ISIS behind Brussels Jewish Museum killings?

Bill Weinberg

Now comes the disturbing news that a Frenchman arrested in the killings at the Brussels Jewish museum had traveled to Syria as an insurgent and is apparently linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Police in Marseille arrested the suspect, Mehdi Nemmouche, after he arrived on a bus from Amsterdam May 30. Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said he had an automatic weapon like that used in the Brussels attack, and ballistics analysis is underway to determine if it is the same weapon. The rifle was reportedly wrapped up in a white sheet scrawled with the name of ISIS. Police in Belgium meanwhile say the suspect had tried to film the May 24 killings, but his camera failed. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said: "The new elements in this investigation draw attention once more to the problem of the 'returnees'—in other words the people going to Syria to participate in combat and return afterward to our country. All European countries are confronted at this moment with this problem." (AP, June 1) The days since the arrest have seen more raids on suspected "returnees" in France. Four were arrested in the Paris area and southern France on suspicion of recruiting militants to fight in Syria. Interior Minister Bernard Cazaneuve told Europe 1 radio: "There are people who recruit jihadists… We are acting everywhere. There will be no respite in the fight against terrorists." (BBC News, June 2)

Meanwhile, Bashar Assad's partisans on the "left" triumphantly proffer stories such as that in The Independent  of April 2, gloating that "the rebel leader touted as the West's last hope to stem the tide of extreme jihadist groups in Syria has said he will not fight against al-Qa'ida, and openly admits to battling alongside them." Interviewed in a safe house on the outskirts of the Turkish town of Antakya, Jamal Maarouf, leader of the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) reportedly told The Independent that the fight against al-Qaeida is "not our problem" and admitted his fighters conduct joint operations with Jabhat al-Nusra—named "the official al-Qa'ida branch in Syria," although ISIS holds a claim to that disputed title.

The Independent's reportage on Syria has, of course, been utterly jaundiced. Anyone who is paying attention knows that that there is a civil-war-wthin-the-civil-war between the secular rebels and al-Qaeda. And all the pseudo-left frauds who now play to fear of al-Qaeda were avidly rooting for al-Qaeda in Iraq just a few months ago. Utter hypocrisy. And hilarious to find these guys on the same said as the French police.

  1. First US prosecution for ISIS ties

    From the Chicago Tribune, June 27:

    A 23-year-old Texas man admitted Friday that he had been practicing military maneuvers and planned to travel to Syria to join ISIS, the terror group that has claimed thousands of lives in a violent march through Iraq in recent weeks.

    Michael Wolfe, a.k.a. Faruq, of Austin, Texas, pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, according to a statement issued by the U.S. attorney's office in San Antonio.

    He was arrested 10 days ago when he tried to board a flight out of Houston. Another man, 23-year-old Rahatul Ashikim Khan, was arrested the same day at his house in Round Rock, Texas, and was charged with trying to recruit men to join terrorist organizations, federal authorities said.

    Still think the US is backing ISIS? How do the Idiot Leftists square it?

  2. Lawyers for Brussels Jewish Museum suspect in neo-Nazi salute

    A charming example of the converance of jihadism and "classical" anti-Semitism (of the kind we're always being told doesn't exist). It seems an image has emerged in European media of attorneys for the Brussels Jewish Museum attack suspect performing the neo-Nazi salute known in France as the quenelle. From JTA, Aug. 1:

    A photo showing Sebastien Courtoy and Henri Laquay, the two lawyers representing Mehdi Nemmouche in Brussels, performing the quenelle surfaced this week, the Belgian Het Belang van Limburg local daily reported.

    The undated photo of the lawyers shows them performing the quenelle with the gesture’s inventor, the French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, who has several convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews and has written, directed, produced and starred in the 2012 film called "The Antisemite."

    Earlier this year, Manuel Valls, France’s former interior minister, said the quenelle — the act of folding one’s arm over one’s chest while pointing downward with the other arm — was "an anti-Semitic gesture, an inverted Nazi gesture" which may violate France's laws against incitement.

    Valls, who is now France’s prime minister, made the assertion based on hundreds of photos online of people performing the quenelle at sites connected to the Holocaust or Jews, or while holding a pineapple in an allusion to a joke created by Dieudonne to suggest the Holocaust never happened or to mock it without breaking laws forbidding Holocaust denial. Dieudonne coined the phrase "shoananas" — a mashup of the Hebrew world for the genocide and the French word for pineapple.

    Really funny, eh?

  3. Belgium: two in police anti-terror raid

    A shootout with Belgian police left two suspected Islamists dead in the eastern town of Verviers Jan. 15, in one of several nationwide coordinated raids on jihadists thought to have returned from Syria’s civil war. Suspects opened fire on police with assault weapons, authorities said. Officials said they believed the targetted cell was on the point of committing major terrorist attacks in Belgium. (Euronews, BBC News)