France: The Coming Civil War: Yves Mamou, Gatestone Institute, July 16, 2016— "We are on the verge of a civil war." That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic.
French Lessons: A.J. Caschetta, Daily Caller, July 15, 2016 — The Bastille Day attack in Nice, France last night should cause the Democrats to reconsider their gun control approach to counterterrorism.
Islamic State Shifts Strategy: Jonathan Spyer, Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2016— The latest wave of bombings by Islamic State confirm a pattern long observed.
ISIS’s Thirst for Blood Only Matched by its Hunger for Publicity: James Kirchick, New York Post, June 26, 2016— He could have been me.
Nice Attack – the Wider Threat to France: Peter Apps, Reuters, July 15, 2016
CAIR Chief's Reflexive Terror Denial Stands Apart: IPT, July 15, 2016
ISIS is a Symptom, Not the Problem: Mitchell Bard, Times of Israel, July 16, 2015
“Prove You’re Muslim or Die”: Raymond Ibrahim, Breaking Israel News, July 17, 2016
Yves Mamou
Gatestone Institute, July 16, 2016
"We are on the verge of a civil war." That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic. No, it came from head of France's homeland security, the DGSI (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure), Patrick Calvar. He has, in fact, spoken of the risk of a civil war many times. On July 12th, he warned a commission of members of parliament, in charge of a survey about the terrorist attacks of 2015, about it. In May 2016, he delivered almost the same message to another commission of members of parliament, this time in charge of national defense. "Europe," he said, "is in danger. Extremism is on the rise everywhere, and we are now turning our attention to some far-right movements who are preparing a confrontation".
What kind of confrontation? "Intercommunity confrontations," he said — polite for "a war against Muslims." "One or two more terrorist attacks," he added, "and we may well see a civil war." In February 2016, in front of a senate commission in charge of intelligence information, he said again: " We are looking now at far-right extremists who are just waiting for more terrorist attacks to engage in violent confrontation". No one knows if the truck terrorist, who plowed into the July 14th Bastille Day crowd in Nice and killed more than 80 people, will be the trigger for a French civil war, but it might help to look at what creates the risk of one in France and other countries, such as Germany or Sweden. The main reason is the failure of the state.
1. France is at War but the Enemy is Never Named. France is the main target of repeated Islamist attacks; the more important Islamist terrorist bloodbaths took place at the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher supermarket of Vincennes (2015); the Bataclan Theater, its nearby restaurants and the Stade de France stadium, (2015); the failed attack on the Thalys train; the beheading of Hervé Cornara (2015); the assassination of two policemen in Magnanville in June (2016), and now the truck-ramming in Nice, on the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789.
Most of those attacks were committed by French Muslims: citizens on their way back from Syria (the Kouachi brothers at Charlie Hebdo), or by French Islamists (Larossi Abballa who killed a police family in Magnanville in June 2016) who later claimed their allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). The truck killer in Nice was Tunisian but married to a French woman, with whom he had three children together, and lived quietly in Nice until he decided to murder more than 80 people and wound dozens more.
After each of these tragic episodes President François Hollande refused to name the enemy, refused to name Islamism — and especially refused to name French Islamists — as the enemy of French citizens. For Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: "terrorism" or "fanatics". Even when the president does dare to name "Islamism" the enemy, he refuses to say he will close all Salafist mosques, prohibit the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist organizations in France, or ban veils for women in the street and at university. No, instead, the French president reaffirms his determination for military actions abroad: "We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq," the president said after the Nice attack.
For France's president, the deployment of soldiers in the homeland is for defensive actions only: a deterrent policy, not an offensive rearmament of the Republic against an internal enemy. So confronted with this failure by our elite — who were elected to guide the country through national and international dangers — how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate? As Mathieu Bock-Côté, a sociologist in France and Canada, says in Le Figaro: "Western elites, with a suicidal obstinacy, oppose naming the enemy. Confronted by attacks in Brussels or Paris, they prefer to imagine a philosophical fight between democracy and terrorism, between an open society and fanaticism, between civilization and barbarism".
2. The Civil War Has Already Begun and Nobody Wants to Name It. The civil war began sixteen years ago, with the second Intifada. When Palestinians executed suicide attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, French Muslims began to terrorize Jews living peacefully in France. For sixteen years, Jews — in France — were slaughtered, attacked, tortured and stabbed by French Muslim citizens, supposedly to avenge Palestinian people in the West Bank. When a group of French citizens who are Muslims declares war on another group of French citizens who are Jews, what do you call it? For the French establishment, it is not a civil war, just a regrettable misunderstanding between two "ethnic" communities. Until now, no one wanted to establish a connection between these attacks and the murderous attack in Nice against people who were not necessarily Jews — and name it as it should be named: a civil war.
For the very politically correct French establishment, the danger of a civil war will begin only if anyone retaliates against French Muslims; if everyone just submits to their demands, everything is all right. Until now, no one thought that the terrorist attacks against Jews by French Muslims; against Charlie Hebdo's journalists by French Muslims; against an entrepreneur who was beheaded a year ago by a French Muslim; against young Ilan Halimi by a group of Muslims; against schoolchildren in Toulouse by a French Muslim; against the passengers on the Thalys train by a French Muslim, against the innocent people in Nice by an almost French Muslim were the symptoms of a civil war. These bloodbaths remain seen, to this day, as something like a tragic misunderstanding…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
A.J. Caschetta
Daily Caller, July 15, 2016
The Bastille Day attack in Nice, France…should cause the Democrats to reconsider their gun control approach to counterterrorism. After San Bernardino and then Orlando, Obama, Chuck Schumer and others have been citing jihadi terror attacks to support their domestic legislation agenda. France is about as close to a national gun-free zone as you can get. Lesson number one from France is that gun laws will not stop jihad terror.
There are no gun show loopholes in France, because there are no gun shows. There are no mandatory waiting periods, and there is no debate about gun control. Everybody agrees that guns are bad, so only the police have them. Or at least that was the plan. But of course the people who don’t obey laws have guns. They are called criminals. Lately a lot of them happen to be Jihadis.
Remember the touching father and son scene last November, after a jihad attack in France, where Parisians were consoling themselves in the modern fashion with flowers, stuffed animals and candles? A conversation between a reporter, a young father and his little boy was captured on French television and “went viral.” The boy was worried about all of the bad guys with guns. His father told him not to worry “They’ve got guns but we have flowers.” Lesson number two from France is when your enemy has guns, flowers will not suffice. So another jihadi has used guns to kill French citizens. This one was also prepared to use grenades (also illegal in France). But he also used a truck, reminiscent of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar who in 2006 drove his SUV into a crowd of people on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill injuring nine.
Banning firearms did not prevent the Nice, France attacker from finding and using firearms. It did not prevent the Bataclan killers, or the killers at the Charlie Hebdo offices, or the killer at the Hyper Kasher Deli, or the killer at the Jewish school in Toulouse. Nor did it prevent the Moroccan jihadi on the train in Paris, who would have done much more damage had it not been for the valiant efforts of three type-A, gung ho Americans with nerves of steel. While the crew of the French train ran away from the shooter, Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler ran towards the gunfire and subdued him. Lesson number three from France is that only by fighting back can you survive.
Banning firearms as a way of preventing jihadi terror pretends that jihadis (and others), suddenly unable to find firearms, will give up on their plans. History says otherwise. There will still be black market firearms. And banning legal firearms makes it very unlikely that civilians under attack will be able to defend themselves. There are not many Stones, Skarlatos or Sadlers in the world. In Belgium earlier this year the jihadis didn’t even use guns but instead bombs – just like the jihadis who attacked the London underground in 2005, the Madrid trains in 2003, the Bali night club in 2002, the World Trade Center in 1993. Trying to prevent jihadis from acquiring weapons by passing laws that outlaw weapons misses two points: they will ignore these laws and get the prohibited weapons anyway, or they will find things that can be used as weapons. Wasn’t that the “tactical” lesson of 9/11?
After 9/11 when the U.S. government created more government (DHS, TSA, ODNI) in response to jihadi terrorism and then began confiscating weapons from airline passengers – scissors, tweezers, nail clippers – rumor had it that the Israelis thought we were crazy. Our attempts to interdict weapons rather than those who would use them seemed counterintuitive to good counterterrorism. All these years later and another president is still chasing weapons. Of course finding those who would use weapons in attacks as part of the global jihad movement – whether they call themselves members of Al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Jabhat al-Nusra Front – requires that one look for jihadists.
Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2016
The latest wave of bombings by Islamic State confirm a pattern long observed. As it continues to lose ground in its heartland and its “provinces,” so the organization turns back to an intensified focus on international terrorism. This is in line with previous experience of international Salafi-jihadi organizations.
Two points need to be noted. First, considerable past experience shows that the destruction of the physical holdings of Salafi-jihadi groups does not mean their eclipse. Second, and more important, Salafi- jihadi networks are today part of a broader process – the revival and flourishing of political Islam. To try to understand them otherwise is to misunderstand them. The patterns of survival of earlier networks confirm this.
That the Islamic State “caliphate” is facing eclipse is no longer under serious dispute. It has lost around 47 percent of its territory in Iraq, according to a June 27 statement by Brett McGurk, the US administration’s point man in the fight against Islamic State. The latest loss is the city of Falluja. In Syria, Islamic State is also contracting, though at a slower rate. Twenty percent of its territory is gone. The US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces is surrounding the town of Manbij close to the Syrian-Turkish border. Its progress has now slowed in the face of two determined Islamic State counterattacks this week, but the siege on the town has not been broken.
In Libya, meanwhile, forces loyal to the UN-appointed Government of National Accord have severely reduced the Islamic State enclave around the city of Sirte. Government forces are now inside Sirte itself, with Islamic State fighters remaining in just three parts of the city. Western air power and special forces are playing a major, if mainly unannounced, role in the advances against Islamic State in all three countries.
But in the same period, as pretensions to statehood recede, Islamic State is proving its tenacity in a series of terrorist attacks of unprecedented range and ferocity, away from the beleaguered front lines of its territorial holdings. Most notably, the massive terrorist strike on a Shi’a area of Baghdad, in which 220 people died, represents a clear message that Islamic State is far from neutralized. The slaughter of 22 people in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the terrorist attack on Ataturk Airport in Istanbul are similar announcements of the movement’s continued vigor.
Add to the roster of Islamic State Ramadan activities the series of attacks in Saudi Arabia – on a US government facility in Jeddah, a Shi’a mosque and a holy site in Medina – and the recent suicide bombings in Aden in which 40 people were killed and for which Islamic State took responsibility. Finally, the attacks at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and in the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv appear to have been perpetrated by individuals supportive of Islamic State, though not directly controlled and activated by the movement.
Of course, the wave of attacks in Ramadan reflect a longer trend. Islamic State has effectively been in retreat since its moment of highest expansion in late 2014. What has happened in recent weeks is that the pace of retreat has increased. We have been here before. The global network of al-Qaida remains in existence and is flourishing. It never proclaimed itself as a caliphate or even as a state. But it did have significant territorial holdings in the pre-2001 period. The expulsion of the group from Sudan and the US invasion of Afghanistan ended these. They did not end al-Qaida. The network survived, adapted and continued.
Today, it remains as important a player as Islamic State in the politics of the Arab world. Its Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, is arguably the most effective and sophisticated Salafi-jihadi formation in existence today. Its Yemeni franchise, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, outperforms Islamic State in that area and prevents its gaining a foothold. So any assumption that the physical destruction of Islamic State as a state-type entity will mean the eclipse of the organization should be dismissed. Salafi-jihadi networks have a tendency to overreach themselves and pick fights with enemies too large for them (see September 11, 2001).
But the evidence suggests that the reaction this produces leads not to the destruction of the network but to its adaptation to new circumstances and its continuation. This brings us to the second point. It is “politically correct” but factually unsustainable to view the networks of Salafi- jihadi Islamism as belonging to a category separate and sealed off from other elements and trends in political Islam. Islamic State grabs the headlines for obvious reasons, but if we broaden the scope of vision a moment, we will discern Salafi-jihadi movements ideologically identical to Islamic State but tactically different from them, movements that enjoy close relations of cooperation with powerful regional states.
Just west of Islamic State’s domain in Raqqa province in Syria, the most powerful political-military grouping is Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest). This alliance brings together Jabhat al-Nusra and another al-Qaida offshoot, Ahrar al-Sham. The latter is arguably the most powerful rebel formation in Syria today. These groupings do not differ in any substantial way from Islamic State in their end goal. And in the case of Nusra, the commitment to and support for international terrorism is identical. Yet Jaish al-Fatah is the recipient of massive aid from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. As a result, far away from the fantasy world of the Geneva talks, Jaish al-Fatah controls a large swath of northwest Syria. It is a serious player. The unseen agencies that work for President Erdogan and King Salman (and Sheikh Tamim of Qatar, though the Qataris matter less these days) handle their countries’ relations with it.
In this area, in turn, Jaish al-Fatah is doing battle with a conglomeration of Shi’a Islamist militias ostensibly representing the Assad regime. The “regime forces” today are themselves better understood as representing a rival, Shi’a Islamist international network, centered on the Islamic Republic of Iran. So the turning back of Islamic State, and its consequent morphing into an international terrorist group, should not be confused with a major strategic achievement. Islamic State will remain to murder people and crowd the headlines. More seriously, the energies of political Islam, which have gripped and shaken the life of the Middle East to its very foundations, remain far from spent. In their many manifestations, they are closer to the centers of “legitimate” power today than at any time in the past.
ISIS’S THIRST FOR BLOOD ONLY MATCHED
James Kirchick
New York Post, June 26, 2016
He could have been me. On May 22, in the eastern Syrian province of Dier ez-Zor, 15-year-old Jamal Nassir al-Oujan was apprehended by militants of the Islamic State for the “crime” of being gay. He was given a short trial, summarily found guilty and sentenced to death by stoning. According to an anonymous eyewitness account gathered by a local news agency, members of the public were ordered to participate in the brutal killing. When I was a 15-year-old gay kid struggling to come out of the closet, the worst fate I could have ever imagined was being rejected by those who loved me. Fortunately, that never happened. But never in my worst nightmares did I consider the prospect that I would be stoned to death in public. Yet that is the fate awaiting gays living under ISIS’s sadist rule. And as this month’s deadly shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, committed by American-born Omar Mateen who pledged fealty to ISIS, shows, the terror group’s murderous homophobia now has American gays in its target sights.
From the very beginnings of its rule in parts of Syria and Iraq two years ago, ISIS has claimed Koranic injunction for its war on homosexuality. A “penal code” released by the group in December 2014 lists death as the penalty for same-sex relations. Though the means by which ISIS punishes homosexuals may be graphic, they did not appear out of a cultural and religious vacuum. “As shocking and horrific as ISIS’s carnival atmosphere executions of gay men continue to be, the public’s willingness to participate demonstrate that ISIS’s actions are built on a well-established foundation,” reports the Counter-Extremism Project. “ISIS has cynically exploited these prejudices in order to ingratiate itself among the people it has conquered as well as to further its hateful agenda and impose its extreme and violent interpretations of Islamic law in the wider Middle East and beyond.”
Horrifying, yes. But what most strikes me most about ISIS’s brutality is its unabashed openness. Not even the Nazis were so candid about their evil. As World War II drew to an end with the advance of the Soviet Red Army and Germany’s defeat in sight, guards at Auschwitz and other concentration camps went about destroying the evidence of their crimes. Across Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, slave laborers were ordered to dig up the corpses of murdered Jews from mass graves and construct giant pyres with alternating layers of bodies and wood, the remains going up in flames. After the war, when the full enormity of what the Nazis had done was becoming known to the world, surviving members of the Third Reich did not defend their actions on principle. Instead, they entered the infamous “superior orders” plea, arguing that they were but cogs in a long, complex chain of command, just following the instructions of their superiors.
Say what you will about ISIS — there is none of this sort of weaselly obfuscation when it comes to its barbarism. ISIS is without question one of the most brutally violent movements in the world today, targeting not just gays, but anyone they randomly label an infidel. And it wants everyone — future generations included — to know it. An atrocity last month may rank as its most repulsive, though that is an admittedly subjective claim. It all depends upon how you rank the varying prospects of being buried alive, thrown off a building or dipped into a vat of nitric acid.
In May, a source in the Iraqi city of Mosul (captured by ISIS two years ago), claimed that, after seizing a group of accused spies, group members executed them via the latter method. “ISIS members tied each person with a rope and lowered him in the tub, which contains nitric acid, till the victims’ organs dissolve,” reads a report from Iraq News. Nitric acid is normally used in the processes of photo engraving and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. One can scarcely imagine what effect it has upon contact with the human body. Days before, the terror group seemed to have reached the depths of depravity when it executed a 7-year-old boy, Muaz Hassan, for the crime of “cursing divinity” while playing a game of pick-up soccer in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIS’s de facto capital. Believed to be the youngest victim of ISIS’s long reign of terror, Hassan was shot by firing squad before a crowd of hundreds of people. His parents reportedly “collapsed in grief.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Nice Attack – the Wider Threat to France: Peter Apps, Reuters, July 15, 2016—With the death of the driver who plowed his truck through dozens of French civilians in Nice, it may take authorities a while to get to fully understand what motivated the attack. The broader picture, however, looks unpleasantly clear: Mainland Europe, and France in particular, is facing a vicious, repeated string of attacks that are hard to stop and likely to produce ever more unpredictable political consequences.
CAIR Chief's Reflexive Terror Denial Stands Apart: IPT, July 15, 2016— Before the bodies of all the victims had been removed from the streets of Nice, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad insisted that religion had nothing to do with the terrorist attack that killed at least 84 people.
ISIS is a Symptom, Not the Problem: Mitchell Bard, Times of Israel, July 16, 2015 —A lot has been made of the president’s irrational refusal to say that radical Muslims are responsible for the terrorist attacks they commit. He has rationalized that the semantics don’t matter, and argues that he does not want to create the perception that we are in a war with Islam, even as Muslim states openly engage in a war against these extremists. Obama is wrong, misleading the American people and sewing confusion as to the threat we are confronting.
“Prove You’re Muslim or Die”: Raymond Ibrahim, Breaking Israel News, July 17, 2016—In light of the recent terrorist attacks in Muslim nations, the argument is again being made that, say what they will, the terrorists are obviously not acting in the name of Islam—a religion which bans the indiscriminate slaughter of fellow Muslims.
