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CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Happy Hanukkah! Hag Sameach!
HANUKKAH 5775: The Festival of Lights that Never Dim: Baruch Cohen, CIJR, Dec. 16, 2014—The kindling of lights at Hannukah remembers the history of the Jewish People.
Terror in Sydney: Wall Street Journal, Dec. 15, 2014— The long reach of Islamist terror hit another Western city on Monday with a siege in downtown Sydney, and we should expect more like it as Islamic State (ISIS) tries to mobilize adherents across the world.
The Terrorist Attack in Australia: Coming to a Theater Near You: Steven Emerson, IPT News, Dec. 15, 2014— The violent conclusion to the Australian hostage taking terrorist siege was inevitable.
Taliban: We Slaughtered 100+ Kids Because Their Parents Helped America: Sami Yousafzai, Daily Beast, Dec. 16, 2014 — The unprecedented slaughter Tuesday at least 132 students at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, shows in the most gruesome possible way that the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, have not yet been defeated or brought under control by the Pakistani military’s recent offensives.
Tracking Extremism from Pakistan to the Middle-East: Stewart Bell, National Post, Dec. 6, 2014— Just before 9/11, Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistan-based correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, published his first book on the Taliban.
Why Can’t We Have a “Conversation” About Militant Islam (Video): Lawfare Project, 2014
Islamist Behind Sydney Siege Abused Australian Jewish Soldier Killed in Afghanistan, Claimed Jews ‘No Better’ Than Hitler: Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, Dec. 15, 2014
From Sydney to Rome, Until Islam Rules the World: Ynet, Dec. 16, 2014
Major Militant Attacks in Pakistan in Recent Years: Washington Post, Dec. 16, 2014
HANUKKAH 5775: THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS THAT NEVER DIM
Baruch Cohen
CIJR, Dec. 16, 2014
The kindling of lights at Hannukah remembers the history of the Jewish People. Their legacy is to share a commitment to Jewish values. We light candles to review our faith in ourselves, in each other, in our people, and in our State of Israel. Hanukkah is the festival of Am Israel, the festival of a strong and independent Jewish People. Yet as the festival of liberty, Hanukkah celebrates more than the independence of our People–it glorifies the right to freedom of all peoples.
Hanukkah affirms the universal truth that the only effective answer to aggression and oppression is the uninterrupted, positive assertion of the principles and values—Jewish values—that oppression threatens. These values, freedom, justice, righteous resistance, inspired by the Maccabean movement, were not simply an abstract and academic rejection of tyranny and oppression. They expressed a desire to safeguard a strong, independent identity and way of life. Hannukah was a fight for Judaism, a military uprising against oppression which went hand-in-hand with a powerful desire for a restoration of the Jewish People, of Am Israel. After the dark nights of the Holocaust, today’s Maccabees in Israel and Diaspora must ensure that our flame, the Jewish freedom flame, the light of Hanukkah, forever illuminates the way to the future for all generations. We Diaspora Jews are in the front lines, called upon to unite with our sisters and brothers in Israel and the world over to ensure that our fight against darkness, hate, antisemitism and evil will, as ever and forever, prevail.
Hag Urim Sameach
Hag Hanukkah Sameach
Happy Festival of Lights and Joy
(Baruch Cohen, who recently celebrated his 95th birthday, is Research
Chairman of CIJR, and a member of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center)
Wall Street Journal, Dec. 15, 2014
The long reach of Islamist terror hit another Western city on Monday with a siege in downtown Sydney, and we should expect more like it as Islamic State (ISIS) tries to mobilize adherents across the world. Iranian-born Man Haron Monis, a self-styled sheikh with a long criminal history, held dozens of hostages in a cafe while claiming to have bombs on the premises. Police stormed the restaurant and killed Monis after negotiations failed; two hostages died and four were injured. News reports say Monis targeted the Lindt Chocolate Cafe days after he lost the appeal of his conviction for harassing families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. He also had more than 40 charges pending for sexually assaulting women while posing as a “spiritual healer,” and as an accessory to the murder last year of his ex-wife, who was stabbed and burned.
The cafe Monis attacked is part of Martin Place, a pedestrian mall near local government offices, the U.S. Consulate and major commercial towers. In September police arrested ISIS sympathizers said to be planning a public beheading there as a “demonstration killing.” Monis initially forced hostages to hold an Islamist black flag in the cafe window, then demanded that police provide him with a flag of ISIS, according to Australian media reports. Monis’s apparent affection for ISIS is shared by a disturbing number of other Australians. Some 70 have had their passports confiscated recently for fear they may travel overseas to fight for ISIS. One such sympathizer stabbed two Melbourne police officers in September and was shot dead. Days before, an ISIS spokesman had called for “lone-wolf” attacks world-wide, including in Australia, and authorities in Canberra raised the country’s threat level to high from medium. This summer an estimated 150 Australians joined ISIS in the Middle East, including a former Sydney resident who posted photographs of his 7-year-old son holding a severed head.
Jihadists haven’t mounted a catastrophic attack in Australia, though not for lack of trying. In the past decade authorities Down Under have uncovered plots against military facilities, a sports arena and the electric grid. Terrorists have had more success targeting Aussies overseas, killing nearly 100 in attacks on the Indonesian resort island of Bali and Jakarta’s Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. Eleven Indonesians died in a 2009 car bombing at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Australia has been America’s staunchest ally in fighting terrorism, deploying troops to Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iraq again. As a liberal democracy with large immigrant communities and Indonesia’s population of 250 million on its doorstep, Australia understands the stakes of the West’s long war against Islamist extremism.
The threat from ISIS in particular needs to be understood as extending far beyond the territory it controls, because ISIS successes in the Middle East could motivate radicals everywhere. In Southeast Asia, violent Islamists from Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines to Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia have pledged loyalty to the new strong horse of global jihad. As more details about Monis emerge, expect many pundits to condemn Australian foreign policy for inviting attacks and warn against a supposedly rising Islamophobia that blames all Muslims for the crimes of some. Those are predictable distractions. The real lesson is that preventing ISIS from taking Baghdad—and then destroying the group—is a matter of basic security for Sydney, New York and the rest of the civilized world.
THE TERRORIST ATTACK IN AUSTRALIA:
COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU
Steven Emerson
IPT News, Dec. 15, 2014
The violent conclusion to the Australian hostage taking terrorist siege was inevitable. The terrorist Man Haron Monis was killed as the Sydney police swat team stormed the café. Even though two hostages were killed, the Sydney police had no choice but to act. After a siege lasting nearly 17 hours, police had good reason to believe that the self-anointed "Sheik" Haron Monis was going to make good on his threat to detonate the bombs he claimed to have unless his demands were met. There had been an open line between a police hostage negotiator with the terrorist for much of that time but with up to 10 hostages remaining captive, it was feared that the terrorist was going to become a suicide bomber and thus kill everyone in the café. The Sydney police are now involved in investigating and reconstructing the time line of entire incident. But there is no doubt that the Australian police saved the lives of many more hostages.
There should be no doubt that this was a pure act of Islamic terrorism despite ludicrous assertions by some commentators that his "motivations" were unknown. We will see all sorts of "explanations" that because his rap sheet included indictments for sexual assault and murder, he was not really an Islamic terrorist but someone who was simply mentally unstable. Well, the same rationale could be said for all terrorists. After all, who in their right mind would want to kill innocent civilians because of their religious beliefs? Islamic extremists do. And to deny their radical Islamic motivation—as our own government has done repeatedly in refusing to classify Islamic terrorist attacks as such as in the case of the massacre carried out by Major Nidal Hassan—is a guarantee that such acts will continue to be perpetuated especially by lone wolf terrorists. Australian police are investigating to determine if Monis acted alone or whether he acted in concert with other Islamic extremists or even at the behest of ISIS itself.
Last month, Monis pledged his allegiance to ISIS and renounced his Shiite heritage in an online posting that since has been taken down. Our organization, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, retrieved the page and translated it. Monis wrote: "Pledge of allegiance [to ISIS] of Sheikh Haron…Allegiance with Allah and His Messenger, and the Commander of the Faithful – I pledge allegiance to Allah and His Messenger and the Caliph of the Muslims…Praise be to Allah and prayers and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family and all his companions, and those who follow them and peace be upon the Commander of the Faithful, the Caliph of the Muslims, the Imam of our current era, and praise be to Allah, who made for us a Caliph of the Earth and an imam who summons us to Islam and holds fast to the Rope of Allah Almighty and praise be to Allah that I have had the honor to pledge allegiance to the Imam of our time. Those who swear allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims are just swearing allegiance to Allah and His Messenger…."
His website also contained rants against the Australian government for their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Australian intelligence was aware of Monis early on and had an extensive file on him based on his prior radical Islamic activities in Australia and electronic surveillance of his communications with Islamic terrorists overseas.
The terrorist incident in Sydney certainly indicates parallels with the calls for individually driven terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals throughout the West. These calls grew in prominence with Inspire magazine, put out by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) led by Anwar Al-Awlaki until he was killed by a U.S. drone. In calling for Muslims living in western countries to carry out lone wolf terrorist attacks, ISIS has copied the same playbook as AQAP in calling for local attacks whenever and where ever possible. These attacks are happening all over the world now, especially fueled beyond the Internet by the rise of social media which has pushed the message of Islamic terrorism virtually as fast as the speed of light. In the past two years alone, there have been more than 100 attempted or successful ISIS inspired Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe and the United State From Belgium to France to Oklahoma City, no place is immune from Islamic terrorism, whether it be from returning ISIS veterans or just those radical Muslims living in the West who are motivated to carry out attacks.
Moreover, it is a lethal mistake for western leaders to differentiate ISIS from other Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, Boko Haram, or Al Shabaab. Those Islamic terrorist groups are motivated by the same underlying motivations behind ISIS: to kill as many of their infidel enemies as possible and impose Islamic supremacy. The only difference is that ISIS has declared itself to be a global caliphate; the other groups are focused on becoming regional caliphates. But their genocidal agenda and tactics are no different than those of ISIS. The only reason Hamas has not been as successful as ISIS in killing its infidel enemies is that Israel has been able to stop Hamas from carrying out acts of mass murder, even though Hamas tried this past summer when it launched more than 6,000 rockets and missiles at Israel in an effort to kill as many civilians as possible. Nigeria on the other hand has been unable to stop the horrific successful attacks by Boko Haram in which more than 300 Nigerians have been slaughtered in the past year alone.
Australian intelligence agencies probably had the best handle on the domestic threat by Islamic extremists as evidenced by their successful interruption of major plots in the past year. Those plots included a plan to behead Australian civilians and a conspiracy to bomb Australian targets. But those were plots planned by conspiracies of multiple extremists. Today's incident, however, shows the difficulties of stopping lone wolf attacks. What we are witnessing is not the rise of radical Islam. It is only an extension of the rise of radical Islam unleashed by the 9/11 attacks. The difference is that this phase is not directed by centralized organizations. Islamic terrorism has now become decentralized, creating a new challenge for western intelligence agencies. It creates extraordinary pressure to come up with new methods to monitor internal threats which are also a technical challenge as it means monitoring meta data of social media. But the most dangerous and counterproductive act would be to deny that Islamic terrorist attacks are what they are: Islamic terrorist attacks.
TALIBAN: WE SLAUGHTERED 100+ KIDS BECAUSE THEIR
Sami Yousafzai
Daily Beast, Dec. 16, 2014
The unprecedented slaughter Tuesday [of] at least 132 students at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, shows in the most gruesome possible way that the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, have not yet been defeated or brought under control by the Pakistani military’s recent offensives. Certainly that was the objective of the attack: The school is a private one run by the army for the children of soldiers.
“The TTP is ready for a long, long war against the U.S. puppet state of Pakistan,” a TTP commander told me when I reached him on his Afghan cellphone. “We are just displaced, but we are still in positions to attack wherever we want,” said Jihad Yar Wazir. Yar Wazir justified the killings as fitting retribution. “The parents of the army school are army soldiers and they are behind the massive killing of our kids and indiscriminate bombing in North and South Waziristan,” which are the TTP strongholds. “To hurt them at their safe haven and homes—such an attack is perfect revenge.” But the children are innocents, I said. What about them, I asked? “What about our kids and children,” he said. “These are the kids of the U.S.-backed Pakistani army and they should stop their parents from bombing our families and children.” Yar Wazir went on: “Those kids are innocent because they are wearing a suit and tie and Western shirts? But our kids wearing Islamic shalwar kamiz do not come before the eyes of the media and the West.” Yar Wazir says the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban) has a long list of attacks that it will carry out in Pakistan against the security forces, whose efforts to crush the group are supported by the United States. The regions where it is strong have served as a refuge for al Qaeda, which is the main American target.
A Peshawar-based journalist, author, and terrorism expert, Aqeel Yousafzai, says today’s attack is a big blow for Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy and policies. “The army public school was not only for army kids. Most of the kids are civilians’ kids, and what is worse is that the media reached the school before the rapid response force” of the police or military. The TTP’s retaliation for the recent offensive against it was “rapid and huge,” says Yousafzai, and all the more of a shock because “the school is located in very sensitive place surrounded by army checkpoints.” According to eyewitnesses, six attackers came in a car, set fire to it, and then entered the school compound at about 10 a.m. by scaling the wall. “We thought it must be the children playing some game,” a worker at the school told Reuters. “But then we saw a lot of firearms with them.” It appears the attackers had little interest in taking hostages. One is reported to have blown himself up, along with many victims, but detonating a suicide vest. The killers went from classroom to classroom mowing down teachers and students alike. The latest reported death toll is 80 children and 46 adults, but that is expected to rise. As of early afternoon some of the attackers still appeared to be putting up a fight.
TRACKING EXTREMISM FROM PAKISTAN TO THE MIDDLE-EAST
Stewart Bell
National Post, Dec. 6, 2014
Just before 9/11, Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistan-based correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, published his first book on the Taliban. The timing set him on the road to becoming one of the world’s experts on Afghanistan and the author of three bestsellers, including The Taliban, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies. He spoke to the National Post’s Stewart Bell during a visit to Calgary this week to give the semi-annual Teatro Lecture.
Q. You’ve argued that the greatest threat to global stability was not the Middle East but the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. Given recent events in Syria and Iraq, do you still think so?
A. Right now what we are seeing is a redrawing of the map of the Middle East and the failure of the Arab states to basically be able to create a common narrative of tolerance within Islam and moderation in Islam to counter the Islamic State of Iraq & Al-Sham. And we’re seeing a huge crisis in the Middle East. In fact, we’re seeing the disintegration of the Middle East.
Q. But Pakistan and Afghanistan remain volatile?
A. Pakistan in many ways is even a more fragile state than Afghanistan because there are multiple terrorist groups, there is the issue of the safety of nuclear weapons and there is always the potential of war with India, which could lead to unforeseen escalation. And there’s continued support for a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, which is also very serious.
Q. We see the extremism and sectarian violence of Pakistan, but you represent a different Pakistan, one that is modern and progressive. Who is winning the contest between these two Pakistans?
A. Unfortunately I would say that the extremists are. And the state is very weak. It is riven with internal divisions between Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, the opposition led by Imran Khan and the military, which doesn’t want any rapprochement with India at the moment. … There are many more extremists, they are well armed and they have the capacity to undertake horrendous levels of violence.
Q. You’ve written that what Pakistanis truly crave is stability — better governance, a better economy, a better military. Give us a progress report on those fronts?
A. Unfortunately, the war against extremism is not going well because, like elsewhere in the Muslim world, there is no common narrative against the extremist groups. The army and the government are at odds with one another so they are not prone to adopt a common narrative against the extremists. And so about one-third of Pakistan is no longer controlled by the authorities. We have huge areas which are controlled by various insurgencies … this obviously leads to very dangerous conclusions: money laundering, drug running, not to speak of the training of extremists and being able to export them to other countries like Syria and Iraq.
Q. Canada spent a great deal of time and effort trying to bring security and stability to Afghanistan. And still we see a country that remains pretty unstable and insecure. What happened?
A. Well, I think the biggest mistake of the international mission was not to have basically developed an indigenous Afghan economy which was self-sustaining. That was the first big mistake. Not enough money was spent on agriculture and alternatives to poppies. I think the second mistake was the failure to build the army, the police, the security institutions much sooner … The third reason was the attention to Iraq. The resources that should have gone to Afghanistan, and the focus of expertise and nation building all went to Iraq and it was wasted there because it never took root in Iraq. I think in Afghanistan you had a population that was basically pro-American, in favour of development and peace and anti-Taliban. And I don’t think the Taliban would have ever been able to reach the limits of power that they have today if the right measures had been taken at that time by the Americans and by NATO.
Q. You’ve called ISIS the new Taliban. What did you mean?
A. ISIS has adopted a lot of the military tactics and political tactics used by the Taliban. … but basically ISIS is much more extreme. It wants to eliminate all the minorities from the Middle East. It wants to redraw the map of not one country but multiple countries, right across the Middle East. And the methods it’s using are methods that not even the Taliban used — the mass slaughter of opposing soldiers or aid workers and journalists. And of course their grasp of the media and the use of social media…
Q. ISIS and Al-Qaeda are built on a foundation of myth and conspiracy theory that is given a phoney religious legitimacy: there is a war against Islam, jihad is needed to defend the Muslims, Muslims are duty-bound to suppress all other faiths, even violently, in order to bring theirs to supremacy. How are we doing at confronting this Islamist world of make believe?
A. I think these extremists have been able to construct an ideology and a set of beliefs that do resonate amongst disenfranchised Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, and possibly it could as well in Jordan and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and other countries. Now I agree with you it’s a false narrative but it’s a narrative that has resonance because of the failure of these regimes and the West to tackle the root causes of alienation and unemployment and all the rest of it. Finally, let me just say that this whole battle that ISIS is fighting, this is a war within Islam. This is not a war against the West. What ISIS wants is the elimination of Shias, the elimination of minorities. It wants to extend its interpretation of Islam to the whole Islamic world, which is why it has formed the caliphate. It’s not an Al-Qaeda rehash. This is something completely different … Al-Qaeda was obsessed with hitting the far enemy, which was America. ISIS is obsessed with hitting the near enemy, which is the Arab regimes.
Why Can’t We Have a “Conversation” About Militant Islam (Video): Lawfare Project, 2014
Islamist Behind Sydney Siege Abused Australian Jewish Soldier Killed in Afghanistan, Claimed Jews ‘No Better’ Than Hitler: Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, Dec. 15, 2014 —The man killed by Australian police today after carrying out the siege of a cafe in downtown Sydney was a known anti-Semite who sent abusive letters and messages to members of Australia’s Jewish community.
From Sydney to Rome, Until Islam Rules the World: Ynet, Dec. 16, 2014—"One Ummah without the West; until Islam rules there will be no rest." These words, said by children aged six to 13, were broadcast during a solidarity ceremony with the Islamic State, in which participants also waved the organization's flags.
Major Militant Attacks in Pakistan in Recent Years: Washington Post, Dec. 16, 2014—Pakistan has been gripped by an insurgency for more than a decade, an internal war with the Taliban and other radical groups that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and security personnel since successive governments in Islamabad joined the United States and its allies in a war against al-Qaida, the Taliban and Islamic extremism in 2001.
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