It Takes More Than Condemnation
Photo: Screengrab SkyNews
British Prime Minister David Cameron, in response to the public, middle-of-a-London-neighborhood, broad daylight beheading of a British soldier in an apparent terror attack, said, “people across Britain, people in every community, I believe, will utterly condemn this attack.”
Condemnation. A man was hacked to death on a busy London street in broad daylight by men shouting what one news outlet called “political statements” (other witnesses have said he was, in fact, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) and using what reports have varyingly described as a machete and/or meat cleaver. And the man who currently occupies the position once held by Wellington, Churchill, and Thatcher is reasonably certain that the people inhabiting his island can be counted on to shake their heads disapprovingly. What’s more, the initial response of the British Defense Ministry was to advise active duty soldiers to “conceal their uniforms” while in public. Somewhere in the afterlife, Admiral Nelson hangs his head in shame.
Yet again, we find ourselves down the rabbit hole. The fight against Islamist extremism is a fight that we’re not used to fighting – a war fought in the shadows, where we are not always completely sure who our enemies are. And yet, one of the suspects of yesterday’s attack did the work for us. When an alleged attacker, his hands soaked in blood and clutching what appears to be a meat cleaver, brazenly approaches a news camera and says, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” then perhaps we ought to take him seriously.
Britain can and must do better. It is well past time that Britain come to grips with the fact that there is a segment of its population – some who are immigrants and some who are home-grown – that is increasingly violent in its hatred of the West generally and the U.K….
Read More » Comments (48) »Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 at 9:49 AM | Stand For Israel
Breaking News: Savagery in London
Early this afternoon a man was brutally murdered in the streets of southeast London. The suspected murderer was recorded on video, with weapons and bloodied hands in full view. Police have since shot two suspects, and one is in serious condition.
From the Guardian:
Brandishing a cleaver and a knife, and with the body of the victim lying yards away, the man said: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
The attack took place in Woolwhich, some 300-400 meters from the perimeter of a military barracks. The victim is suspected to have been a serving solider, though it is not yet confirmed.
We will update you as the story continues.
Comments (16) »Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013 at 2:20 PM | Stand For Israel
Terror at Tapuach Junction
Photo: Wikipedia/ Tamar Jordanian
Evyatar Borowsky, a 31-year-old father of five, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist as he waited for a ride at Tapuah Junction in the West Bank. Pictures of Evyatar’s eldest son hugging his father’s corpse one last time as the body was being laid to rest have been circulating around the Internet. Since seeing that heartbreaking image of the poor child, I have been filled with sadness and rage.
The Palestinian terrorist who committed this murder had recently been released from an Israeli prison after serving a short stint for throwing stones at Israeli vehicles. Some analysts suggested that the attacker committed the murder in order to bring “honor” to his family’s name after his brother was arrested by the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) for collaborating with Israel. (more…)
Comments (1) »Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 at 4:07 PM | afarkas
The Delusional Power of Islamist Hatred
The mother of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, has said some pretty crazy things in the past few days. On the one hand, one well-known model of how human beings experience grief in five stages tells us that denial and anger are the first two steps. Mrs. Tsarnaev has lost one son and the other is likely headed to jail for a long time – or to death row. Her devastation is understandable and excusable.
What is neither understandable nor excusable is the steady stream of bizarre pronunciations coming out of her mouth. She started off saying that her boys had been set up. Now she is saying that the bombing didn’t happen at all and that the blood splashed all over Boston’s Boylston Street was paint.
Perhaps she has actual mental or emotional problems. Perhaps she has suffered a breakdown. But in a part of the world that promotes belief in crazy anti-Muslim conspiracies – from sharks trained by the Mossad to attack non-Israeli tourists in the waters off the Sinai peninsula to balloons from an innocuous Israeli celebration drifting across the Lebanese border and fictionally killing ever-escalating numbers of fictional children – the confluence of Islamist victimhood fetishism and inferiority complex has metastasized into a situation in which a growing number of people will believe just about anything that absolves Islamist terrorists and lays the blame at the feet of (insert villain of your choice here…America, Jews, Israel, Mossad, etc.).
We can dismiss Mrs. Tsarnaev as much as we want. There are a LOT of people who will believe her. And that should scare us more than the insanity of her rants.
Comments (34) »Friday, April 26th, 2013 at 7:25 AM | Stand For Israel
Education by Murder in Boston
Medical workers aid injured people at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon following an explosion in Boston, Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Daniel Pipes, writing at his blog (but also printed in yesterday’s Washington Times), says that – while the Boston bombings will not result in immediate, serious policy changes – it is likely to result in more Westerners realizing that radical Islam is a threat to our way of life and our values:
Comments (14) »It will prompt some Westerners to conclude that Islamism is a threat to their way of life. Indeed, every act of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims, be it violent or cultural, recruits more activists to the anti-jihad cause, more voters to insurgent parties, more demonstrators to anti-immigrant street efforts, and more donors to anti-Islamist causes.
Thursday, April 25th, 2013 at 9:24 AM | Stand For Israel
Where We’re Headed
Photo: Flickr/ hahatango
After the Boston Marathon bombing and the manhunt that led to the capture of one alleged terrorist and the death of another, a few provocative observations and predictions:
This is not the last time that terrorism will strike on U.S. soil. Yesterday, a young man from the Chicago area was arrested at O’Hare airport boarding a flight to Turkey – his plan was to cross the Turkish border with Syria and go fight with al-Qaeda. Yesterday afternoon, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they had broken up a plot to bomb trains. The jihadists want to attack us. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies are great and staffed by bright, passionate, committed men and women. But they’re still human and, eventually, they’ll miss something. Unless we’re willing to substantially curb civil liberties (and we shouldn’t be), terrorism could become a fact of life.
Boston’s decision to lock down the city was understandable given that it was the city’s first taste of terrorism. But the message it sent was that you can bring an entire major American city to a grinding halt with $400 worth of parts and a total lack of human decency. Similarly, the reaction of some Bostonians – dancing in the streets and chanting “U.S.A.” – after the second suspect was apprehended amounted to treating a 19-year-old nobody like he was Osama bin Laden. If terror does become a fact of American life, we simply can’t keep reacting this way.
We should stop being nice about who and what is primarily responsible for acts of terrorism in the world. Radical Islamist terror is the problem. We need to name it – responsibly, of course. We also need to recognize that we can’t do much about it. It’s not about U.S. foreign policy (because that wouldn’t explain why there have been attacks in so many countries that don’t support our foreign policy). It’s not about Israel. It’s an illness within the Muslim world and, while we can vigorously try to lessen its terrible effects…
Read More » Comments (31) »Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013 at 9:11 AM | Stand For Israel
Surviving Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Charged
Photo: Screen capture
The charges are in for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing:
The Justice Department said Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It said he is “specifically charged with one count of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (namely, an improvised explosive device or IED) against persons and property within the United States resulting in death, and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.” The department said in a news release that the bombings resulted in the deaths of three people and injuries to more than 200 others.
The question remains: What motivated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan (who was killed on Friday in a firefight with police), to carry out this vile attack? Were they working independently, or at the behest of a foreign terrorist group? Rest assured that, once the younger Tsarnaev recovers, law enforcement authorities will be asking him these questions. Let’s hope they get some straight answers — and that justice is done.
Comments (2) »Monday, April 22nd, 2013 at 2:19 PM | Stand For Israel
Still Waiting for Answers in Boston
Photo: Screen capture
As Americans wake up to news that one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing is dead and another still at large – and that both are of Chechnyan descent – Jonathan Tobin recommends caution:
Comments (19) »There is a long history of Chechnya being a source of Islamist terrorism, both against Russia and elsewhere. But until we learn more, this is not the time to jump to any conclusions about the motives of these killers or whether they fit the model of the Ft. Hood killer, an American who was inspired by Islamist ideology to carry out a deadly attack. An American media that has been bursting with impatience all week hoping to be able to put this tragedy in some perspective or to use it promote some sort of political agenda will just have to keep waiting.
Friday, April 19th, 2013 at 8:34 AM | Stand For Israel
Whoever Attacked Boston, Islamist Terror Still a Threat
Law enforcement authorities have still not identified the culprit in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing (Photo: Flickr/hahatango)
Barry Rubin writes that, regardless of the source of the terror attack in Boston, Americans shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that Islamist terror isn’t a threat. In fact, says Rubin, American vulnerability is high (and grows with complacency), the intent of our enemies is undiminished, and their capabilities grow daily:
The relative success of law enforcement and intelligence agencies is clear, yet the intensity of any terrorist war is measured not by successful attacks but by the number of attacks. One should always remember, as an Israeli official working on this issue once told me in private conversation, that counterterrorism was the only profession where succeeding 99 percent of the time was to fail.
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Thursday, April 18th, 2013 at 7:49 AM | Stand For Israel
How Anti-Israel Zealotry Threatens Europe
Pamphlet photo from the Jeu de Paume Museum exhibition in Paris
Evelyn Gordon, writing at Commentary magazine, discusses the unintended negative repercussions for the people of Europe of the knee-jerk anti-Israel stance that a number of Europe’s most-revered institutions have taken in recent years. Gordon says that the European propensity to laud Palestinians makes Europeans less secure – not from Palestinian terrorists, but from home-grown terrorists:
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