The Ongoing War In France

                                                                                            
                                                                                                                published at Times of Israel

President Hollande has closed the borders of France. Such a thing has not happened since World War II. The borders were sealed to make sure that none of the terrorists got away, although the police said Friday night that all of these terrorists had been killed.

The borders were also sealed and "checkpoints reinstated" because the President of France has decided to try to keep out other potential terrorists.

About one hundred and fifty people were murdered at six different Paris locations in France's worst experience of terror attacks. On Friday evening these people were sitting in cafes, watching a soccer match, attending a rock concert, or simply enjoying life in the beautiful city of Paris.  In a split second their lives were destroyed by suicide bombers, grenade throwers, and by the gunfire of terrorists shouting "Allahu Akbar." Hundreds more in Paris are injured and of course thousands are traumatized.

President Obama, offering US support and sympathy, said that the terrorists must be "brought to justice." President Hollande managed to say "we know who they are" without saying who they are.

Paris's terror, like the terror of 9/11, the London tube bombings, the Mumbai attacks, and the ongoing nearly daily violence against Israelis, is part of a global war.

Yet, every time an Islamist terror attack occurs--except in Israel where it is acknowledged that Hamas, Hezbollah, and even "lone wolf" kids abusively raised to kill infidels, are perpetuating terror--there is reluctance to name the perpetrators, to acknowledge that their goal is to destroy, to murder, and ultimately to take over.

As the events unfolded no mainstream media site nor political leader (that I heard) used the term "Islamist terror" even though there was never any doubt that these were Islamist attacks.  ISIS was all over social media praising the killings.

Now ISIS (Daesh) has claimed responsibility. President Hollande has announced "three days of national mourning" and said this:

"Faced with war, the country must take appropriate action...France will be merciless towards these barbarians from Daesh."

I hope that there is no call for "all sides" to quell the violence or for Hollande not to engage in rhetoric that will "inflame tensions."

And if the French do respond to the murder of innocents, I hope that the free world will help them (regardless of their various faults) rather than mistake them for the perpetrators.

"Bloody Friday" Free Pass For Terror?

                                Tourists leaving Sousse, Tunisia after terror attack            --photo: Daily Record 

ISIS supporters made good on the call this week from Abu Muhammad al-Adani, Islamic State official spokesman, to use the month of Ramadan to create a “calamity for the infidels…and apostate Muslims.”

On Friday, they slaughtered 38 people, mostly tourists from England, who were relaxing at a beach in Tunisia.  Earlier in the day, terrorists in France beheaded a businessman after ramming a truck into a factory and causing an explosion. And at around the same time, in Kuwait, a suicide bomber killed 25 worshipers and injured hundreds at a mosque.

On any given day if you happen to be an “infidel,” that is, a Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist, or if you are a Muslim who goes to the wrong kind of mosque, a former Muslim, or an atheist, you are a target. A target wide as the world.

While the horror that was the beach at Sousse, and the beheading in France by a terrorist who was known to French authorities, may take Western attention for a while (for a lifetime for those who lost loved ones and those who are among the many wounded) it is especially scary to think that quickly we will stop paying attention, again.

Terror attacks in France and Tunisia are very recent, those that ended the lives of 12 people who were working at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and 4 people who were shopping in a kosher market in Paris as well as the terrorism at the Bardo Museum in Tunis that left 22 people dead.  Yet, every new attack shows up as if anomalous, as if only tenuously connected to what has come before, and without acknowledgment by Western powers of the war that has been declared on us.  

Instead there will be some speeches and memorials and investigations. The UN will focus its next emergency session on Israel.

As a member of the vast, world majority of non-jihadists, of we, the people enjoying living life and intent on continuing to do so, I’d be encouraged to hear some direct statements from our leadership. What kind of plan is there for defense of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world?

A disturbing question but an obvious one:  Is giving nuclear weapons to Iran --whose mullahs see themselves in opposition to ISIS but also to the US and Israel – the best you can do?

Je Suis Charlie; Je Suis Juif

Yesterday, I started a post that began: "We are all Charlie, not just in solidarity and sadness, but because we are targets -- even if we pretend, just to get through the day, that we're not. And nothing we do is making us targets -- not what we draw or write or say or even what we believe. We are targeted by Islamic terrorists because of who we are: non-Islamists. And when the next Islamic terrorist attack occurs, we need to stand with those innocent victims of terror, too."

Then I hurried in the rain to the train station in Tel Aviv ahead of the last trains that run on Fridays, while in Paris the next terror attack was already underway.

Today we know that four Jews shopping in a Kosher market (their names are still not published) were murdered before the police were able to stop the killers. We know that another 30 people saved themselves by huddling together in a freezer for hours during the attack. We know that French government leaders are in emergency meetings.

But we have known and the French officials have known that the Jews of France have been under siege for years. We knew that the offices of Charlie Hebdo had been fire-bombed in 2011. We knew about the twin towers bombing in 1993.

Last night the Grand Synagogue of Paris was closed on shabbat because the police did not believe they could provide protection from terror. The last time the Grand Synagogue was closed was during World War II.

We've had plenty of warnings. Now, what will the free world do?

Paris, Gaza, and the Oldest Hatred

                                                                                             Photo: Reuters / Philippe Wojazer

It seems that attending synagogue in Paris has become more dangerous than running to bomb shelters in Israel. In the past weeks, with Hamas rockets targeting all the cities of Israel, 430 French Jews, mostly young families, arrived to make their home in Israel.  

The world’s third largest Jewish community has in recent years experienced a steady decline of its population due to emigration, mainly to Israel but also to the US and Canada.  The war in Israel will come to an end but dangers for Jews in France, and elsewhere in Europe, will continue unless radical change takes place within Europe, with France the focal point of the greatest threats to Jews. 

It is hard to think of the beautiful city of Paris this way. But the reality is that Jews in Paris have been trapped inside their synagogues while mobs rioted outside throwing Molotov cocktails and chanting  “death to the Jews” and “long live Hamas.”

The pretext of pro-Palestinian protest has been completely shattered as Jewish businesses have been torched and Jewish neighborhoods have become danger zones for their residents.

Even if one holds the position that Israel should not defend itself against Hamas rocket attacks, it should be obvious that shouts of “death to Jews” and the chant, “Jews out of France,” by marchers through Paris back in January (without the Gaza pretext) express raw anti-Semitism. 

Most recently these chants have been accompanied by so much violence that “Paris’s Kristallnacht” is an apt description. According to Paris University professor, Guy Muilliere:

Demonstrators also shouted slogans in favor of a man who had murdered Jewish children: "We are all Mohamed Merah." Merah shot and killed a rabbi and three Jewish children at close range in a schoolyard in Toulouse in 2012; it was the one of the most serious anti-Semitic acts committed in France since the Vichy regime. This was the first time in France that a large crowd proudly identified with a murderer of Jewish children.

…Dozens of windows of Jewish shops and restaurants along the route were broken and covered with yellow labels saying, "boycott Israel". This was the first time that so many Jewish shops and restaurants were attacked during a demonstration in Paris.

In addition, several hundred protesters armed with iron bars, machetes, axes and firebombs, arriving Place de la Bastille, marched to the nearby Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue on rue de la Roquette. They shouted, "Let's slay the Jews," "Hitler was right," and "Allahu Akbar".

It is encouraging that French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls spoke out on Monday, according to the Jerusalem Post, condemning “the use of anti-Zionist rhetoric as a cover up of anti-Semitic opinions,” though the rioters make no such distinction. He delivered the speech on the anniversary of the 1942 Vil d’Hiv Roundup, a two-day period during which French authorities delivered 12,000 Jews to the Nazis. “The dishonor of France,” said Valls “is to have been an accomplice of the occupier, to have sent men, women, children, to death because they were Jews.”

Also on Monday, after an anti-Israel protest in Toulouse, a man threw firebombs at the Jewish Community Center and was arrested. A local Jewish community leader, Nicole Yardeni, commented, “We endure daily insults and get spat on--a general feeling of anxiety because a part of the population has a poisoned mind that makes it their mission to hurt Jews, regardless of Gaza.”

During an attack last week on a kosher restaurant in the Paris neighborhood Le Marais,  “A worker of the restaurant managed to shutter the restaurant’s anti-burglary bars, preventing the crowd from entering and locking dozens of customers inside. The crowd proceeded to hurl various objects at the windows while shouting ‘bunch of dirty Jews, we will kill you’ and ‘death to the Jews.’”

                                                                                                                 Published at Times of Israel