CST expresses its deepest sympathies to the family and colleagues of the British soldier who was murdered in Woolwich, South London on 22 May 2013. Our soldiers serve on behalf of Britain, its people and its values, making this an attack upon us all. That the victim was wearing a ‘Help for Heroes’ shirt is especially poignant.

The impact of the terrorist attack is magnified by the imagery: two Jihadists, not fleeing the scene, not attacking passers-by, and one of them standing with bloodied hands, bearing his meat cleaver and knife. His spoken words are clear and deliberate. They repeat the manner and message of the so-called ‘martyrdom’ videos that exemplify the importance of media for terrorism today.

Since the London Transport bombings of July 2005 we have almost become normalised to the high numbers of terrorist threats, arrests and prosecutions. We read the plotters’ intentions, we see the numbers of people attracted to such hatreds, but the accumulative psychological impact of this is nothing compared to witnessing the reality and the imagery of a single actual successful attack.

From CST’s specific mission of Jewish communal security, we are keenly aware that the same Jihadists who want to kill soldiers may well also want to kill Jews. This happened in Toulouse, in March 2012, when Mohamed Merah’s murder of French soldiers was the prelude to his killing three Jewish children and a rabbi at the Ozer HaTorah school. That morning, Merah apparently set out to kill a policeman. He failed, so simply switched targets.

Terrorism seeks to provoke fear and hatred, to polarise society and cause a counter-reaction that the terrorists hope they can eventually exploit. Within hours of the Woolwich murder, the English Defence League was playing its predictable role, cynically hyping up the outrage. CST’s Muslim counterparts at the Tell MAMA anti-hate crime group are already reporting a wave of violence and intimidation against random Muslim targets throughout Britain. This racist violence is as stupid and counterproductive as those waves of antisemitism repeatedly suffered by Jews in Britain (and elsewhere) since the Year 2000.

Looking forward, the risk of actual far Right terrorism against a Muslim target is surely heightened; as is the danger of other Jihadists trying to copy the Woolwich murderers, using the most basic of easily available ‘cold weapons’.

For Jewish community security, the primary lessons remain unchanged. Anyone can see how many people are arrested for terrorism and incitement each year; and we see, and hear, the hatreds expressed by Jihadist groups on our streets, our campuses and elsewhere. Worse, these hatreds are not solely restricted to supporters of Al Qaeda. Those who support Hamas, Hizbollah and other such extremists are not exactly opposed to the threat or reality of anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence. CST is distributing a security notice across our community, stressing that security measures should continue to be fully implemented.

To conclude, rather than living in fear, we should be alert to the full picture of terrorist activities and rhetoric here in Britain, whether it be Jihadist, far Right or whatever; and we must keep on working with decent people of all faiths, and none, in opposition to extremism.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission is an Islamist advocacy group that organises London’s al-Quds Rally, an annual event inaugurated by the late Ayatollah Khomeini for his followers around the world to call for Israel to be destroyed.

You can get a sense of what the IHRC wants people to think of Israel and Jews by the content of one of the DVDs for sale on its website, a 1998 film called Jerusalem: The Promise of Heaven.

This film has a terrorist association of which the IHRC may not be aware, or that they may not want you to know about.

In April 2005 Saajid Badat, from Gloucester, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for plotting to blow up a transatlantic aircraft with a bomb secreted in his shoe. Unlike his colleague Richard Reid, Badat did not go through with the plan and cooperated with police after his arrest. He continued to cooperate with the authorities after his imprisonment and consequently had his sentence cut further. He was released from prison in 2010.

In 2012 Badat gave evidence in a US-based terrorist trial during which he revealed that he had been instructed by a senior al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan to collect intelligence about potential Jewish targets in South Africa for al-Qaeda to attack.

When Badat was arrested he directed the police to two suitcases in his possession that contained the explosive material he had been given, but had never used, for his aborted plot. Alongside this material, in the same suitcases as the explosives, the police found four propaganda videos relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

The first suitcase was found underneath a bed in the front room on the ground floor and it was x-rayed. In it was found a fuse attached to an improvised detonator and then the second suitcase was found on the first floor landing and in that the police found the high explosive and as Badat had described, it was in a black sock. Also with it was a length of detonating cord. In addition to those explosive items, in the black suitcase video tapes were found entitled: “The Return”, a documentary about Palestinian refugees, another entitled “Blood in the Ibrahimi Mosque”, a documentary about a 1994 massacre in that mosque, “Minarets in the Face of Destruction”, a documentary about how the Israeli authorities have sold off Muslim places of worship, and “Jerusalem: The Promise of Heaven”, another documentary about a mosque and its three different faiths that were worshipped there.

Jerusalem: The Promise of Heaven can be watched in full below. It is particularly inflammatory and offensive. The narrator talks throughout of “Jews” rather than “Israelis” or “Zionists”.

Over footage of Orthodox Jews praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the narrator says [16:19]:

What on earth are they doing? What on earth are they wailing? Do they have any sense of guilt for what they have done and what they are causing?

Of the closed Omari Mosque in Jerusalem, the narrator says [28:53]:

Not satisfied with sealing up the mosque, the Jews set up a synagogue adjacent to its walls. The call for prayer was silenced. It was replaced with satanic rustles and whispers.

This last reference to “satanic rustles and whispers” is set over footage of Orthodox Jews at prayer.

There is a recurring theme associating Jews with gold. At 28:06 the narrator says:

Today the Jews are still going ahead with the war of eviction. They are using the temptation of gold in order to take what they could not gain by force.

At 47:28 the narrator says:

The systematic policy of dispersion persists, in order to empty the holy city from its people and to offer it on a golden platter to the Jews imported from abroad.

The film interviews officials from the al-Aqsa Mosque who are united in their rejection of any Jewish connection to Jerusalem and their denial of Jewish history. Akef Ishtayya, an assistant at the Islamic Museum in Al-Aqsa, says [11:44]:

Al-Aqsa is in need of clean and honourable hands, not polluted, profane hands which are stained with blood. The faith of the prophet Moses called for monotheism and taught the ethical commandments and values. But these people have no values or ethics. Where did they come from? The Pole tells you he has come to the land of his ancestors. It could not be true that the one who has come from Russia, Poland or Ethiopia has an ancestor who lived here once.

Najeh Bkeirat, Chairman of the Islamic Heritage Committee at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, says about the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives [20:22]:

Most of their graves are false. The Jews in this place, or in America or in Europe, pay thousands of dollars to have the names of their false ancestors written on these graves.

Mohammed Abu Sneineh, a guard at Al-Aqsa, says [17:53]:

They say they are the descendants of Abraham, but Abraham was no Jew or Christian, he was a Muslim.

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, currently banned from entering the United Kingdom because of his support for Palestinian suicide bombing and his antisemitic statements, is also interviewed in the film. At 25:12 he delivers a typical dose of his theological anti-Judaism:

Ruthlessness, violence and immoral practices – the Quran says about them, because they say there is no callness (sic) to keep faith with the gentiles, they consider it lawful to do whatever they like with the blood of nations, and the wealth of nations, and the sanctity of nations, therefore they cannot be trusted to fulfil a commitment or an obligation.

Towards the end of the film, Qaradawi is shown making a rousing call to arms:

If a certain generation of people choose to forsake their right they will have to bear the guilt. The Muslim Ummah would never consent to such an evil thing and will defend the land of Isra and Miraj, the first Qibla, the land of steadfastness and Jihad. The Muslims will defend the third holiest city in Islam by all means and will not spare a drop of blood.

Why is the IHRC selling this film, a copy of which was found in the possession of an al-Qaeda terrorist who had been instructed to prepare terrorist attacks against Jews; a film that speaks of Jews as satanic, ruthless, immoral people who cannot be trusted; that claims Jews use gold to achieve their sinister aims and demands that Muslims defend Jerusalem to the last “drop of blood”?

According to the IHRC website, all profits from sales via their online shop go to their associated charity, the Islamic Human Rights Commission Trust. The stated objectives of this charity include “cultivating a sentiment…in favour of good race relations.” If the IHRC are serious about this objective, they could make a start by withdrawing this foul film from sale.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that a 22-year-old Moroccan man, Mohamed Jarmoune, has been sentenced to five years and four months imprisonment for planning terrorist attacks against Milan’s main synagogue and Jewish school.

Italian media said the sentence was more than the four years asked by the public prosecutor. Jarmoune, who has lived in Italy since childhood, was arrested in Brescia in March 2012.

Investigators found documents on his computer analysing the security measures of Milan’s main synagogue. He was also suspected of planning attacks and organizing terrorist groups through internet social network sites.

Milan Central Synagogue, targeted alongside the Jewish school.

The UK Govt has stated its intention to “take the lead” in the “EU designation of the Hezbollah military wing”.

The announcement came in a House of Commons exchange on 9 May between Alistair Burt MP (Under-Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs) and Michael McCann MP (a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel).

The debate may be read in full, here on Hansard and includes the Government’s rationale (dialogue with Lebanon) for distinguishing between Hizbollah’s “political and military wings”. There is, of course, really no such distinction, as Alistair Burt all but acknowledges, saying “it is a difficult distinction to make”.  

The diplomacy-geared distinction between Hizbollah’s “political and military wings” continues the situation from the previous Government’s 2008 proscription of the military wing. Burt describes it as “…the whole of Hizbollah’s military apparatus, namely the Jihad Council and all the units reporting to it – that is, the military wing”.

The 2008 banning followed the 2001 proscription of Hizbollah’s External Security Organisation, which is Hizbollah’s outright “terrorism wing”. For example, see this Australian Govt explanation of these terrorists’ work, including their being widely blamed for the appalling 18th July 1994 truck bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. 

84 people were murdered in the AMIA bombing and Iranian Defence Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, was amongst other Iranians indicted for the attack. The antisemitic outrage in Buenos Aires exemplifies the interlinked nature of international Iranian and Hizbollah terrorism. In parallel, the political and military manifestations of the Iran-Hizbollah linkage are far more blatant and now include the shoring up of Assad’s regime in Syria.

In 2012, on the 18th anniversary of the antisemitic Buenos Aires bombing, five Israelis and a Bulgarian were murdered in a bomb attack upon a bus carrying Israeli tourists at Burgas airport in Bulgaria. The authorities believe Hizbollah was responsible. (See here for a detailed analysis by expert, Matthew Levitt of such Hizbollah activities.) In March 2013, a Cyprus court found a Lebanese-Swedish national, Hosem Taleb Yaacub, guilty of plotting terrorism on the island and of working with cells in France, Holland and Turkey. Yaacub admitted to being a member of Hizbollah and told the court:

I was just collecting information about the Jews. This is what my organisation is doing, everywhere in the world.

The cases in Cyprus and Bulgaria bring Hizbollah-Iranian terrorism to Europe and the European Union, whether that is via Hizbollah’s terrorist operations or those of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds force. Having previously committed terrorism in the Middle East, South America, Far East, Africa (including a Nairobi synagogue), India and Georgia, and Azerbaijan (including a Jewish school), their geographical creep into relatively peripheral EU states is no accident. This terrorism is not simply getting closer to the EU, it is now within the EU: posing a particular threat to the EU’s Jewish citizens and any Israeli visitors or residents.    

Given the gradual approach of the Iran-Hizbollah terrorist threat (in all its guises), it is proper that the UK Govt should seek to encourage the EU to act now. Indeed, a failure to act will also send its own signal – both to the terrorists and to those whom they threaten. Alistair Burt has now laid out the UK Govt position and expects to discuss it at EU level “within the next four weeks”. CST wishes him and his colleagues every success.

Excerpts from Alistair Burt’s reply to Michael McCann MP: 

I thank the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) for raising this important issue; for the clear and unequivocal support that he has given to the forces of stability in the middle east; for the way that he has pointed out the risks and the dangers that Hezbollah action poses in the area; for his support for the state of Israel; and for his courtesy in sending me a copy of his speech, which has helped me to tailor my response. I will make some comments for the record on the activities of Hezbollah, and on how the United Kingdom Government see Hezbollah and other Iranian-supported terrorist organisations.

…My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has asserted yet again that the EU proscription of Hezbollah, which the hon. Gentleman made a significant part of his remarks, has become a topical issue in recent months with the announcement by the previous Bulgarian Government on 5 February, implicating Hezbollah’s military wing in the atrocious bomb attack on a bus in Burgas last July, which killed five Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver. The assessment of the involvement of Hezbollah’s military wing is shared by the United Kingdom. The guilty verdict in the trial of a Hezbollah operative in Cyprus, concluded on 21 March, is still further evidence of Hezbollah’s role in terrorist attacks or planned attacks on EU soil over the past 12 months.

In response, therefore, to the murderous terrorist attack at Burgas airport, and in light of the disrupted plot in Cyprus, we are calling for Europe to deliver a robust response. We firmly believe that an appropriate EU response would be to designate Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organisation. 

…I believe very firmly that EU designation of the Hezbollah military wing would send out a clear message, as the hon. Gentleman stated, that we condemn the terrorist activities of the military wing of Hezbollah and that terrorist activities on European soil will not go unpunished. We believe the evidence gathered from the investigation into the Burgas attack and from the Cypriot trial into the foiled attack by a Hezbollah operative to be sufficient to warrant designation action under the EU common position 931—the EU’s designation process. We will continue to work closely with our European partners on this issue.

…We will take the lead in the EU in initiating CP 931 action in response to what we believe has been an attack on EU soil…We are sharing information with our EU partners before calling for a meeting of the common position 931 working group to discuss our proposal for a designation. We expect this meeting to take place in the coming weeks—within the next four weeks. The UK has compiled a core script to address any concerns raised by member states ahead of the working group and to explain the implications of proceeding with designation.

…Turning to other Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups, we are seriously concerned by Iran’s support for terrorist groups that undermine regional stability.

…We are also increasingly concerned by Iran’s involvement in terrorism outside its borders through the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds force, including in Thailand, India, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kenya, where two Iranian men were recently sentenced to life in prison by a Kenyan court for planning to carry out bombings in Nairobi and other cities last year. We are committed to the toughest possible international response to Iran’s support for terrorism and its refusal to operate within the bounds of international law.

I confirm for clarity that we recognise the grave concerns regarding Hezbollah and Iranian-supported terrorist groups and we are taking what action we can accordingly. We believe in particular, very much on the lines set out by the hon. Gentleman, that Europe can and must act, and I hope that I have been able to persuade him that I and my ministerial colleagues will continue to engage with our European counterparts in pursuance of that objective. What the middle east needs most desperately now is peace and stability. It is difficult to see the part being played by Hezbollah’s military wing or by Iran in relation to that. The time for ending the cycle of violence perpetuated by Assad and his regime is now, and the time to bring peace and stability to the middle east is now. We will support all attempts that aim to do that, but we will be ruthless in our condemnation of those who seek to upset it.

Last night Tottenham Hotspur played Chelsea in a Premier League football match. As is sadly often the case, antisemitic abuse was directed at Spurs both online and at the match itself.

James Masters, a sports writer, has done sterling work in collecting examples of antisemitic tweets relating to last night’s game on his twitter timeline. You can read some of these tweets below (not all of the tweets below are antisemitic; some are from people criticising the antisemitic tweets).

A word of warning: some contain foul and offensive language as well as vile antisemitism. We do not publish such language lightly on the CST blog.

We have shared all the material below with football’s anti-racist body, Kick It Out, and we will report the antisemitic tweets to the Police.

One of the tweets tells of a chant heard from Chelsea fans at the match, that went: “Adolf Hitler, he’s coming for you”. Another tells of seeing a Chelsea fan arrested at a station after the match for singing “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz”. Other antisemitic comments are made by fans on twitter itself. Some involve antisemitic abuse directed at Spurs; in others, Chelsea fans direct antisemitism at their own Israeli player, Yossi Benayoun.

CST Blog has written before about the evidence of Hizbollah’s involvement in terrorism against Jews outside Israel, after details emerged from the trial in Cyprus of Hizbollah member Hossam Yaacoub who was convicted last month of helping to plan terrorist attacks against Israeli tourists on the island. Yaacoub denied this, and told Cypriot police:

I don’t believe that the missions I executed in Cyprus were connected with the preparation of a terrorist attack in Cyprus. It was just collecting information about the Jews, and this is what my organization is doing everywhere in the world.

A new report in CTC Sentinel, written by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, reveals in detail the training and missions that Yaacoub undertook for Hizbollah. Titled Hizb Allah Resurrected: The Party of God’s Return to Tradecraft, the report explains the strategic decision taken by Hizbollah and Iran to return to the overseas terrorism that they deployed during the 1980s and 1990s (based in part on an earlier Washington Institute report); failed plots in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and Turkey; and some details about Hizbollah’s operations in Europe. This included missions by Yaacoub  to deliver and accept packages from Hizbollah operatives in France, Holland and Turkey.

The evidence in the report of Hizbollah’s terrorist activities in Europe further underlines why the European Union should proscribe the organisation. Levitt concludes:

Taken together, the Bulgarian and Cypriot cases present compelling evidence of Hizb Allah’s return to traditional tradecraft. As the Yaacoub case makes clear, several years before the Qods Force instructed Hizb Allah to rejuvenate its IJO terrorist wing in January 2010, the group had already been recruiting operatives with foreign passports, and providing new recruits with military training and surveillance skills. Yaacoub was recruited in 2007, while Mughniyyeh was still alive. Indeed, while Mughniyyeh’s assassination prompted the group to resume international operations in a way they had not since before 9/11, Hizb Allah never stopped identifying and recruiting new operatives for a variety of different types of missions at home and around the world.

There is no question, however, that the operational failures that followed Mughniyyeh’s assassination demonstrated that the group’s foreign operational capabilities had weakened over time. When Mughniyyeh was killed, and later when Iran wanted Hizb Allah to play a role in its “shadow war” with the West, Hizb Allah was not yet fully prepared to do so. Yet the Bulgaria and Cyprus cases suggest that this may no longer be the case. Yaacoub was no anomaly, as the Burgas attacks made clear. Like Yaacoub and the Burgas operatives, some of those new recruits are Western citizens. During one of his training sessions, Yaacoub heard another trainee speaking fluent Arabic with some English words mixed in. According to Yaacoub, the trainee spoke with a distinctly American accent.

Read it all here.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on 19th April 1943.

To mark this occasion this week’s Jewish Chronicle essay, by Martin Winstone of the Holocaust Educational Trust, details the many different ways in which Jews resisted the Nazi Holocaust:

The landscape of Holocaust remembrance is punctuated by anniversaries, but few dates are as resonant as April 19, which marked the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Its enduring symbolism is attested to by the fact that it is the national Holocaust Remembrance Day in Poland, the country from which more than half of the victims of the Shoah came. This year, the 70th anniversary, represents one of the last landmark commemorations in which survivors and witnesses will be able to participate.

In Warsaw, memorial events will continue until May 16, the date commonly accepted as the end of the revolt. This in itself shows why the uprising occupies such a central place in both Jewish and Polish narratives of the Holocaust: a group of poorly armed, inexperienced guerrilla fighters resisted German forces for almost a month in what was the first major civilian revolt in occupied Europe. It is thus hardly surprising that it has become the supreme symbol of Jewish resistance.

Despite this, Jewish resistance is often marginalised in accounts of the Shoah. Even some of those who have celebrated the uprising have used it to reproach other European Jews for alleged passivity. During the war itself, many critics – Jewish and non-Jewish – claimed that the victims had allowed themselves, in an oft-used phrase, to be “led like sheep to the slaughter”. But such arguments simply do not stand up to serious scrutiny.

[...]

Of course, one should be careful not to exaggerate. As Bauer reminds us, we should not assume that the majority of Europe’s Jews were fighting or writing diaries. The Holocaust brought untold misery and destruction, and it was only human that many succumbed to despair, and that ties of communal and even familial solidarity were often frayed. “It is wrong”, he writes, “to demand… that these tortured individuals and communities should have behaved as mythical heroes.” Rather, “the fact that so many of them did is a matter of wonderment.”

April 19 2013 ought to encourage us to consider not how little resistance was offered by Jews during the Shoah but how much. Amid the speeches and laying of flowers in the Ghetto Heroes’ Square in Warsaw, we will be reminded of the myriad ways in which ordinary human beings, confronted with the most extraordinary of circumstances, sought to assert basic values of dignity and solidarity. No one could have demanded more.

The essay can be read in full here.