How long until Arabs and Muslims rule, Britannia? - Prof. Phyllis Chesler

by Prof. Phyllis Chesler

Those in England who deplore its Islamization are afraid to express their thoughts out loud.

England: Shakespeare's heroic fairy realm; the world of Blake, Milton, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Virginia Woolf.

England: The country of William Wilberforce, who successfully fought to abolish the slave trade; the land of the bravest suffrage movement anywhere; Churchill's own country--that fair and glorious Kingdom is still there but it is also fraying, fading away.

I've just returned from a visit to this storied Isle. I saw the most sublime production of "The Tempest" at The Sam Wanamaker/Globe Theater; a wondrous  production of "As You LIke It" at the National Theater; and a riveting performance of Bellini's opera about the Druid priestess, "Norma," at the Coliseum. Every seat was filled by Brits of all ages. High Culture still lives on there--and yet, London is no longer as I first encountered it in 1961 or again, in 1969, or even in 1989.

Now, all London only dares whisper about the Arab and Muslim takeover of their city. Nearly every single luxury hotel is owned by the Sultan of Brunei, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia as is the historic department store Harrods. (Dodi Al-Fayed's father, an Egyptian, bought it long ago when he envisioned his son marrying Princess Diana, the mother of the future King of England).

The best townhouses on Park Lane, in Hyde Park, Belgravia, Mayfair, and Knightsbridge now belong to Arab Embassies, oil-rich sheiks, and the occasional Russian oligarch.

Londoners who still "take tea" in the lobbies of the grand hotels, tell me in soft, resigned voices that "this is how it is and there is nothing that can be done about it. Speak out and you will fall into immediate disfavor."

I know several exceptionally gallant, truth-telling thinkers and writers in London who are now blacklisted, censored, their powers curtailed. They dared tell the truth about how biased against America and Israel the British media and professoriate are--and how irrationally they favor both Islam and Islamism.

However, as one life-long Londoner pointed out to me: "Harrods, which is also owned by Arabs, (al-Fayed sold it to Qatar), loses business nine months of the year and only survives because Arabs come on shopping expeditions in the summer to escape the desert heat." London's Fortum and Mason's, the most luxurious store in the world, now has its first stand-alone satellite store in Dubai.

A limousine driver tells me that he routinely picks up exceedingly short fur coats that cost $65,000.00 for Arab women and that "once, a Saudi Prince left 3 million pounds in the boot (trunk) of my car. He completely forgot about it."

A professor from Oxford comes down to visit me. She tells me about the "Asian (Pakistani) grooming gangs" in Oxford and about how 378 very young Caucasian infidel girls were pimped out by these gangs in Oxford alone.

"Finally, after many years, the pimps were arrested and sentenced and the failure of the police to stop them was excoriated in open court. The English Defense League mounted a brave, civil rights protest right in front of the police station. The police cordoned them off, surrounded them with barking dogs and a line of police officers who let no one near enough to hear what they had to say. And then they loosed the Anti-Fascist League against them who came rushing down the street, hollering "Nazi, fascist scum."

As Orwell understood, not all speech is equal.

The streets are filled with women in heavy hijab, in Niqab, (face masks), and in black, burqa-like body bags. As I have written many times before: I have no quarrel with head coverings but suggest that the West must draw the line at face masks and sensory deprivation isolation chambers which burqas truly are. These "covered" women are flying the flag of Jihad, of a barbaric version of patriarchy--which is now increasingly ensconced within Britain's gates.

The West's dependence on Big Oil together with its own blind commitment to cultural sensitivity, an allegedly anti-racist tolerance for the barbarian "other," and fearfulness about the consequences of speaking out--have together brought this about.

Some say that just as England once colonized the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, Central Asia, and the Far East that now, the favor is being returned; the Islamic world is giving the colonizing Mother Country a taste of its own well deserved medicine.

Tragically, this means that infidel women are sexual prey; that their rape, sexual harassment, and sexual slavery is being done quite openly, publicly--just as it is done in the Muslim world.

It means that the luxury hotels all offer a "halal" option; that certain British government offices are run as Sharia enterprises.

The British nationalists and the Islamists agree on one thing and one thing only: That the Jews are the greatest oppressors and conspirators in the world; that "Palestine" is the most oppressed (non-) country in the whole wide world; and that this must be screamed out loud in the mosques, on the streets, in the media, and in the universities. Please read Carol Gould and Melanie Phillips for starters if you have not already done so.

Recently, I wrote about a British documentary made possible by the hard work of a Turkish-born nun, Sister Hatune Dogan. She opened every door for the British filmmakers, gentled the sex slaves whom she and her networks had rescued from ISIS and translated their words for the filmmaker.

Despite all promises to the contrary, Sister Hatune and her foundation were completely dropped from the film. When I finally got the producer on the phone, she admitted to me that "the film could not afford to be associated with such a racist Islamophobe, that it would ruin their chances for recognition and prizes"--and when I questioned her further, she quickly began yelling, then screaming after which she hung up on me in breathtaking fashion.

Yes, there is some "fight back." Britain has the power to return Muslim girls whose families have kidnapped them to Pakistan for forced marriages--that's if they can find them. Just as I was leaving, I read that a couple were arrested at Heathrow Airport for having taken their eight year old girl back to Somalia to have her genitals mutilated; doing so, is against the law.

Will Britain, will all Europe, fight to remain Western countries? Or, hoisted on their own petard of political correctness, will they simply become vassal states of Islam? 
To be or not to be--that is the question.


Prof. Phyllis Chesler

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18548#.VuWRn3qzdds

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Turkey: Normalizing Hate - Uzay Bulut

by Uzay Bulut

World Champion Violator of Right to Freedom of Speech

• "[T]hey have launched an investigation against me in accordance with article 301 because I mentioned 'peace, brotherhood, and human rights' in my statement to the press. Hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against lawyers and members of opposition in Turkey because they talked about peace and brotherhood." — Ilhan Ongor, Co-President of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association.
• Starving or murdering civilians does not, apparently, constitute a crime in Turkey, but speaking out about them does.
• Insulting non-Turkish and non-Muslim people has almost become a social tradition in Turkey. Prejudice and hate speech have become normalized.
• What makes this hate speech even more disturbing is that these people -- Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Jews, among others -- are the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Thrace, where they have lived for millennia. Today, as a result of Turkey's massacres, pogroms and deportations, they have been turned into tiny communities.

According to the 2015 statistics of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), 28 lawsuits were opened by applicants against member states regarding their violations of freedom of expression. Ten of those applications (complaints) were made against Turkey's violations of freedom of expression. Turkey ranked first in that category.

Turkish law professor Ayse Isil Karakas, both a judge and elected Deputy Head of the ECHR, said that among all member states, Turkey has ranked number one in the field of violations of free speech.

"619 lawsuits of freedom of expression were brought at the ECHR between 1959 and 2015," she said. " 258 of them -- almost half of them -- came from Turkey and most were convicted as violations of freedom of expression."

For a country that fancies itself a candidate for EU membership, that is quite a record. Actually, when it comes to deciding what thoughts are warmly tolerated and what thoughts are severely punished, Turkey is extraordinary. If the statement involves Jew-hating for instance, it is welcomed by many.

Seyfi Sahin, a columnist in the Islamist pro-government newspaper Vahdet, wrote on January 31:

"I believe that the gorillas and chimpanzees living in the forests in northern Africa today are cursed Jews. Those are mutated, perverted people.
"Believe me, this view is stronger and more scientific than the Darwin theory. We Muslims, and those who believe that, do not have the banks, the money, the organizational power in the world of science, or the propaganda power to scream those truths.
"But we have our wisdom, our faith and our Allah. Alhamdulillah (Praise be to Allah)."

In an attempt to back up his "views," Sahin mentioned that he is also a medical doctor, and quoted Koranic verses 2/65, 5/60 and 7/166. "Those verses are signs that monkeys descended from human beings," he said. "Allah always tells the truth."

Throughout his entire piece -- which has been widely "liked" and shared on social media -- he tried to "prove" his claim that monkeys come from Jews, and his newspaper saw no harm in publishing it. Yet, no one has yet brought him to account for his libelous insults. Who knows? He might even be given an award for this piece.

However, much of the Turkish public and the Turkish state are not so tolerant and welcoming when human rights issues -- especially Kurdish issues -- are discussed.

According to reports, two lawsuits were filed on January 3 against Sibel Ozbudun, an author and retired associate professor of anthropology known for her writings about minority rights. The indictment claims that through her social media posts, Ozbudun has committed the crime of "openly inciting people to commit an offense" and "making propaganda of the PKK." The lawsuits were filed after the police received an e-mail from someone denouncing Ozbudun for her posts.

One of the pieces of "evidence" of the prosecutors is a verse, popular in Turkey, shared by Ozbudun on her Facebook page: "I want the country be divided -- henchmen, sycophants and slimy ones to one side; honorable, dignified, laborious, patriotic people to the other."

On another occasion, on December 30, a Turkish instructor and a member of the Social Rights Association, Cise Atalay, during a lecture at Amasya University mentioned human rights abuses. A student called the police; Atalay was arrested for "terrorist propaganda" on the spot. Next, her home and office were searched.

The student who called the police is not alone. Turkish state authorities also regard requests for human rights as "terrorist propaganda" or "insulting the Turkish state." On January 7, an investigation was launched against the co-president of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD), Ilhan Ongor, for violating Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes it illegal "to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions."

On November 11, apparently, Ongor had issued a press release in which he said, "Today, in Silvan, a crime against humanity is being committed by the state. They are trying to make the massacres ordinary." He had been criticizing the recent military attacks against Kurds during a curfew imposed on the Kurdish district of Silvan.

The military attacks had caused starvation, civilian deaths and massive destruction. After his criminal investigation, Ongor said that "People's right to life is violated while the judiciary is trying to suppress human rights and defenders of freedom."

"Interestingly, they have launched an investigation against me in accordance with article 301 because I mentioned 'peace, brotherhood, and human rights' in my statement to the press. Hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against lawyers and members of opposition in Turkey because they talked about peace and brotherhood."

Starving or murdering civilians does not constitute a crime in Turkey, apparently, but speaking out about them does.

In Turkey, if someone utters the most vicious or threatening remarks about Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Christians, Kurds, Alevis or other members of a minority, he is never condemned by the state or held to account. But those who speak of human rights abuses, or criticize the state for its violent, repressive actions, will most probably be accused of violations.

After a group of Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK guerillas were killed in battle on September 8, the principal consultant of President Tayyip Erdogan and former Chairman of the Constitutional Commission of Turkey's Parliament, Burhan Kuzu, wrote in his Twitter account:

"So far, thousands of terrorists have been bumped off. This will continue. The corpses of the dead terrorists should definitely have autopsies. Many of them will be found to be uncircumcised. Wake up, my Kurdish brother, wake up now!"

Kuzu seems to be trying to legitimize the killings of PKK members because being uncircumcised implies being Christian or non-Muslim. He also seems to think that the PKK members are not Muslims, and that any non-Muslim deserves to be "bumped off."

Evidently jumping to conclusions about the possible political leanings of dead people based on their genitalia, and saying that because of their religious background they deserve to be killed, is perfectly acceptable in Turkey. What is more alarming is that Kuzu, who made these statements, is a constitutional law professor.

In 1996, at Turkey's parliament, the interior minister at the time, Meral Aksener, and a current MP from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), said that the leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), Abdullah Ocalan, was "Armenian semen." She then clarified the remark by saying, "I did not refer to the Armenians living in Turkey. I referred to the Armenian race in general."[1]

Humiliating statements about non-Turkish or non-Muslim people are common and popular, even among political circles, but if one makes critical statements about the state policies, one might be prosecuted, or end up in prison -- due to the vagueness of Turkey's "terrorism" laws.

Because of several articles in the Turkish penal code, many individuals face prosecution as if they were actually fighting the government as "members" of the armed Kurdish PKK, and are often sentenced accordingly.[2]

Many peaceful demonstrators have also faced prosecution for exercising their right of freedom of expression, if they shout slogans, hold up banners, or make statements to the press.

The latest victims are the peace activists who demanded an end to the recent military siege in Turkey's Kurdistan. On December 27, activists from western Turkey started a journey towards Diyarbakir in an attempt to oppose the military siege and civilian deaths in the region. Calling their action "We are walking towards peace," they arrived in Diyarbakir on December 31 -- to be attacked by the police. Four were injured and twenty-four were taken into custody, accused of "carrying out acts on behalf of a terrorist organization."

In December, peace activists walked to the city of Diyarbakir in Turkish Kurdistan in an action they called "We are walking towards peace." When they arrived, they were attacked by the police. Four were injured and twenty-four were arrested, accused of "carrying out acts on behalf of a terrorist organization." (Image source: JINHA)

The state tradition of violating the freedom of expression goes back to the foundation of the Turkish republic in 1923. The new regime established by the Republican People's Party (CHP) -- with its laws and "independence tribunals" -- totally crushed any kind of political opposition and freedom of opinion.

The 1925 Law on the Maintenance of Order gave the government that founded the Turkish republic extraordinary authority through which it could suppress all kinds of opposition and ban any group or publication it viewed as threatening its authority.

In 1926, all major national newspapers except Cumhuriyet and the official Ankara daily, Hakimiyet-i Milliye were closed.[3]

In another autocratic policy, the "independence tribunals" were founded in 1920 -- and functioned periodically until 1929 -- to prosecute the dissidents of the government and hand down swift capital punishment for them.

"The members of the independence tribunals were chosen from the parliament," wrote the historian Ayse Hur.

"But those members -- except for the prosecutors -- were not jurists. On the doors of the tribunals were written 'Independence tribunals are afraid of Allah only' and they were not responsible for their rulings but all of the civilian and military bureaucrats were responsible for the executions of punishments without delay.
"No evidence was needed to give rulings. It was very rare that the defendants had lawyers. There was neither time for that nor lawyers courageous enough. The rulings were given in accordance with the personal convictions of judges and those who were tried did not have a right of appeal. The punishments (and hangings) were carried out right away. The rulings were given and executed so swiftly that sometimes the wrong people were hanged instead of real defendants."

"By the time the independence tribunals were disbanded two years later," wrote professor Michael M. Gunter, "more than 7400 Kurds had been arrested, 660 had been executed, hundreds of villages had been destroyed, and thousands of other Kurds had been killed or exiled."[4]

The tribunals were legally closed down in 1929, but the laws concerning independence tribunals remained in force until 1949. They continued functioning as the nightmare of the opponents of the regime until the end of the one-party regime of the Republican People's Party (CHP) in 1950.

Sadly, the new Turkish regime founded in 1923 did not aim to foster a culture of free opinions and free debate. And the rest of Turkey's history has mostly been about repeated violations of freedom of expression. Almost all opinions that are different from the state's official ideology are targeted, criminalized and repressed.

Turkey has pursued discriminatory and violent policies towards minority groups, but discussing those policies often constitutes a crime.

Omer Asan, a Turkish author and publisher, was accused by Turkish courts of "spreading separatist propaganda" through "Pontus, Pontic Culture," a book he wrote. The title means "sea" in Greek, and is a historical Greek designation for the territory located in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. The inhabitants of Pontus were some of the very first converts to Christianity. From 1914 to 1923, out of approximate 700,000 Pontic Greek Christians, as many as 350,000 were killed by Muslim Turks in a genocidal campaign. Almost all the rest were driven out of their homes during the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

That act marked the end of one of the ancient Greek civilizations in Asia Minor. The ancient region known as Pontus has been almost totally Turkified and Islamized up until today.

The book was, among other things, the subject of a television program in which a theology professor accused Asan of "being a traitor friendly to Greece" and of "wanting to reintroduce Orthodox Christianity to a Muslim region."

In January 2002, the National Security Court ordered the seizure of the book.[5]

In March, 2002 the State Security Court brought criminal proceedings against Asan. He was charged with disseminating separatist propaganda by asserting that there were still some communities influenced by Pontic Greek culture in the province of Asan's hometown, Trabzon, and the surrounding area.

In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights convicted Turkey of violating Asan's right to free speech.

Why is Turkey disturbed by critical thoughts, questions and books, but not by those who call Armenians "sperm," Jews "monkeys" or who talk about the private parts of dead Kurds? Insulting non-Turkish and non-Muslim people has almost become a social tradition in Turkey. Prejudice and hate speech have become normalized.

What makes this hate speech even more disturbing is that these people -- Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Jews, among others -- are the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Thrace, where they have lived for millennia. Today, as a result of Turkey's massacres, pogroms and deportations, they have been turned into tiny communities.

After committing crimes against these native people, Turkey not only denies the realities of this history, but insults and threatens the remaining members of those groups. It also represses whoever would like to discuss these issues. The only people who seem to enjoy "freedom" completely are those engaging in hate speech.

Citizens of other countries who live in Turkey are also exposed to prohibitions on free speech.

Norma Cox, an American academic who worked as a lecturer at Turkish universities during the 1980s, was deported and banned from re-entering Turkey by order of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior in 1986, 1989 and 1996. She has been unable to return to Turkey ever since.

The Ministry of the Interior claimed that Cox had been expelled and banned because of her separatist activities against national security, "namely statements she had made about Turks assimilating Kurds and Armenians, and Turks forcing Armenians out of the country and committing genocide."

Cox's application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said: "Expressing opinions on Kurdish and Armenian issues at a university, where freedom of expression should be unlimited, could not be used as a justification for any sanctions, such as the ban on her re-entry into Turkey."

In 2010, the ECHR convicted Turkey of violating Cox's freedom of expression.[6]

While hate speech and racism are warmly tolerated and even promoted by state authorities, free debate on Turkey's social and political issues such as the Kurdish question and the PKK, Armenian genocide, history of Anatolian and Pontic Greeks, and the Christian roots of Anatolia, among others, are criminalized.

Turkey thereby systematically violates Turkish citizens' freedom of information or right to know, a right recognized by the United Nations.

The researcher Lisa Reppell, who analyzed Turkey's cases in the ECHR, wrote:

"The category in which Turkey stands out most significantly is freedom of expression. ... Though by number of incidences, freedom of expression judgments are a smaller percentage of Turkey's judgments, violations of this category are much more common in Turkey than in any other member state. Out of a total of 544 judgments handed down by the Court between 1959 and 2013, 41 percent of all freedom of expression violations have come from cases against Turkey."

Turkey is a mental prison. In Turkey, knowledge of history and respect for human rights are neither valued nor popular; hatred, bans and discrimination are.

Despite Turkey's unchanging pattern of violating freedom of expression, the country was officially recognized as a candidate for full membership of the European Union in 1999, and is a part of the "Western Europe" branch of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) at the United Nations.[7]

For decades, Europe has treated Turkey almost as if Turkey were a part of Europe. Turkey, however, has never behaved like a modern European state or even a state that truly aspires to be one.

Perhaps Turkish authorities in charge of the country's tourism affairs should prepare more truthful videos or posters. They might say: "Come to Turkey, where Asking for Peace is a Crime., but Asking for Uncircumcised People To Be Killed Is Normal."

Or: "Watch your books and remarks! We Are So Sensitive That Even the Mention of Greeks and Christians Offends Us."

Another poster could say, "In This Country, Recognizing the Armenian Genocide Is a Crime but Calling Someone "Armenian Sperm" is Just Fine. Welcome to Turkey!"

Uzay Bulut, born and raised a Muslim, is a Turkish journalist based in Ankara.

---

[1] "Armenian semen" is one of the most popular swear words in Turkey, often used for Kurds, as well. Kurds, or Kurds who request national rights, are "accused" of being Armenian. Many people in Turkey, including military personnel openly refer to Kurds or Kurdish activists as "Armenians," "dirty Armenians," "Armenian bastards," "Armenian sperm" or "Armenian semen."
[2] For more details, see: "Protesting as a Terrorist Offense: The Arbitrary Use of Terrorism Laws to Prosecute and Incarcerate Demonstrators in Turkey," by Human Rights Watch, November 1, 2010.
[3] "The History of Turkey", by Douglas Arthur Howard, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.
[4] "The A to Z of the Kurds", by Michael M. Gunter, Scarecrow Press, 2009.
[5] For details about Asan's case at ECHR, please see: European Court of Human Rights, 840; 27.11.2007 Asan V. Turkey.
[6] Cox's application to the ECHR also said:

"[T]he Ministry's allegations against her had not been proved. Even assuming that she had said those things at the university, she had remained within the permissible limits of criticism. Furthermore, she had never been prosecuted for having expressed those opinions. The action taken against her by the Ministry had therefore been devoid of any legal basis."

For details about Cox's case at ECHR, see "Case of Cox v. Turkey", Application no. 2933/03, 20 May 2010
[7] In 1987, Turkey's application to accede to the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union (EU), was made. Since 1963, Turkey has been an associate member. Turkey became a member of the Council of Europe in 1949; the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1961; and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 1973. It was an associate member of the Western European Union from 1992 to its end in 2011. It also signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995.

• Follow Uzay Bulut on Twitter

Uzay Bulut, born and raised a Muslim, is a Turkish journalist based in Ankara.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7461/turkey-normalizing-hate

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic State Closing in on Germany - Soeren Kern

by Soeren Kern

Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

• Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.
• "Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany." — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.
• More than 800 German residents -- 60% of whom are German passport holders -- have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.

A 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover. The stabbing appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

The incident occurred at the main train station in Hanover on the afternoon of February 26, when two police officers noticed that the girl — identified only as Safia S. — was observing and following them.

The officers approached the girl, who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, and asked her to present her identification papers. After handing over her ID, she stabbed one of the officers in the neck with a six-centimeter kitchen knife.

According to police, the attack happened so quickly that the 34-year-old officer, who was rushed to the hospital, was unable to defend himself. After her arrest, police found that Safia was also carrying a second, larger knife.

"The perpetrator did not display any emotion," a police spokesperson said. "Her only concern was for her headscarf. She was concerned that her headscarf be put back on properly after she was arrested. Whether the police officer survived, she did not care."

On March 3, Hanover Public Prosecutor Thomas Klinge revealed that Safia had travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015 to join the Islamic State, but that her mother had persuaded her to return to Germany on January 28.

Last month, Safia S., a 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent, stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover, in what appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

According to police, the stabbing was premeditated: unable to join the Islamic State in Syria, Safia had determined to carry out an attack against the police in Germany.

Safia is being charged with attempted murder. She is also being charged with a terrorism offense. According to prosecutors, by travelling to Turkey to join the Islamic State, the girl violated Section 89a of the German Criminal Code, "Preparation of a serious violent offense endangering the state."

The newspaper, Die Welt, reported that Safia had been part of the local Salafist scene since 2008 — she was only seven years old at the time. She had appeared in Islamist propaganda videos alongside Pierre Vogel, a convert to Islam and one of the best-known Salafist preachers in Germany. In those videos, Vogel praised Safia for wearing a headscarf to school and for being able to recite verses from the Koran.

Safia's brother, Saleh, is reportedly being held in a jail in Turkey, where he was arrested for trying to join the Islamic State.

Until now, the only other successful Islamist attack in Germany took place at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011, when Arid Uka, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, shot and killed two United States airmen and seriously wounded two others. Uka was later sentenced to life in prison.

On February 4, 2016, German police arrested four members of an ISIS cell allegedly planning jihadist attacks in Berlin. In coordinated raids, more than 450 police searched homes and businesses linked to the cell in Berlin, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The ringleader — a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying at a refugee shelter with his wife and two children in Attendorn — arrived in Germany in the fall of 2015. Posing as an asylum seeker from Syria, the Algerian, identified only as Farid A., is said to have received military training with the Islamic State in Syria.

Also arrested were: a 49-year-old Algerian living in Berlin under a fake French identity; a 30-year-old Algerian living in Berlin with a valid residence permit; and a 26-year-old Algerian, allegedly with ties to Islamists in Belgium, who is living in a refugee shelter in Hanover.

The men allegedly were planning to attack Checkpoint Charlie, the iconic Cold War crossing point between East and West Berlin. They also allegedly were planning to attack the Alexanderplatz, a large public square and transportation hub in the center of Berlin.

On February 8, German police arrested an alleged ISIS commander who was living at a refugee shelter in the small town of Sankt Johann. The 32-year-old jihadist, known only as Bassam and posing as a Syrian asylum seeker, had entered Germany in the fall of 2015. German intelligence authorities were unaware of the man's true identity until the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, interviewed him after receiving a tip from other Syrians at the shelter. Bassam said the accusations against him are false: "I want to learn German and work as a cook," he said.

In a February 5 interview with ZDF television, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe. "The terror risk is very high," he said.

On February 4, the Berliner Zeitung quoted Maaßen as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 warnings that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently living in Germany. Some of the jihadists are known to have entered Germany using fake or stolen passports.

Maaßen also revealed that the BfV knows of 230 attempts by Salafists to canvass German refugee shelters in search of new recruits. In a recent interview with the Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, Maaßen said that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014; 5,500 in 2013; 4,500 in 2012, and 3,800 in 2011.

Although Salafists make up only a small fraction of the estimated six million Muslims living in Germany today, intelligence officials warn that most of those attracted to Salafi ideology are impressionable young Muslims who, at a moment's notice, are willing to carry out terrorist acts in the name of Islam.

In an annual report, the BfV described Salafism as the "most dynamic Islamist movement in Germany." It added:

"The absolutist nature of Salafism contradicts significant parts of the German constitutional order. Specifically, Salafism rejects the democratic principles of separation of state and religion, popular sovereignty, religious and sexual self-determination, gender equality and the fundamental right to physical integrity."

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Maaßen warned: "Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany."

On February 16, more than 200 German police raided the homes of 44 Salafists in the northern city state of Bremen. The Interior Minister of Bremen, Ulrich Mäurer, said he had ordered the closure of the Islamic Association of Bremen (Islamischen Fördervereins Bremen) for the alleged recruiting of jihadists for the Islamic State:

"It is rather apocalyptic that we have people living in the middle of our city who are prepared, from one day to the next, to participate massively in the terror of the Islamic State."

In December 2014, authorities in Bremen shut down another Salafist group, the Culture and Family Association (Kultur- und Familieverein, KUF), after some of its members joined the Islamic State.

More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to Die Welt, based on the most recent data compiled by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. Around 130 others have been killed on the battlefield, including at least a dozen suicide bombers.

In a February 19 interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, the head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said that up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. He added that further jihadist attacks in Europe were to be expected:

"Europe is now facing the greatest terrorist threat in more than ten years. We expect that ISIS or other Islamist groups will carry out an attack somewhere in Europe, with the aim of achieving high losses among the civilian population. In addition, there is the threat posed by lone-wolf attackers. The growing number of foreign fighters presents the member states of the EU with completely new challenges."

A recent poll conducted by YouGov for the news agency, Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), found that 66% of Germans expect the Islamic State to carry out a jihadist attack on German soil in 2016. Only 17% of those surveyed believe there will be no attack; 17% said they did not have an opinion.

Speaking at a gathering of international police in Berlin on February 25, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the spy chief, warned that Germany is not an island: "We have to assume that we will become the target of jihadist attacks, and we need to be prepared."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7609/germany-islamic-state

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Egyptian TV Host Al-Ghiety To Hillary Clinton: Old Bag, You Are The Cause For What Happened In Syria, Iraq, And Libya - MEMRI

by MEMRI

Egyptian TV host Mohamed Al-Ghiety lashed at U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on his Tahrir TV talk show.

In response to the former secretary of state's defense of the U.S. involvement in the Qadhafi ouster, Al-Ghiety referred to Clinton as an "old bag," and accused the U.S. of being the cause for what happened in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. "At least 99% of the Libyans," he said, "long for the days of Qadhafi." The show aired on March 7.

Click here to view the clip on MEMRI TV

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MEMRI

Source: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5378.htm

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Their goal is to hurt Israel - Dan Margalit

by Dan Margalit

The entire Arab League designated the group as a terrorist organization. But not Joint Arab List (Balad faction) MK Dr. Jamal Zahalka, nor Hadash's Jewish MK, Dr. Dov Khenin.

Nothing will make Joint Arab List parties Balad and Hadash tone down their stance. The harsh criticism against Hezbollah was taken up a notch this weekend. It is no longer only Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States -- the entire Arab League designated the group as a terrorist organization. But not Joint Arab List (Balad faction) MK Dr. Jamal Zahalka, nor Hadash's Jewish MK, Dr. Dov Khenin. 

This is not a trivial matter. The sages say that a sin repeated becomes a habit, and that is what is happening with the stance of the Arab factions. They are completely and consistently hostile towards anything that has to do with Israel -- and the Jewish majority has grown accustomed to this behavior, accepts it as a decree from above and comes to terms with it. They do not object to or reflect on the Arab parties' vigorous efforts to harm Israel. There are democratic countries that would not exercise such patience and tolerance with a party like this, which represents a minority.

But now, things are getting more serious. The Arab League designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization based on its own criteria, with no consideration for Israel, for better or worse. No Sunni, Christian or secular Arab interests will involve cooperation with Hezbollah. And among the Shiites, there is a major disagreement about where to place their loyalty. 

Now, with the ongoing support for Hezbollah from the Joint Arab List, light has been cast on an even more concerning situation: Even if the entire Arab-Islamic world believes that Hezbollah is a destructive presence on the scene, one fact remains stronger than anything else -- Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is an essential player due to his violent animosity toward Israel.

Zahalka and his political partners determined for themselves and for their constituency that the principle of causing harm to Israel is more important and comes before any legitimate interests for Arabs in the Middle East or in the West. This is sad for those who worked hard for 68 years to integrate Israeli Arabs into the delicate texture of the local society. 

It is clear that this is the practical and declared stance of the Arab Knesset members. It also appears to consciously conflict with the will of their constituency. A poll released on Channel 2 News found that the majority of Israeli Arabs feel that the leadership of the Joint Arab List does not represent them well. These MKs have made no moves toward a policy of peace and Jewish-Arab coexistence. As long as they stick to this stance, even in light of changes in the Sunni-Shiite divide, they will become irrelevant to the Jewish-Arab dialogue.

Dan Margalit

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=15493

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Inside Communist Cuba - Joseph Klein

by Joseph Klein

Observations from a “people-to-people” tour.

I recently traveled to Cuba on what is called a “people-to-people” tour – the only legal way at present for a U.S. citizen to spend any time on Castro’s island as a casual visitor.  The idea, according to the U.S. Cuban Assets Control Regulations, is not for U.S. citizens to flit around Cuba simply as self-directed tourists with guidebooks in hand. We are expected by the federal government, as a condition of travel to Cuba, to engage in a full-time schedule of organized educational exchange activities “intended to enhance contact with the Cuban people, support civil society in Cuba, or promote the Cuban people’s independence from Cuban authorities.”

Air transportation to and from Cuba for U.S. citizens is currently via a charter flight. After dealing with bureaucracy and long waits on multiple lines before the flight took off from Miami, we arrived at the Havana airport only to encounter total disarray in retrieving checked luggage. Despite plans announced recently to allow American air carriers to offer 20 flights per day to Havana, Cuba’s infrastructure is nowhere near ready for prime time.

Once emerging from the chaotic scene at the Havana airport, our tour group of 28 Americans was met outside the airport by our local guide, a young enthusiastic woman proud of her Cuban homeland but also curious about the United States and the American people.

When visiting Cuba you realize right away that you are truly stepping back in time. Internet and cellular telephone services are spotty. Cash is still king, requiring Americans to exchange U.S. dollars for what are called Cuban Convertible pesos (CUCs for short) and lose about 13% of value in the process. Old American cars pop up all over Havana.  Horse and buggies travel side by side with automobiles in the countryside. Consumer goods we take for granted are mostly non-existent. Railroad tracks look like something out of an old Western movie.

However, there are some development projects underway or in the planning stages. They include not only the refurbishing of Cuba’s many fine historic buildings in Havana and smaller cities, but also new hotels and office towers financed with foreign investment. The tourism industry is Cuba’s number one priority for foreign investment.

It won’t be too long before U.S. businesses, including hotel chains, begin to invest in Cuba, as restrictions continue to be loosened by the Obama administration. Until then, however, the “people-to-people” tours are the primary means for American citizens, who want to beat the crowds that mass tourism will produce, to visit the island.

Each day of our tour was organized to show Cuba in its best light, featuring its rich history and beautiful architecture, lively music and dance, and a vibrant art scene. While we generally stayed together as a group, we were free to walk around the city streets ourselves. I did not sense any government minders following us to make sure that we only spoke to the “right” people. Overall, I had a positive experience on the tour, with the exception of having to endure some over-the-top pro-revolution rhetoric along the way, highlighted by a visit to a shrine built for the blood-thirsty revolutionary Che Guevara.

In fact, our first stop after gathering our bags at the very chaotic Havana airport was the Museum of the Revolution. Our guide, with an amused smile on her face, made sure to steer us towards large wall murals with unflattering caricatures of Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Captions under each of the presidential “portraits” thanked the “cretin” for contributing to the success of the Cuban revolution.

The tour’s bookends were stops to see a huge mural of Che Guevara in Revolutionary Square the first day of the tour and, on the last day, a huge statue of Che Guevara outside of a mausoleum in Santa Clara where his remains are kept. Che Guevara is still treated like a god in Cuba. One sees his image virtually everywhere you look, including emblazoned on souvenirs. Although he was born in Argentina, and left Cuba after winning a decisive battle against the deposed Batista’s forces in Santa Clara to fight other wars in the Congo and Bolivia, Cubans, including our guide, consider Che Guevara one of the “most beloved” heroes of Cuba. Fidel Castro and his brother, the current President Raoul Castro, do not come anywhere close.

Before discussing other aspects of the tour, I have to pause on Che Guevara since one could feel his spirit everywhere. The Cuban people, particularly the younger generation, need to come to grips with the crimes against humanity that Che Guevara and his fellow guerilla soldiers committed against Cuban civilians to achieve victory and secure authoritarian rule under the Castro brothers. Learning the truth will debunk the mythology the regime uses to indoctrinate the Cuban people and hold them back from asserting their human rights.

Che was a cold-hearted killer, who, even before his revolutionary days in Cuba, revealed to his parents his psychopathic personality. He wrote his father that he had discovered he loved to kill. He wrote his mother that “I am all the contrary of a Christ.”

In “Notas de Viaje,” Che wrote the following:  “…and I know, because I see it printed in the night, that I, the eclectic dissector of doctrines and psychoanalyst of dogmas, howling like possessed, will assault the barricades or trenches, will stain in blood my weapon and, mad of fury, will slit the throats of any defeated who fall into my hands…’

The Cuban revolution provided Che an outlet and pretext for acting on his psychosis. He boasted, for example: “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”

Che was prepared to use the 1962 Cuban missile crisis as an excuse to wreak vengeance on the United States by launching lethal nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. He wrote: “If the missiles had remained, we would have used them against the very heart of America including New York…We must walk the path of liberation even if it costs millions of atomic victims.”

Needless to say, I could have done without the glorification of Che Guevara. But trying to challenge our hosts on their version of Che’s legacy would have elicited nothing more than defensive responses or stony silence. Thus, I decided that it wasn’t worth going there, and I concentrated instead on the demonstrations we witnessed of the Cuban peoples’ creative spirit even while still living under authoritarian rule.

Besides, the best rebuke to Che’s legacy has been the failure of Cuba’s socialist experiment. After the subsidies from the Soviet Union and Venezuela, which had kept the Cuban economy afloat, dried up and the Cuban economy cratered, the Cuban regime put its toes into the waters of capitalism. We saw evidence of small-scale capitalism taking root. There are some privately owned small farms and housing. There are family-run and owned restaurants, art galleries, music groups and tourist businesses that we visited. I got a particular kick out of seeing a privately owned hotel, close to the Bay of Pigs Museum honoring Cuban resistance to the U.S.-supported “imperialistic invasion,” which now welcomes American visitors.

The regime still runs Cuba’s major industries, to be sure. Most Cuban workers live on low government salaries, supplemented by subsidized food ration coupons. Schools and health care services and facilities, examples of which we had an opportunity to visit, are run reasonably well by the government. Cuba’s literacy rate is over 99 percent, and its health system has received praise by Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the World Health Organization.

That said, however, the Cuban people we encountered did not seem content to live the kind of bland, conformist lifestyle that characterized the people living in the old Soviet Union. The creative arts in Cuba are flourishing.

The tour, for example, included a visit to the home of artist José Antonio Rodríguez Fuster, which contains a myriad of vibrantly colorful sculptures, paintings and ceramics that reminded me of Gaudi’s and Picasso’s artwork. And, just as Gaudi’s art appears in various places around Barcelona, Fuster has installed his work in neighboring streets and houses.  Paintings at another art gallery we visited presented examples of truly imaginative individual expression. We did not see any overtly political art that might be interpreted as anti-regime, but nor was there any emphasis on so-called socialist realism art, used in the former Soviet Union to depict the purported “virtues” of socialist values.

Music and dance are passions for the Cuban people that the regime does not appear to try to suppress today. Aside from live salsa music being played everywhere on the streets and in so many bars, Cuba now has highly professional self-sustaining choral and dance groups. We attended a performance of the Compas Dance Group, who embraced Cuba’s Spanish heritage with flamenco dancing, as well as performing dances reflecting Afro-Cuban traditions. But Cubans do not only look back to the past for their music. Cubans, particularly Cuban youth, are hungry for rock and roll. The regime, which once banned the Beatles from Cuba’s airwaves, is actually welcoming rock groups to perform in Cuba, including the Rolling Stones and even some American bands. The unintended consequence may be to stimulate the growth of homegrown bands and gradually wean the younger generation away from the officially sanctioned mass thought they are learning in Cuba’s public schools.

We also visited Catholic churches, which now welcome worshippers, decades after Fidel Castro’s regime had confiscated church property, nationalized Catholic schools and drove priests into exile. Pope Francis’s visit last September to Cuba was well-received. However, the Cuban regime still sets strict limits on freedom of conscience and public protest. Prior to Pope Francis’s visit, the regime arrested at least 50 Catholic dissidents.

Cuba is at a crossroads. It is still clinging to its myth of revolutionary glory, symbolized by its deification of Che Guevara. Public dissent from government policies is still not tolerated. However, driven by the recognition that it must eschew its rigid socialist orthodoxy in order to save its economy, the regime is going through its own version of Perestroika. Seeds of capitalism are beginning to bear fruit. The regime is also showing more openness to removing some restrictions on artistic and musical expression as well as worship. When President Obama visits Cuba later this month, he needs to encourage such positive behavior. At the same time, he should insist on meeting with political dissidents. And he needs to forcefully urge the Cuban leaders he meets with to release the regime’s political prisoners and end their suppression of the Cuban peoples' fundamental political rights to freedom of speech and press, freedom of assembly and freedom of association. The Cuban leaders should be made to understand that further loosening of economic restrictions will be conditional on the regime’s concrete progress on human rights for their people.

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262126/inside-communist-cuba-joseph-klein

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Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel? - Shoshana Bryen

by Shoshana Bryen

President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one "victory."

• Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And Obama's abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.
• It is estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2014, four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces. This is a far cry from 2011, when Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq."
• He needs to find a "success." Cue the Middle East "peace process."

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another "peace plan" designed by the Obama administration. There isn't much new in it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. might support a UN Security Council resolution calling on "both sides to compromise on key issues," and it might involve the Middle East Quartet. Israel would be told to stop building in the territories and recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian State. The Palestinians would be told to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give up the "right of return" for the original 1948/49 refugees and their descendants.
Just do it and voila! Problem solved.

As Vice President Biden arrived in Israel this week, word leaked about yet another "peace plan" designed by the Obama administration. (Image source: Israel Prime Minister's Office)

Why and why now? Because President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office and needs another job. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one "victory." Consider the list of Administration failures right now and the terrible destruction they have entailed:

In his first foreign visit, President Obama opened the door in Egypt to an uprising not only of "Google people" in Tahrir Square, but also to the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherhood representatives were front and center at the President's speech in Cairo's Al-Azhar University, to the dismay of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak. After Mubarak's overthrow, the White House pressed for the inclusion of the Brotherhood in Egyptian elections despite its history of terrorism. Since then, the U.S. and Egypt have been unable to find a way to communicate constructively, despite Egypt's increasing closeness to Israel and their joint interest in controlling the terrorist Hamas and Iranian-sponsored jihadis in Sinai.

The Muslim Brotherhood was emboldened in Syria by its successes in Egypt.

The Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS -- both in some measure precipitated by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq – have killed upwards of 350,000 people (more than 55,000 in 2015) and displaced nearly 4 million more. Chemical weapons, starvation, beheadings and aerial bombing are weapons of choice by various sides. Russia is calling the shots (literally) in Syria, while Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to fund various jihadi groups, and Iran operates freely in both Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, despite taking enormous casualties in Syria, continues to add to its missile arsenal in Lebanon.

This is a far cry from 2011, when President Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq." An Iraqi non-governmental organization estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed there in 2014, double the number from the previous year and four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces.

Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have all been destabilized by an influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq. Lebanon, a fragile country of less than 4.5 million people divided into Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze, now has more than one million Syrian refugees.

Afghanistan was the "good war" in President Obama's narrative. At West Point at the end of 2009, President Obama announced an additional deployment of 30,000 American soldiers to stabilize Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Six years later -- 15 years after we got there -- American military leaders told him the Afghan government still couldn't survive without a continuing American military presence. Since the administration decided to leave a contingent of nearly 10,000 soldiers for an indefinite period of time, the Taliban has refused to continue peace talks with the Afghan government, and we're looking at another bloody summer. Terrorist bombs in Pakistan are a daily occurrence.

Libya was supposed to be a test of our "responsibility to protect." It also had, from the President's point of view, the benefit of "leading from behind" and having "no boots on the ground." After successfully ousting Moammar Gaddafi -- who had turned his WMD program over to US and UK intelligence, kept al-Qaeda from moving from Egypt to Western North Africa, and paid reparations for terrorism -- the U.S. acknowledged as many as 30,000 Libyan deaths in two months of war.

The war in Mali was a direct result of the demise of the Gaddafi government and the raiding of government weapons depots by al-Qaeda-supported Tuareg forces. Only the direct involvement of French troops saved the government there. The deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods, and Glen Doherty are attributable to the rise of al-Qaeda there as well. Today, there are as many as 1700 armed gangs across Libya and ISIS controls Sirte, a city of more than 100,000. The Pentagon is drawing up plans for U.S. military action to force ISIS out, we are again bombing Libya and there are American Special Forces on the ground.

Meanwhile, the U.S. bombed an al-Shabaab training base in Somalia this week, killing more than 150 members of the group.

Iran has come closer to nuclear weapons competence in the past eight years. And President Obama's abandonment of dissidents and pro-democracy advocates in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Turkey and Iran paves the way for waves of repression and bloodshed around the world.

The widespread wreckage and carnage that accrues to President Obama's policies and fantasies should disqualify him from further activity on the international stage when his term ends. But since retirement doesn't appear in the offing, he needs to find a "success."

Cue the Middle East "peace process."

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7595/obama-peace-process-israel

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