Vienna: Rabbi attacked during Chanukah ceremony

Apparently the man is a Palestinian (DE).

A Muslim man attacked a Chabad rabbi Saturday night as he was conducting the annual ceremony to light the public Chanukah menorah in Stefenfaltz Square in the city of Vienna, Austria.

The attacker hurled himself at Rabbi Dov Gruzman, principal of the city’s Jewish school run by the Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic movement, and began punching him, a local resident told Arutz Sheva.

As the rabbi tried to hold off his attacker, the Muslim suddenly bit his victim, severing part of his finger in the process.

The Muslim was caught and arrested by police, and was held for questioning. The rabbi was evacuated to the hospital where doctors rushed to reattach his finger.

Gruzman told Arutz Sheva that the Muslim had raced towards the entrance at the beginning of the ceremony and began to curse the Jews who were there and the Jewish people in general.

“I tried to hold him off, to keep him away from the entrance and he bit me really hard, and that’s how he injured me,” he said.

(more)

Source: Israel National News (English), h/t JIHAD I MALMÖ

With thanks to Islam in Europe

Sixty Hours of Terror

I. Ten Gunmen, Ten Minutes

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) hummed with the foot traffic of late commuters. Under hulking steel rafters, held over from the British colonial era, the PA announcer issued final calls for departing suburban trains as they lurched away one after the next, packed with passengers.

Long-distance travelers, mostly the poor North Indian migrants who flock to the city by the tens of thousands, took up benches and spots on the concrete floor, resting on sheets of newsprint with their piles of luggage.

Fongen Fernandes, the spry fifty-three-year-old manager of the upper level of the Re-Fresh snack bar with its tall glass panels overlooking the platforms, was talking to a graphic designer.

Fernandes stood admiring the designer’s digital handiwork on a laptop open at a table in the far corner of the restaurant, when he felt sand-like debris sprinkle the top of his head. “What’s this?” he said to himself. He wiped his smooth pate a couple times and continued talking, unaware that below two young men had emerged from a bathroom abutting Platform 13 and begun spraying the crowd with gunfire, unaware that a high-velocity bullet shot from less than thirty yards away had missed him by inches and lodged in the wall over his shoulder.

He bid the designer farewell and was halfway down the stairs when another series of rounds cracked against the wall and showered sparks into the air. A grenade exploded on the platform.

Rattled by the sudden chaos, Fernandes scrambled back upstairs, cut the lights, and ducked behind some advertising placards that were pasted to the base of the snack bar windows. He instructed everyone to slide belly-down and hide behind a bank of metal food warmers.

One woman started to scream. He motioned for her to shut up. When she wouldn’t, Fernandes threw his handkerchief to a waiter who held it to her mouth. “Don’t let go of her,” he said.

Fernandes stole a look at the scene below. Bodies lay scattered on the station floor, slicked in blood. The gunmen scanned and swiveled. They shot from the hip, in steady bursts. The shorter, stocky one, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, wore beige cargo pants and a blue t-shirt with VERSACE printed in white on the chest; the other, Ismail Khan, was slimmer and wore all black.

Both carried rucksacks. On any other day, Fernandes would have taken them for college boys on their way home. These were no students, though. The ease with which they wielded their weapons amid the panic betrayed a professional’s mien.

Two more volleys lashed into the snack bar. One hit Mukesh Aggarwal, a co-worker in charge of the ground level, in the stomach. Fernandes, a devout Catholic, started to pray in the dark. “St. Anthony, please deliver us . . .”

9:40 P.M. Leopold Café.

Two young men—one named Abu Shoaib, the other known simply as Nazir—got out of a yellow and black city cab across the street from the Leopold Café. Open since 1871 in the heart of the Colaba district, the multi-level dive was packed with more than a hundred people enjoying western food and cheap pints of Kingfisher beer to the din of rock music that spilled onto the sidewalk, where hawkers plied t-shirts and offered hash to foreign backpackers.

Co-owner Farhang Jehani stepped out to take a phone call. He watched the pair of young men pay the cab fare and wait by the curb, bags slung over their shoulders. Driver Fulchand Bhind was grateful for the extravagant tip the young men had given.

Unbeknownst to him, the two men had slipped a bomb, set to go off in one hour, under his seat. As Bhind pulled away, the bomb clicked silently toward detonation. How could he have known? These young men certainly didn’t look like terrorists. Jehani, across the street, assumed they were students waiting for friends.

When his call was finished, he went inside and around to the back staircase that leads to the mezzanine-level bar to watch the cricket match. India was playing England, and they were winning. Jehani’s family is part of Mumbai’s long-established Parsi community, émigrés from Iran who practice the Zoroastrian faith, but like any lifelong Indian, he is passionate about cricket.

Read it all at VQR Online

H/T: David F.

'Mumbai terrorist pretended to be Jewish'

The American and Indian authorities are questioning an American citizen of Pakistani descent on suspicion of involvement in last year's Mumbai terror attacks.

Indian media reported on Sunday that the suspect pretended to be Jewish, stayed at the Chabad center and prepared the ground for the lethal attack.

David Coleman Headly (49) was arrested last month at Chicago's O'Hare Airport while on his way to Philadelphia, and from there to Pakistan. The American Federal Bureau of Investigations suspected he was involved in a plot to carry out an attack in Denmark following the publication of the controversial Prophet Muhammad caricatures.

A deeper look, however, revealed that he was also involved in the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, in which at least 173 people were killed.

Since Headley's arrest, the US has been investigating his actions along with the Indian authorities. Over the weekend Headley's role became clear: Indian security sources reported that he was the one who scanned the Chabad center for the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is believed to be responsible for the attacks.

Head of the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided a number of locations in Mumbai on Saturday in search of incriminating evidence against Headley. Indian defense ministry sources told the Chinese news agency Xinhua that its investigators found that Headly had visited all ten locations that were attacked last November.

According to the report, Headley visited the Chabad center in Mumbai in July 2008 – four months before the attack – and presented himself as a Jew in order to stay at the place. Prior to the Chabad center, he stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was one of the central targets of the terror attack.

"It remains unclear how he entered the building (Chabad center) while pretending to be a Jew," an Indian police source told the Calcutta Telegraph. "We are looking into the matter and are trying to find out if anyone in the city helped him. The American FBI found a book in his bag in Chicago titled 'To Pray as a Jew'. It seems he was meticulously preparing himself to behave like a Jew."

Headley, a Pakistani who immigrated to the United States, changed his name several years ago from Dawood Jilani. Between 2006 and 2009 he ran an immigration help center in Mumbai, but investigators believe he was actually an operative in a widespread terror network that spanned seven Indian cities, including Mumbai, Ahmadabad and New Delhi.

The American authorities informed the Indians of Headley's arrest in Chicago, and Mumbai police also arrested two local tour guides suspected of assisting him in the city.

Indian investigators raided Headley's help center offices and spoke with the center's employees. Officially, the center is meant to help immigrants obtain entry visas to the US and Canada, but investigators are looking into connections he made with other bodies in the city during his stay.

YNet

Urgent terror alert for Israelis in India

The Counter-Terrorism Bureau at the National Security Council issued a severe terror warning for India on Thursday.

A Pakistani terror organization affiliated with al-Qaida and responsible for the attacks in Mumbai last year is planning to carry out a string of attacks throughout the Indian subcontinent, it warned.

The warning said that while all westerners in India are in peril of being targeted, Israelis and places where Israelis usually congregate in large numbers are in more serious danger.

The bureau asked all Israelis in India to steer clear of places where Western tourists are found in large numbers. It put a special emphasis on Chabad houses, which are popular with Israeli tourists, especially during the High Holidays.

The bureau rated the threat as "imminent and concrete," and emphasized the Jammu and Kashmir regions in India's North.

Thursday's warning was unusual, as India is a friendly country and there are tens of thousands of Israelis in India at any given time.

Arab countries like Jordan, Egypt - including the Sinai Peninsula - and Morocco are regularly mentioned in Counter-Terrorism Bureau statements, especially during and following Israeli military operations.

Source: JPost

U.S. Jewish institutions targeted on Muslim website

February 05 | By Aaron Klein

'Give them the Islamic message,' demands New York-based extremist

JERUSALEM – A U.S. jihadi website has issued a series of videos targeting the New York headquarters of Chabad, a Jewish outreach movement, just two months after the group was rocked by a deadly terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.

The videos also ask viewers to "give the Islamic message" to Yeshiva University, a Manhattan-based Jewish college, as well as "Jewish Federation buildings all over the U.S." in response to the institutions' purported funding for Israel amid its recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Islamic threats already resulted in a New York Police Department investigation and a beefed-up police presence outside the Chabad headquarters, WND has learned.

"When an atrocity is done like what was done in Gaza, indiscriminately killing women and children, we know who the source is," stated Yousef Al-Khattab, the CEO of RevolutionMuslim.com in a video address posted on the website.

"These are definitely the sources," Khattab stated, citing Chabad and the other Jewish institutions.

"We think it's imperative to hold these people responsible, speak in front of their homes, give them the Islamic message. Leave them the message of Islam. That's not a threat, that's what it is," Khattab said in the video.

While Khattab, who spoke to WND today, claimed his website is not issuing threats against Jewish groups, a second video posted on the site contains what can easily be interpreted as lightly veiled threats of violence against Chabad.

The video features a slideshow of images of wounded Palestinians and then repeatedly switches to pictures of Chabad's main headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It then presents a picture of a blood-stained Jewish prayer book taken from inside a Jerusalem seminary following a deadly shooting massacre there last March that killed eight Jews.

The video ends with the sound of gunshots.

Asked whether the video montage was implying Chabad's headquarters should be targeted by Islamic violence, Khattab told WND, "It is what it is."

Khattab said he did not have the authority to issue a directive to carry out specific attacks.

Further petitioned to explain the intended meaning of the blood-soaked prayer book interspersed with images of Chabad's headquarters, Khattab replied, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

He told WND he supports Hamas' suicide bombings against Israelis, including attacks targeting cafes, restaurants and nightclubs.

"There is no such thing as Israeli civilian," he said. "I pray to Allah for the complete destruction of Israel."

In a video on his website, Khattab states he normally advises others to "just ignore [the Jews]. That's not racist. We don't like to deal with them ... but when there is a terrorist war of destruction, killing of kids ... [Israeli] genocide, then we have to take to the forefront."

Security bolstered at Chabad headquarters

Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad, told WND although not all threats are serious, his organization is "work[ing] closely with law enforcement to ensure that all threats are handled properly, as safety is of paramount concern."

Immediately following RevolutionMuslim's first posting about Chabad two weeks ago, the NYPD stationed a large police presence, including NYPD vans, outside the Jewish group's headquarters.

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelley called Chanina Sperlin, vice president of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, to assure him the police were looking into the situation and were taking any threats seriously.

Khattab said he was questioned by NYPD investigators.

Expert: Take threats seriously

One Chabad official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was not particularly concerned about the alleged threats.

But U.S. terrorism expert Steve Emerson said videos like those posted on RevolutionMuslim.com should be taken seriously.

"Any site that advocates violence or provides incitement to violence has to be taken seriously," he told WND.

'We appreciate support of American progressives'

Realizing his statement may attract the attention of U.S. law enforcement agencies, Khattab delivered a direct message to the NYPD, CIA and FBI: "You can put me in jail for the rest of my life. As long as I got that information out there for people, I did something. I didn't sit on my behind."

Khattab also lashed out against any website that may pick up on his statement.

"It just attracts Drudge, the JAWA report, Atlas Shrugs (blog), and Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch blog) and just other whining little queers and stuff like that."

But he celebrated what he said is his website's non-Muslim following of "progressive Americans, socialists, anarchists, communists ... people who can really contribute, they give us dialogue and send us nice e-mails."

Khattab, a 39-year-old New York taxi driver who converted to Islam from Judaism, said he launched RevolutionMuslim.com with the mission of "preserving Islamic culture," "calling people to the oneness of God" and asking them to "support the beloved Sheik Abdullah Faisal, who's preaching the religion of Islam and serving as a spiritual guide.

He told WND his site's main goal is to establish worldwide Islamic dominance. He runs the site from his home in Queens, N.Y., and even advertises his personal phone number.

Faisal, the website's spiritual adviser, was convicted in the UK in 2003 for urging his followers to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. In videotaped recordings, Faisal was taped delivering sermons calling on Muslims to use chemical weapons to "exterminate unbelievers" and "cut the throat of the Kaffars (nonbelievers) with (a) machete."

FoxNews.com previously reported Faisal's sermons may have influenced "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who attended mosques where Faisal preached.

Khattab's website is no stranger to controversy. In the past it featured a video praising al-Qaida's beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl under the banner "Daniel Pearl I am Happy Your Dead :)," and a puppet show making light of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

Source: WorldNetDaily

Prime Target in Mumbai Was the Chabad House

January 6, 2009

Mumbai jihadists' prime target was Jewish center

"When asked during interrogation why Nariman House was specifically targetted, Ajmal reportedly told the police they wanted to sent a message to Jews across the world by attacking the ultra orthodox synagogue." "Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and Pagans" -- Qur'an 5:82

"Nariman House, not Taj, was the prime target on 26/11," by Somendra Sharma for DNAIndia, January 5 .

Think 26/11, and images of the carnage at the Taj come to mind. But the terrorists themselves were in no doubt that Nariman House was the prime focus. For this was the place which housed a Jewish centre, and the fanatics from Pakistan were clear that they wanted to send a message to the world from there.

The Mumbai crime branch, which is investigating the terror attacks, has found that the terrorists' handlers in Pakistan were clear this operation should not fail under any circumstances. The rest of the operations - at the Taj, Oberoi and Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus - were intended to amplify the effect.

A senior police official, told DNA on condition of anonymity, that the interrogation of Mohammed Amir Iman Ajmal (aka Kasab) revealed as much. Just before entering the city, the terrorists' team leader, Ismail Khan, briefed them once again about their targets. "But Khan briefed Imran Babar, alias Abu Akasha, and Nasir, alias Abu Umer, intensely on what to do at Nariman House," the officer said.

When asked during interrogation why Nariman House was specifically targetted, Ajmal reportedly told the police they wanted to sent a message to Jews across the world by attacking the ultra orthodox synagogue.

According to the statement by Ajmal, Khan told Babar and Nasir that even if the others failed in their operation, they both could not afford to. "The Nariman House operation has to be a success," the officer said, quoting from Ajmal's statement.

"Khan also said that as far as Nariman House was concerned, there should not be even a minimal glitch in finding it and capturing it," the officer quoted Ajmal as saying.

After the dinghy carrying the 10 terrorists reached Mumbai at the Macchimar colony opposite Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade, it was decided that no bombs would be planted in the taxi to be used to reach Nariman House. "The idea," according to the police officer, "was that if Babar and Nasir got delayed in locating and entering Nariman House, the bomb in the taxi may explode even before they entered their target." ... "Ansari told us that he did not divulge this information earlier because it would have jeopardised the most important operation of the LeT. He had also been warned by the LeT that Nariman House was their most secret operation and must not be compromised at any cost," the officer said.

Source: JihadWatch

Andrew Bolt: An attack on us all

Andrew Bolt | Friday, November 28, 2008 at 06:08am

THE slaughter in Mumbai was a barbaric attack not just on India, but on us. On the West.

For the first time in India, Muslim terrorists have singled out Westerners and Jews, and the places they are most likely to visit.

And that makes al-Qaida a prime suspect—either as a partner with local terrorists or prime mover.

From the gunmen’s targets, it seems that al-Qaida or associated Islamist groups may have chosen a new, easier, battleground for their war against the West.

This will change all the security thinking for next week’s Twenty20 Champions League, in which Victoria and Western Australia, were to compete, and for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

And a naive world will learn that the war on terror they’d hoped would die with the presidency of George W. Bush will be inherited by Barack Obama.

Mumbai has been hit by Islamist terrorists before, of course, but those were very different. The targets were locals, and so were the grievances.

The city’s stock exchange, trains and hotels and gas stations were attacked in 1993 by criminals and terrorists who killed 257 people to revenge the killing of Muslims by Hindu mobs.

Ten years later, 52 people were killed in car bombings apparently by Muslims fighting for control of Kashmir, and in July 2006 pro-Kashmiri Islamists bombed commuter trains and railway stations, slaughtering at least 187 more.

But this is dangerously different.

Most of the buildings the young gunmen stormed were places tourists would use or know.

There’s the five-star Oberoi and the Taj Mahal Hotel, right next to the iconic Gateway of India.

Also attacked were the main railway station and the exclusive Leopold Cafe, popular with foreigners and the rich, and the place where Australian Kate Anstee was shot in the leg.

Explosions have also been reported near the domestic airport.

Even more telling was that the terrorists reportedly took over Nariman House, a residential complex owned by Jews that contained a Jewish prayer hall and the local office of the Chabad movement.

Also different this time was the taking of hostages.

Again, they were mainly Westerners. British witness Ashok Patel said the terrorists at the Taj Mahal shouted out: “Who has US or UK passports?”, and guests at the Oberoi said the terrorists there also singled out Americans and Britons for hostages.

Chabad officials feared that their Mumbai emissary, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, was also being held at gunpoint at Nariman House.

In a way, it’s pointless trying to decide exactly which Islamist group this time is formally responsible.

It may be the “Deccan Mujahideen”, which contacted Indian media outlets to take the bloody credit, but nothing is known of a group with this studiously local name, and first-timers are unlikely to have the men, organisation, experience, cash or fire-power to launch a co-ordinated strike like this on a dozen targets.

The “Deccan Mujahidin” may just be the latest incarnation of another mysterious group, the “Indian Mujahideen”, which boasted of carrying out the bombings in Delhi in September, which killed 20 people, and in Ahmedabad in July, which killed 45. But did they, too, have the resources it took to launch this attack?

The names of these outfits may shift, but it’s just a rebadging of the same kind of people inspired by the same ideology. And more telling than their temporary names are the deeds.

True, one of the terrorists in the Oberoi rang India TV to say he belonged to an Indian Islamist group wanting to end persecution of India’s Muslims, and demanding: “We want all mujahidins held in India released.”

But the attacks themselves point to another, more specific agenda as well.

It’s India’s links to the West that were attacked—its hotels, foreigners, Jews, and rail and airport links.

The aim, as with the al-Qaida-linked bombings in Hindu Bali, seems to be to split the country from the West. This would make it part of the Islamists’ global war against the West and its freedoms—a war driven by a deadly amalgam of religion and politics.

Some may see this latest horror as proof that US President George Bush has failed against the war in self-defence he launched after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, and Obama must choose more peaceful ways.

But terrible though they are, these killings are an aberration. The trend in recent years has been for fewer terrorist attacks around the world, even in Iraq, where al-Qaida has been mauled. Since 2001, Islamists have not managed one successful attack on the US. Britain has foiled every big terrorist plot since 2005.

Shambolic India was always an easier target, but one only for the desperate. And for this to be first in there against the West shows how small the appeal of jihad is even in a nation with 150 million Muslims.

Indeed, the Pew Research Centre has polled a dramatic drop in support among Muslims around the world for violent jihad and al-Qaida since 2002.

This is the struggle Obama inherits, and it will not end until Islamists horrify enough fellow Muslims by their pointless slaughter - and until Bush’s dream is fulfilled, and Muslim nations share our love for the freedom now under such savage attack in Mumbai.

Source: Herald Sun