The French satirical paper decided to double down after last week’s edition containing insulting caricatures of the Iranian leader infuriated the mullahcracy. 

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo published another set of cartoons poking fun at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Wednesday, undeterred by the Islamic regime’s anger over its previous week’s disrespectful pictures of Iran’s supreme leader.

“The mullahs aren’t happy. The caricatures of their supreme leader … do not seem to have made them laugh,” the paper’s editor, known as Riss, wrote in the new edition.

“Laughing at themselves has never been a strong point of tyrants,” he added.

Riss noted that there had been a cyber attack on the paper a few days after the edition came out.

“A digital attack doesn’t leave anyone dead, but it sets the tone,” he commented. “The mullah’s regime feels in such danger that it considers it vital to its existence to hack the website of a French newspaper. It is an honor in one sense, but above all proves that they feel their power is very fragile.”

Last month, Charlie Hebdo launched an international caricature competition called “Mullahs Get Out” that would feature Khamenei in particular. They called it a show of support for the anti-regime protestors who have continually taken to the streets throughout the Islamic republic after young Kurdish citizen Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in September by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

The winning pictures were featured in last week’s edition, published in honor of the eighth anniversary of the murder of 12 Charlie Hebdo employees in their Paris office by two Islamic radicals who were enraged after the paper had featured caricatures of Islam’s founder, Mohammed.

The editors placed a particularly graphic cartoon of Khamenei on the front page, and dozens of others inside – some of them vulgar. Many ripped Iran’s leader and his fellow clerics over the death sentences carried out against several demonstrators.

The Iranians were furious, calling in the French ambassador to protest.

“The insulting and indecent act of a French publication in publishing cartoons against the religious and political authority will not go without an effective and decisive response,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted while blaming the French government for the privately owned paper’s content.

While the minister did not spell out what that response would entail, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad tweeted Tuesday that “Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard Corps, threatened to kill those associated with Charlie Hebdo: ‘Muslims will take revenge sooner or later. And you may arrest the avengers, but the dead will not come back to life.’”

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The cartoon on the cover of Charlie Hebdo reflects the widespread mix of fury and bewilderment at a French court’s refusal to prosecute Sarah Halimi’s murderer.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

The latest cover of France’s world-famous satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo features a devastating cartoon about the case of Sarah Halimi — the Jewish woman beaten to death in her Paris apartment in April 2017 by Kobili Traore, an anti-Semitic intruder — alongside a headline that asks, “Should we decriminalize anti-Semitism?”

Traore was excused from a criminal trial by France’s highest appeal court earlier this month, on the grounds that his consumption of marijuana on the night that he killed Halimi had rendered him temporarily insane. The decision rocked France, with politicians from across the spectrum condemning the court for allowing an alleged anti-Semitic murderer to walk free, and thousands of people attending demonstrations demanding justice for Halimi in several cities last weekend.

One senior judge even resigned in protest on Tuesday, asking, “What is this justice, that takes up the cause of what appears to be an anti-Semitic assassination?”

The cartoon on the cover of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo reflects the widespread mix of fury and bewilderment that greeted the Court of Cassation’s decision, using the coarsely-drawn imagery which the magazine is known for to maximum effect.

The image depicts a highly stereotyped, knife-wielding Muslim man wearing traditional garb. There are seven large marijuana joints stuffed into his mouth which he lights using the candles of a menorah — a possible reference to the claim that Traore made to court-appointed psychiatrists that he had been traumatized by the sight of a menorah and other Jewish symbols in Halimi’s apartment.

Alongside the cartoon, the text asks sarcastically, “Faut-il dépénaliser l’antisémitisme?” — “Should we decriminalize anti-Semitism?” Another headline above the image reads, “Sarah Halimi: A ‘delirious puff’ in the Court of Cassation.” The phrase “delirious puff” was coined by the psychiatrists consulted by the court to supposedly explain how Traore’s ingestion of marijuana led him to lose all mental awareness and self-control.

The magazine also featured a hard-hitting editorial by its editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard. “The martyred corpse of this poor woman had hardly cooled when they were already questioning the anti-Semitic motive of her murderer,” Biard commented, in a reminder of the widespread indifference and skepticism that the Halimi family faced from law enforcement and the media in the days and weeks after the murder.

“Crazy or not, the assassin did not strike at random,” Biard wrote. “He went up to his Jewish neighbor, whom he murdered chanting ‘Allahu akhbar’ and yelling that he had killed the ‘demon.’ And, despite the evidence, we nitpick, we smirk. Sure, we’re dealing with a killer who doesn’t like Jews very much, but hey, that’s not the most important thing. Most importantly, he didn’t do it on purpose. He succumbed to a stroke of madness, as they say…”

Charlie Hebdo became an international household name in Jan. 2015, when the magazine was the first target during a week-long killing spree by Islamist terrorists that culminated in a massacre at a kosher market in eastern Paris.

Twelve people at the magazine’s offices in Paris were murdered on Jan. 7, 2015 by two gunmen, the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. Both terrorists were later killed following a stand-off with police. Charlie Hebdo was accused of blasphemy by several Islamist organizations after it published cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, in contravention of strict Islamic law which forbids any portrait of Islam’s founder.

In a separate development in the Halimi case on Wednesday, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin wrote to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, expressing disappointment at the decision not to try Traore for Halimi’s murder.

“I have sadly heard the decision of the court to uphold the decision of the previous courts, which ruled that the accused in the anti-Semitic, brutal and harrowing murder of Sarah Halimi is legally incompetent to stand trial,” Rivlin wrote.

“Every effort must be made as to send a clear message that there is no forgiveness for acts of despicable and morbid anti-Semitism, and for attacking Jews on the basis of their origin and religion,” he stressed.

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French lawyers express dismay at downplaying of anti-Semitism during trial of terror suspects linked to January 2015 attacks.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

Prosecutors at the trial in France of 14 defendants charged with providing support to the Islamist terrorists behind the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris began their closing arguments in court on Monday, amid concern that the anti-Semitic character of the atrocities was being deliberately downplayed in the proceedings.

“There are some events that mark us all for life, there are some trials more than others that make the voice tremble, that make the heart tighten,” Julie Holveck — vice prosecutor of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office — told the court.

A total of 17 people were murdered on Jan. 7-9 , 2015, as brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi massacred staff at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and their cohort, Amedy Coulibaly, murdered a policewoman and hostages at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris two days later. All three terrorists were later killed in separate gun battles with French police.

But during the last week, lawyers for the victims of the attacks voiced concern that the anti-Semitic element behind the atrocities had been buried during the long-awaited trial, which began over the summer and was suspended for several weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, Patrick Klugman — a lawyer representing several of the victims — expressed dismay at the virtual absence of anti-Semitism as a factor in the indictment against the accused.

“Do you know how many times the word ‘anti-Semitism’ appears in the indictment order that comes before your court? How many times this word, which caused the crime in one of its most fundamental aspects, is mentioned in 271 pages? Only once!” Klugman declared.

Describing France as a country “where we target and kill Jews with disconcerting ease,” Klugman noted a “nauseating” pattern of officials doubting the anti-Semitic motives behind the numerous violent assaults on French Jews over the last 20 years.

“In this case, anti-Semitism is everywhere,” Klugman argued.

He emphasized that the Islamist hatred of Jews was on display not only at the Hyper Cacher market — the kosher grocery store where Coulibaly murdered four Jewish hostages — but during the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Klugman reminded the court that Michel Catalano — a printer who was held hostage by the Kouachi brothers — had said in his testimony that the first question the terrorists had asked him was whether he was a Jew.

“Weeping, Michel Catalno confided to you that, if he had answered in the affirmative, he would have died,” Klugman said.

Other lawyers for the victims echoed Klugman’s remarks before the court.

Elie Korchia — representing two of the Hyper Cacher victims who now live in Israel — said that France had a “blind spot” when it came to anti-Semitism, “even though this is the trial of anti-Semitism on our soil.”

Aged between 29 and 68, the 14 defendants on trial face sentences ranging from 10 years in prison to life imprisonment.

Three of them have been tried in absentia, including Hayat Boumeddiene, Coulibaly’s former girlfriend, who fled to Syria a few days before the attacks.

The individual described as “lynchpin” of the attacks — Ali Reza Polat, a 35-year-old French and Turkish dual national — is expected to be handed the severest of all the sentences when the court announces its verdict on Dec. 16.

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says French magazine committed “unforgivable sin” of insulting the prophet Muhammad.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei Tuesday condemned the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, saying the publishers committed the “unforgivable sin of insulting the Great Prophet of Islam.”

Khamenei said French politicians’ failure to condemn the “crime,” excusing it instead as freedom of expression, had “laid bare the devilish hostility and grudge that Western political and cultural organizations hold against Islam and the Muslim community,” the state-controlled Tasnim news agency reported.

The Iranian leader then laid the blame for the cartoon on Israel and the United States, saying they were responsible for the French magazine’s satirical portrayals of the prophet.

“The deeply anti-Islamic policies of Zionists and the arrogant governments are the reason for such hostile moves,” Khamenei said, explaining that the cartoon was “aimed at distracting the attention of West Asian nations and governments from the ominous plots that the US and the Zionist regime have hatched against the region.”

In 2006 the magazine published a satirical depiction of the prophet Muhammad on one of its cover, prompting condemnation from many Islamic leaders over the religious prohibition on depicting his image. More cartoons were published in 2012 and magazine staff members were then added to the death list of the Al Qaeda terror group.

In January 2015 two armed Islamic terrorists entered the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and murdered 11 employees in a hail of gunfire and then shot and killed a Muslim French police officer during their escape.

Two days later as police surrounded the two in Paris, another Islamic terrorist took hostages at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in the city and murdered four Jewish people in the store.

Police killed all three of the terrorists.

Last week Charlie Hebdo republished the “Mohammed Cartoons” one day before the opening of the trial for 14 defendants charged for being involved in the two terrorist attacks that killed a total of 17 people including the  their fellow journalists and cartoonists.

François Molins, then public prosecutor of Paris, recalled his arrival at the Charlie Hebdo office. He found “the smell of blood and gunpowder. In the newsroom, it is carnage. It is more than a crime scene, it is a war scene, with a frightening tangle of bodies.”

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Charlie Hebdo republished the “Mohammed Cartoons” under the title “Tout ça pour ça” (“All of that for this”). “We will never give up”, they said.

By Giulio Meotti, Gatestone Institute

Yesterday, one day before the opening of the trial for 14 defendants accused of involvement in a string of terrorist attacks in France, which included the murders of their fellow journalists and cartoonists on January 7, 2015 at their Paris office, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished the “Mohammed Cartoons” under the title “Tout ça pour ça” (“All of that for this”). “We will never give up”, they said.

The defendants in the trial, some in absentia, “face a variety of charges related to helping perpetrators carry out attacks that killed 17 people over three days in January 2015.” In addition to the 12 victims in and around the office of Charlie Hebdo, a police officer was murdered in the street and four people were murdered in a kosher supermarket.

François Molins, then public prosecutor of Paris, recalled his arrival at the Charlie Hebdo office. He found “the smell of blood and gunpowder. In the newsroom, it is carnage. It is more than a crime scene, it is a war scene, with a frightening tangle of bodies”.

Charlie Hebdo‘s editor, known as Riss, has detailed the heavy security surrounding the weekly since the terror attack. Charlie Hebdo is now subsidizing part of its own protection, spending 1.5 million euros per year. “When you take 3 euros out of your pocket to buy a copy of Charlie Hebdo, 1.30 euros goes to the distributor and with the remaining 1.70 euros the magazine pays the employees, the rent, the service providers, as well as its security,” he said.

After paying an even greater price in 2015 in terms of blood, and paying an exorbitant price in terms of security, it would have been understandable for Charlie Hebdo‘s editors to have stopped using their freedom of speech to subject Islam to criticism. That is not what they chose to do.

“We have often been asked to publish other cartoons of Mohammed”, they wrote.

“We have always refused to do it, not because it is forbidden — the law allows it — but because we needed a good reason to do it, a reason that made sense and that would bring something to the debate”.

The last time Charlie Hebdo had run a cartoon of Mohammed was five years ago, on the cover of the issue just after the massacre, which sold eight million copies. It showed the prophet of Islam accompanied by the title “All is forgiven.”

“We must continue to portray Muhammad; not to do that means there is no more Charlie,” said Patrick Pelloux, a cartoonist who has since left the magazine. Is Charlie still Charlie, many wondered after the massacre? Today, yes — but France is starting to reflect on the dramatic decline in its freedom of expression.

Philippe Lançon, who was seriously injured in the 2015 attack by the Kouachi brothers, was still recovering when he attended a party, where he met the author Michel Houellebecq. The two had a brief conversation; Houellebecq concluded it by quoting the gospel of Matthew: “… the violent take it by force.”

“Charlie Hebdo, freedom or death”, Le Figaro recently wrote in a headline. At first glance, yes, the battle is lost, explains the French newspaper. Political Islam, hand-in-hand with the cultural left, “advances under the guise of human rights and the fight against discrimination.”

Much of the French media has been welcoming Charlie Hebdo‘s trial with a feeling of withdrawal and surrender. “My unfortunate client will be freedom and I fear that in the medium term it is a lost cause,” Charlie Hebdo‘s lawyer Richard Malka told the weekly Le Point.

“Kouachi brothers and those who armed them won, yes … Who would publish the caricatures of Muhammad today? Which newspaper? In what play, in what film, in what book do you dare to criticize Islam?”

In recent months, “several attacks have been averted”, said Jean-François Ricard, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor. France is under severe jihadist threat. Former Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was quoted in Le Parisien saying that “violence has taken root in the heart of society,” the country risks “a conflagration” and he defines communitarianism (a system of small self-governing communities) as “a slow and fatal poison.” The journalist Etienne Gernelle wrote in Le Point:

“Charlie Hebdo still lives under a death threat; what it represents, freedom, is under house arrest; France is paralyzed as soon as the word ‘Islam’ appears and political world and media celebrated Charlie and then distanced themselves”.

Former Charlie Hebdo journalist Zineb El Rhazoui, author of the book Détruire le Fascisme Islamique (“Destroying Islamic Fascism“), regularly receives death threats. She pointed the finger at those accusing the magazine of Islamophobia. “I remember all those who contributed to Charlie’s isolation and descent into hell,” Rhazoui said.

“They have a moral responsibility for Charlie’s fate. Is it normal that five years after this horrible crime, this horrible setback for freedom of expression and French culture, there is still a ‘collective against Islamophobia’ in France? Is it normal that five years after this attack, I have to continue walking protected by gunmen in the heart of Paris?”

The weekly Marianne asked: “Can the Kouachi brothers boast a posthumous victory? Yes.” They then listed five acts of capitulation from the past five years:

First act: Charlie Hebdo‘s journalists had just been murdered when the writer Virginie Despentes wrote in Les Inrockuptibles about the terrorists: “I have loved them in their clumsiness, when I saw them, weapons in hand, spreading terror and screaming ‘we have avenged the prophet.'” Not a word about the fate of Charlie Hebdo‘s cartoonists, journalists and employees who were murdered for making fun of Islam, or the people murdered in the kosher supermarket.

Second act: On November 17, 2015, four days after the terrorist attacks in Paris in which 130 victims were murdered, French journalist Antoine Leiris, whose wife was murdered in the attack on the Bataclan Theater, wrote: “You will not have my hate.” It will become, Marianne explained, the “informal slogan in progressive circles. Leiris’s faith prevented not only indignation but also a lucid analysis of the situation.”

Third act: The editor of Mediapart, Edwy Plenel, held a meeting in the suburbs of Paris with the prominent Islamist Tariq Ramadan. Plenel accused Charlie Hebdo of engaging in a “war on Muslims.”

Fourth act: In 2019, in Paris, a “march against Islamophobia” was attended by 13,500 people. The slogan from the circle of Salafist religious associations was adopted by “almost all the political leaders of the left,” according to Marianne. During the march, activists shouted “Allahu akbar,” the same cry used by the terrorists who struck Charlie Hebdo.

Fifth act: “Can we criticize Islam without fearing for our own safety?” Marianne asked. In January 2020, a 16-year-old girl, Mila, responded to homophobic insults (she was called “dirty lesbian” by a Muslim) on her Instagram account by criticizing Islam. Mila, threatened with death, fled from her school and was put under police protection. “Radio silence from left-wing political parties, feminist organizations and LGBT associations: when the aggressors are Muslims, the watchword is obviously to close eyes and cover ears.”

Western democracies have paid dearly for the right to freedom of expression and, if not protected and exercised, it can disappear overnight.

Preventive self-censorship and a “strategic retreat” in the face of Islamist fury appear only as an epic regression. With the “spirit of Charlie” retreating in France and “cancel culture” advancing in the U.S., it seems that freedom of expression is being dragged into court, rather than its killers and their useful idiots. In January, on the fifth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the author Pascal Bruckner said:

“I have the impression that our immune defenses have collapsed and Islamism is winning. Its main demands have been met: no one dares to publish caricatures of Muhammad anymore.”

Charlie Hebdo has bravely done it again: it has published cartoons of Mohammed. It is still the last and only European magazine ready to defend freedom of expression. A French philosopher, Elisabeth Badinter, in the documentary “Je suis Charlie” said: “If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won.” Will those who proclaimed “Je suis Charlie” stand with them now?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

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Given current trends, Christianity in England is becoming a relic, while Islam will be the religion of the future, an analyst predicts.

By: Giulio Meotti/ Gatestone Institute 

“London is more Islamic than many Muslim countries put together,” according to Maulana Syed Raza Rizvi, one of the Islamic preachers who now lead “Londonistan”, as journalist Melanie Phillips has called the English capital. No, Rizvi is not a right-wing extremist.

Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate for Literature, was less generous; he called the UK “a cesspit for Islamists”.

“Terrorists cannot stand London multiculturalism,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said after the recent deadly terror attack at Westminster. The opposite is true: British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Above all, Londonistan, with its new 423 mosques, is built on the sad ruins of English Christianity.

The Hyatt United Church was bought by the Egyptian community to be converted to a mosque. St. Peter’s Church has been converted into the Madina Mosque. The Brick Lane Mosque was built on a former Methodist church. Not only buildings are converted, but also people. The number of converts to Islam has doubled; often they embrace radical Islam, as with Khalid Masood, the terrorist who struck Westminster.

The Daily Mail published photographs of a church and a mosque a few meters from each other in the heart of London. At the Church of San Giorgio, designed to accommodate 1,230 worshipers, only 12 people gathered to celebrate Mass. At the Church of Santa Maria, there were 20.

The nearby Brune Street Estate mosque has a different problem: overcrowding. Its small room can contain only 100. On Friday, the faithful must pour into the street to pray. Given the current trends, Christianity in England is becoming a relic, while Islam will be the religion of the future.

In Birmingham, the second-largest British city, where many jihadists live and orchestrate their attacks, an Islamic minaret dominates the sky. There are petitions to allow British mosques to call the Islamic faithful to prayer on loudspeakers three times a day.

More Muslim Worshippers than Christians

By 2020, estimates are that the number of Muslims attending prayers will reach at least 683,000, while the number of Christians attending weekly Mass will drop to 679,000.

“The new cultural landscape of English cities has arrived; the homogenized, Christian landscape of state religion is in retreat”, said Ceri Peach of Oxford University. While nearly half of British Muslims are under the age of 25, a quarter of Christians are over 65. “In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” said Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society.

Since 2001, 500 London churches of all denominations have been turned into private homes. During the same period, British mosques have been proliferating. Between 2012 and 2014, the proportion of Britons who identify themselves as Anglicans fell from 21% to 17%, a decrease of 1.7 million people, while, according to a survey conducted by the respected NatCen Social Research Institute, the number of Muslims has grown by almost a million. Churchgoers are declining at a rate that within a generation, their number will be three times lower than that of Muslims who go regularly to mosque on Friday.

Acquiring an Increasingly Islamic Face

Demographically, Britain has been acquiring an increasingly Islamic face in places such as Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets. In 2015, an analysis of the most common name in England showed it was Mohammed, including spelling variations such as Muhammad and Mohammad.

Most important cities have huge Muslim populations: Manchester (15.8%), Birmingham (21.8%) and Bradford (24.7%). In Birmingham, the police just dismantled a terrorist cell; there is also a greater probability that a child will be born into a Muslim family than into a Christian one. In Bradford and Leicester, half the children are Muslim. Muslims do not need to become the majority in the UK; they just need gradually to Islamize the most important cities. The change is already taking place. “Londonistan” is not a Muslim majority nightmare; it is a cultural, demographic and religious hybrid in which Christianity declines and Islam advances.

1/3 of UK Muslims Do Not Feel ‘Part of British Culture’

According to Innes Bowen, writing in The Spectator, only two of the 1,700 mosques in Britain today follow the modernist interpretation of Islam, compared with 56 percent in the United States. The Wahhabis control six percent of mosques in the UK, while the fundamentalist Deobandi control up to 45 percent. According to a survey from the Knowledge Center, a third of UK Muslims do not feel “part of British culture.”

London is also full of sharia courts; there are officially 100. The advent of this parallel judicial system has been made possible thanks to the British Arbitration Act and the system of Alternative Dispute Resolution. These new courts are based on the rejection of the inviolability of human rights: the values ​​of freedom and equality that are the basis of English Common Law.

Opening the Door to Sharia

British personalities keep opening the door to introduce sharia. One of Britain’s leading judges, Sir James Munby, said that Christianity no longer influences the courts and these must be multicultural — which means more Islamic. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chief Justice Lord Phillips also suggested that British law should “incorporate” elements of sharia law. The British cultural establishment is rapidly capitulating to Islamic fundamentalists in accepting their demands.

British universities are also advancing Islamic law. The official guidelines of the university, “External speakers in higher education institutions,” published by Universities UK, provide that “orthodox religious groups” may separate men and women during events. At Queen Mary University of London, women had to use a separate entrance and were forced to sit in a room without being able to ask questions or raise their hands — as in Riyadh or Tehran. The Islamic Society at the London School of Economics held a gala in which women and men were separated by a seven-meter panel.

After the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, recommended self-censorship and “some restraint” in discussing Islam. The British ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Simon Collis, converted to Islam and completed the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. He now calls himself Haji Collis.

What will be next?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

The post The new London: 423 new mosques; 500 closed churches appeared first on World Israel News.

SWAT outside scene of the attack. (Gregory Castillo/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

Two men, apparently Islamic terrorists, were killed in Texas after violently attacking an event defending freedom of speech. 

By: AP and World Israel News Staff

In a violent attack seemingly motivated by radical Islam, two men opened fire Sunday evening at an event in Texas defending freedom of speech.

As a cartoon contest for the best depiction of the Muslim prophet Mohammed was scheduled to end, the men drove to the event, located at the Curtis Culwell Center in the Dallas suburb of Garland, and began shooting at a security officer, according to a City of Garland statement. Garland police officers returned fire, killing the attackers.

The Curtis Culwell Center and surrounding businesses were evacuated after the attack, and police blocked off a large area around the center. There was a heavy police presence as helicopters circled overhead while a bomb squad searched the vehicle driven by the assailants.

The shooters have not yet been identified, Officer Joe Harn, a spokesman for the Garland Police Department, said at a news conference. However, chatter on social media indicates that they were Muslims.

Police were unaware of any ongoing threat and had not received any credible warnings before the event, Harn said.

Neither the FBI office in Washington, D.C., nor the Dallas office had any immediate comment.

‘This is war. Are we going to surrender?’

The event inside, a contest hosted by political activist Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), would award $10,000 for the best cartoon depicting Mohammed.

According to mainstream Islamic tradition, any physical depiction of the Prophet Mohammad — even a respectful one — is considered blasphemous, and such drawings have sparked violence around the world. In January, for example, two Muslim terrorists massacred 12 cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters in Paris.

Another deadly shooting occurred the following month at a free speech event in Copenhagen featuring an artist who had caricatured the prophet.

The security officer who was shot and wounded in the ankle in Texas, identified as Bruce Joiner, was treated at a local hospital for injuries and released Sunday night.

After the shooting, about 75 attendees at the contest were escorted by authorities to another room in the conference center. They were then taken to a separate location, where an Associated Press reporter was told they could not leave until FBI agents arrived to question them.

Johnny Roby of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was at the conference. He told AP that he was outside the building when he heard about 20 shots that appeared to be coming from the direction of a passing car.

Roby then heard two single shots and heard officers yelling that they had the car before he was sent inside the building along with everyone else who was there.

Artist Bosh Fawstin (L), the winner, is presented with a check by Wilders (C) and Geller. (Gregory Castillo/AP)

Geller, president of AFDI, told AP before the event that she had planned the contest in order to defend free speech in response to violence over drawings of Mohammed. Although it remained unclear for several hours after the shooting whether it was related to contest, Geller said on Sunday night that the violence proved just how “needed our event really was.”

“This is a war. This is war on free speech. What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?” Geller posted on her site.

The event featured speeches by Geller and Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker known for his outspoken criticism of radical Islam. Wilders told the audience that it was no coincidence that the attack occurred specifically in Texas. “It is here that, three months ago, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Islamic activists convened to demand that free speech be curtailed. They want to prohibit cartoons, books and films which they find insulting,” he said.

Wilders received several standing ovations as he quoted former President Ronald Reagan and Texas founding father Sam Houston, who defended liberty and preached not to submit to oppression.

“Mohammed fought and terrorized people with the swords. Today, here in Garland, we fight Mohammed and his followers with the pen. And the pen, the drawings, will prove mightier than the sword,” Wilders declared.

Geller’s group is known for mounting a campaign against the building of an Islamic center blocks from the World Trade Center site.

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Two cousins, both US citizens, were arrested for attempting to assist in a ISIS terror attack. 

US security forces arrested an Illinois Army National Guardsman after he attempted to travel to Libya to fight with the Islamic State (ISIS) terror organization, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. They also arrested the soldier’s cousin, whom authorities say was plotting to attack a US military installation.

Hasan Rashid Edmonds, 22, vowed to bring “the flames of war to the heart” of America if he was unable to get to the Middle East to join ISIS, and his cousin bragged that he could kill up to 150 people in a terrorist attack in the US, the prosecutors said.

Hasan, a soldier, was arrested Wednesday evening at Chicago Midway International Airport while trying to board a plane on the first leg of a journey to Egypt. Jonas M. Edmonds, 29, his cousin, was arrested a few hours later at home, the US attorney’s office in Chicago said. Both are US citizens from suburban Aurora.

According to the federal charges, the plan was for Jonas to carry out an attack in the US after Hasan had left the country, while donning Hasan’s uniform to gain better access to soldiers. The criminal complaint says they plotted an armed attack against a US military facility in northern Illinois, where Hasan had trained. The complaint did not name the targeted facility.

In internet messages to an undercover FBI agent in January, Hasan said that if he was unable to make it to the Middle East, he would help bring “the flames of war to the heart” of America and “cause as much damage and mayhem as possible,” the complaint says.

On Tuesday, the cousins drove to a military installation with an undercover agent to discuss an attack. Hasan described the rooms inside, discussing which would be the best targets.

“I wish to go to Dawlah,” he said, referring to the Islamic State. He later told the undercover agent he was required to support ISIS. “The State has been established and it is our duty to heed the call,” he continued. “Inshallah [God willing] we will complete our task or be granted shahada (martyrdom).”

In other messages, Hasan said his knowledge of the US military and American psychology would prove helpful in terrorizing US citizens. “If we can break their spirits, we will win,” he said, according to the complaint.

He allegedly spoke admiringly of the terrorist attack in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters in January. “Honestly, we would love to do something like the brother in Paris did,” he wrote.

Both men face a count of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State. The conspiracy includes terrorist plots on American soil. A conviction carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

The accused men made an initial court appearance in Chicago on Thursday. Jonas kept swiveling in his chair, stroking his beard and, at one point, he yawned loudly, reports say. Hasan sat still.

Hasan’s sister, Manchinique Bates, 23, told the Chicago Sun-Times, “They aren’t terrorists. … Just because they choose to worship as Muslims does not make them terrorists.”

Jonas allegedly communicated to an undercover agent that it could be difficult for him to get travel documents, in which case he would stage attacks in the US, using AK-47 rifles or whatever he could get his hands on to kill up to 150 people, prosecutors charge.

“I can unleash a lion,” he reportedly said. “What I would need … honestly nothing. I am prepared to go even if it’s with a rock.”

Growing ISIS Threat in US

Earlier in March, the FBI arrested three ISIS terrorists in Brooklyn, New York. They were preparing attacks in the US as an alternative if unsuccessful in joining ISIS in Syria.

Loretta Lynch, Obama’s candidate for US attorney general, said, “The flow of foreign fighters to Syria represents an evolving threat to our country and to our allies.”

In February, the FBI arrested Abdirahman S. Mohamud in Ohio for conspiring to provide material aid to terrorists in the Middle East. The authorities did not disclose which group he supported.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Justice Department arrested five Bosnian terror suspects for holding ties to ISIS and to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. A sixth suspect who was indicted had already left the country.

In January, Islamic State supporter Christopher Lee Cornell was arrested in Ohio on charges of planning an attack on Capitol Hill. The authorities found two semi-automatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition in preparation for the assault.

Altogether, at least 10 Islamist terror suspects in America have been arrested this year, and all but one had links to ISIS.

By: AP and World Israel News Staff

The post FBI thwarts ISIS terror plot at US military base appeared first on World Israel News.

Denmark is the latest target of Islamic terrorism. The double attack, one outside a synagogue, has left the Jewish community shaken.

(Photo: shutterstock)

Muslim terrorists struck twice in Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, on Saturday, leaving two victims dead and several wounded in two shooting attacks.

The first attack, which resembled the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris last month, targeted an arts café during an event called “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression,” held in support of free speech. The event hosted artist Lars Vilks, who is known for his anti-Muslim cartoons and has provoked the ire of Muslims worldwide in the past. Vilks has also been threatened with death for his cartoons of Mohammad, Islam’s most revered figure.

French ambassador Francois Zimeray got up to speak at the event, praising Denmark’s support for freedom of speech following the Muslim terror attacks last month in which 16 people were murdered.

Moments after he began to speak the terrorist fired some 40 rounds into the café, killing a 55-year-old man and wounding three others. The terrorist reportedly got into a waiting vehicle and fled the scene.

Helle Merete Brix, the organizer of the event at the cafe, told Reuters she had seen an attacker wearing a mask. “The security guards shouted ‘Everyone get out!’ and we were being pushed out of the room,” Brix said. “They tried to shoot their way into the conference room … I saw one of them running by, wearing a mask. There was no way to tell his face.”

Police said they believe Vilks, the main speaker, was the target.

“We feel certain now that it was a politically motivated attack, and thereby it was a terrorist attack,” Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt told Reuters, speaking on Saturday, close to the site of the cafe.

Terrorist Attacks Synagogue

(Photo: shutterstock)

A few hours later a gunman opened fire on a synagogue not far from the cafe, killing one person and wounding two policemen, one in the arm and the other in the leg. The victim, a Jew, has been identified as Dan Ozen, 37, a community member and a volunteer security guard at the synagogue. A bat mitzvah was underway during the attack.

The guard was reportedly on site because of the attack at the café. “We had contacted the police after the shooting at Café Krudttønden to have them present at the bat mitzva, but unfortunately this happened anyway,” Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, a Copenhagen Jewish community leader, told Denmark’s TV 2 News. “I dare not think about what would have happened if (the killer) had access to the congregation.”

The attacker fled on foot.

Danish police launched a massive manhunt to track assailants. Helicopters were heard in the skies and armored vehicles were seen patrolling the streets. The police were initially unsure if the two attacks were carried out by the same person or people.

The Danish security forces found and shot dead a terrorist in Copenhagen on Sunday not far from where the two terror attacks occurred. The terrorist opened fire on police and they returned fire, killing him. No police were hurt in the incident. The individual is believed to be the perpetrator of the two terror attacks.

Danish security forces remain on high alert.

European Council President Donald Tusk called the tragedy “another brutal terrorist attack targeted at our fundamental values and freedoms, including the freedom of expression.”

In comments to the Arutz 7 media outlet, Denmark’s former Chief Rabbi Brent Lexner said that the community was not surprised.

While Prime Minister Netanyahu called on Jews to emigrate to Israel en masse, Copenhagen’s envoy to Israel, Jesper Vahr, said “The solution for the Jews of Denmark is not to leave in the wake of the terror attacks… We will do everything in our power so that the Jewish community in Denmark feels safe.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman responded by stating that the attacks “demonstrate what we have said for years: Israel and the Jewish people have been victims of this terror primarily because they are at the forefront of the terror war being waged against the West and the entire free world.”

Liberman noted, “The international community must not satisfy itself with declarations and rallies against this terror, but must go beyond the boundaries of what is politically correct and wage all-out war to root out Islamic terror.”

He noted that the Israel Foreign Ministry is in constant contact with its embassy in Denmark, and is closely following the events.

By: World Israel News Staff

The post Islamic terror rocks Denmark killing 2, including Jew at synagogue appeared first on World Israel News.

Islamic terror continues to plague France. In the latest incident, two soldiers were stabbed on Tuesday while guarding a Jewish center.

(Photo: shutterstock)

A knife-wielding Muslim attacked three French soldiers on Tuesday who were on patrol, securing a Jewish community center in the southern French city of Nice. Two were lightly wounded, and the assailant was arrested. France 24 reports that two alleged accomplices fled the scene.

“It seems like a premeditated and quite violent act,” said regional police chief Marcel Autier.

“The person responsible, who is in his 30s and from the Paris region, is known to police,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Reuters.

According to Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, the attacker carried an identity card with the name Moussa Coulibaly. The surname is the same as that of the terrorists who murdered four Jewish hostages in January at the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris, although it is not known whether they are related.

The attacker, known to police for previous acts of violence, was reportedly stopped on a tram for not having paid for a ticket. “He paid his fine, but refused to show his identity papers. He got out suddenly near the soldiers and with a sharp knife struck the cheek of one and the arm of another,” France Inter radio reports.

An ISIS Link?

A French security official said the attacker had been sent home by Turkish authorities last week after flying there on a one-way ticket. Turkey is known to be a transit point for Jihadis from Europe on their way to join up with Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. Border police had flagged Coulibaly on January 28 to the attention of their Turkish counterparts on January 28, who promptly returned him home, the French security official said.

Earlier on Tuesday, French authorities arrested seven men and a woman for suspected involvement in a network sending fighters to join Islamic terrorists in Syria. Three of the arrested had traveled to Syria and returned in December 2014, but it was unclear whether they joined ISIS or another terror group.

Since the string of terror attacks that rocked the country in recent weeks, including the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Hyper Cacher terror attack, France has deployed approximately 10,000 soldiers and policemen to secure Jewish sites and sensitive targets.

By World Israel News staff

The post Two French soldiers guarding Jewish Center wounded in attack appeared first on World Israel News.

A recent poll showed that a majority of Palestinians blame Israel for the recent wave of terror in Paris, including the Charlie Hebdo attack. Could Palestinian incitement be responsible for this sentiment?

Five out of six Palestinians – 84 percent – are apparently convinced that Israel aided the perpetrators of the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month.

Responding to a poll conducted by the Palestinian Maan News Agency, 84 percent of Palestinians said that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters and the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack were “suspicious, and that Israel may be behind it.” Fewer than nine percent of respondents say Islamic terror was to blame for the attacks.

Palestinian Incitement and Propaganda

These findings may not be that surprising when the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ongoing incitement is taken into consideration.

The official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote earlier this month that Israel was behind the terror attacks in France because the Jewish state “was the only one to benefit from them.”

The newspaper alleged that the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) planned the attacks, claiming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had wanted to encourage Jewish immigration and take “revenge on European governments… because of their… support for… an independent Palestinian state,” Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports.

Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor and publisher of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ who was murdered earlier this month along with 11 others in an Islamic terror attack. (Photo: The Gatestone Institute)

One regular columnist, Muwaffaq Matar, argued that because Netanyahu “wishes to realize the myth of the ‘Jewishness of Israel'” and encourage immigration, the attacks against Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe were “no coincidence, but a carefully executed and fully controlled plan,” according to PMW.

“‘Netanyahu’s Jewish State’ was the only one to benefit” from these attacks, Matar stated.

Netanyahu “trades with the blood of the 17 victims of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and of the supermarket,” wrote another columnist, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, saying that Netanyahu wanted to “exploit the terrorism that struck some French Jews” in order to encourage them “to immigrate to Israel.” The writer claimed that “Turkish sources, including intelligence and the mayor of Ankara,” determined that the attacks were “planned by the Israeli Mossad,” PMW continues.

Similarly, journalist Akram Atallah, interviewed on official PA TV, claimed that “in the past, the Israeli Mossad carried out operations [i.e., terror attacks]: It bombed synagogues in order to force the Jews to emigrate,” and that “the operation [Charlie Hebdo] served Israel’s demographic [interests], for the Israeli media and government bodies predicted yesterday that 10,000 French Jews would immigrate to Israel.”

“The perpetrators of the two attacks in Paris and the Israeli settlement establishment” have “matching interests,” said Hafez Al-Barghouti, another columnist for the PA daily, thereby insinuating that Israel was involved in the attacks.

By World Israel News Staff
(With files from Palestinian Media Watch)

The post Most Palestinians Blame Israel for Paris Attacks appeared first on World Israel News.

According to this Imam from Saudi Arabia, the only language that infidels (i.e. Jews and Christians) understand is Islamic terror. He then throws in the ridiculous idea that Muslims discovered America, as was previously stated by Turkish President Erdogan. So revisionist history is still in full force. We’ve seen it with the invention of the Palestinian nation and the claim that Muslims discovered that the world is round!

The post WATCH: Saudi Imam Incites Islamic Terror Against Jews and Christians appeared first on World Israel News.

The cover of the Charlie Hebdo “survivors’ edition.” (Photo: nrg.co.il)

Leading bookseller Steimatzky seemingly bowed to Islamic pressure, canceling its sales promotion of the latest Charlie Hebdo magazine depicting Mohammed. Some Israeli politicians pointedly defended freedom of expression.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has instructed activists to buy copies of the “survivors’ issue” of French weekly Charlie Hebdo and to give them out at no charge after Steimatzky – Israel’s oldest and largest bookstore chain – apparently caved in to Islamic demands and cancelled an in-house launch of the magazine. The event was scheduled for Saturday night at a branch in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

The survivors’ issue, which has been selling in the millions worldwide, includes a cover cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Steimatzky had received 600 copies to sell at the launch for 35 shekels each, Globes reports.

In a letter sent earlier that day to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Member of Knesset (Israel’s )Parliament Masud Gnaim, head of United Arab List, which is associated with the Islamic movement in Israel, warned:

“This is a very serious, dangerous and stupid step. This is not freedom of expression, but a hard blow to the holiest of holies for Muslims that will bring about unrest and great anger among the Arabs and Muslims in the country and in the whole world, and no one can predict the results.”

“Steimatzky decisively supports freedom of expression,” the bookseller told the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. “The company has sold the magazine for years and will continue to do so. However, the chain has decided the sale of this issue will not occur at a special event in our store, but it will be held online starting Monday at 5 p.m.”

Hatnuah party leader Tzipi Livni, in a rare agreement with Liberman, told IDF Radio: “We expect every European country to stand up to threats on freedom of expression, and that is how we need to act,” Livni said. “Our values and Israeli society are strong enough to know what the limits are, and the limit is the law. A caricature does not break the law.”

Thousands Demand Caliphate in PA Cities

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian Arabs, holding signs and flags promoting the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, protested on Saturday in the Palestinian Authority-administered cities of Ramallah and Hebron against the publication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, according to a Reuters report.

Thousands of supporters of Islamic party protested in Ramallah on Saturday against sale of Charlie Hebdo magazine. (Photo: Youtube screenshot)

“Khalifah [Islamic caliphate] will stop the insults against the Prophet,” read a huge sign.

“We have taken to the streets in order to demand Muslim armies act the way France and the West deserve in response to the repeated offences against the Prophet, peace be upon him,” declared Baher Saleh, a member of the Tahrir party, according to Reuters.

The party – Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation) – is part of an international political movement working towards the goal of an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law.

The fiercely anti-Israel demonstrators also chanted: “France is the mother of terrorism. America is the mother of terrorism.”

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas had attended the massive rally supporting freedom of expression in Paris following the massacre of 12 people – 10 journalists and two policemen – at Charlie Hebdo headquarters.

In a piece by Khaled Abu Toameh published on Friday by The Gatestone Institute, the award-winning Palestinian journalist declares:

“The glorification of terrorists and jihadists by the PA and the ongoing anti-Israel incitement by both the PA and Hamas, are driving many Palestinians into the open arms of the Islamic State.”

According to Abu Toameh, “Hamas and other Palestinian groups are continuing to deny the obvious, namely that the Islamic State terror group has managed to set up bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

In fact, earlier this month Israeli security busted an ISIS cell in the PA-administered city of Hebron, arresting three terrorists.

“According to Israeli security sources, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank have defected to Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, the sources said, is to topple the PA and launch terror attacks on Israel,” Abu Toameh writes.

Abbas Protected by Israeli Security

“Abbas is lucky that the Israeli security forces are still operating in the West Bank, including inside cities and towns controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Were it not for the IDF and various branches of the Israeli security establishment, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Islamic State would have toppled the Palestinian Authority and beheaded Abbas and his officials a long time ago,” he states.

“Still, Abbas does not feel comfortable acknowledging the fact that a growing number of Palestinians in the West Bank are joining Islamic State. Abbas fears that if he admits that Islamic State is already operating in the West Bank, this could dissuade many Western countries from supporting his effort to persuade the world to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state,” the author concludes.

The post Leading Israeli Book Chain Submits to Islamic Pressure appeared first on World Israel News.

(Photo: Dabiq)

According to Israeli security forces, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] have defected to the Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, according to sources, is to topple the Palestinian Authority and launch terror attacks on Israel.

Some 200 supporters of the Islamic State, who held up Islamic State flags, took to the streets of Gaza City to protest the latest cartoons published by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. They also chanted slogans that called for slaughtering French nationals, and burned French flags. Attempts by Hamas to impose a news blackout on the protest failed, as photos and videos found their way to social media.

The glorification of terrorists and jihadists by the Palestinian Authority, and the ongoing anti-Israel incitement by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, is driving many Palestinians into the open arms of the Islamic State.

Hamas and other Palestinian groups are continuing to deny the obvious, namely that the Islamic State terror group has managed to set up bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Presence of Islamic State Embarrassing for PA and Hamas

The Palestinians do not feel comfortable talking about the fact that Islamic State is working hard to recruit Palestinians to its ranks.

The presence of Islamic State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is an embarrassing development for both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

For Hamas, the fact that Islamic State has long been operating in the Gaza Strip is something that it does not want the world to know about.

Hamas cannot afford a situation where another Islamist terror group poses a challenge to its exclusive control over the Gaza Strip. Since it seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has successfully suppressed the emergence of rival forces, first and foremost the secular Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

https://youtu.be/UnXpxR9rRTA

But if until recently it was Fatah that posed a challenge and threat to Hamas’s rule, now it is the Islamic State and its supporters in the Gaza Strip are openly defying the Islamist movement’s regime.

When the first reports about Islamic State’s presence in the Gaza Strip emerged last year, Hamas and other Palestinians were quick to dismiss them as “false.”

Salah Bardaweel, a senior Hamas official, said in February 2014 that the Islamic State “does not exist” in the Gaza Strip.

This week, however, it became evident that Hamas was lying when it denied the presence of Islamic State in the Gaza Strip.

Some 200 supporters of the Islamic State, who held up Islamic State flags, took to the streets of Gaza City to protest the latest cartoons published by the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

“I am knife” has become a new slogan among pro-terror Palestinians. (Photo: Facebook)

The protesters tried to storm the offices of the French Cultural Center in Gaza City. They also chanted slogans that called for slaughtering French nationals, and burned the French flag.

The protest apparently caught Hamas by surprise. Hamas security forces that were rushed to the scene dispersed the protesters and arrested seven Islamic State supporters.

Attempts by Hamas to impose a news blackout on the Islamic State protest failed, as photos and videos of the demonstration found their way to social media. Needless to say, Hamas-affiliated media outlets ignored the protest. They were hoping that the world would also not see the Islamic State demonstrators on the streets of Gaza City.

Hamas’s biggest fear is that scenes of Islamic State supporters marching in the heart of Gaza City will scare international donors and dissuade them from providing badly needed funds for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also afraid that Western officials working with the United Nations and relief agencies will stop visiting the Gaza Strip after watching the footage of Islamic State supporters.

In recent weeks, it has also become evident that Islamic State has some kind of a presence in the West Bank — a fact that poses a serious threat to Abbas’s Palestinian Authority [PA].

PA leader Abbas welcomes to Ramallah Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prison in October 2013. (Photo: Issam Rimawi/FLASH90)

Just last week, Israel announced arrests of members of an Islamic State terror cell in the West Bank city of Hebron. The three Palestinian members of the cell confessed during interrogation that had planned to launch a series of terror attacks against Israel. The three suspects were identified as Waddah Shehadeh, 22, Fayyad al-Zaru, 21 and Qusai Maswaddeh, 23.

Until recently, Hamas was considered the number one threat to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Now, however, it has become evident that Islamic State is also trying to set up bases of power in the West Bank. According to Israeli security sources, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank have defected to Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, the sources, said, is to topple the PA and launch terror attacks on Israel.

IDF Protects Abbas from ISIS Beheading

Abbas is lucky that the Israeli security forces are still operating in the West Bank, including inside cities and towns controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Were it not for the IDF and various branches of the Israeli security establishment, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Islamic State would have toppled the Palestinian Authority and beheaded Abbas and his officials a long time ago.

Still, Abbas does not feel comfortable acknowledging the fact that a growing number of Palestinians in the West Bank are joining Islamic State. Abbas fears is that if he admits that Islamic State is already operating in the West Bank, this could dissuade many Western countries from supporting his effort to persuade the world to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Like Hamas, Abbas also fears that Westerners would stop visiting Ramallah and other West Bank Palestinian cities once they learn about Islamic State’s presence in these areas.

PA Incitement, Glorification of Terrorists to Blame

Although Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are continuing to bury their heads in the sand and deny what is there, they cannot avoid responsibility for the emergence of Islamic State in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The glorification of terrorists and jihadists by the PA and the ongoing anti-Israel incitement by both the PA and Hamas, are driving many Palestinians into the open arms of the Islamic State.

Islamic State or Palestinian State?

This is something that the UN Security Council members will have to consider the next time they are asked to vote in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian state. Otherwise, they will be voting for the creation of an Islamic, and not a Palestinian, state.

The post Islamic State Deepens Grip in Future ‘Palestine’ appeared first on World Israel News.

World powers have taken the first step in combating global anti-Semitism. Israel’s ambassador to the UN demanded better security for European Jews.

For the first time in history, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) held a meeting on Thursday on global anti-Semitism. This unique three-hour session was broadcast live from UN headquarters.

The Israeli-led initiative was joined by 37 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia and all members of the European Union. About half of the UN’s members attended the meeting.

Rabbi Yaacov Monsonego, whose eight-year-old daughter Miriam was murdered in front of a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, attended the session.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor expressed Israel’s view on the current state of affairs, stating: “We don’t need any more monuments commemorating the Jews who were murdered in Europe. We need a strong and enduring commitment to safeguard the Jews living in Europe.”

Never Again?

Prosor spoke of his grandmother Elfrida, who was born in Germany and endured the extreme hardships that a Jew in Europe faced during the Holocaust. “The world pledged ‘Never again,’ but here we are again,” Prosor stated.

“Seventy years after the Holocaust ended, European Jews are once again living in fear. Two weeks ago, we watched in horror as innocent Jews were murdered in a Paris grocery store…. Violent anti-Semitism is casting a shadow over Europe.”

Prosor directly accused the UN of anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitism can even be found in the halls of the United Nations,” he said. “Disguised as humanitarian concern, a number of delegates have used the General Assembly, this podium, to voice their anti-Semitic sentiments.”

The Israeli ambassador called on every nation to speak out as clearly as did French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who declared: “When the Jews of France are attacked, France is attacked, the conscience of humanity is attacked,” and as clearly as Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said, “I do not accept any kind of anti-Semitic message or attacks at all, not least the ones that were…seen at the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, disguised as alleged criticism of the policy of the State of Israel.”

Famous French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy delivered the keynote address in the wake of the Muslim terror attacks on French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris.

“The United Nations was founded to fight this plague. This assembly was given the sacred task of preventing those terrible spirits from reawakening. But they have returned, and that is why we are here. It is up to you now to take the floor and to act. It is up to you, who are the faces of the world, to be the architects of a house in which the mother of all hate – anti-Semitic hate – will see its place reduced.”

Anti-Semitism Equals Anti-Israelism

The modern form of anti-Semitism is anti-Israelism, and “even if Israel were exemplary – a nation of angels – even if they granted the Palestinians a state…this enigmatic and old hatred would not dissipate one iota,” Lévy said.

“Grievances about Israeli actions must never be used as an excuse to attack Jews,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, adding that “in the same vein, criticisms of Israeli actions should not be summarily dismissed as anti-Semitism. This only suppresses dialogue and hinders the search for peace.”

The UN’s 57 Islamic nations unanimously condemned all words and acts that encourage “hatred, anti-Semitism [and] Islamophobia.” The statement, given by Saudi ambassador Abdallah Al-Moualimi, stressed the importance of dialogue in efforts to combat Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and denounced “any discrimination based on belief and religious practices.” However, they moved on to blame Israel for anti-Semitism.

Hate Crime in London More than Doubled

In the meantime, Scotland Yard revealed that there is a huge rise in anti-Semitic crime in London, which has more than doubled.

The statistics show there were 299 hate crimes against Jews between the start of April and the end of December, which represent a rise of 128 per cent on the same period in 2013, when there were 131 hate crimes.

Police said last week that they were increasing patrols in areas with large Jewish communities following the terror attacks in Paris. Scotland Yard said officers were continually liaising with the community, the Jewish Chronicle reports.

British Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said: “The global picture of terrorist activity does give us heightened concern about the risk to the Jewish community in the UK. We are seeing continuing anti-Semitic rhetoric from extremists and attacks on this community in France and elsewhere.”

Europe has experienced a surge in anti-Semitism in recent years, especially in France, where anti-Semitic attacks are up by 312 percent.

A World Zionist Organization study in August found that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the world jumped by 383 percent in July as compared to the same month the previous year, with Europe showing a 436-percent increase.

By: Atara Beck, World Israel News

The post UN Holds First-Ever Meeting on Anti-Semitism appeared first on World Israel News.

(Photo: shutterstock)

French authorities have declared war on anti-Semitism and stepped up security around Jewish sites, but anti-Semitic attacks perpetrated by Muslim assailants continue to plague the Jewish community in France.

The latest reported attack occurred last Thursday when a 13-year-old Jewish boy was assaulted with mace in Le Pre-Saint-Gervais, a northeastern suburb of Paris, by three assailants described as “unidentified minors.”

The attackers, who appeared to be of North African descent, and possibly Muslim, identified the boy as Jewish because he wore identifiably Jewish garb –  a kippah (skullcap) and Tzitzit (garment with fringes) –  a report by the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA) states.

The victim was rendered temporarily blind and rushed to a nearby clinic for medical treatment while suffering intense pain, the BNVCA report said.

This attack is part of a surge in anti-Semitic incidents in France that has been ongoing since 2012, according to BNVCA, and which led to the death of 12 people at the hands of French Muslims targeting Jews.

“The situation is becoming increasingly intolerable,” BNVCA stated in the report. “A child of 13, as he is about to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah, knows nothing but the climate of fear and insecurity as a result of anti-Semitism.”

Foiled Attack on a Jewish Conference

Another report published Wednesday states that jihadists who were arrested last September in Lyon had been planning to carry out a terrorist attack at a Jewish group’s conference on anti-Semitism.

Five suspects were arrested in a series of sweeps by French police in mid-September. They were reportedly plotting to attack an event organized in Lyon by the regional branch of Le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the umbrella of French Jewish communities and organizations, French daily Le Progres reported.

Among the five arrested are Karim and Reda Bekhaled, brothers who are believed to have been involved in recruiting Muslims to fight in Syria. A police officer said that the brothers “had the ambition of dying as martyrs” and “planned to carry out imminently an act of violence.”

Breakthrough in Hyper Cacher Investigation

French Security forced patrol in Paris. (Photo: kavalenkau/Shutterstock)

In the meantime, French authorities have made a breakthrough in the investigation of the Hyper Cacher terror attack in which four Jews were murdered by a Muslim terrorist in Paris.

A French justice official announced Wednesday that four men accused of aiding Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who committed the attack, will be indicted.

Three of the men, all in their 20’s, are accused of helping with the logistics and purchasing weapons for Coulibaly, Paris Prosecutor François Molins said during a news conference. Another drove a vehicle for Coulibaly. “They were part of a criminal terrorist organization,” Molins said.

Police have arrested 12 suspects in total in connection with the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Hyper Cacher attack, and they are searching for more suspects.

The post France Fights Terror in Wake of Attacks appeared first on World Israel News.