26-May-17: With Ramadan starting tonight, the Indonesians sense where their problems are coming from

Indonesian police spokesman shows materials collected as evidence
from the bombing site, during press conference in Jakarta
on May 25, 2017 [Image Source]

The world's largest Moslem nation is reeling after a pair of human bombs exploded near a bus station in the capital.

Aljazeera says the explosions went off minutes apart this past Wednesday night around 9:00 pm at Jakarta's Kampung Melayu terminal. They killed three police officers and injured at least 10 others - five of them police, five civilians.

"This is the biggest attack in the capital since last year," Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen said, reporting from Jakarta. "Police say they were on high alert after the attack in Manchester and they were expecting something. They only didn't know what was going to happen and where." ...Authorities in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation are increasingly worried about a surge in "radicalism", driven in part by a new generation of fighters inspired by ISIL. Indonesia has long been fighting armed groups but in recent years hundreds have flocked to fight for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq... [A]uthorities believe about 400 Indonesians have gone to join the group in Syria, and could pose a more lethal threat if they come home. [Aljazeera, May 25, 2017]

Reuters adds that an anti-terrorism unit carried out a raid the following day (Thursday) at the home of one of the suspected human bombs. It quotes a statement by President Joko Widodo: "We must continue to keep calm... keep cool...  Muslims are preparing to enter the month of Ramadan for fasting".

Ramadan runs for a month starting tonight (Friday). The Indonesians evidently understand that the passions it arouses have a deeply worrying impact on already feverish Islamist terrorist minds. They probably wonder about the good sense of people like the leader of a Moslem Cultural Center in south-western England who, reflecting on the atrocity in Manchester, is quoted yesterday in a local newspaper saying

“We stand united with Manchester, the British people in general and people all over the world who suffer at the hands of the small yet dangerous minority of murderous extremists and remind people that terrorism has no religion and despite their claim, the terrorists have nothing to do with Islam..." ["Terrorists have nothing to do with Islam", Wiltshire Times UK, May 25, 2017]

Considerably more sense emanated from the Archbishop of Canterbury when he said publicly half a year ago:

Society should no longer say the atrocities of Isis have “nothing to do with Islam” because the approach restricts efforts to fight extremism, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. The Most Rev Justin Welby has called on all religious leaders to “stand up and take responsibility” for the actions of extremists who claim to be following the strictures of their faith... ["Justin Welby: It's time to stop saying Isis has ‘nothing to do with Islam’", Independent UK, November 19, 2016] 

And a timely alert from a year-old New York Times article:

As the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approached, jihadist propagandists told their followers that it was a good time to kill people. The spokesman for the Islamic State said in late May that jihadists should “make it, with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere.” Another extremist distributed a manual for using poisons, adding, in poor English: “Dont forget Ramadan is close, the month of victories.” A bloody month it has been [remember - 2016], with terrorist attacks killing and wounding hundreds of people in Orlando, Fla.; Istanbul; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and now Baghdad, where a bomb killed more than 140 people early Sunday in a shopping area full of families who had just broken their Ramadan fasts.
For the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, violence is completely dissonant with the holy month, which in addition to fasting is a time for spiritual renewal, prayer and visits with friends and family.
It is widely believed that the rewards earned for noble acts are greater during Ramadan, which culminates in the Eid holiday this week. Jihadists have perverted this belief to serve their own ends, analysts said. In short: If one believes it is good to kill those who are considered infidels, all the better to do so during Ramadan..." Many large attacks occurred during Ramadan last year [2015], too, hitting a Tunisian beach resort, a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, a Kurdish town in northern Syria and African Union troops in Somalia. ["ISIS Uses Ramadan as Calling for New Terrorist Attacks", New York Times, July 3, 2016]

25-Feb-16: The martyrs of Indonesia

Outside the coffee shop where the January 2016 Islamist terror attacks were

launched in Jakarta, Indonesia [Image Source]

According to a Reuters report today, the Australian government published a travel advisory yesterday. Here's the text of the warning:

Advice levels | Indonesia overall, exercise a high degree of caution | Central Sulawesi, Papua and West Papua provinces , reconsider your need to travel | Conditions can change suddenly... Latest advice, 25 Feb 2016 | Recent indications suggest that terrorists may be in the advanced stages of preparing attacks in Indonesia (see Safety and Security). The overall level of advice has not changed... We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Indonesia, including Bali, at this time due to the high threat of terrorist attack... The Indonesian Government has recently increased security across Indonesia, which underscores the ongoing high threat of a terrorist attack.

Reuters adds that the Australian foreign ministry (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) "did not respond to a request for more details".

It also notes that a similar statement was issued from the same Australian source this past Sunday, warning of the possibility of attacks in and around Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That advisory was followed soon after by warnings of a similar nature from the diplomatic missions of the UK, New Zealand and Canada, among others.

As the Australian warning notes, Indonesia mounted an ongoing counter-attack on what Reuters terms "suspected militants" in the wake of a major terror attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, last month. We reported on that here ["14-Jan-16: In Indonesia's capital, a mall and a Starbucks now under terror attack"]

Australian tourism to Indonesia is a big deal:

Last year, 1.1 million Aussies travelled to Indonesia, and predominantly Bali, generating over $53 million in visa fees alone. As the biggest source of visitors to Bali... [Source]

With a total Australian population of 23.1 million, those 1.1 million Aussie visitors to Indonesia in 2015 alone amount to nearly 5% of the country's population in a single year. A serious warning about terrorism is clearly going to make serious waves.

It is also likely to fall on receptive ears: Indonesia's deadliest terror attack far happened in 2002 when more than 200 people including some 88 Australians were killed in three terrorist bomb attacks in Bali. Members of an Islamist terror group, Jemaah Islamiyeh, were subsequently convicted. We posted about it here and published an open letter to the Australian victims in several newspapers at the time and in later years [link]. Australians are well-prepared to know about the dangers.

Perhaps because of the sensitivity that comes from our Australian background, we have posted in this blog a number of times in the past decade about terrorism in Indonesia [click "Indonesia"], and not always with the greatest of admiration. Indonesian Islamists have notably escaped punishment from the country's legal authorities ["17-Nov-06: Indonesia Shows the Way in Fearlessly Combatting Religion-Based Terror"], for instance, a matter largely ignored in the current political environment.

Indonesia is challenged by terror in ways that many other countries are not. To start with, it's home to the world’s largest population of Muslims. And as a survey last month in Time Magazine shows, this has consequences:

Indonesia finds itself facing a new threat. There are 22 local groups who have pledged allegiance to ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even though the state officially banned ISIS in 2014, the groups have yet to face any legal challenge to their dissemination of propaganda, gathering of funds or recruitment of Indonesians... After the 2002 attacks in Bali, Indonesia’s government formed Detachment 88, a U.S.-trained counterterrorism unit, which became the country’s greatest asset in dismantling and deradicalizing the JI and al-Qaeda-affiliated networks between 2002 till now.
“Detachment 88 hunted terrorists, then killed or rehabilitated them,” says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore... Today, ISIS has taken over the space in Indonesia once dominated by [Jemaah Islamiyeh] and al-Qaeda affiliates, says Gunaratna. Many of their followers have defected to ISIS... Gunaratna attributes ISIS’s online propaganda as a powerful recruitment tool, saying that out of the 3,000 pro-ISIS social media sites in Southeast Asia, over 70% of them originate from Indonesia. Furthermore, in the past two years, over 600 Indonesians are believed to have traveled to ISIS-held territories in the Middle East, compared with the 400 JI militants who trained with al-Qaeda in the space of 10 years. That’s still only 600 in a country of 200 million, and support for the group is limited “to a fringe of a radical fringe” of Indonesian Muslims, says a report on ISIS in the country by the Institute of Policy Analysis of Conflict. But even a handful of militants can still stage significant atrocities, as Indonesians saw once again this week... To fight the rapidly growing threat of ISIS, [Gunaratna] says Indonesia will have to double the numbers of Detachment 88, criminalize ISIS-affiliated groups and counter the propaganda on the web. Both it, and the world, are facing a truly global threat... ["Indonesia’s Long Battle With Islamic Extremism Could Be About to Get Tougher", Tara John, TIME, January 14, 2016]

To our Israeli ears, the understanding and anti-terror solidarity in that TIME report are a dream. The non-stop efforts made by the authorities here in Israel where, to borrow TIME's description of Indonesia, we face threats with numbers inflicting significant atrocities and so on, attract a very different media tone. Imagine a report praising Israel for hunting and then killing/rehabilitating the terrorists.

Regular readers who saw the post we published here yesterday ["24-Feb-16: Incitement and its harvest: What the numbers do and don't tell"] don't need reminding that the malevolent and growing role played by the Islamists of Hamas gets downplayed, even ignored, by outsiders looking in. This ought to be surprising given the very open way the Hamas insiders have articulated their plans for Israelis and Jews over the years.

Yet even today, knowing what we know about the savagery they practice against their own people and that they endlessly threaten and try against ours, there remain relatively respectable voices out there calling for a different, more open approach to the barbarians:

Former British prime minister and former Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said that dialogue with Hamas was "worth trying" in the hope of unifying the Palestinian leadership and stressed that the terror group's stance on Israel could be changed... ["Tony Blair: Dialogue with Hamas 'worth trying'", i24news, December 11, 2015] 

for instance, and

This morning, Carter demanded recognition of Hamas’ “legitimacy as a political actor”. He did so on the grounds that Hamas “represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people”. He did not suggest that Hamas should lay down its weapons or indicate any interest in peace before being granted such recognition. Rather, recognition would “begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons.” ["Jimmy Carter Calls For Recognizing Hamas "Legitimacy"", Forbes, August 6, 2014]

If there are people calling for greater understanding of the Indonesian jihadists, of how it's "worth trying" to dialogue with them, of their being "legitimate actors", of how the murder-and-mayhem strategy behind these latest travel advisories can be changed, we're not hearing them. We wonder if anyone else is.

The Australian news media often give Israel's robust response to jihadist terror, particularly the kind emanating from Hamas and Fatah, hostile coverage. How fair are they when we compare that coverage with how they depict Indonesia, their huge and hulking northern neighbour?

Consider the following report from Australia's government-owned ABC a week ago ["Jakarta mosques, schools linked to Islamist terror group as Indonesia struggles to contain radicals", ABC News, January 18, 2016]. It starts this way:

A number of Indonesian mosques and schools, including in the capital Jakarta, are being used to preach the hardline Islamic State doctrine and recruit new supporters. 7.30 [an astute and very watchable ABC Television current affairs program] has been told of five Jakarta mosques where Islamic State dogma is preached and where fighters are recruited. The Indonesian Government has banned dozens of IS websites, and promised to crack down on extremist teachings at schools. But anti-terrorism laws remain weak, and authorities are losing the battle against Islamic State recruitment.
Down a winding dirt road in Subang, West Java, sits a simple, no-frills Islamic boarding school with a deeply disturbing history. At least three of the terrorists involved in last month's attack in central Jakarta can be linked to the school...

And on it goes, describing the quiet growth of murderous extremism in the villages of the world's largest Moslem state. And clearly taking a stand: the terror needs to be blunted while the overtaxed right-minded Indonesian government "struggles" to "contain" the threat. The word "martyr", to describe the Islamists, appears exactly zero times.

Now imagine that instead of Indonesia, they were describing Gaza and the areas occupied by the PA/Fatah.

A report like that, if it ever went to air, would have to acknowledge that, unlike the authorities in Jakarta, the people who rule Gaza don't pretend to be against educating children to become killers and jihadists. Instead, they run huge programs to achieve just that.

And unlike in Indonesia, there is no need for investigative reporters to lurk around Gaza and try to dig up evidence of a handful of mosques and prayer halls where preachers issuing blood-curdling cries for knifings, shootings and rammings, because these, unlike in Indonesia, are a daily event in Gaza. Fresh video clips testify to this all over the web. And many of the Gaza and PA clerics doing the incitement are not outlaws but salaried government officials. Indonesia has "anti-terrorism laws [that] remain weak". But in Gaza, the laws (consider the Hamas constitution) call for terrorism; they justify it and elaborate on the different ways it ought to be done. And in the PA, if you are convicted on terrorism charges by the Israelis, you get a pension under their laws and become entitled as a matter of law to extremely generous rewards when you get out of prison.

The facts on the ground in terrorism-rich Indonesia are similar to those in terrorism-addicted Gaza and the PA-ruled West Bank except that (a) there is much more of it here compared with Indonesia, and (b) most reporters and their editors make bones about not viewing the Israelis, engaged daily in efforts to suppress a wave of daily murders and maimings, as being in a struggle.

As far as we can tell, no one in any part of the respectable news-reporting media ever calls the Indonesian bombers "martyrs".

Sitting here in Jerusalem, the lack of sympathy and the patent hypocrisy in major parts of the mainstream media are elements of a daily, obvious and painful reality.

14-Jan-16: In Indonesia's capital, a mall and a Starbucks now under terror attack

From Australia's Channel 9 News:

A massive police operation is now underway in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta following a series of deadly explosions that has left at least seven dead. Several blasts rocked the area around a popular shopping centre, the Sarinah at the crossroads of Thamrin Road and Wahid Haysim Street, as suicide bombers and gunmen carried out attacks on a Starbucks café and a nearby police post about 10.30am local time (2.30pm AEDT). Jakarta police spokesman Colonel Muhammad Iqbal said the explosions had killed seven people, including four of the attackers.
Video from the scene shows at least one attacker detonating a suicide vest near the shopping centre, exploding as he approaches the building. Indonesian media has reported that three suicide bombers targeted the Starbucks in the shopping centre, while two gunmen attacked the police station, triggering a gunfight.
It is understood some of the attackers are now holed up in a nearby building, with police surrounding them. There has been at least one fresh explosion nearby as dozens of counter terrorism police moved in on the building. Counter terrorism police are searching several nearby buildings, including a McDonald’s, and occasional gunshots are still ringing out. Local authorities have confirmed a police officer died during the attacks.

Police crouch outside the Starbucks an hour ago [Image Source]

It's summer in the southern hemisphere and Australians travel in large numbers to holiday in Indonesia. Over at The Age (Melbourne), they are reporting on

at least seven explosions... in Central Jakarta on Thursday, including two suicide bombings... Explosions occurred near Sarinah, a shopping mall in Central Jakarta, near office buildings and fast food outlets... There are other unconfirmed reports of similar explosions in Cikini (Central Jakarta), Kuningan (South Jakarta), Simatupang (South Jakarta) and Slipi (South Jakarta), as well as reports of gunshots in the area of Palmerah (West Jakarta). 

CNN are quoting

one analyst (who) likened the timed attacks to the Paris massacre where ISIS struck several locations at the same time.

The disingenuous BBC, caught up as usual in a bout of self-muting corporate bashfulness about calling this attack what it is and what everyone knows it is, is currently confining itself to such purely-functional descriptors as "series of bomb blasts", "further explosions", "gunfire", "suspected attackers" (because you wouldn't want to prejudice the potential legal case against the men hurling the bombs and firing the automatic rifles by making assumptions, Heaven forbid). The editors at the BBC leave it to a local political figure, the Indonesian president Joko Widodo, to extract them from their politically-correct know-nothingness by providing a quote, naturally inside a pair of quotation marks, that this is an "act of terror". Thank you, Mr Widodo, and good luck in the challenging days undoubtedly lying ahead.

(Some of our previous Indonesia-focused blog posts are here.)

07-Sep-15: Putting numbers to the fears: terrorism is absolutely growing

From the September 2015 Terror Threat Snapshot

In June 2015, a freshly launched USA government publication called “Terror Threat Snapshot” caught our eye. It was going to be put out monthly by the US Congress' House Committee on Homeland Security. Now, we're not great believers in the readability of government reports, but this one made some interesting comments right off the bat. So we have stayed tuned, and read it when new issues emerge.

That first issue referred back to newspaper reports (like this one from International Business Times) that appeared in 2014 and indicated that terrorists in the service of ISIS were using sea-going smugglers to create refugee flows into Europe as a kind of "Trojan Horse", generating concerns about how terrorists might potentially exploit these flows.

So here we are in September 2015, thinking disturbing thoughts, particularly after viewing the video clips circulating in the social media the last few days - lots of men, many rough looking but hardly desperate; not so many women and children. (This one from Hungary, devoid of dialogue, captures the mood. And this one. And this.)

The House Homeland Security committee chairman Michael McCaul, a Republican representative from Texas, launched the latest Snapshot on Friday [press release], emphasizing that the threat from jihad in the U.S. was already high and has escalated dramatically during 2015. Here, in our words, are some of the larger talking points:

• More jihadist terror cases have been uncovered in 2015 than in any year since 9/11. 
• ISIS is fueling what the report calls "Islamist terror wildfire across the globe" at a speed that has no precedent. As of the end of August, ISIS had inspired or initiated 57 terror attack plots against Western targets, of which 15 were targeted at the United States. 
• ISIS has affiliates, groups pledging support or a direct presence in 18 countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Pakistan, Philippines, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. It controls 12 cities and towns in Iraq and 13 more in Syria as of early September 2015.
• Activists working in the name of ISIS have released "hit lists" of American government personnel, including service members. Most Islamist terror plots on U.S. soil have, since the start of 2014, been based on killing police or U.S. service members.
• Cases involving homegrown jihadists/terrorists rose from 38 in July 2010 to 124 today, a rise of 300% in five years.
• On August 13, 2015, the ISIS "hacking division" released information on 1,400 American government personnel  and urged its followers to track them down and do harmful things. The released information included names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. 
• How many Westerners have gone to fight in the Syria and Iraq Arab-on-Arab bloodbath? About 4,500 including 550 women, and including more than 250 Americans, including those who attempted to travel and failed. Some 40 American fighters who went to Syria had returned to the United States as of March 2015, and some have since been arrested on terror charges.

We don't have much time for people who say terrorism is a side-show, we're winning, it's drying up. The reality is it's getting worse on a global basis, with clear and identifiable focuses of activity and inspiration, and it's going to get much worse before our side prevails.

12-Oct-14: Anniversary reflections on the Bali Islamist massacre

October 12, 2002

Today marks twelve years since jihadist terrorists carried out a ghastly bombing attack on night club spots on the Indonesian island of Bali. There's some background in today's Sydney Morning Herald: "Quiet ceremonies to mark Bali bombing".

The Kuta Beach massacre was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia: 202 people were killed that night. 164 were foreign nationals, 38 were Indonesian citizens. 209 people were injured.

Almost immediately after it happened on October 12, 2002, the editorial team at the Herald-Sun newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, contacted Arnold Roth. This was only a year after the death of the Roths' daughter Malki. Both Arnold and Malki were born in Melbourne. The Herald-Sun requested a first-person response, an open letter to the families of the Indonesian attack victims. 

Malki's death, like those of the Bali massacre victims, came at the hands of terrorists acting in the name of Islam. Arnold felt he had something to say and set everything else aside to quickly write an op-ed [background here]. He sent it off to the Herald-Sun. Then... silence. 

For reasons that have never been explained, his article never appeared in the pages of the Melbourne newspaper. The paper's editor at the time never troubled himself to respond to several emails from Roth asking for an explanation. Eventually, the Jerusalem Post picked it up and published it in the paper's December 9, 2002 edition. Here's the text.

A letter to the families of the Kuta Beach victims
Arnold Roth, Jerusalem

I never felt more like a father than when taking the hand of my little daughter Malki and crossing the street with her. There is something so right and solid about being your child's protector. 

I never felt more wretched, frightened and alone than on the night the call came saying her body had been identified. My daughter was murdered by a deliberate act of explosive horror. I was not there to protect her. 

Grieving for your murdered loved one will be the most intensely lonely and personal thing you ever do. No one else can feel the depth of pain inside you. Friends and family will want to share the burden, to wrap their love and support around you, to lighten the load by their sincere care and concern. But the ache remains, along with the feelings of guilt. The cold truth will never change: an innocent life was deliberately and violently erased - and the monsters that did it are delighted with their work of their hands. 

I wish I could pass along some wisdom that might help you through this awful time. I can't. The best I can do is share some thoughts. The massacre at Kuta Beach is too raw, too huge, for anyone to fully comprehend. Time will help you to put it into a context, but you should not expect the answers to come easily... or ever. 

Time plays a key role in Jewish mourning observances. Some practices are specific to the first seven days. Others are designated for the first thirty days. And in the specific case of the death of a parent, Judaism prescribes a full year of mourning. This seems strange. A parent's passing, no matter what the circumstances, is always hard. Isn't the death of a life-partner or a child harder? But that's the point: a year after a parent dies, you can expect that life starts getting back to normal. But there's no normal life after burying a child or a spouse. 

It's a certainty you are thinking about the people who did this. You may be imagining them getting out of bed that day, praying to their god, storing their equipment and driving the lethal load to a site of pleasure and enjoyment - their minds focused on a lust for the destruction and death of others. Like me, you may feel this was barbarism: cold-blooded, primal, bestial - an act of pure hatred. 

But get ready for the cold, clinical analysis of others. For them, the terrorists are "militants". The hatred is "desperation". The pointless destruction of life is "strategic". An Australian journalist requested an interview with me in Jerusalem days after Malki was murdered last year. When I agreed, he told me it would make sense for his audience only if he could combine it with an interview of the suicide-murderer's father. He said there were two sides to the story and the opinions of the bomber's family were a "counterpoint". I was dumbfounded. His professional standards demanded, he said, that the interview could not take place under any other conditions. So it never took place. 

Some people see life as if through a TV screen. For them, your private loss can only be understood as part of a political drama. Point and counterpoint. But no one should tell you how to mourn, how to grieve. There is no standard - no over-mourning, no under-mourning. No one can tell you how it feels or how it ought to feel. 

If you're asking what can be done, I want to offer this. When a young life ends, a huge empty space is left behind. How do you fill it? With hatred, thoughts of revenge, evening up the score? After our daughter's death, we sat down as a family and asked ourselves how her life and actions should be remembered. We decided to raise money and give practical help to families raising a child with disabilities. Malki, a very practical teenager, did this herself and believed in it. It would have made her smile. 

Perhaps it's not politically correct to say this, but I believe evil does exist in the world - a great deal of it. 

How do you answer evil? For us, the right response has been to do things which we hope will increase the stock of good in the world. We know this will have no impact on the barbarians who killed our children and loved ones. But we're absolutely determined that they won't be impacting us any more than they already have. They and their values are irrelevant to our lives.

About two and a half years ago, we commented on the trial of one of the Bali bombing perpetrators, Umar Patek, and the lessons that might be learned from it: see "31-May-12: Highly effective terrorist, now on trial, is really sorry. Not." And then on his sentencing: "22-Jun-12: Only twenty years prison because he expressed remorse... but not really".

09-Sep-14: In Australia, terrorism no longer as far away as it once seemed

Australian woman recruited by the Islamist thug
(photo below) whose arrest is now being sought.
Educated at St Hilda's School, Southport,
Queensland, this woman was shot dead
in January 2014 in war-torn Aleppo, Syria.

Having spent a major part of our lives in Australia, and raising part of our family there, it's worrying and depressing to see terror take centre-stage in one of the world's most congenial societies.

ASIO seriously considering raising Australia's terror threat level to high | ABC Australia News | September 9, 2014 | The head of Australia's domestic spy agency, David Irvine, says the country's official terror threat level could be upgraded in the next few days. ASIO's director-general has told the ABC's 7.30 that the threat had been building in Australia over the past year and he had an "elevated level of concern". The threat has been at medium since 2003, which means an attack is possible and could occur. If it is raised to high, it means an attack is likely... "I'm certainly contemplating very seriously the notion of lifting it higher because of the numbers of people we are now having to be concerned about in Australia, because of the influence of Syria and Iraq on young Australians both in terms of going to those places to fight, but also in terms of what they are doing here in Australia with a potential intent to attack."

And this

Same Australian woman some time
later, prior to her violent death
[Image Source]

Arrest warrant for Islamic State jihadist accused of sending Australians to Syria | ABC Australia News | September 9, 2014 | Police have issued an arrest warrant for a former Kings Cross nightclub bouncer believed to be Australia's most senior member of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria and Iraq, following an investigation by the ABC's 7.30 program. Authorities say Mohammad Ali Baryalei, 33, has used a trusted position in IS operational command to funnel more than half of the 60 Australians currently fighting in the wars. Counter-terrorism sources have told 7.30 Baryalei recruited a who's who of Australian IS fighters, including senior fighters Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, who has posted pictures online of his seven-year-old son holding a severed head in Syria, as well as videos of himself and Elomar executing prisoners in Iraq... Australian Federal Police say an arrest warrant has been issued against Baryalei for "terrorism-related activity". "Should Baryalei return to Australia, this warrant authorises law enforcement to arrest him immediately," an AFP spokesman said. "As this matter is ongoing it would not be appropriate for the AFP to comment further." Baryalei is from an aristocratic family from Afghanistan who came to Australia as refugees when he was a child. The 33-year-old was an aspiring actor who had a fleeting appearance on the true-crime series, Underbelly, but years ago turned to radical Islam in Sydney. Baryalei became a leader of the Street Dawah preaching movement in Sydney, where he formed a cell of jihadists. He proselytised with at least five men who went on to die in Syria and Iraq and many more who are still fighting.

Mohammad Ali Baryalai, highest-ranking
ex-Australian in ISIS: He and
family were received as refugees in
Australia. Now returning the favour

This Iranian source, quoting Australian authorities in May 2014, said that "as many as 12 Australians had died fighting in Syria. Most were young men, including several from Melbourne." Also that "nearly 150 Australian citizens were being monitored for fighting or planning to fight in foreign conflicts".

An especially sober Australian view of the threat it faces was articulated by a former head of the Australian armed forces, Professor Peter Leahy, last month. He warned that "the country was ill-prepared for the high cost of fighting a war that would be paid in “blood and treasure” and would require pre-emptive as well as reactive action".

Australia needs to prepare itself for a century-long war, both overseas and at home, against radical Islamic militants. Currently the director of the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra, Prof. Leahy [said] that as a liberal, secular society, Australia is perceived as 'the far enemy' by radical Islamic groups and individuals, and would no doubt continue to be targeted. "We are already affected in that there are places that would be wise for us not to travel to and there have been terrorist bombings in places that we do travel to, as we can see from 9/11 and both of the Bali bombings..." [The Australian, August 9, 2014]

We published an open letter in the wake of the massive 2002 Bali terrorist attack in which Australian victims figured prominently. It's here.

2-Feb-14: In Australia, evidence that Syria's bloodbath is bringing jihad down under

Melburnians old enough to remember when the international airport was located at Essendon might also recall a large advertising sign on Mt Alexander Road which, as we recall it, proclaimed: "Fly Qantas to the World".

The picture of the drinks coaster on the right is the only souvenir we could find on-line of that rather dated commercial message. Growing up in Australia, there really was the sense that Australia was located somewhere just off to the side of the rest of the world, and that from Melbourne and Sydney you needed an airline to get there.

Times have changed. In the Melbourne Age yesterday, a news article ["Al-Qaeda terrorist threat to Australia"] says what observers paying attention to the rising tide of overt sympathy for Islamist jihad will have noted long ago: Australia today faces challenges not so different to those taxing the minds and resources of authorities in Western Europe and Asia. And while the outcome is still uncertain, the results till now are none too encouraging.

The report quotes the US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who says terrorist organizations connected to Al-Qaeda, already known to be successfully enticing Australians to join the Syrian bloodbath, have established training camps in Syria to provide a basis for terrorist attacks on Australian soil by returning jihadists. Some key points:

• "As many as 200 Australians are believed to have travelled to Syria to help rebels trying to topple dictator Bashar al-Assad." 
• "US intelligence has evidence of ''training complexes'' within Syria ''to train people to go back to their countries and conduct terrorist acts''.
• "About half of the Australians fighting in Syria are believed to be members of Jabhat al-Nusra. Others have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an even more militant Islamist group with strong ties to al-Qaeda."



A world away from the peaceful Australian
Gold Coast, Amira Karroum was killed
alongside her Muslim husband Yusuf Ali
in Syria [Image Source]

• Australia's counter-terrorism ambassador Bill Fisher shares the assessment. He says that while "the likelihood of an attack like 9/11 in the West has lessened", the threat of "smaller but nonetheless deadly attacks is very real - hitting bars where Westerners congregate overseas, and other soft targets. In this respect, the threat is worse"...

Australia's awareness of how threats like these translate into tragic outcomes took a startling turn upwards when a jihadi terror attack on a tourist spot in Bali, Indonesia in 2002 cost more than two hundred innocent lives, including those of 88 Australians. [See our contribution in the wake of the tragedy: "11-Oct-07: Kuta beach, five years on"].

Since then, there have been reports and video clips of religious calls to violence by Australian Islamic figures [here, here, here among numerous other instances], violent street demonstrations in Sydney [here, here, here and elsewhere], and front-page reports like this January 2014 article entitled "Amira Karroum was one of many Australians being recruited to fight in Syria" about a young Australian woman who seemed so ordinary, so unremarkable, "the unlikeliest terrorist" until - after her violent death - she is revealed to have written to family:

"Everything is temporary... Islam is my identity. The burqa is my shield. Jannah (the Islamic garden of paradise) is my destination.'' [Telegraph, Sydney, January 18, 2014]

A year ago, Qantas - which faces non-trivial commercial challenges - entered into a strategic partnership with Emirates, a highly successful, well funded airline that is wholly owned by the government of Dubai, a monarchy.

Dubai's government has been wholly controlled by the Al Maktoum family since 1833, entirely untroubled by the need for elections. Qantas, the Al Maktoum business partner, now happily channels much of its Europe-bound traffic via Dubai (concerning which, we posted a string of comments in 2012 and 2013 starting with this one). The volume of passenger and freight traffic between the Middle East and Australia has grown accordingly and is likely to keep doing so. This is going to have an impact. As the Dubai-based on-line journal Arabian Business recently noted:

"Dubai controls strategic trade routes in the world and also more than 65 terminals across the world, including new developments underway in India, Africa, Europe and South America. What this means is, Dubai can influence global trade through these particular ports and have controls over them... Once they implement this and once Dubai starts implementing this in relation to its own trade, what you will see is the beginning of Islamisation that is led by Dubai.” [Arabian Business, October 2, 2013]

Concerns about a Dubai role in the funding of terror get occasional media attention, like this January 2010 piece from The Guardian, "Dubai's dark side targeted by international finance police":

"Fears are intensifying that the emirate has become a global centre for terror funding, money-laundering, drug money and mafia cash..." [The Guardian]

Significant changes have clearly overcome once-isolated Australia's place in the world in the past decade or two. So the notion that religiously motivated terrorists - jihadis - are eyeing far-away places like Australia ought not to be a surprise to anyone. The reality is that neither distant Australia nor anywhere else on earth is far enough away from "the world" to be insulated from the threats that the loathsome jihadists embody.

The warning that hardened Islamist fighters, energized by what they may have seen or done in the slaughter-house that Syria has become, are returning to hospitable Australia with mayhem on their minds ought to continue to get serious attention.

27-Jan-14: In Gaza, a death cult celebrates its graduating class

Hamas leader Hanieyeh: From the Al-Aqsa TV coverage
of the graduation event

A January 16 ceremony took place in the terror-rich atmosphere of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip marking the graduation of several thousand high-school children from a government-imposed, paramilitary indoctrination course in which the goal of self-destruction played a central role. It would have done the North Koreans proud.

But unlike in North Korea, what took place on a sports field in Gaza was based explicitly on the values of a religion with hundreds of millions of adherents throughout the world. The Hamas satellite channel Al-Aqsa TV broadcast the ceremony throughout the Arabic speaking world where it was viewed in real-time and via recordings by a global audience. This was no mere flower show or Friday morning local sermon.

The translation team at MEMRI published the English-language text of the television coverage today. From experience, it's unlikely to get much airplay in the conventional media channels. This is a shame since watching the video [online here] and reading its transcript [here] is a sobering, shocking experience.

Viewers watching it understand, in ways that reports alone rarely convey, that what is in evidence here is a failed state in the tragic grip of a massively-intrusive religious cult consuming its own children. The hatred and zeal, the recurring calls to kill and be killed (the one evidently no less praiseworthy than the other), claim to be derived from Islam. They explicitly invoke its tenets and values.

For those of us who hold by non-Islamic belief systems, we are left again wondering where the outrage from believers in a civilized, respectful Islam is. (Perhaps not all of us. Harriet Greenwood, for instance, until this week the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, inserted into her sadly credulous April 28, 2013 profile of the Gazan Futuwwa programs a malicious and misleading comparison with Israel's compulsory post-high-school national service program.)

Something hideous is happening in Gaza. Those doing it declare it's what Islam demands. As far as we can tell, Islam's adherents in other places are largely silent. This cannot be because they don't know it's happening.

Hamas minister Fathi Hammad reminds graduating high
schoolers where to place the emphasis

Some selected extracts from MEMRI's transcript of the Al-Aqsa TV coverage of the January 16, 2014 graduation ceremony in Gaza:

• Chant: "Our utmost desire..." [Announcer] "Is death for the sake of Allah!" [Graduating children]
• "Today, 13,000 youth are graduating from the Futuwwa camps.... Remain steadfast on the path. Continue the work you began in the camps... Memorize what you have learned, and implement it in the battlefield when you meet the enemy." [Osama Al-Mazini, Hamas regime's minister of "education"] [The New York Times published some background on the Futuwwa camp phenomenon in its January 14, 2014 edition]
• "To the Zionist enemy, everywhere and at any time... You shall never enjoy a pleasant life on our beloved homeland. We... will confront you on every hill, in every valley, and on every road. Nothing awaits you here but to be killed. Nothing awaits you here but to be killed or to leave. [A high-school student who graduated the Hamas training course]
• "Sons and brothers, you do not have much time to train. Study, conduct training, become experts and be inventive, with the help of Allah. The battle will be your battle. The Jihad will be your Jihad. Palestine is your land, Islam is your religion, and Allah is your God. The Messenger is your role model, and the Koran is your constitution. You have been planted by Allah, and therefore, you will harvest the enemies of Allah in the battle to come... We pray for Allah to choose martyrs and leaders from among you – and not only in Palestine, but throughout planet Earth, so that the call for Jihad will be spread all over the world, and the entire world will embrace the religion of Allah." [Fathi Hammad, Hamas regime's minister of interior. Note that when his own child needed the best possible medical care in April 2010, he had little hesitation in getting her across the border into an Israeli children's hospital ward. Though her life was saved there following a botched medical procedure in Gaza, he carefully avoid any mention of Israel when later thanking those responsible for the act of salvation.]
• "These words, which we memorize well, are uttered by the martyr who ascends to Allah. We are the vanguard to be joined by Arab and Islamic armies – from Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Egypt, and from every country that turns towards Jerusalem to liberate it." [Announcer]
• "The best way for us to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday is to walk in his footsteps and provide the future generations a Jihadi education. We shall walk in his footsteps in educating the future generation to love death for the sake of Allah as much as our enemies love life... This is the generation of stone, the generation of the missile, the generation of tunnels, and the generation of martyrdom operations.... I call upon my brothers, I call upon the education minister, the minister of the interior, the Al-Qassam Brigades, and the national security agencies to open courses in the Futuwwa camps for girls too..." [Ismail Hanieyeh, Hamas prime minister and another Hamas insider who has had no hesitation in sending sick family members to the best-available Israeli doctors and Israeli hospitals]

Minister Hammad delivers a theological/educational message

High schoolers show the message was delivered

11-Sep-13: No need to speculate: Palestinian Arabs genuinely, overwhelmingly believe in barbarism as a strategy

Yasser Abed Rabo, co-author of 2003 peace
plan, with Israeli partner Yossi Beilin [Image Source]

A Pew Research Global Attitudes report issued today demonstrates statistically that

Overall support for violence in the name of Islam has declined among Muslim publics during the past decade... In many of the countries surveyed, clear majorities of Muslims oppose violence in the name of Islam. Indeed, about three-quarters or more in Pakistan (89%), Indonesia (81%), Nigeria (78%) and Tunisia (77%), say suicide bombings or other acts of violence that target civilians are never justified. 

But there is one demographic where a clear majority of respondents - 62% - told Pew's pollsters that "suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified". That demographic is Palestinian Arab Muslims.

Knowing the murderous intentions of the Palestinian Arab "street" concerning us ordinary Israelis (and keep in mind that Palestinian Arab terror is rarely directed at the Israeli military), it casts a deadly light on the current strategies of the Mahmoud Abbas regime's inner circle. 

A report published just yesterday by WAFA, the official mouthpiece of the PA, quotes Yasser Abed Rabbo summing up the 'peace' process currently underway. Abed Rabbo is said to be one of the authors of the 2003 Geneva Accord. 

“Israel is trying to benefit from the negotiations to pressure Europe to cancel the boycott (of settlement products),” he said on Voice of Palestine... The negotiations have not made any progress on the ground and that all Israel wants is that no one says anything about its settlements and other activities that violate the rights of the Palestinian people.
“There are no signs of progress... There is progress only in the settlements and in the violations, but not in the negotiations that can cause us to say that US efforts have achieved any real results on the ground or in the peace process..." [Abed Rabbo quoted yesterday by WAFA]

His voice is part of a choir. The Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes today on the Gatestone Institute website that -  

PLO, Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials have described the talks as "futile", "unproductive", "a waste of time" and "a cover for Israel to pursue its policy of creating new facts on the ground..." By sounding the alarm bell already, the Palestinians are hoping that when the talks fail they will be able to tell the world, "You see, we told you from the beginning that these Israelis do not want peace." But these statements and threats have also proven to be counter-productive. The more Palestinian officials and leaders talk about the "futility" and "ineffectiveness" of the peace talks, the bigger the opposition grows to the negotiations with Israel. [Khaled Abu Toameh on Gatestone Institute website, September 10, 2013]

Nearly two-thirds of the people ruled by the clique of which Abed Rabbo is a leading member are committed to the most extreme forms of lethal terrorist attacks on Israelis. In that light, do we need to speculate about the intended effect when PA insiders like him dismiss so comprehensively the current round of talks between their side and Israel?

3-Aug-13: Prison breaks and terror threats

Indonesian police secure entrance to burning prison
compound in Medan, July 11, 2013 [Image Source: CNN]

Following on from what we posted here Friday ["2-Aug-13: That war against "terrorism"? How well are we doing, exactly?"], Interpol issued an alert today advising its 190 members to step up vigilance in the wake of a wave of prison breaks involving hundreds of terrorists and other criminals in 9 countries which "may be linked". These took place (among other locations) in

• Libya: More than 1,100 prisoners escaped from a facility on the outskirts of Benghazi on July 27 [NYTimes report] following a wave of political assassinations and attacks on political offices across the country
• Iraq: An overnight jail-break on July 22 in which 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda terrorists, escaped from Abu Ghraib [NPR report]
• Iraq: Also July 22, Taji prison, north of Baghdad, was attacked by forces of The Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella group for al-Qaeda in Iraq [Al Jazeera report] with numerous deaths and many prisoners freed
• Pakistan: A high quality military-style operation on July 31 in which, says NPR, Taliban forces numbering around 100 (or the Tehrik-e-Taliban, a Pakistani affiliate of al-Qaeda, according to RT) armed with explosives and automatic weapons attacked the central prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan freeing (depending on who is to be believed) between 175 and 300 prisoners, among them 35 "high-profile militants". Al Jazeera correspondent Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Islamabad, said that the infiltrators "were using loudspeakers and calling the individual names of inmates to come out of the badly damaged prison." Ahead of the prison break, officials received a letter threatening such action, but according to the head of the local prison department Khalid Abbas, "they didn't expect it so soon."
• Indonesia: BBC says 100 prisoners escaped (while CNN says "hundreds") on July 12 from Tanjung Gusta prison in Medan, Sumatra. Nine of them are reported to be terrorists.

Reuters says the Interpol warning refers to the anniversaries of several violent attacks over the past years during the coming month, including in Mumbai and Nairobi. Though they don't mention it, August 9 is the twelfth anniversary of Hamas' showcase attack on the Sbarro restaurant in central Jerusalem.

29-Oct-12: File away for use when Haniyeh is next depicted as partner for peace

Man of principle shakes hand of religious ideologue

Ignore the confusing English. The source is a Persian-language news channel translated from the source Arabic and then rendered into English by a team of salaried propagandists.

But there's no mistaking the intent of Ismail Haniyeh, the man who heads the Hamas regime that dominates the Gaza Strip and "one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority". Source: This past Saturday night's edition of the Iranian news channel, FARS [online]

Hamas Leader: Palestinian Stance against Israel Unchangeable   

20:40 | 2012-10-27
TEHRAN (FNA)- Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh underlined his nation's irrevocable stance against Israel, stressing that Palestinians will never ignore even a single span of their land. "We (Palestinians) will never overlook even one span of Palestine's soil because Palestine is an endowed land and no person, leader, organization or group is entitled to the right to ignore this land," Haniyeh said in a meeting on Saturday with the members of 'Miles of Smiles 17' aid convoy and an Indonesian delegation visiting Gaza. "Israel has no future in the Palestinian lands and our motto is that we will never recognize the Zionist regime," he said. 

A man of principle.

In the interests of throwing some modest light on how far the arch-terrorist's principles take him: Many Israelis are aware that earlier this year, the man who instructs the forces under his command to fire off rockets and mortars into anything Israeli and within reach, made arrangements for his brother-in-law to be saved by Zionist doctors at an "Occupation" medical facility in one of the Zionist Entity's major cities.

In early 2012, Haniyeh allowed his sister, Suhila Abd el-Salam Ahmed Haniyeh, to accompany her critically ill husband to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel, for emergency heart treatment. After successful treatment and care, the couple returned to Gaza without incident. Word of the unusual visit was released only four months later. It remains to be seen how this special treatment for the leader's relatives will be regarded by Gazans. [Wikipedia]

12-Oct-12: How do you answer evil? Ten years after the Bali terror bombing

Flowers at the site of the October 12, 2002 bombings of the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar in Bali [Image Source]

Today marks ten years since jihadist terrorists carried out a ghastly bombing attack on night club spots on the Indonesian island of Bali. The Kuta Beach massacre was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia: 202 people were killed that night. 164 were foreign nationals, 38 were Indonesian citizens. 209 people were injured.

Almost immediately after it happened on 12th October 2002, the then editorial team at the Melbourne (Australia) Herald-Sun newspaper contacted Arnold Roth. This was only a year after the death of the Roths' daughter Malki. Arnold and Malki had both been born in Melbourne. The Herald-Sun requested a first-person response, an open letter to the families of the Indonesian attack victims. 

Malki's death, like those of the Bali massacre victims, came at the hands of terrorists acting in the name of Islam. Arnold felt he had something to say and set everything else aside to quickly write an op-ed [background here]. 

He sent it off to the Herald-Sun. Then... silence. 

For reasons that have never been explained, his article never appeared in the pages of the Melbourne newspaper. The paper's editor at that time never respond to several emails asking for an explanation. 

Eventually, the Jerusalem Post picked it up and published it in the paper's December 9, 2002 edition. Here it is:

A letter to the families of the Kuta Beach victims
Arnold Roth, Jerusalem

I never felt more like a father than when taking the hand of my little daughter Malki and crossing the street with her. There is something so right and solid about being your child's protector.

I never felt more wretched, frightened and alone than on the night the call came saying her body had been identified. My daughter was murdered by a deliberate act of explosive horror. I was not there to protect her.

Grieving for your murdered loved one will be the most intensely lonely and personal thing you ever do. No one else can feel the depth of pain inside you. Friends and family will want to share the burden, to wrap their love and support around you, to lighten the load by their sincere care and concern. But the ache remains, along with the feelings of guilt. The cold truth will never change: an innocent life was deliberately and violently erased - and the monsters that did it are delighted with their work of their hands.

I wish I could pass along some wisdom that might help you through this awful time. I can't. The best I can do is share some thoughts. The massacre at Kuta Beach is too raw, too huge, for anyone to fully comprehend. Time will help you to put it into a context, but you should not expect the answers to come easily... or ever.

Time plays a key role in Jewish mourning observances. Some practices are specific to the first seven days. Others are designated for the first thirty days. And in the specific case of the death of a parent, Judaism prescribes a full year of mourning. This seems strange. A parent's passing, no matter what the circumstances, is always hard. Isn't the death of a life-partner or a child harder?

But that's the point: a year after a parent dies, you can expect that life starts getting back to normal. But there's no normal life after burying a child or a spouse.

It's a certainty you are thinking about the people who did this. You may be imagining them getting out of bed that day, praying to their god, storing their equipment and driving the lethal load to a site of pleasure and enjoyment - their minds focused on a lust for the destruction and death of others. Like me, you may feel this was barbarism: cold-blooded, primal, bestial - an act of pure hatred.

But get ready for the cold, clinical analysis of others. For them, the terrorists are "militants". The hatred is "desperation". The pointless destruction of life is "strategic". An Australian journalist requested an interview with me in Jerusalem days after Malki was murdered last year. When I agreed, he told me it would make sense for his audience only if he could combine it with an interview of the suicide-murderer's father. He said there were two sides to the story and the opinions of the bomber's family were a "counterpoint". I was dumbfounded. His professional standards demanded, he said, that the interview could not take place under any other conditions. So it never took place.

Some people see life as if through a TV screen. For them, your private loss can only be understood as part of a political drama. Point and counterpoint. But no one should tell you how to mourn, how to grieve. There is no standard - no over-mourning, no under-mourning. No one can tell you how it feels or how it ought to feel.

If you're asking what can be done, I want to offer this. When a young life ends, a huge empty space is left behind. How do you fill it? With hatred, thoughts of revenge, evening up the score? After our daughter's death, we sat down as a family and asked ourselves how her life and actions should be remembered. We decided to raise money and give practical help to families raising a child with disabilities. Malki, a very practical teenager, did this herself and believed in it. It would have made her smile.

Perhaps it's not politically correct to say this, but I believe evil does exist in the world - a great deal of it.

How do you answer evil? For us, the right response has been to do things which we hope will increase the stock of good in the world. We know this will have no impact on the barbarians who killed our children and loved ones. But we're absolutely determined that they won't be impacting us any more than they already have. They and their values are irrelevant to our lives.