for a couple of dozen articles we have written in the past two years about Amnesty's odious promotion of Bassem Tamimi, a propagandist to whom Goebbels would surely have raised his hat. 

And if your time is short, please read just one of our posts that captures the essence of the others - this one for instance: 

• "07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people". 

Or this: 

• "06-Nov-15: What Amnesty hath wrought: The elevation of the terror-minded Tamimis".

This has all worked out just peachy for Ben Ehrenreich who can be expected to return soon to the well for more public attention as the impresario of the little village in the hills. 

Did anyone ever say terrorism doesn't pay?