Belgium's state broadcaster reported that
the Belgian-born French citizen was injured in a shootout that ended
with his capture. The Belgian counter-terrorism source said two people
were wounded.
"We have him," tweeted Theo Francken, Belgium's state secretary for asylum policy and migration.
The
26-year-old Abdeslam was brought to a hospital after being shot in the
leg, CNN Belgium affiliate VTM reported, citing a police source. The
same broadcaster said two suspects may still be in the house in
Molenbeek where Abdeslam was captured.
Three
explosions were heard in that area early Friday evening, CNN French
affiliate BFMTV reported, though it wasn't clear if those were
controlled blasts or part of a continuing operation.
Molenbeek, the impoverished Brussels suburb where Friday's raid took place, has a reputation as a hotbed for jihadism.
Several members of its large, predominantly Muslim population -- many
of whom are first-, second- and third-generation immigrants from North
Africa -- have been linked to terror plots and attacks.
Last
fall, Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens cited Molenbeek as a place
where more needs to be done to address what he called Belgium's "foreign
fighter problem."
...
Earlier Friday, the Belgian federal
prosecutor's office revealed that the 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam's
fingerprints and DNA were found in a Brussels apartment raided three
days earlier. One person was killed and two people escaped that
operation, according to authorities.
The man killed by a special forces sniper was Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian who used the name Samir Bouzid, and who is believed to have directed the Paris attackers via calls from Belgium, according to the prosecutor's office.
Belkaid
is believed to have helped Abdeslam travel prior to the attacks and
transferred money to a female cousin of Paris ringleader Abdelhamid
Abaaoud following the attack, the Belgian senior counter-terrorism
official told CNN in January.
Authorities
believe Abdeslam was using the apartment as a hideout following the
Paris attacks, according to the Belgian counter-terrorism official.
...
Investigators think Abdeslam may have been
the driver of a black Renault Clio that dropped off three suicide
bombers near the Stade de France, one of the attack sites near Paris.
They also believe he had worn a suicide belt found on a Paris street
after the attacks.
He is believed to
have called friends to take him to Belgium after the attacks. They
passed through police checkpoints, but Abdeslam had not yet been
identified as a suspect and they were allowed to continue on their way.
Surveillance video emerged of him and another man at a gas station near the Belgian border the day after the attacks.
He has eluded authorities ever since.
You have to wonder whether ISIS will try to take hostages in an attempt to spring him, or whether being targeted by hostage-taking to exchange for terrorists is something that only happens to Israel, which finds itself urged by 'friends' to give in to the hostage-takers.
Sunday marked ten years since the murder of Ilan Halimi. That's Halimi in the square with the purplish pink around it. It's from a Muslim dating site. It was eventually taken down. Halimi was brutally murdered by a gang of Muslims, all but one of whom have been let go ten years later. On Sunday, there were a number of very small ceremonies in Paris marking Halimi's murder. They were only attended by Jews.
The small crowd and its Jewish focus illustrate the wide disconnect between how the Halimi case is understood within and outside of France’s Jewish community – and what that might mean for the French Jewish future.
For France’s Jews, it remains an intimately tragic affair, marking arguably the most savage and sadistic anti-Semitic crime in France since World War II. For many citizens of French or European Christian origins, it is indeed a despicable violent crime, but not one fuelled by anti-Semitism. For me this is a form of blindness, of denial – but also a mark of the failure of France's government and Jewish community to establish violent anti-Semitism as a central concern for the whole of society.
...
Guershon N'duwa, president of the FJN, the Black-Jewish Federation of France, a constituent member of the French Jewish umbrella body CRIF, has organized the ceremony for Ilan Halimi for the past ten years, but he will not organize an eleventh. "The French government has always minimized the case of Ilan Halimi, and even now, has still not woken up to establish the link with the attacks of the past few years," says N'duwa, "and there is a definite link, a hatred of Jews.”
He continued: "But while Jewish community leaders have reached upwards, if you like, to French political parties on the right and left, they have not reached out to the non-Jewish public. So in spite of grandiose statements by politicians about fighting anti-Semitism, many French people still believe that Ilan's horrific death was a specifically Jewish affair, with few emotional links to the overall French nation, and not even necessarily a case of anti-Semitism. In reality, the intense emotional reaction by Jews here became a line that separated them from other French people, who reacted with intellectual disgust, but little more."
Both the Jewish community and the French government have been unable to engage the wider French public with the need to see, recognize and confront violent anti-Semitism and incitement against the community. This has diminished the number of French people who see anti-Semitic violence as a problem for all of France, not only its Jews and the government and security elite. For many, World War II had ended long ago, so it was easier to believe that this was a simple indecent but random tragedy committed by sociopaths.
...
The anniversary event’s low turnout was also an indication of intra-Jewish politics that have weakened the community’s resonance to speak as a united voice on this issue. In fact there were five other competing Halimi commemoration ceremonies around Paris this year, somewhat atomizing the effect of fewer and more robustly attended events. There were no Halimi family members present at Sunday’s Boulevard Voltaire gathering either, though his sisters reportedly attended one of the other ceremonies.
"This has become a very politicized affair and I am unhappy enough about that not to do it again," says N'duwa, who comes from a Protestant family in Congo-Brazzaville, Africa. He converted to Judaism years ago in France and has also lived in Israel.
...
Youssouf Fofana, who organized his kidnapping for ransom, will be in prison for years, in theory for life. Most of the others involved, including the woman used as bait, and the building superintendent who gave them the basement room and apartment in which Halimi was tortured in exchange for 1500 euros (which he never saw), have already been released.
Ten years after Halimi's murder, I still wonder why Jews remain in France. Neither they nor their non-Jewish neighbors understand what's going on in their country.
It's come to this: The leader of the Jewish community in Marseille, France, has advised his constituents not to walk around outside with kipot (skullcaps) on their heads.
The president of the Marseille Israelite Consistory, Zvi Ammar, said that it was an "exceptional decision".
"Life is more sacred than anything else. We are now forced to hide a
little bit," he told the AFP, adding that the move made him "sick to the
stomach".
The teacher escaped with only minor injuries. His attacker, aged 15, was caught soon after fleeing and arrested.
The teen later claimed to have been acting in the name of Daesh, the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
“He said several times he was acting in the name of Isis, because
Muslims in France were dishonouring Islam and French soldiers were
protecting Jews,” said Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin.
A Jewish councilman was found dead in his apartment on Tuesday morning,
prompting French media speculation of a racially motivated killing.
Alain
Ghozland of the Parisian suburb of Créteil was found by his brother,
who checked in on the city councillor after he failed to show in
synagogue the previous evening.
While a police source who spoke
with Metro News admitted that it was “too early to know the cause of
death,” Ghozland was reportedly found with stab wounds and bruising. His
apartment appeared to have been ransacked and his car was missing from
its spot outside.
The victim, whose father helped found the local
Jewish cultural association, was active in Jewish affairs and his death
has shaken his coreligionists, according to the French newspaper.
He
was described by the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de
France (CRIF), the umbrella organization representing French Jewry, as
“a prominent leader of the local Jewish Community.”
“People are upset. They do not know what to think and ask a lot of questions,” one relative was quoted as saying.
And last week marked the anniversary of the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris, which was the icing on the cake of a week in which mass murder was committed in the name of Islam at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Sorry but I don't understand why the flow of immigration from France to Israel isn't a wave. Why would any Jew want to stay there?
Inevitable: Sweden's Foreign Minister blames Israel for Paris attacks
Carl Bildt may not be the foreign minister of Sweden anymore, but his replacement is no better. Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom has told a Swedish television station that the Paris attacks happened because - you guessed it - Israel has refused to give a 'state' to the 'Palestinians.'
“Here again, you come back to situations like that in the Middle East
where not least the Palestinians see that there isn’t any future [for
them]. [The Palestinians] either have to accept a desperate situation or
resort to violence,” Margot Wallstrom said in an interview with Sweden’s SVT television station about the Nov. 13 killing of 132 people in a series of attacks in the French capital.
French President Francois Hollande said the attack was “an act of war” by the Islamic State terrorist group.
Queried by the Times of Israel over the statement by Wallstrom,whose
government last year was first in the European Union to recognize the
Palestinian Authority as a country that Sweden calls Palestine, a
spokesman for the Israeli foreign minister said her words reflected
“blindness.”
“It would seem that the Swedish foreign minister is afflicted with
total political blindness,” said the spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon. “This
blindness may lead to tragedy.”
The Swedish Embassy in Israel later said in a tweet: “FM has not said
that Israeli Palestinian conflict is linked to tragic events in Paris.
Sweden condemns all acts of terrorism.”
Later on Monday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned Sweden’s ambassador in Israel for a meeting with Director-General Dore Gold.
What can you say about a country that has someone like this as their chief diplomat? /Spit.
The woman hanging out the window on the left of the building when everyone was escaping is pregnant. I have no idea how she got down from the window. You'll see her again briefly in the second video below.
The last time Islamic terrorists came to the Bataclan: 'Next time we not come to talk'
The Islamic terrorists had been to the Bataclan Club in Paris to talk to its Jewish owners before. They warned 'Next time we not come to talk.'
In 2006-2009 at leat, Le Bataclan hosted the annual fundraising gala
of the French Jewish Migdal nonprofit group for the Israeli Border
Police. Last month, it hosted a gathering of some 500 Zionist Christians
who came there in support of the Jewish state.
In one case involving threats against Le Bataclan, a group of
approximately 10 men wearing Arab keffiyehs over their faces arrived in
December 2008 at the theater, demanding to speak to management.
“This is something we cannot continue to accept,” one of the men from
the group was filmed telling the security guards outside Le Bataclan.
“You will pay the consequences of your actions,” the same person, his
voice electronically distorted, told the camera after the confrontation,
which ended peacefully. “We came here to pass along a small message. Be
warned. Next time we won’t be coming here to talk.”
The massacre at Le Bataclan Friday, during a rock concert by The
Eagles of Death Metal band from the United States, was by far the
deadliest of the six simultaneous attacks which French security forces
said were perpetrated by at least eight terrorists. According to a tally
released by French authorities on Saturday, 127 people died [that's now been raised to 132. CiJ] and some
180 were wounded.
...
At
Le Bataclan, two terrorists fired at patrons at random but in a calm
and deliberate manner, survivors said. Police stormed the building
approximately 40 minutes after the killing began. The terrorists were
killed in the takeover.
Whereas the men who showed up at Le Bataclan in 2008 presented
themselves as “residents of the area,” threats of attack against the
concert hall as payback for Israel’s actions also included foreign
players, according to a 2011 report by Le Figaro.
According to that report, a French woman named Dodi Hoxha told French
counterterrorism officers in 2010 of a plot by Jaish Islam, Al Qaeda’s
branch in Gaza whose name means “the Army of Islam”, to organize an
attack at Le Bataclan, which Hoxha said had been selected because “the
owners are Jewish.”
Hoxha was arrested that year in connection with an attack against
French students in Cairo in 2009, in which one student died. DGSE, the
French external security agency, believed the attack on the students in
Cairo was to punish France for its perceived role in Israel’s blockade
of the Gaza Strip.
According to the website of Le Bataclan, the venue is being run by
Jules Frutos and Olivier Poubelle, who owned most or all of the place
until the media group of the billionaire Arnaud Lagardère bought 70
percent of the asset in September.
Attempts to verify claims of a Jewish link relevant to Frutos, Poubelle or Lagardère were not immediately successful.
But
for France’s far-right Jewish Defense League, LDJ, the threats against
Le Bataclan are proof that it was targeted as punishment for hosting
pro-Israel events.
“Pro-Palestinian groups designated it openly as a
‘Zionist’ concert hall, and now we see the result,” LDJ wrote in a
statement shortly after the attacks. “France woke up to a taste of
‘Palestine’.”
Yet Nicolas Shashani, a prominent French pro-Palestinian activist,
said that despite some incidents, Le Bataclan is not generally
associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Le Bataclan may have had a Zionist link in the past, but if the
perpetrators wanted to select a site tied to Israel to send a message,
it doesn’t strike me as a very effective target,” he said. “To the
general population, Le Bataclan is just a concert hall and nothing
more,” he said.
Shashani noted that “unsubstantiated rumors” also linked the attack
to the Eagles of Death Metal band, because it performed in Israel in
July. During the concert in Tel Aviv, lead singer Jesse Hughes recalled
how Roger Waters, a former member of the Pink Floyd band and a promoter
of a boycott against Israel, asked the band to stay away. “I answered
with two words: F**ck you!” he told the cheering audience, adding: “I
would never boycott a place like this.”
The band escaped the attack unscathed.
Shashani said it was “far-fetched” to suppose the band was the reason for Le Bataclan’s targeting.
“In previous attacks, there were clear targets,” Shashani said.
“Soldiers, cops, a kosher supermarket. This time, the attacks were
against cafes, restaurants, a soccer stadium – attacks against the
Frenchman on the street.”
Lesson from the Paris terror attacks: Europe needs to join forces with Israel
Greetings from somewhere over eastern Kentucky - my next stop (which is not my final stop today) is Dallas, Texas.
David Harris of the AJC (not necessarily a source from which I would expect it) has some very wise advice for Europe.
And finally, when will Europe finally wake up and realize that democratic Israel is part of the solution, not the problem?
At the end of the day, the terrorism faced by France - or Belgium,
Denmark, Germany, Spain, the U.K., etc. - is a kissing cousin of that
confronted by Israel. Some European leaders go to great lengths to deny
that obvious truth, seeking instead to draw distinctions that are, in
fact, largely non-existent, or suggesting that Israel somehow "deserves"
what it gets, while implying that Europe does not.
Let's get real.
The authors of 9/11 detested who and what America is. They didn't give a
darn what political party was in power, because they attacked the Twin
Towers when Clinton was president and again when Bush was in the Oval
Office.
The same with Europe. The target is Europe's value system - its democracy, openness, freedom, and secularism.
And, yes, the same with Israel. The terrorists of Hamas (with which the
Palestinian Authority made a pact), Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Islamic
Jihad, and ISIS don't want Israel to exist, period. They're not
interested in who's in power in Jerusalem or how to get to a two-state
accord, but rather establishing their rule over the entire land.
One would hope that this would at least awaken Europe enough to get them to cancel the 'settlement product' labeling. Don't hold your breath. It won't. Anti-Semitism trumps all.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
