You’ll Never Believe Who’s Really Behind the Paris Massacre According to Iran-Produced Video

A video titled “Who Was Behind the Paris Attacks,” released by the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, alleges that the US and its allies were the real perpetrators behind the jihadist massacre in Paris that killed 132 people.

The US and allies, claimed the video, created ISIS and provided them with weapons in order to further their own interests, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported. Khamenei’s website also published a cartoon titled “Big Brother Goofed!”, showing Uncle Sam flinging an ISIS boomerang at Syria and the boomerang returning to strike France.

These missives follow the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s claim that France is paying the price for using ISIS terrorism to promote its own interests, MEMRI reported.

Regime officials further berated the West for only expressing shock when Sunni ISIS terrorism strikes their home, while failing to sympathize when the victims are in Syria, Iraq, and other places around the world.

Iranian daily Kayhan, which is affiliated with Supreme Leader Khamenei, published an editorial that claimed Edward Snowden’s revelations prove that the CIA and the Mossad were involved in establishing ISIS. (Read more from “You’ll Never Believe Who’s Really Behind the Paris Massacre According to Iran-Produced Video” HERE)

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Belgium Police Arrest 16, Paris Fugitive Still at Large

Belgian prosecutors announced early Monday that police had detained 16 people in 22 raids but that Paris fugitive Salah Abdeslam was not among them. Despite the raids, authorities maintained their highest terror alert in the capital for a third straight day.

The raids capped a tense day with hundreds of troops patrolling and authorities hunting for one or more suspected militants, the Belgian government chose Sunday to keep the capital on the highest state of alert into the start of the workweek to prevent a Paris-style attack.

Citing a “serious and imminent” threat, Prime Minister Charles Michel announced that schools and universities in Brussels will be closed Monday, with the subway remaining shut down, preventing a return to normal in the city that is also home to the European Union’s main institutions. (Read more from “Belgium Police Arrest 16, Paris Fugitive Still at Large” HERE)

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American Voters More Fearful After Paris Attacks

One week after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Diane Lochocki drove with her boyfriend from New York to the New Hampshire State House. Ben Carson was filing for the presidential primary, and Lochocki, 78, wanted to see him. It was time for a new president, one who actually took the threat of radical Islam seriously.

“Terrorists are insidious people,” Lochocki said. “Your neighbor could be one and you wouldn’t know. I feel we should close our borders until we get the rest of the world under control. If that’s inhumane, then I’m inhumane. You think what you want.”

The attacks that killed 130 and injured more than 350 in France’s capital Nov. 13 changed the 2016 contest for president — by changing what voters worried about. Across the country, among both Republicans and Democrats, have come pronouncements of anger and fear not seen after the terrorist attacks in London or Madrid — or even, in some ways, after Sept. 11, 2001. Suspicion of Muslims and intolerance of refugees have exploded; so has criticism of President Obama’s handling of the terror threat.

A Suffolk University-Boston Globe poll Saturday confirmed it, with 42 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire’s upcoming GOP primary calling terrorism and national security the country’s most important issues. Before Paris, they’d worried most about the economy.

In more than two dozen interviews over the weekend in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Alabama, voters offered some clues as to why Paris has altered the consciousness so dramatically. They described feeling more afraid of the Islamic State, more horrified by the imagery of beheadings and other atrocities. They are uncomforted by Obama’s leadership. And with the pain of the Iraq war still weighing on the nation, they are even listening to the people who say the United States must send troops to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State. (Read more from “American Voters More Fearful After Paris Attacks” HERE)

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Beijing Vows Justice as ISIS Kills Chinese, Norwegian Hostages

Beijing has vowed to bring ISIS to justice after the group said it had executed two hostages, a Chinese and a Norwegian.

ISIS said it had killed the two men, identified as Chinese national Fan Jinghui and Norwegian citizen Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad in its English-language online magazine Dabiq.

President Xi Jinping “strongly condemned” ISIS for the killing of Fan, the first known Chinese national to be killed by the group, and the country’s foreign ministry said the Chinese government would “definitely hold the perpetrators accountable.”

But how to respond to Fan’s “cold-blooded and violent” death presents a dilemma for China, which has stayed on the sidelines in the fight against ISIS and has a long-held principle of noninterference in other countries’ affairs. [Editor’s note: this is laughable; China economically leverages nations all over the globe. Ask any Ecuadorean, for instance, as to whether they believe China interferes in their domestic affairs]

To date, Beijing has been vague on the question of what it will contribute to the global fight against ISIS and has declined to explicitly offer its support for airstrikes being conducted against the group in Syria. (Read more from “Beijing Vows Justice as ISIS Kills Chinese, Norwegian Hostages” HERE)

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Major Car Rental Bars Israeli Executive From Renting

On Saturday evening, Dov Bergwerk arrived at the Avis branch on West 76th Street and Broadway. Accompanied by his wife Ruth, the Bergwerks were planning to join friends for dinner in Westchester. Mr. Bergwerk, a senior vice president and general corporate counsel at the Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva, got out his driver’s license, reservation number and “Wizard” loyalty card – he’s rented from Avis dozens of times before – and anticipated the usual smooth transition into a nondescript mid-sized sedan . . .

A reservation agent named Angelline declined to honor Mr. Bergwerk’s reservation, saying that it was company policy not to recognize Israeli documents. Stunned, Mr. Bergwerk explained that he had rented from Avis many times, including a car from that very same office on Thursday, November 19 – only two days earlier.

Mr. Bergwerk asked Angelline to access the profile attached to his Wizard card, which shows that he is an executive at a giant multinational company who has no regulatory issues and has rented from Avis, including at that very branch, many times without incident. She refused. They argued.

Eventually, a manager was called. Shamoura took the side of her reservation agent, also refusing to honor Mr. Bergwerk’s reservation or recognize his documents. Stunned and stranded on a Saturday night in New York, Mr. Bergwerk called the Avis main number and got through to customer service. The representative confirmed to him that the Israeli license was an acceptable form of ID and also mentioned that he could show his passport to ameliorate any ID concerns the on-site employees had. Mr. Bergwerk put the customer service representative on the phone with Shamoura, the branch manager, and at this point the story evolved. She now claimed that she was declining to rent the Bergwerks a car not because of the insufficient documents but because Mr. Bergwerk had “argued about the way I was being treated in front of other customers,” according to Mr. Bergwerk . . .

The Observer asked Mr. Bergwerk if he felt that, in the heart of Manhattan’s progressive activist community, he was being singled out for being an Israeli. (Read more from “Major Car Rental Bars Israeli Executive From Renting” HERE)

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New ISIS Video Threatens Attack on White House

The Dijla branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) released a new video depicting unidentified jihadists celebrating the recent attacks on Paris and vowing the attacks would “conclude with the so-called White House.”

In the video – titled “Paris Before Rome” — militants warn French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Obama “and those who follow in his footsteps” to expect more strikes . . .

“We began with you, and we shall conclude with the so-called White House. We shall turn it even blacker than our fire by the will of Allah,” a militants says in the video. “Better still … we shall blow it up just like we blew up the idols on this good land.”

The video surfaced one day after another ISIS video that makes reference to Times Square. In what appeared to be a threat directed at the U.S., Times Square was shown along with New York City taxis and several Midtown locations, interspersed with what appeared to be a man preparing an explosive device and strapping it to himself . . .

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department is warning that St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Milan’s cathedral and La Scala opera house, as well as “general venues” like churches, synagogues, restaurants, theaters and hotels have been identified as “potential targets” in those two cities for terrorist attacks. (Read more from “New ISIS Video Threatens Attack on White House” HERE)

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France’s Most-Wanted Man

Salah Abdeslam — the only one of the suspected Paris attackers known to have survived — is still at large and still very much at the center of a mystery.

Nine days after the terror attacks that killed 130 people, a clearer picture is emerging of his movements — and it seems Abdeslam fled the city late on the night of November 13 in a state of panic.

Information from sources close to the investigation draw a picture of a man on the run, and how that run began. On the evening of the attacks, Abdeslam, 26, was thought to have been the driver of a black Renaut Clio that dropped off three suicide bombers near the Stade de France . . .

Four days later, last Tuesday, the Clio was found abandoned in the Place Albert Kahn in Paris’ 18th arrondissement. It appeared to have been parked hurriedly on a pedestrian crossing.

This is where the mystery begins. Was Abdeslam meant to carry out a separate attack? Or join the men who had already burst into the Bataclan theater? Or return to Brussels, where he lived, to plan another attack? (Read more from “France’s Most-Wanted Man” HERE)

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Crisis as Cover: Paris Attacks Ringleader Posed as Refugee

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday some of the Paris attackers, including the mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, exploited the Syrian refugee crisis to slip into the country unnoticed.

Abaaoud, the ringleader behind last Friday’s bombings and shootings in the French capital that killed 129 people, was able to get into Europe undeterred, according to French authorities. The 28-year-old had also been linked to several plots around France including a thwarted attack by a gunman on a high-speed train in August.

French officials confirmed Thursday Abaaoud was killed in an anti-terror raid Wednesday in a suburb north of Paris. He was identified from skin samples after the Saint-Denis apartment raid.

Abaaoud had claimed he successfully moved back and forth from Europe to Syria coordinating terror attacks, and narrowly escaped a January police raid in the Belgian city of Verviers. “Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave… despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies,” he told the ISIS magazine Dabiq.

Two counterterrorism officials told Fox News on Thursday that Abaaoud is comparable to Mohammed Atta – the “tactical guy” who identified and pulled together the operatives. (Read more from “Crisis as Cover: Paris Attacks Ringleader Posed as Refugee” HERE)

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US Youth Slain by Terrorists Was Bringing Food to Soldiers in West Bank

Ezra Schwartz, an American yeshiva student who was killed Thursday in a West Bank terror attack, had been volunteering delivering food parcels to Israeli soldiers in the area when he was shot by a Palestinian terrorist.

Schwartz, 18, of Sharon, Massachusetts, was remembered as “a fun person to hang out with, very charismatic.”

He was one of three people killed in a terror attack near the settlement of Alon Shvut. He was studying for a year at Yeshivat Ashreinu in Beit Shemesh . . .

Schwartz was killed when an assailant opened fire from inside his car at vehicles near the Etzion Bloc junction. Police named 51-year-old Ya’akov Don of nearby Alon Svhut and 24-year-old Palestinian Shadi Arfah of Hebron as the other victims of the shooting . . .

The United Synagogue Youth program which Ezra joined in 2013 released a statement saying he “is remembered as being a warm and funny member of the…community. Staff on his trip recalled today that he used his deep experience in Judaism to teach other teens how to participate in Jewish ritual.” (Read more from “US Youth Slain by Terrorists Was Bringing Food to Soldiers in West Bank” HERE)

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Trump Just Made This Major Accusation Against the White House About Syrian Refugees

By Christopher Snyder. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is accusing President Barack Obama of making it easier for Muslims rather than Christians to enter the U.S. in the midst of the Syrian civil war.

“If you were Muslim from Syria, you can get into this country … if you were a Christian from Syria it was almost impossible to get in and yet the Christians were having their heads cut off,” Trump told a crowd Wednesday in Worcester, Mass. “It’s the most unfair thing, this is during the Obama administration … what’s wrong with us?”

The businessman, though, did admit the challenge of proving the religion of those claiming refugee status. “Well I don’t know if you can prove they are Christian, first of all I happen to be Christian, I’m protestant, and I would love to do that, but how are they proving that.”

Obama blasted the idea of admitting people solely based on their religion.

“When I hear folks say well maybe we should just admit Christians but not Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he said at a press conference Monday. (Read more from “Trump Just Made This Major Accusation Against the White House About Syrian Refugees” HERE)

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U.S.-Bound Syrians Detained in Honduras With Fake Passports

By Curt Mills. Honduras has detained five Syrian nationals traveling by land to the United States, and in possession of fake Greek passports.

The five men are currently being held in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. The central American nation is over 1,500 miles from the United States border . . .

The men were coming from Costa Rica, and planning to make passage into Guatemala next. (Read more from “U.S.-Bound Syrians Detained in Honduras With Fake Passports” HERE)

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