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Many media accounts are referring to last night’s shootings in Copenhagen as a “copycat” episode in which the perpetrator sought to emulate the atrocities committed by Islamists last month in Paris. But whether or not the Copenhagen shooter was specifically motivated by the ones who committed the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Hyper Cacher market, this crime must be understood as being one more example of the twin trends of Islamist violence and anti-Semitism that have spread across Europe. Even more importantly, it demonstrates the folly of the mindset of the Obama administration that continues to be resolute in its unwillingness to confront the sources of terrorism and the reality of its role in violent Jew-hatred.More.
The Copenhagen shootings provide important context for the interview of President Obama published last week in Vox. In it, he acknowledged that it was legitimate for people to be concerned about terrorism, but he spoke of it as a secondary concern that gained headlines merely because of the lurid nature of the crimes committed by those involved. Likening his job to that of a “big city mayor” who needs to keep crime rates low, he spoke of terrorism as merely one more problem on his plate and not the most serious one. Obama not only refuses to acknowledge that the spread of ISIS in the Middle East is fueled by a form of religious fundamentalism that has strong support in the Muslim world; he also quite deliberately refused to label what happened in Paris last month an act of anti-Semitism, a stand that was echoed by the press spokespersons for both the White House and the State Department last week.
I wrote last week that, contrary to Obama, there was nothing “random” about an attack on a kosher market in Paris: the assailants were clearly seeking out a place where they could kill Jews and succeeded in that respect. The same is true of the Copenhagen shooter’s decision to attack a synagogue after spraying bullets at a café where a cartoonist who had drawn images of the Prophet Muhammad was speaking. One person was killed at the café and a Jewish voluntary security guard at the synagogue (who was there protecting the celebrants at a bat mitzvah being held at the time).
The Copenhagen attacks are one more reminder that the debate about whether there is such a thing as Islamist terrorism or if attacks on Jews are “random” isn’t about semantics. The refusal to address the religious sources of terrorism—a point on which some Arab leaders have begun to be heard—inevitably renders American efforts to do something about the problem ineffective. Just as importantly, denying the connection between this form of Islam and anti-Semitism seems to be causing the administration to also refuse to acknowledge that Jews in Europe are being targeted because of their identity and not simply due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If the U.S. were to begin to tell the truth about the Islamist roots of terror and the connection with anti-Semitism, that might be the start of a re-examination of mistaken policies that have, albeit unwittingly, led to the rise of ISIS as well as a determination to retreat from the Middle East...
Yesterday evening’s Copenhagen synagogue shooting is yet another attack on Jews as Jews -- just as we have witnessed such attacks at the Toulouse Jewish primary school, the Brussels Jewish museum, the Paris kosher supermarket, the firebombing of the synagogue in the German city of Wuppertal, and at many other places in recent years, from the Jewish communal centres in Mumbai and Casablanca, to the ancient synagogues in Istanbul and Jerba.
Yet only last week President Obama and his spokespeople were suggesting that it was just some kind of “random” accident that Jews were being killed.
The Obama team has consistently demonstrated a willful lack of understanding about the nature of Islamism, about anti-Semitism, and about the intentions of the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. They seem more interested in disparaging the prime minister of America’s ally Israel than in preventing the regime in Tehran going nuclear – a regime which has already de facto taken control of large swathes of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Its terrorist actions outside the Middle East spread to, among other places, Thailand, Bulgaria (where Jewish tourists were blown up in 2012) and Argentina, where 85 people were murdered at the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. Only last month an Iranian diplomat in Montevideo was expelled from Uruguay for planting a bomb designed to kill Jews. (This foiled attack was barely reported on outside the Uruguayan and Israeli media.)
As Middle East scholar Bassam Tawil wrote last week: “Does Obama really want his legacy to be, ‘The president who was an even bigger fool than Neville Chamberlain’?”
Part of the Obama team’s attitude, it seems to me, is derived from the misreporting of the New York Times, a paper whose claim to be “the paper of record,” they presumably take seriously.
At the present time, over a dozen hours after other media (such as The Guardian) reported prominently on the specifically anti-Semitic nature of yesterday’s attack in Copenhagen and on the fact there was a Bat Mitzvah going on in the synagogue while it was being attacked (with over 80 people including many children inside), the lengthy report on the New York Times website on the Copenhagen shootings doesn’t mention the word “anti-Semitism” once. Instead New York Times correspondent Steven Erlanger writes in his piece “anti-Muslim sentiment is rising in Europe.”
Nor does the New York Times mention the bat mitzvah. There are not so many Jews in Denmark and not many bat mitzvahs -- it seems the terrorist had done his research carefully. Yet the New York Times website home page says, at the time of writing, that the shooting was “near a synagogue”. It wasn’t near a synagogue. It was at a synagogue. The synagogue was the target. Which is why a Jew guarding the synagogue was shot dead. With the New York Times’ reporting one starts to understand how Obama and his spokespeople could say the kosher attack in Paris was “random” even though the perpetrator – interviewed live on French radio during the attack – proudly boasted that he had come all the way across Paris in order to kill Jews gathering before the sabbath.
(None of this is new, of course. Even during the Holocaust, the New York Times did all it could to avoid mentioning that those being deported to Auschwitz and other camps were being deported because they were Jews.)
One can only imagine how many children might have died had the gunman managed to enter the bat mitzvah celebration yesterday...
Sisi bans Egyptians from going to #Libya. pic.twitter.com/vy0ZyNof8G
— Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) February 15, 2015#Sisi: I'm sending foreign minister to New York "#Libya situation is s threat to global security" pic.twitter.com/UsDfZn13JC
— Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) February 15, 2015Sisi: The time is not for "selectivity and double standards" when it comes with dealing with terrorism. pic.twitter.com/PnQubDY80L
— Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) February 15, 2015Copenhagen terror attack suspect named as 22-year-old Omar el-Hussein, who 'had violent past'.
Terror returned to Europe at the weekend when a suspected Islamist extremist gunned down two people in separate attacks on a Copenhagen café and a synagogue before being killed by police in a predawn shoot-out on Sunday.
The dead suspect, named on Sunday night as Omar el-Hussein, had reportedly been released from prison two weeks ago after serving a two-year sentence for grievous bodily harm.
In a rampage with parallels to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris five weeks earlier, the 22-year-old Danish-born assailant fired around 40 shots at a free speech debate in an arts café on Saturday afternoon, killing a 55-year-old documentary filmmaker, Finn Norgaard.
After fleeing in a stolen car, the gunman went on to target a girl's bat mitzvah party at Copenhagen's main synagogue at one o'clock on Sunday morning, shooting dead Dan Uzan, 37, an economist at the Danish treasury, who was acting as a volunteer security guard.
The gunman was then later killed after a shoot-out with police at a train station in central Copenhagen. Up to four other people were being held by police on Sunday night following raids across the country.
As with the Charlie Hebdo attackers, the head of the Danish security and intelligence service, Jens Madsen, said on Sunday that the gunman had been identified as a potential threat.
"He was on the radar but he was not known to have travelled to conflict areas like Iraq or Syria," Mr Madsen said. "We cannot yet say anything concrete about the motive ... but we are considering that he might have been inspired by the events in Paris," he told a news conference.
Police traced the killer from CCTV footage from the arts café attack, which showed him abandoning his getaway car, a stolen Volkswagen Polo, and taking a taxi. They questioned the driver, and went to the address in the mainly immigrant area of Norrebro where he had dropped off the suspect.
The gunman had left again by the time police arrived at his home, near the railway station, and went on to attack the synagogue. When he returned around 5am, police tried to apprehend him but shot him dead after he opened fire on them.
In an indication that the gunman may have had accomplices, four people were arrested when a dozen armed police raided an internet café in central Copenhagen. Among the four were a Pakistani and an Arab, according to Danish media reports.
Witnesses at both attacks said further killings were only averted by the swift intervention of the police, who have been on high alert in the Danish capital since the Paris shootings...
Denmark’s Jewish community was in shock Sunday after a gunman attacked a Copenhagen synagogue, in a weekend of violence that echoed the deadly events in Paris last month and rekindled a debate over the dangers of being a Jew in Europe.More.
Police said they shot and killed the gunman, who killed a guard and wounded two policemen at the synagogue a day after attacking a seminar on free speech that featured a Swedish cartoonist who has lampooned Islam. One man, a participant in the conference, was killed and three policemen were wounded in the first assault.
At the synagogue, the gunman killed 37-year-old Dan Uzan, who was guarding the door of a bat mitzvah ceremony in a parish hall. None of the reported 80 guests were injured.
A stream of Danes converged on the synagogue to pay their respects to the victims, laying flowers along a stone-and-iron fence.
“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday after the Copenhagen attacks. I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: ‘Israel is the home of every Jew.’”
Mr. Netanyahu, who had made a similar declaration after the Paris attacks, in which four Jews were killed at a kosher store, said his government would launch a $46 million plan to prepare for “mass immigration” from Europe to Israel.
Several Jewish leaders said the call by the Israeli Prime Minister was ill-timed. “Terror is not a reason to move to Israel,” Jair Melchior, Denmark’s chief rabbi, told the Associated Press, adding he was “disappointed” by Mr. Netanyahu’s comment.
Some said authorities need to do more to protect Jewish communities. European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor called on European authorities to form a pan-European task force with legal authority and financial resources dedicated to taking the battle to the radical Islamist enclaves, hunting terrorists down before they act.
“The threats against Jews and the inability of governments to defend them are forcing Jews out of Europe,” Mr. Kantor said. “Intelligence-gathering, surveillance and protection must be amassed and shared by all nations and terrorists need to be hunted down before they act. Now is the time for all EU member states to act swiftly and effectively.”
About 8,000 Jews live in Denmark, a nation of 5.7 million, according the European Jewish Congress...
Rather than face terrorism charges, Danish jihadis who return to the European country from Syria are offered rehabilitation.Hmm...
Unlike in Britain, where a handful of terrorism suspects have been detained after flying into the UK from Turkey, the Danish government enrols citizens in a rehabilitation programme.
More Danes travelled to Syria last year per head of population than any other European country except from Belgium.
Thirty per cent hailed from Aarhus, the country's second largest city, where the rehabilitation programme was orchestrated.
Everyone who returns from war-torn countries is screened and offered treatment for shrapnel wounds as well as psychiatric care for trauma.
The families of those already in Syria are also given access to Skype.
It was intended for those who travelled to the Middle East with the intention of helping civilians oppressed by the Assad regime.
Some of those enrolled in the programme said they would have turned against the government if treated as a criminal.
Critics however fear the system, allegedly designed in anticipation of the breakdown of ISIS, will be abused.
But actually, it was a religiously motivated attack. Islam is the only belief-system that mandates violence against those who commit the crime of drawing cartoons of Muhammad and those who commit the crime of being Jews. Thorning-Schmidt’s denial of manifest reality only aids and abets the advancing jihad.Below, Thorning-Schmidt lays flowers at the Copenhagen synagogue, saying Denmark "will do everything" to protect the Jewish community. Yeah. Riiiiight.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned address to Congress next month is driving an uncomfortable and rarely seen wedge between congressional Democrats and Israel — and that may have been exactly what House Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans intended.The Dems. The party of hate.
For many Democrats, and especially the more than two dozen Jewish members of Congress, Boehner's decision to invite Netanyahu to speak about Iran's nuclear program — despite objections from the White House — is forcing them to choose between their president and their long-standing support for Israel.
On Thursday, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) became the third Jewish Democrat to say he would not attend the planned joint session speech, a surprising expression of protest in contrast to the usual outpouring of support and standing ovations U.S. lawmakers lavish on Israel's leader.
"There's a tension," said Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who has not decided whether to attend. "The prime minister's coming puts us who are supportive of Israel in a difficult position, especially as Jews who do support Israel, because I think it's totally inappropriate to come at this time."
At least 20 other members of Congress have also vowed to skip the speech. Some see Netanyahu's visit as an affront to the president, while others view it as the latest in a continuing effort by Republicans to upset the ties between Democrats and Jewish American voters and donors.
Boehner insisted the invitation was intended only to give a key ally a forum for discussing the Iran nuclear talks, in which Israel has a significant stake.
But privately, Republican aides haven't hidden their delight at how the issue is vexing Democrats, without conceding that was the intent.
Democrats suspect politics were part of the reason Boehner broke the usual protocol by not coordinating the invitation of a foreign leader with the White House.
"I don't know what's in the speaker's mind," said Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel, who represents a district in south Florida with a sizable Jewish population and plans to attend the speech. "He could be thinking about Iran, he could be thinking about politics.… I am just very disturbed — and I would say upset — that Israel is to be used as a political football."
Though Israel has long coveted the bipartisan support it enjoys in Congress, Netanyahu's Likud Party and U.S. Republicans have moved closer together in recent years, joined by shared conservative ideologies and hawkish foreign policies. Evangelicals, who are often more pro-Israel than many Jewish Americans, have also pushed the GOP toward greater support of the Netanyahu government.
So have wealthy donors like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who contributed more than $100 million to Republicans in the 2012 campaign and is expected to be a major player in the 2016 presidential race. Adelson, who is Jewish and is married to an Israeli, is also one of Netanyahu's biggest political patrons; he owns a free, pro-government daily newspaper in Israel that has become one of the country's most-read.
But in the U.S., 70% of American Jews identify with the Democratic Party, while just 22% with the GOP, according to a 2013 study by Pew Research Center. President Obama won 69% of the Jewish American vote in 2012, according to exit polling reported by NBC News, though support dropped from 78% in his 2008 election.
"You're seeing an emerging split between a part of the community that is politically in line with the prime minister and in line with the Republican Party, and a part of the community that is more supportive of a progressive political agenda here and the Labor Party there," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group. Boehner's invitation "has successfully exposed that that difference can no longer be papered over."
Obama publicly declined this week to offer advice to fellow Democrats when asked whether they should attend Netanyahu's address, though he has said he wouldn't meet with the prime minister when he comes next month, citing the proximity to Israel's March 17 election.
Vice President Joe Biden, who would usually attend the speech as the president of the Senate, is proceeding with plans to travel abroad then.
Amid the initial controversy over the invitation, top Israeli officials worked the halls of the U.S. Capitol last week to gauge the level of concern, particularly among Democrats...
