Tuesday, December 10, 2019

ANOTHER SAUDI ATTACK HIGHLIGHTS IMMIGRATION CATASTROPHE - WHEN WILL THERE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY STOP BEING A NATIONAL JOKE? - "How many more innocent victims must be slaughtered before our nation comes to its senses?"

Terror Attack At Naval Air Station Highlights Immigration Catastrophe

Limitations in the vetting process endanger national security.
 
Michael Cutler

The nearly all-consuming fixation on the lack of border security along the U.S./Mexican border ignore the many other elements of what should be a cohesive and coordinated immigration system.
Contrary to the claims made by the open borders, immigration anarchists, the purpose of the border wall is not to prevent the entry of aliens and/or cargo into the United States, but to make certain that all who enter the United States are properly vetted and records of their entry are created.
However, not enough attention is paid to the vetting process itself upon which the integrity of the immigration system depends.
The issue of border security must include the process by which visas are issued and by which aliens are screened at ports of entry.
The great majority of foreign terrorists who have attacked our nation have actually entered the United States through ports of entry either with visas that were obtained by concealing the backgrounds and true identities of the aliens in question, or by making bogus claims to political asylum, getting released and then disappearing.
The issue of the vetting of aliens has made it to the front page of newspapers and the “A block” of television news program because of the deadly shooting at the Pensacola Air Naval Station by a 21 year old member of the Saudi military, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a second lieutenant in the Saudi Air Force as reported in the New York Times on December 6, 2019, Trainee on Military Base Mounts Deadly Attack.
It has been reported that Alshamrani had posted virulently anti-American remarks in social media.  The immediate obvious question is whether or not the vetting process including appropriate searches of social media accounts that might have disclosed his hatred of America before he was granted his visa.
The ability to effectively vet applicants is limited.  Searches delve into possible criminal histories, but when applicants have no criminal histories and no known ties to criminal or terrorist organizations, such vetting process may fail.
Apparently there are two purposes behind the training of foreign pilots by the U.S. military: to protect U.S. national security interests and encourage the sale of military aircraft and other equipment by U.S. military suppliers.
Justifiably, a number of political leaders, and other have called for the suspension of this program so that the vetting process can be evaluated.  To this point, on December 8, 2019 the New York Post reported, Lindsey Graham wants training program suspended after Pensacola shooting.
That report included this excerpt:
US Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who represents the base, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the incident “has to inform our ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.”
“We should not be taking new incoming Saudi students until we’re absolutely confident in our vetting process,” Gaetz said.
There are currently more than 850 Saudis in the US for various training activities — among about 5,000 foreigners from 153 countries in the country undergoing some form of military training.
There has been a string of incidents that include foreign military students going missing in the United States in the past. There have also been worrying reports about foreign students enrolled in other U.S. schools going missing, including some who are citizens of countries that have a nexus to terrorism.  Yet with only about 6,000 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents for the entire United States and with more than half of them engaged in the investigation of non-immigration issues, there are precious few agents available to enforce the immigration laws.  “Sanctuary” policies of a growing number of cities and states exacerbate the crisis.
One of the most astonishing incidents involving a failure of the vetting process occurred six months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 when it was discovered that two of the dead terrorists had been granted authorization to attend a civilian flight school in March 2002, six months after they participated in the terror attacks of 9/11.
On March 19, 2001 the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims conducted a hearing into that fiasco on the topic, INS's March 2002 Notification Of Approval Of Change Of Status For Pilot Training For Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta And Marwan Al-Shehhi.  The video of that hearing is worth watching.
I was called as an expert witness at that hearing.
For all of the beast-beating and complaints of the members of that subcommittee and other members of congress, measures to prevent such failures have been outweighed by the demands of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veritable laundry list of corporations and special interest groups that our immigration laws not be enforced and our borders be allowed to remain wide open by those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing- even when lives and national security are on the line!
Today we are focused on aliens being given the best possible military flight training in America’s latest fighter planes.  The possibilities of what such a highly-trained pilot could do in the seat of such as aircraft is mind-numbing.
In the wake of the shooting at the Pensacola Air Naval Station information had been circulated that the alleged shooter had visited New York City days before the attack, possibly in the company of other classmates.  This immediately gave rise the concern that he, and possibly others, might have been scoping out potential targets for terror attacks.
The mainstream media, in a moment of rare candor raised that possibility.  Yet no one had thought to a Department of Justice press release published just days earlier.
On December 3, 2019 the DOJ reported, Hizballah Operative Sentenced to 40 Years in Prison for Covert Terrorist Activities on Behalf of Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad Organization; Ali Kourani Was Trained by Hizballah’s External Terrorist Operations Component and Gathered Intelligence in New York City in Support of Attack-Planning Efforts.
You will notice in this excerpt from the earlier DOJ press release that announced Kourani’s  conviction that immigration law violations were among the crimes that he committed:
Yesterday, a jury returned a guilty verdict against Ali Kourani, a.k.a. “Ali Mohamad Kourani,” a.k.a. “Jacob Lewis,” a.k.a. “Daniel,” on all eight counts in the Indictment, which charged him with terrorism, sanctions and immigration offenses for his illicit work as an operative for Hizballah’s external attack-planning component.  Kourani is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 27, 2019…
On September 19, 2019 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York issued a press release that announced, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Indictment Of New Jersey Man For Terrorist Activities On Behalf Of Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad Organization. The subtitle of that press release provides more disturbing information, Alexei Saab Allegedly Was Trained by Hizballah’s External Terrorist Operations Component in Bomb-Making and Conducted Intelligence-Gathering in New York City and Washington, D.C., and Elsewhere in Support of Hizballah’s Attack-Planning Efforts.
On August 2, 2019 the Justice Department posted thus extremely this worrying news release, Afghanistan National and Former U.S. Military Interpreter Charged for Role in Human Smuggling Conspiracy.
On August 20, 2018 the Department of Justice issued a press releaseTwo Individuals Charged for Acting as Illegal Agents of the Government of Iran. 
My piece written in February 2018, Saudi Graduate Of Al Qaeda Terror Training Camp Arrested In Oklahoma -  Alleged classmate of 9/11 hijackers attended US flight school in 2016 included a link to the DOJ press release, Saudi Citizen Charged in Oklahoma With Concealing Attendance at Al Qaeda Training Camp.
There is a clear nexus between immigration and national security yet, for decades, the immigration system has abjectly lacked the resources it needs to imbue this important mission with the resources essential to enhancing the integrity of this vital system.  Furthermore, the radical Left have demanded the dismantling of immigration law enforcement altogether, in essence ordering “Shields down” in a truly perilous era.
How many more innocent victims must be slaughtered before our nation comes to its senses?


Rand: We Should Put Hold on Flight Training Program, ‘Saudi Arabia Needs to Pay a Penalty’

1:37


During an interview aired on Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) stated that Saudi Arabia shouldn’t be given “easy forgiveness” in the wake of the Pensacola shooting, said that Saudi Arabia “needs to pay a penalty” for its actions, and called for a hold on the flight training program and a halt on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.
Rand said, “I think we never fully realized that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, 2001 were Saudis. We haven’t realized that they actually killed a journalist and chopped him up and dismembered him in a consulate. And now we have Saudi pilots coming over here ostensibly to train to be our allies, shooting our own soldiers. No, I think there shouldn’t be any kind of easy forgiveness for Saudi Arabia. I’d put the whole program on hold, I would search all of these people, I would search all of their communications to make sure they were not complicit in this killing, and then I’d send them back home, and I’d put the whole program on hold until we find out whether Saudi Arabia truly is a friend and truly is willing to stamp this out. Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars spreading hatred of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, you name it, around the world, and Saudi Arabia needs to pay a penalty for this.”
He further called for the cessation of arms sales to Saudi Arabia to try to pressure them into better behavior.


"I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."

Saudis, Airplanes, and the Pensacola Killings

America doesn’t do retribution like it used to.
 
Bruce Bawer

I went through all of December 7 this year without thinking about the date, so it wasn’t until the morning of December 8, when I watched a video somebody had posted on Facebook, that I realized I had missed Pearl Harbor Day. The video showed the glee club of the Naval Academy singing the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” (which, as it happens, was my mother’s favorite hymn), on December 7, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack. At one point the video cut away from the singers to black-and-white images of the devastation caused on December 7, 1941. It was deeply moving. And it was also thought-provoking. At the time of the attack on Hawaii, the Japanese had already conquered Korea, much of China, and Indonesia; within days after Pearl Harbor, they had taken Hong Kong, Thailand, Kiribati, and Wake Island, and within a few more months they had swallowed up what are now the countries of Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea, plus Guam.
Yet less than four years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States, having just taken part in the utter destruction of Nazi Germany, brought Japan, too, to its knees. Not only did we beat their butts; we also crushed to bits the twisted set of beliefs, including a conviction that the Emperor himself was a god, that had been at the heart of the Japanese mentality for centuries. Having been told they were invincible, they were stunned to the core by the impact of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those bombings, and the subsequent occupation under General Douglas MacArthur, totally rewired their minds. In short, we humbled them and, in doing so, kicked off a sea change that would have been inconceivable before the war – the transformation of what had, for centuries, been a warlike empire populated by would-be kamikazes into a democratic Western-style nation and staunch U.S. ally whose people are preoccupied with the peaceful manufacture of electronics.
On September 11, 2001, the U.S. was the victim of another surprise attack, one even more horrific than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The weapons were our own airplanes, and fifteen of the nineteen perpetrators were Saudis, several of whom had attended flight school in Florida. Last Friday, an atrocity at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, revealed to the American public that Saudis, even now – eighteen years later – are being trained to fly by the U.S. military. The guilty party, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, an aviation student and a second lieutenant in the Saudi Air Force, opened fire in a classroom building, murdering three and wounding twelve before being killed by two local sheriff’s deputies (raising the question, incidentally, of why county cops made it to the scene before armed personnel).
Alshamrani was, by the way, not a “lone wolf.” Six other Saudis, fellow students of his in Pensacola, were “detained for questioning” after the shootings; one of them, reportedly, had filmed the shooting spree, while two others watched from a car, which suggests, of course, that they may have known about, and approved of, Alshamrani’s plans beforehand. And yet one of the claims made in the hours after the atrocity was that all Saudi subjects selected for training at U.S. military installations are intensely vetted by both Saudi and U.S. officials.
That was troubling news. Even more troubling were President Trump’s tweets. After offering “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families, Trump added that “King Salman of Saudi Arabia just called to express his sincere condolences” and that Salman “said that the Saudi people are greatly angered by the barbaric actions of the shooter, and that this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people.” Now, I’m a huge fan of President Trump, but nineteen years after 9/11, I find it appalling that, during his tenure, our military is training Saudis to be pilots. It wouldn’t have surprised me under Bush or Obama. But it surprises me under Trump. It’s also depressing to see Trump doing emergency PR work for the Saudi government, which is widely believed to have played a role in the 9/11 attacks. As of Sunday morning, Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was still refusing to call the shootings an act of terrorism. This isn’t why we elected Donald J. Trump.
In 1941, we went all-out in our response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We were right to do so. And it worked. We turned a jaguar into a kitten. Nuclear fission helped. I’m not saying we should have used nukes in response to 9/11. But a nuke wasn’t necessary. Surely we could have reduced the Kaaba, the Great Mosque, and other key structures in Mecca to rubble on September 12, 2001, by using conventional missiles. Yes, every government and media organ on earth, of course, would have reflexively condemned us for doing so. But perhaps the condemnations would not have been all that vicious or gone on all that long. If you’re old enough to remember 9/11, you’ll recall that the whole non-Muslim world was in shock, and briefly, anyway, everyone on the planet, other than the most fanatical America-haters, was on our side; the ridiculously widespread, utterly counterfactual image of Muslims as victims that now dominates Western culture had yet to be firmly established.
Think of it. Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. showered those cities with leaflets telling the inhabitants what was coming and warning them to clear out pronto. We could have done the same with Mecca. After nearly 3000 people had been massacred on our soil without warning or provocation in the name of Allah, bombing a few deserted structures in the Arabian desert would hardly have seemed a disproportionate response. In any case, America ended up being reviled anyway because of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which cost massive sums of money and countless lives on both sides without ever coming close to resolving the actual problem at the root of Islamic terrorism; surely the criticism of the U.S. for bombing Mecca to kingdom come in a single day’s sortie, would not have gone on nearly as long as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted, along with the daily worldwide condemnations thereof. And it would have been lots cheaper.
Most important, it would have been even more stunning, in its own way, than the attacks of 9/11 themselves, making it crystal clear to every Islamic terrorist, potential terrorist, or terrorist cheerleader, as well as to the rulers in Tehran, Cairo, Riyadh, Baghdad, Kabul, Ankara, and other Islamic capitals, that America meant business. Such an attack would have paralyzed every devout Muslim on earth – it would, with any luck, have wiped the very concepts of jihad and sharia out of their heads and knocked the Korans out of their hands, setting off a metamorphosis that, in the long term, would probably have done them a great deal of good, just as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in retrospect, the best favor anybody ever did Japan. But it’s too late for such thoughts now. Eighteen years too late. Instead of a reformed Muslim world, what we have today is a Western world, including an America, that, since 9/11, has undergone a shift in attitudes that makes it difficult for most of us even to talk frankly about the perfidy that is Islam and to call an obvious act of terrorism by its true name.


WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI
  I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword and Scimitar, which contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his father was to strangle all his brothers.  Yes, it's awful.  But it has been happening for a very long time.  And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER


TRUMP AND THE MURDERING 9-11 MUSLIM SAUDIS…

Why is the Swamp Keeper and his family of parasites up their ar$es??


WHAT WILL TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???

JUST ASK THE SAUDIS!


JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.


WHAT WILL TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???


JUST ASK THE SAUDIS!


JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.


“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and 

Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy 

approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This 

is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---

- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER


PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP: Pathological liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity foundation fraudster, tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of the Saudis dictators


Opinion: Trump And Pompeo Have Enabled A Saudi Cover-Up Of The Khashoggi Killing

In the weeks following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump spent more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally than he did reacting to the killing.
Hasan Jamali/AP
Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department Middle East analyst, adviser and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations. He is the author most recently of the End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President.
Richard Sokolsky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, worked in the State Department for six different administrations and was a member of the secretary of state's Office of Policy Planning from 2005 to 2015.


It has been a year since Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered Saudi Arabia's Consulate in Istanbul where he was slain and dismembered. There is still no objective or comprehensive Saudi or American accounting of what occurred, let alone any real accountability.
The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's admission in a recent CBS interview that he takes "full responsibility," while denying foreknowledge of the killing or that he ordered it, sweeps under the rug the lengths to which the Saudis have gone to obscure the truth about their involvement in the killing and cover-up.
The Saudi campaign of obfuscation, denial and cover-up would never have gotten off the ground had it not been for the Trump administration's support over the past year. The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not only refused to distance themselves from the crown prince, known by his initials MBS, but also actively worked to relegitimize him. The Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status. In short, without Trump, the attempted makeover — such as it is — would not have been possible.
The Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the U.S.-Saudi relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status.

Weak administration response
The administration's weak and feckless response to Khashoggi's killing was foreshadowed a year before it occurred. In May 2017, in an unusual break with precedent, Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his inaugural presidential trip; gave his son-in-law the authority to manage the MBS file, which he did with the utmost secrecy; and made it unmistakably clear that Saudi money, oil, arm purchases and support for the administration's anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli policies would elevate the U.S.-Saudi "special relationship" to a new level.
Predictably, therefore, the administration's reaction to Khashoggi's killing was shaped by a desire to manage the damage and preserve the relationship. In the weeks following Khashoggi's death, Trump spent more time praising Saudi Arabia as a very important ally, especially as a purchaser of U.S. weapons and goods, than he did reacting to the killing. Trump vowed to get to the bottom of the Khashoggi killing but focused more on defending the crown prince, saying this was another example of being "guilty before being proven innocent."
Those pledges to investigate and impose accountability would continue to remain hollow. Over the past year, Trump and Pompeo have neither criticized nor repudiated Saudi actions that have harmed American interests in the Middle East. Two months after Khashoggi's death, the administration, in what Pompeo described as an "initial step," imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi individuals implicated in the killing. But no others have been forthcoming, and the visa restrictions that were imposed are meaningless because none of the sanctioned Saudis would be foolish enough to seek entry into the United States.
What's more, the administration virtually ignored a congressional resolution imposing sanctions on the Saudis for human rights abuses and vetoed another bipartisan resolution that would have ended U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia's inhumane military campaign in Yemen.
The Saudis opened a trial in January of 11 men implicated in the killing, but the proceedings have been slow and secretive, leading the United Nations' top human rights expert to declare that "the trial underway in Saudi Arabia will not deliver credible accountability." Despite accusations that the crown prince's key adviser Saud al-Qahtani was involved in the killing, he's still advising MBS, has not stood trial and will likely escape punishment. A year later, there are still no reports of convictions or serious punishment.
Legitimizing Mohammed bin Salman
The Trump administration has not only given the crown prince a pass on the Khashoggi killing, but it has also worked assiduously to remove his pariah status and rehabilitate his global image. Barely two months after the 2018 slaying, Trump was exchanging pleasantries with the crown prince at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires and holding out prospects of spending more time with him. Then this past June, at the G-20 in Osaka, Japan, Trump sang his praises while dodging questions about the killing. "It's an honor to be with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia," Trump said.
And you can bet that when Saudi Arabia hosts the G-20, scheduled to be held in its capital of Riyadh in November 2020, the Trump administration will be smiling as its rehab project takes another step in its desired direction.
What the U.S. should have done
Trump has failed to impose any serious costs or constraints on Saudi Arabia for the killing of a U.S. newspaper columnist who resided in Virginia or for the kingdom's aggressive policies, from Yemen to Qatar. In the wake of the Khashoggi killing, the administration should have made it unmistakably clear, both publicly and privately, that it expected a comprehensive and credible accounting and investigation. It should have suspended high-level contacts and arms sales with the kingdom for a period of time. And to make the point, the administration should have supported at least one congressional resolution taking the Saudis to task, in addition to triggering the Magnitsky Act, which would have required a U.S. investigation; a report to Congress; and sanctions if warranted.
Back to business as usual
The dark stain of the crown prince's apparent involvement in Khashoggi's death will not fade easily. But for Trump and Pompeo, it pales before the great expectations they still maintain for the kingdom to confront and contain their common enemy, Iran, as well as support the White House's plan for Middle East peace, defeat jihadists in the region and keep the oil spigot open.
Most of these goals are illusory. Saudi Arabia is a weak, fearful and unreliable ally. The kingdom has introduced significant social and cultural reforms but has imposed new levels of repression and authoritarianism. Its reckless policies toward Yemen and Qatar have expanded, not contracted, opportunities for Iran, while the Saudi military has demonstrated that, even after spending billions to buy America's most sophisticated weapons, it still can't defend itself without American help.
Meanwhile, recent attacks on critical Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blames on Iran have helped rally more American and international support for the kingdom.
When it comes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the kingdom's callous reaction to Khashoggi's killing, the president and his secretary of state have been derelict in their duty: They have not only failed to advance American strategic interests but also undermined America's values in the process.

ONLY IN EUROPE?

In Europe, Muslims Trying to Kill Jews is a Mental Illness

"Many people who are psychotic read the Koran.”
 
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Martin Colmans was selling furniture in the Albert Cuyp market in Amsterdam when he was stabbed in the thigh. His son, Sharon, ran out to help him and protect his mother and was stabbed in his back and chest. But he succeeded in preventing the stabber from getting to his mother, Orly.
Tarik Ghani, the Muslim man who stabbed him, ran a hookah shop in the market. The victim said that he noticed a sudden change in his attacker after he returned from the Middle East and was often seen, “reading the Koran.” “He stopped talking to us, shaved his head and prayed all the time. He also began giving us nasty looks.” Other vendors in the Cuyp market stated that Tarik hated Jews. There had been warnings that he might turn violent and attack someone. Those warnings were however disregarded.
Instead of sending him to prison, a Dutch judge sentenced Tarik to a year of psychiatric treatment. The Colmans had asked the judge to take his anti-Semitism into account, instead the judge accepted Tarik’s claim that he was mentally ill and had been hearing voices. There was no evidence for this claim.
 "Many people who are psychotic read the Koran," a psychiatrist explained.
Tarik hadn’t been obsessively reading the Koran before the attack because he was a terrorist, but because he was psychotic.
Around the same time as a Dutch court was exempting Tarik from responsibility for his anti-Semitic attack, a French court was giving Kobili Traore another pass for the brutal murder of Sarah Halimi.
Sarah, the elderly head of a Jewish nursery school, was brutally attacked in her apartment. Her brother had said that the killer had previously called them, “dirty Jews”. The police had been called before the attack. They had heard Kobili loudly chanting verses from the Koran. Reinforcements were called, but the police did nothing. Meanwhile Kobili climbed through the window into Sarah’s apartment.
The Muslim beat her until her nightgown was covered in blood while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, verses from the Koran and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Neighbors called the police and described what was going on. The police did nothing. At some point during the brutal assault, the killer crushed Sarah’s skull with a telephone. Finally, he shouted that his victim was “mad and about to commit suicide”.
And then he threw her out the window and returned to his apartment.
That was in 2017. Since then multiple courts have ruled that Kobili Traore was not responsible for his actions because cannabis had been found in his system. He had been smoking pot. And that had allegedly brought on some sort of psychotic episode that prevented him from being responsible for his actions. Like Tarik Ghani, he is likely to remain in a hospital until the shrinks decide to set him loose.
Kobili has had three psychiatric reviews, none of whom agree with each other, but all claim he was unfit.
But trying to belatedly make Sarah’s murder look like a suicide showed that he knew what he was doing. He had calculatedly cased her apartment early in the day and had calculated exactly where to drop her.
The cover-up of the murder began from before it even happened. Instead of taking Kobili to prison, the cops took him to a hospital. A urine test found cannabis in his system. And the narrative was set. And yet the killer admitted that he had been motivated by his hatred of Sarah’s Jewishness.
He told investigators, "When I saw the Torah and menorah in her home, I felt oppressed." By the Torah, he likely meant a copy of the bible in his victim's home. (His reference to the menorah that Jews light on Chanukah has been unhelpfully mistranslated as “chandelier” from the French by the media.)
The psychiatrist argued that Kobili could be both anti-Semitic and insane because "during delusional episodes among Muslims, an anti-Semitic theme is common." The psychiatrist was making the case that the killer wasn’t guilty because Muslims are inherently anti-Semitic, and he was acting on that inherent anti-Semitism, but wasn’t truly in control of his actions because he had smoked 10 joints beforehand.
Muslims are predisposed by their religion and culture to hate Jews, but Kobili would not have done so unless he had suffered a psychotic break. That argument simultaneously characterizes Muslims as anti-Semitic, while excusing anti-Semitic murders as a form of mental illness uniquely suffered by Muslims.
Homicidal Muslim anti-Semitism was diagnosed as a form of mental illness. Sarah had been killed because of “the fact that she was Jewish”, but the killer was not responsible for his actions.
Meanwhile, what Kobili did before the brutal murder, besides smoke pot, was ignored.
Before the murder, Kobili had visited the Omar Mosque in Paris whose previous imam, Mohammed Hammami, had been expelled from the country for promoting terrorism and anti-Semitism. The mosque had been set up by Tabligh Jamaat, an Islamist group at the center of terrorism in France. It’s been estimated that the majority of Islamic terrorists in France have been linked to the movement.
Many Tabligh Jamaat members joined Al Qaeda. That includes Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, and shoe bomber Richard Reid.  Al Qaeda was able to use the Islamist organization as cover for its members. And it’s far from the only Islamic terrorist organization that Tabligh Jamaat has been associated with.
Tabligh Jamaat is also notorious for recruiting troubled young men and subjecting them to extensive brainwashing. In one report, a Malian, the same country of origin as the killer, described recruits being kept awake for long periods of chanting and praying until they lose touch with reality. That has ominous similarities to the behavior of Kobili Traore, obsessively chanting, on the night that he murdered Sarah.
Sarah’s killer had visited an anti-Semitic mosque linked to a cult-like Islamist movement that recruits troubled young men, as Kobili had been recruited in prison, and drives them into frenzies while teaching them that their duty is to conquer the world for Islam. And that’s exactly what Kobili did in Paris.
There is a tragic and ugly pattern.
In 2015, Farid Haddouche attacked Rabbi Acher Amoyal, his son, and another man, who were leaving a Marseilles synagogue on the Sabbath. Farid had shouted, "Allahu Akbar" and stabbed one of the men in the abdomen. He was deemed unfit to stand trial after a psychiatric evaluation even though his mother admitted that he had no history of mental illness. But he had been drunk at the time. Protests by the Jewish community eventually led to an actual trial and he was sentenced to four years in prison.
In 2003, Sébastien Selam, a Jewish DJ, was stabbed to death by Adel Amastaibou. The Muslim killer told the cops that it was the will of Allah. He boasted to his mother, "I killed a Jew! I will go to paradise."
Prior to the murder, Adel had assaulted a Rabbi and threatened a pregnant Jewish woman. But he was found unfit to stand trial on account of mental illness.
Like Kobili, Adel had been getting high. His drug of choice though was hashish.
Adel was hospitalized, but in a foreshadowing of just how little that will mean in the cases of Kobili and Tarik, he was given passes to leave the hospital and go off to parties.
It’s not just in Europe where homicidal Islamic anti-Semitism gets a psychiatric pass. Ahmed Ferhani, who plotted to bomb a New York City synagogue, became a popular progressive cause. The Nation claimed that he was a mentally ill man who had been entrapped by the cops. After a suicide attempt, the Center for Constitutional Rights held a vigil on behalf of the murderous anti-Semite.
The toxic combination of substance abuse, Ferhani had sold drugs to finance the Islamic killing spree, allegations of mental illness, and a plot to kill Jews, is becoming ubiquitous. As is the general effort to whitewash lone Islamic terrorists as being mentally ill because their behavior appears irrational.
There can be a thin line between crazy and evil. And some behavior that isn’t aberrant in the Muslim world, for example Kobili’s fear of demons, can in our context resemble mental illness. But, as Jamie Glazov noted in his recent book, Jihadist Psychopath, there isn’t a necessary contradiction there.
The rush to exonerate killers on the grounds of mental illness because they have alcohol or cannabis in their system, because their brutal crimes defy reason, and because it is easier than following the links to places like the Omar Mosque that the authorities don’t want to go, is encouraging Islamic violence.
In 2016, in Strasbourg, France, Chalom Levy was stabbed by an attacker shouting, "Allahu Akbar". Levy was wearing a 'kippa', a Jewish religious skullcap on his head, and had been preparing for Shabbat.
Levy, who had previously rushed into a burning car to save a woman trapped inside, was able to fight off the attacker and run for help. His attempted killer was arrested outside a café, Levy had escaped to.
The authorities and the media rushed to describe the attacker as mentally ill. And indeed, he had previously spent time in a psychiatric hospital after he had stabbed another Jewish man in 2010.
Instead of sending him to prison, he had been deemed unfit to stand trial and had been hospitalized.
This is what happens when Muslims murdering Jews ceases to be a crime and instead becomes a mental problem that a bit of time playing with dolls, talking about your dreams, and gobbling pills can solve.
The time will come when the attempted killer will stab someone else. And they may not survive.
If, as Tarik’s psychiatrist claimed, “many people who are psychotic read the Koran” and, as Kobili’s shrink insisted, "during delusional episodes among Muslims, an anti-Semitic theme is common”, then there’s no meaningful distinction between Islamic terrorism and mental illness. And if you characterize terrorism against Jews as a form of mental illness, then no Muslim terrorist should ever go to jail.
Murdering Jews or anyone in the name of Islam is not a form of mental illness. It’s genocide.

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