Who is saying what about the terrorist attacks

“A direct line leads between the attacks of extremist Islam around the world to the attack that took place here at a kosher supermarket in the heart of Paris,” — Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Netanyahu visited the kosher supermarket in eastern Paris where four Jews were killed by an Islamist gunman who stormed the store last week, warning that attacks could grow worse.

“I expect all of the leaders, with whom we marched in the streets of Paris yesterday, to fight terrorism wherever it is, also when it is directed against Israel and Jews.” Netanyahu also warned that the terror threat would grow. “The terror strikes that we have experienced here will grow to dimensions people do not yet understand, and this is why I hope Europe will unite, I hope it will wake up in time,” he said. “Israel supports Europe in its fight against terrorism and it’s time Europe supported Israel in the same fight.”(Times of Israel, Jan .12, 2015)

“The international jihadist movement has declared war. They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly how they would think and act, they have declared war and are executing it on a massive scale, on a whole range of countries with which they are in contact, and they have declared war on any country like ourselves that values freedom openness and tolerance. We may not like this and wish it would go away, but it is not going to go away. And the reality is we’re going to have to confront it, obviously that is what we’re doing in concert with our allies, trying to prevent and dealing with the very worst manifestation of this, the jihadist army that is occupying parts of Syria and Iraq. This is going to be unfortunately, the reality of the world we are living in for quite some time. We’re just going to have to face that head on and deal with it,” — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, addressing the terrorist attacks in Paris last week. (Real Clear Politics, Jan. 9, 2015)

“It is fair to say we should have sent someone with a higher profile,” —White House spokesman Josh Earnest. —The White House admitted that it made a mistake by not sending a higher-ranking official to Paris for Sunday’s unity rally against terrorism. More than 40 heads of state attended the rally and marched together through the streets of Paris in solidarity with France after last week’s three Islamist terrorist attacks, which killed a combined 17 people. The U.S. was represented by Ambassador to France Jane Hartley, rather than President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, or Secretary of State Kerry. Earnest said the White House did not have enough time to address the “significant security challenges” that would have accompanied Obama’s participation. (Algemeiner, Jan. 13, 2015)

“This behavior is part of the hypocrisy and political juggling act Abbas is used to; he thinks that this will earn the sympathy of nations,” —Hamas senior official Mahmoud Zahar, slamming PA President Abbas for attending the mass anti-terror rally in Paris on Sunday. “First he should take care of his own people,” Zahar said. The Hamas statement follows recent reports that the unity government between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah party has ended. Hamas has accused Abbas of ignoring Gaza and reconstruction efforts there following last summer’s war. “Abbas wants to look as if he fights terrorism, even though he does not know the meaning of terrorism,”Zahar said. (Algemeiner, Jan. 12, 2015)

“As far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly,” — Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, the antisemitic French comedian, on his Facebook page. He was referring to terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, who gunned down four Jews at a kosher supermarket. Dieudonné, whose appearances and videos feature long rants against Israel and the Jewish lobby, is wildly popular among young French North Africans. Dieudonné was detained for questioning on Wednesday in response to his Facebook post. Prosecutors launched an inquiry on potential charges of glorifying terrorism against Dieudonné, who has already faced accusations of antisemitism, and has mocked the killing of US reporter James Foley by Islamic State militants.  (Globe & Mail, Jan. 13, 2015 &Jerusalem Post, Jan. 14, 2015)

“There is a new anti-Semitism in France,” —French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, in an interview with The Atlantic. “We have the old anti-Semitism, and I’m obviously not downplaying it, that comes from the extreme right, but this new anti-Semitism comes from the difficult neighbourhoods, from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, who have turned anger about Gaza into something very dangerous. Israel and Palestine are just a pretext. There is something far more profound taking place now.” France’s Jewish population of about 500,000 is less than 1 per cent of the country’s population. Yet Jews are all too often targeted by hate crimes, many of which are committed by Muslims. In 2012, seven people, including three children, were gunned down by Mohammed Merah, an antisemitic French citizen of Algerian extraction. Last year, four people were killed at the Jewish Museum in Belgium, allegedly by a French national. Last summer, a pro-Palestinian mob torched Jewish shops in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles. (Globe & Mail, Jan. 13, 2015)

“Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires,” — Anjem Choudary, a radical U.K. based Muslim cleric. Choudary penned an opinion piece inUSA Today regarding the Paris terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. “In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike,” the cleric added. Choudary is a supporter of Shariah Law and the establishment of a caliphate in the Middle East. On Wednesday he tweeted: “If freedom of expression can be sacrificed for criminalising [sic] incitement & hatred, Why not for insulting the Prophet of Allah?” (Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2015)

“A singular feature of extremist Islamists is that they are not at all interested in persuasion. They don’t care about winning you over, only about making you submit. They want to menace and threaten. They want to frighten. They enjoy posing with the severed head. It is the West’s job not to be overcome by fear, not to give an inch. Steady is the word,” — Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 9, 2015)

“We are very happy with what happened at the heart of France,” —Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau, in an eight-minute video posted on YouTube that couldn’t immediately be verified. “Oh you French people, oh you who follow the religion of democracy, between you and us is enmity to eternity,” said the man, speaking in Arabic and holding an AK-47 assault rifle. Nigeria’s military has repeatedly claimed to have killed Shekau, and in October the authorities said they had agreed a cease-fire with the group. Since then, violence in the mainly Muslim north has continued unabated. (Bloomberg, Jan. 14, 2015)

“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home,”—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a televised statement, referring to the Jewish practice of facing Jerusalem during prayer. (Times of Israel, Jan. 11, 2015)

“100,000 French people of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is not France anymore. But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure,” —French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “France without Jews is not France,” he added. The Paris attacks re-raised the specter of increased Jewish immigration from France and the rest of Europe to Israel. France — the second largest Diaspora community after the US — sent a record 7,000 Jews to Israel in 2014, amid fears of increasing antisemitism. (Times of Israel, Jan. 11, 2015)

“We’re not building our aliyah strategy on tragic events. We’re building it on the fact that there is this place in the world called Europe, where Jews are feeling increasingly uncomfortable,” —Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky. Sharansky predicted more than 10,000 French Jews will move to Israel in the course of 2015 — breaking 2014’s record number of 7,000 new Francophone immigrants. “We have to make sure that Israel is very attractive choice for them. And that’s already happening,” said Sharansky, the former Soviet Prisoner of Zion who was finally allowed to come to Israel in 1986. Over the next two decades, indeed, he expects some 250,000 immigrants from France. While Sharansky, whose agency is a quasi-governmental institution with widespread responsibilities for immigration and absorption, said the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine wouldn’t impact Jewish immigration numbers, he did see it as a wake up call that the very essence of a free Europe is a stake. “This particular tragedy is a very tragic and powerful reminder for Europe that the time is running out for them — not for European Jews…If France and the other Western nations will not fight quickly and strongly for re-establishing the civilization of liberal nations, Europe is in danger,” he said.“The exodus of Jews, as many times in the past, is the first harbinger, a warning of where it goes.” (Times of Israel, Jan. 8, 2015)

“[Carter] recommended to Yasser Arafat that Yasser Arafat turn down the deal that … would have resulted in the Palestinian state,” —Harvard law professor and Israel-advocate Alan Dershowitz. “He has blood of thousands of Jews and Palestinians on his hands. He should just stop talking about the Middle East,” he added. Dershowitz appeared Wednesday on Newsmax with Anti-Defamation League President Abe Foxman. The men weighed in on Carter’s recent suggestion that the International Criminal Court in The Hague should investigate both Israel and Hamas for possible war crimes. (Newsmax, Jan. 14, 2015)

“Load your machine gun and advance, son of proud Jerusalem, Gird yourself with flames and capture the soldiers, Open fire, have no mercy, shoot the Zionists! Advance with your men, O keffiyeh-masked one! The land of the Night Journey [Jerusalem] is our [first] direction of prayer, Its liberation is our goal, Palestinian, lead the attack and raise our flag,” —Hamas music video. Hamas’s Islamic Block at Al Quds University has just produced a special music video showing all the fans out there exactly how to murder Jews. It’s a musical enactment of the murder of two praying Jews, wearing their prayer shawls. (Jewish Press, Jan. 14, 2015)

“We know that this is an ideology, a political ideology, that is embedded unfortunately in the religion of Islam, a religion that is practiced by multitudes of people who are not violent themselves. We know this. What we fail to do over and over again is to make this connection and we are fighting an asymmetric war where we fight with military means and counter terrorism means but we are not fighting back with ideas…there is a vacuum of morality. If western society doesn’t instil, again I’m using the world inculcate the values that have made the west so peaceful and prosperous through schools, through the media, through academia, through every possible peaceful channel of educating minds. What happens is you have a vacuum and vacuums like this one are usually filled by evil terrorist ideologists. What we are seeing is an Islamist, evil terrorist ideology,” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born American (formerly Dutch) activist, writer, and politician who is often critical of Islam. She collaborated on a movie with Theo van Gogh, Submission (2004) that provoked controversy with Muslims, and death threats were made against the two filmmakers. Van Gogh was assassinated later that year by a Dutch Muslim. (Town Hall, Jan. 12, 2015)

“I say and repeat, again, that we are in need of a religious revolution,” —Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, on New Year’s Day. “You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting on you. The entire world is waiting for your word … because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.” (Globe & Mail, Jan. 13, 2015)

SHORT TAKES

IN JERUSALEM, THOUSANDS GATHER FOR FUNERAL OF FOUR JEWS KILLED IN PARIS (Jerusalem) — Israelis mourned Tuesday alongside the families of four Jewish men killed by a gunman at a kosher market in Paris last week and buried at an emotional funeral here. “This is not how we wanted to welcome you to Israel,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said at the funeral. “We wanted you alive, we wanted for you life,” Rivlin added. The killings of Yohan Cohen, 20; Yoav Hattab, 21; Philippe Braham, 45; and François-Michel Saada, 64, on Friday in Paris by an Islamist terrorist shook France’s Jewish community. A few mourners held signs with photographs of the victims and the words “Je suis mort parce que juif,” meaning “I died because I am Jewish.” (Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2015)

AL QAEDA IN YEMEN CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR ATTACK (Sana’a) — Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen formally claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the deadly assault a week ago at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed twelve people, saying that the target was chosen by the Qaeda leadership and referring to attackers as “two heroes of Islam.” A statement by the official publication arm of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen, indicated that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was in response to the publication’s frequent caricatures lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. The attack was ordered by the Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, in keeping with the wishes of his predecessor, Osama bin Laden. (New York Times, Jan. 14, 2015)

GERMAN NEWSPAPER THAT REPRINTED CHARLIE HEBDO CARTOONS FIREBOMBED (Hamburg) — German police arrested two suspects in connection with an arson attack on a Hamburg newspaper that reprinted cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad from Charlie Hebdo. The assailants threw stones and an incendiary device into a basement window of the Hamburger Morgenpost’s building. No one was hurt in the attack. News organizations across Europe published the controversial Muhammad cartoons following the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo. (National Post, Jan. 11, 2015)

MAPS OF PARIS JEWISH SCHOOLS FOUND IN TERRORIST’S CAR (Paris) — It has been revealed that Amedy Coulibaya, who murdered four people in a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday, may have planned to attack a Jewish school just one day earlier. Maps with the locations of Jewish schools on them were found in his car. On Thursday, Coulibaya shot and murdered a female police officer who was responding to a car accident. Investigators now suspect that he had been planning to attack a Jewish school located a short distance beyond the site of the crash. In 2012, a terrorist attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse, murdering four people. (Jewish Press, Jan. 11, 2015)

FRANCE TO DEPLOY 5,000 POLICE TO PROTECT JEWISH SCHOOLS (Paris) — France will deploy nearly 5,000 security forces and police to protect the 700 Jewish schools in the country, its interior minister said Monday. Bernard Cazeneuve said soldiers would also be posted as reinforcements, as he addressed parents of a Jewish school south of Paris near where a gunman shot dead a policewoman on Thursday.  The gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, reportedly told a TV station that he had deliberately targeted Jews, and was said to have the addresses of several Jewish schools saved in his phone. (Times of Israel, Jan. 12, 2015)

HALF OF UK JEWS SEE NO FUTURE IN ENGLAND (London)—A Campaign Against Antisemitism survey shows a bleak picture for UK Jewry. The results are so bad that the report describes itself a “Wake Up Call”. The CAA report says that while UK antisemitism is not yet at the levels of Europe, it has reached a tipping point. The report describes a correlation between the rise of attacks on Israel and antisemitism, but the antisemitism doesn’t disappear when the attacks on Israel subside. There are approximately 269,000 Jews living in the UK. Antisemitic incidents in 2014 was at its highest recorded levels in 30 years. In July of 2014, 95% of all of London’s hate crimes were directed against Jews. (Jewish Press, Jan. 14, 2015)

2,000 KILLED IN BOKO HARAM RAIDS (Baga) — Terror experts and officials say Boko Haram carried out a series of attacks last week, killing as many as 2,000 civilians in northern Nigeria. Survivors in the town of Baga fled into the nearby waters of Lake Chad, where some drowned and others are trapped on small islands, menaced by hippos, a local government official said. District leader Musa Alhaji Bukar described the town — which had a population of 10,000 — as “virtually nonexistent” following the massacre. “These towns are just gone, burned down,” local Sen. Ahmed Zanna said. “The whole area is covered in bodies.” Boko Haram’s offensive continued Thursday with terrorists setting up new checkpoints and killing people hiding in the bush. Nearly 10,000 people have fled to Chad since Saturday, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis. (Washington Times, Jan. 9, 2015)

EGYPTIAN COURT OVERTURNS MUBARAK’S CONVICTION ON CORRUPTION(Cairo) — An Egyptian court on Tuesday overturned former president Hosni Mubarak’s conviction on corruption charges and ordered a retrial, AFP reported. The former president remains in detention pending a judicial order. Supporters of the 86-year-old broke into cheers and chanted “Long Live Justice!” as the Court of Cassation in Cairo announced its decision, which concerns the last remaining of a series of charges laid against Mubarak following his 2011 ouster. Another court in November dropped murder charges against Mubarak over the deaths of protesters during the uprising, which ended his three decades of autocratic rule. (Arutz Sheva, Nov. 14, 2015)

CONVICTED SAUDI BLOGGER FLOGGED IN PUBLIC FIFTY TIMES (Riyadh) — Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger convicted of insulting Islam, was brought after Friday prayers to a public square in the port city of Jiddah and flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators. Badawi was sentenced last May to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes. He had criticized Saudi Arabia’s powerful clerics on a liberal blog he founded. The blog has since been shut down. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 1 million riyals or about $266,600. Rights activists say Saudi authorities are using Badawi’s case as a warning to others who think to criticize the kingdom’s powerful religious establishment from which the ruling family partly derives its authority. (New York Times, Jan. 9, 2015)

SULIMAN MOHAMED ACCUSED BY RCMP OF PARTICIPATING IN TERRORIST GROUP  (Ottawa) — Suliman Mohamed, a 21-year-old from Ottawa, has been accused by RCMP of conspiring to participate in a terrorist activity with two twin brothers who were arrested on Friday. Mohamed was arrested Monday and charged with one count of participation in the activity of a terrorist group and one count of conspiracy to participate in a terrorist activity. Police said Mohamed’s arrest was linked to the arrests of twin brothers Ashton and Carlos Larmond on Friday. In a media release, RCMP allege Mohamed conspired to participate in terrorist activity with the Larmond brothers.  (CBC, Jan. 12, 2015)

PA, PLO GO ON TRIAL IN U.S. FOR ATTACKS ON ISRAEL (New York) — A Manhattan jury was asked to determine whether the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization helped orchestrate a wave of terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in a trial that got under way Tuesday. The civil trial is the first against the Palestinian political apparatus in the U.S., and comes just weeks after the PA joined the International Criminal Court, which raises the threat it could attempt to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes. The decade-old lawsuit was filed under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, a federal law that gives U.S. victims of international terrorism recourse in federal court. (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13, 2015)

SYRIAN ACTOR CHALLENGES ASSAD TO SPEND A NIGHT IN ‘FREEZING’ REFUGEE CAMP (Damascus) — Calling on President Bashar Assad to alleviate the plight of Syrian refugees, a Syrian actor challenged the leader of the war-torn state to spend a night in the cold conditions that ordinary Syrians have had to endure. In a video posted to Youtube the actor, Ehab Yousef, is seen buried partially in snow while demanding that Assad “needs to come out from his hideout and show support for the people who are dying in the refugee camps”. Syria has been hit by one of the harshest winters it has seen in decades, weather that has only worsened the fate of some 6.5 million internal refugees. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 12, 2015)