European security expert Michel Gurfinkiel on Brussels, Paris, and more

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio, this is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. At the moment, all eyes are on the front of that war that is known as Europe. We’ve witnessed another horrible attack, this time in the capital of Belgium, some say the capital of Europe. The headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. And very much a central focus of European culture and life. Brussels. And to describe what has happened, to understand what this is of a piece with, I couldn’t be more pleased but to have a chance to talk for a full hour with one of the most thoughtful observers and most articulate commentators upon Europe and culture and geopolitics, Michel Gurfinkiel. Michel is a man of many parts. He is the founder and president of the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think tank in France. He is associated with one of the most important of those think tanks in the United States, the Middle East Forum, where he serves as a Shillman/Ginsburg fellow. He is the editor-in-chief emeritus of a marvellous publication, Valeurs Actuelles, a conservative news weekly in France. And an active contributor on this side of the pond to such publications as Commentary, PJ Media, American Interests. In France, he’s actually best known, perhaps, for his books, including Can Israel Endure and The Return of Russia. And a new book that I’m sure will be highly acclaimed, hopefully there and here, Theo-Revolution, about political Islam. Michel Gurfinkiel, it is a delight to have a chance to talk with you. I regret, however, as I know you do, that we are often prompted to do these conversations by terrible things that are developing on your side of the Atlantic, notably this attack. But nonetheless, it is very, very good to have you with us and thank you for taking a full hour of your time to address these and related issues in detail. Welcome back.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

It’s a pleasure and an honour to be with you, Frank.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Thank you. Listen, let’s start this conversation – and it will be far-reaching and wide-ranging, I know, but let’s start with the specifics of what we now believe we know about this specific act of jihad in the heart of Europe, in Brussels, its perpetrators and their ties to an earlier attack in your own country.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Well, the first thing I would like to say about the terrible attacks in Brussels is that everybody was expecting something like that. If I may quote Valeurs Actuelles, I would like to stress that on February 18^th, which means about one month ago, this magazine published a cover story about the coming attack, the coming terrorist attacks, in Europe. And many other publications, in fact, ran stories about this sense of gloom and doom in the security community. It was well known that the terrorists, the jihadist networks, were already – had the personnel and the means to go on with further large scale attacks. And there was even a scenario, which is taken very seriously by the security community, according to which, in fact, the jihadists are planning a kind of pan-European November 11, November 13. Or if you prefer, a pan-European September 11^th. Which means similar to those attacks over the continent and in all hubs of Europe in lives and power. In that respect, the attack in Brussels was clearly fitting with that kind of – that pattern of terrorist aggression. I would like to stress what it means for a country like Belgium to undergo an attack like what happened two days ago. Belgium is a country of about ten million inhabitants. There were something like thirty-three to thirty-five casualties. We don’t know about the – the people who were in the very tight situation at hospital. There were at least one hundred and fifty persons wounded. Which means that proportionately to the population of Belgium, this is of the same size as the November 13^th attacks in Paris. Really the same size. And one must understand that there were simultaneous attacks at the airport of Brussels and at the Metro station just, I mean, it was almost in front of the headquarters of the Europeans community. If you’re familiar with Brussels, you realise what it means. And the city was simply, I mean, almost instantly turned into a ghost city. People would not walk outside. Those who had to do some travel or – had to do it on foot because no transportation was available anymore. Telephone lines were partially suspended, essentially the mobile telephone lines. And of course, you have now a military presence over the city and in fact over the country which is a warlike situation.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

You know, Michel, you’ve described –

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

— it’s really war.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. You’ve described powerfully there what has been anticipated, as you say, I think both in Europe and to some extent even in the United States, we’ve been hearing of late about so-called spectacular and elaborate attacks. This was perhaps less elaborate in its planning and execution, but nonetheless had a spectacular, in the worst sense of the word, result. And worse may yet be coming. Let me ask you, there’s been speculation here, Michel Gurfinkiel, that this was a bit of a rushed job, that the planning had obviously been fairly far advanced for these attacks, but they may have been spooked into engaging in them at this particular moment in time because of the capture of a fellow implicated in that attack last November in Paris. First of all, remind us of that, the connection between these two incidents in terms of the jihadi connection and if you have any thoughts on that issue of whether this in fact might have been an even more spectacular act of jihad had it gone forward perhaps in conjunction with other parts of this more comprehensive plan.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

First of all, one must stress the fact that France and Belgium are from the jihadist angle one single country. You have – you had people based in Belgium or carrying Belgian passports that had been involved in the attacks in Paris last November. And alternatively, those people who are now involved in the Brussels attacks have ties with France. The case of Salah Abdeslam, who is the main director in both operations, to some extent, is very interesting. Because this is a person of Moroccan origin who was born in Belgium – in Belgium, but who has been awarded French citizenship. So on the one hand, he is clearly – clearly belongs to the Arab world. On the other hand, he is both French and Belgian. He has got both citizenships and he just –

FRANK GAFFNEY:

He sort of personifies that link between the two countries. Michel, hold the thought, I want to come back to this in just a moment with more of our special hour long conversation with Michel Gurfinkiel right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome back. We’re visiting with Michel Gurfinkiel this hour. He is the founder of the superb Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute in France, a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum here. A very, very active, prolific writer and commentator on matters involving terrorism and national security and international geo-strategy. And Michel, you were talking a bit about the man who was considered to be, I guess, the mastermind of the virulently destructive attacks in France last year. And has got ties to Brussels, which brought down upon the people of Brussels these attacks of this week. Talk more about him, what we know about him, what his personal example tells us about the enterprise that’s afoot at the moment. The jihad.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Yes, Salah Abdeslam is Moroccan, of Moroccan origin. He was born in Belgium and is a French citizen. And he exemplifies the links that exist in Europe between jihadist groups in all counties of the European Union. We may think of French citizens and Belgian citizens and so on. From the jihadist point of view, there are only wars of Islam that happen to be European born and will make use of their European citizenship. Either as Belgian, French, or any other European citizenship in order to fight and destroy European – Europe as a policy and European civilization as a non-Muslim civilization.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Michel Gurfinkiel, we are talking about the dangers that not just France, not just Belgium, but Europe and for that matter the wider non-Muslim world known to the shariah adherent Muslims at least as the house of war. Give us a flavour of how you see that larger, sort of pan-European, well, Western Civilization under attack, now coming sharply into focus with this particular episode on both sides of the Franco-Belgian border.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Let me first try to, you know, first things first. So let’s try to understand what is the view of the world for the jihadists. The view of the world is that the global world is divided basically between two worlds. There is the world of Islam, dar al-Islam, where Islamic law, Koranic law, rules supreme. And there is the non-Muslim world, which resists the spread of Islam and is deemed to be the world of war, dar al-harb. And this is not a war like there used to be wars in Europe, for instance, it’s not a civilized war. It’s a total, absolute war. It’s the Manichean war of good versus evil. And it means that everything is along – along this perception, against those who resist Islam. And to resist Islam doesn’t mean just to wage war to Islam or to, for instance, ban the Islamic religion. If you simply request Muslim citizens to abide by the law of the land and to admit that the law of the land is to be obeyed first and then religious freedom is being granted, if you just stick to that position, you are an enemy of Islam according to the teachings of the jihadists. Now, I would like —

FRANK GAFFNEY:

This is known as fitna, I believe, in their tradition and it can take any kind of forms. In fact, I think it’s fair to say, Michel Gurfinkiel, that simply speaking as we are doing today can constitute a kind of fitna or resistance to Islam that – that is intolerable if it’s deemed to be harmful to the faith, let alone critical of it, that can be a capital offense and what you’ve described, really, here is a construct, an operating concept, if you will, for the jihadis that justifies all manner of violence on their part, doesn’t it?

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

This is specifically the jihadist approach. But now, I would like to stress something which is consistently misunderstood in the Western countries. It is that there is a debate, actually, among the fundamentalist Muslims of – and there are many different schools and streams among them, there is a discussion on whether jihad should be understood as war the way the jihadists actually insist it should be. Or whether a different and more peaceful approach is feasible as well. What is very – very interesting is that the main fundamentalist teachers of Islam nowadays, like Sheikh Qaradawi, who now lives in Qatar, but he’s the supreme spiritual leader of the Muslim Brothers, the Brotherhood, he insists that Muslims, of course, the aim, the goal of Islam is to spread over the world because Islam is simply the correct political regime for all the world and it’s a positive religious duty to expand Islam. But what he says is that war is an option and war as I described it, but then – merciless war, but then there is another option. The other option is, in fact, to live peacefully among the non-Muslims and to spread Islam peacefully. And as long as not just the practice of Islam, but the spread of Islam, is accepted and condoned by the non-Muslims, there is no reason to resort to war. So this is what is usually referred to as moderate Islam. In fact, there is a very, very thin difference between the so-called moderates and then fundamentalist Islam and the jihadist Islam. The only difference is that while jihadists say let’s make war to the West right now, the moderate fundamentalists say, no, we have another option, which is to spread peacefully and to wage war only on specific instances. When somehow that the West will resist some of our demands. And in the meantime, it’s permissible, it’s perfectly acceptable to in fact accept lots of social behaviours that normally should not be condoned by Islam. For instance, there is one famous instance where –

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Michel, I want to ask you to pause for a moment because we have to take another short break. This is a hugely important point, the nexus between the Muslim Brotherhood and the violent jihadists of various stripes, many of them spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood. And I want to really explore that with you, because you’re right, it’s largely ignored on both your side of the Atlantic and ours and to our great peril, I’m afraid. More of that and so many other topics with Michel Gurfinkiel as our hour long conversation with one of the brightest minds in Europe on all of this joins us here at Secure Freedom Radio. Stay tuned.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome back. I am enjoying enormously, as I hope you are, a very interesting, thought-provoking, and incredibly insightful conversation with Michel Gurfinkiel. He is, among other things, a journalist of great renown in his native France, including as a result of his service as the editor-in-chief of Valeurs Actuelles, a position he now holds as an emeritus editor. He is also very active in the think tank business. He founded and is president of the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think tank in France as well as associated with the highly regarded Middle East Forum in the United States as one of its Shillman-Ginsburg fellows. You can find his writings, among other places, at Commentary and PJ Media and American Interests here. He has numerous books. Unfortunately, they have not been translated into English. This is a shame that needs to be remedied. Including Can Israel Endure? And The Return of Russia. And a new book that is coming out entitled Theo-Revolution, which we await with great expectation. Michel Gurfinkiel, again, thank you so much for your generous time today. I do want to pick up on something that you were exploring before the break and perhaps challenge you a little on it. In this country, as you know, back in the early 1990s, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood operative by the name of Mohammad Akram wrote a memorandum back to the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters about how the Brothers were doing in the United States some thirty years after they had begun building infrastructure and operations here with the Muslim Students Association. And Mohammad Akram’s so-called explanatory memorandum on the general strategic goal of the group in North America fell into government hands in 2004 through sheerly providential intervention and was introduced into evidence in the largest terrorism financing trial in US history here, the Holy Land Foundation trial, and what Mohammad Akram’s explanatory memorandum makes pretty clear is that the piece of this that you’ve described being promoted by their spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, of so-called peaceful jihad, or what Akram called civilization jihad, isn’t peaceful because that’s what’s preferred. It’s peaceful, or I think of it really as pre-violent, because it’s setting the stage for decisive victory through violence during a period when the violence simply would not be practicable. The Brothers and the Islamic supremacist movement isn’t strong enough to achieve the desired goals of the domination of the world by shariah and so on just yet. It has to be cultivated and by using stealthy means, that can be done in the West. And I just wonder, would you explore that proposition, that it’s not sort of an either/or, but it’s a necessary stage to get to the desired end state of violent conquest.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Well, I’ll try to be very specific. There was one question that was asked of Qaradawi. Given the fact that he took a very lenient view towards the existence of Islam in the Western way of life. So he was asked whether suicide attacks against Israeli civilians was permissible under the shariah, Islamic law. And this man, again, who has a reputation of being a moderate, of holding lenient views, said, yes, it is perfectly permissible to undertake suicide attacks against – or any other terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Because there is a complete consensus among Muslims that Israel is an enemy of Islam. So we are here in a situation where a man who – a leader, a spiritual leader, who is widely respected and who is held as being extremely moderate as compared to the people from the Islamic State, for instance, this leader in fact says that it’s enough that there is a consensus among Muslims, whatever it means, to turn from the civilized jihad and a peaceful jihad to a complete terrorist and merciless strategy against the civilians, we’re not talking about the military, but the civilians, of Israel because they are supposed to be the enemies of Islam. So anytime there is what they call a consensus of Muslims to say that one country is the enemy of Islam, it can be Israel, it can be United States, as we saw, for instance, of course in 2001 with the attacks on New York and Washington, DC. So anytime a country is deemed to be the enemy of Islam, even the moderate fundamentalists agree that we revert to violent jihad and to merciless jihad.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Here’s the thing, Michel –

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

— very troubling instance.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, two points. One is, as we talked about earlier, it isn’t really so much that it’s a country versus another country. It is the dar al-harb. It is the non-Muslim world that is not permitted to resist or engage in fitna against the God-ordained, you know, order of things. Namely, the triumph of shariah, the rule of a caliphate, if you will. And that those who are seeking to fulfil God’s will, the shariah adherent faithful, whether they are of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Islamic State or al-Qaeda or the Taliban or Boko Harum or unaffiliated with any organization, it is still their duty to achieve, through whatever means are at hand, whatever form of jihad is available to them and practicable, to advance this, you know, well, God’s will. So if that’s the case – and I take it, we do agree that it is, this puts into a very sharp relief, it seems to me, what’s taking place in Europe. And I want to broaden the lens with you beyond what we’ve been discussing of this attack and so on, to visit with you, Michel Gurfinkiel, about the hijra, as I think it’s best described, the migration that has been taking place in the past year, the geographic repopulating, if you will, of Europe by Muslim masses, a million plus so far and perhaps another million or three, we’re told, in the offing in Turkey. From the perspective that you have at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute in Paris, for example, how does this look and where is it headed?

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Well, I’m convinced and I’ve been convinced for many years that we are witnessing a completely unprecedented situation. And one should take it as realistically as possible. I believe that the Western countries are undergoing a demographic crisis. And cannot – and have to resist the influx of vast immigrant populations that do not share at all their values in terms of civilization or in terms of human rights or politics or religious freedom, etcetera. So I think this is extremely important and I believe that there has been – it has been simply criminal on the part of both the intellectual and the political establishment in the Western countries not to discuss this matter frankly and honestly.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let alone do the right thing about it. Michel, pause with me for one more moment. We’re going to come back for segment four of this very special conversation with Michel Gurfinkiel right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome back. This hour long conversation continues with Michel Gurfinkiel of France, the editor-in-chief of Valeurs Actuelles. He is also the founder of the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute. And Michel, you were just describing the failure of the elites, political and intellectual, in not only your native France but across Europe, I’m sorry to say I think there’s a lot of evidence of this on this side of the pond as well, in terms of understanding the nature of the problem we’re confronting, demographic and political, but would you further that thought and tie into it, if you will, the role that you’ve seen being played in sort of that, well, malfeasance, I guess, is really the right word for it, by influence operations of the Muslim Brotherhood. I certainly see them here.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Well, this is – here we are back to what I called the discussions with Muslim fundamentalists about the role of Muslims within the Western world. Basically, what is to be stressed is that basically a Muslim is not allowed to live in a non-Muslim country. Since Islam is simply living under the law of God, how can you live in a country that doesn’t obey the law of God? And for that reason, in many instances in the past, when one country that was from the Muslim wars in fact occupied or conquered by non-Muslims, the case of Spain, for instance, is very graphic in this sense, so what should Muslims do? They should simply leave that country and turn to a Muslim country. But as long as the non-Muslims rule the formerly Muslim country. So in theory, a Muslim cannot live in a non-Muslim country. Now, for reasons that have nothing to do with religion, it just happened that Western countries imported, so to say, a lot of non-Western persons, for many reasons, into the West, and all of a sudden, very quickly, really, in the space of one generation or two generations, very substantial Muslim communities were created in Europe and North America. So the question was, was it permissible for those Muslims to live as immigrants in Western countries? And the consensus of all fundamentalists has been that, finally, yes. They are allowed to live in Western countries provided they contribute to the spread of Islam. Provided they contribute to what Qaradawi, for instance, calls the universality of Islam. Alamiyah of Islam. The fact that people –

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me ask you, Michel, because this is confusing to me, I had thought that this wasn’t a recent insight or revelation or directive of a guy who’s influential, to be sure, but very much sort of a man of this moment, Qaradawi, for example, but rather this goes back to sort of the fundamental traditions of Islam dating to Mohammad’s own experience. The hijra, as I understand it, was first practiced by Mohammad himself in moving from Mecca to Medina where he began, basically, building this religion of his and –

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

You are right, you are right. You’re right, perfectly right. You are absolutely right. And again, I’m quoting Qaradawi, because he’s very well known, but scores of authorities, Muslim religious authorities, have, in fact, issued similar permissions to Muslims to live in the non-Muslim world as long as they contribute to the spread, the universal spread of Islam. Now, what happened was that the leaders of the various Islamic militant brotherhoods, not just the Muslim Brotherhood, but there in fact tens of similar brotherhoods all over the Islamic world, at one point realised that since Muslims were any way going to immigrate to Western countries just because life is better in Western countries, you know, and work is available, instruction is available and so on, social advancement is available, since at any rate Muslims were immigrating to Western countries, this should be turned into a strategic asset. And so they started to double up both territory and both networks in order to tell Muslims living in the West, you know, you immigrate – maybe you immigrated in order to have a better life in Western countries, but in fact, you can fulfil your duty of jihad peacefully or in another way by living in the West and by growing and prospering in the West.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me just tease out one other thing on this, because, Michel, as you are surely aware, one of the controversies that we’ve had in this country has been about a woman by the name of Huma Abedin, the right hand of the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, now active in her presidential campaign and been involved with the Clinton family for now the better part of twenty years, I think. Huma Abedin’s family, as I’m sure you are aware, was set up by Muslim Brotherhood operatives to run an organization called the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Whose principle purpose, for quite some time now, has been to inculcate I think precisely what you’re talking about, this notion of how Muslims are supposed to conduct themselves when they find themselves in positions of being minorities in non-Muslim countries. And I think the main themes are remain separate, do not assimilate, build, you know, sort of Muslim capacity networks, I think you keep calling it, and I think that’s a good term, but also infrastructure. And this is very much of a piece, it seems, if I’m not mistaken, I think you agree, with this notion that the object is to actually expand the reach of this shariah program and ultimately to set the stage for its emergence as the dominant force, the ruling force in all of these non-Muslim nations in the dar al-harb.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

I believe you are right. I may not be aware of all the specifics around that person. I read a little bit. But what is certainly, certainly clear is that there is a global view among Muslim fundamentalists and today what is very important and relevant is that the fundamentalist Muslims simply are – have achieved supremacy over all the Muslim world. There are some exceptions, but those people that we may call the truly moderate Muslims, and there are such people, are not in command of the vast majority of Muslim religious institutions in the world today. And this is —

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Hold that thought, because this is a key point when we come back for our final segment of this conversation, this very important conversation with Michel Gurfinkiel, we’ll talk about the extent to which in fact the authorities of the faith actually preclude a moderate view of its teachings. That and more with Michel Gurfinkiel right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

We’re back in this last segment of a very wide-ranging as I expected and thought-provoking conversation with Michel Gurfinkiel, a courageous and extraordinarily articulate – you think he’s impressive in English, you should see him in French – but a very powerful force and voice for thoughtful analysis and commentary on both sides of the Atlantic. Currently the founder and president of the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute and a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum. And Michel, you were just addressing an issue that I think we, again, too many of us don’t understand, and that is while there are various faith traditions within Islam, and thank God quite a number of people have a more benign or peaceable or tolerant view of its teachings than others, the authorities of the faith could not be more clear about what’s entailed and it seems to me as though it is basically shariah of the most virulent kind. You’ve described this as sort of fundamentalist, I think it’s principle characteristic is its Islamic supremacism. And whatever the tactical approach, violent or pre-violent, it’s a real threat to all of us. Your thoughts?

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

It’s a threat to all of us and if I may add that it’s also a threat to the vast majority of Muslims. There is no question that many Muslims – and some of them are courageous enough to say it aloud or in fact thinking that their civilization should evolve in a much more open and – I wouldn’t say modern, but a much more open and tolerant and peaceful way. But those Muslims who aspire to peace and normal coexistence with other faiths have been intimidated and in fact have been terrorized by the fundamentalists and the violent groups. You see there is something that very few people are aware – it is that a very large part of the Palestinian-Arab population by the beginning of the 20^th Century was extremely sympathetic to the Zionist movement and to the growth of a Jewish commonwealth in the Holy Land. But they have been simply reduced to silence by terror and murder by two competing Palestinian fundamentalist groups. By the one led by the infamous great mufti of Jerusalem who was a friend of Hitler. And the other one by Kasam [PH], the Muslim Brothers’ leader in Palestine, who by the way, was not Palestinian at all. He was Syrian, he had lived in Libya and found that he became something similar to the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. And this is the Hamas wing of the Palestinians. Those fanatics have simply terrorized, murdered and terrorized the peace party among the Palestinians and that’s one of the roots of the problem we have now.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

But one of the things that they’ve drawn, I think you’d agree, Michel, is this authority of the faith. That they are practicing the true faith and that everybody else has to conform. And that they’re supported in doing so by, you know, al-Azhar University and various imams who are the designated senior officials in Saudi Arabia and the like and let me just turn, if I can, to one of the other places where we’re seeing the true threat posed to the dar al-harb. The Western world or Western Civilization. Manifesting itself as these jihadists of various stripes work their will. And that is in the form of anti-Semitism. You have been following this very closely, have written books on the subject and countless articles. Give us quickly, if you would, Michel, your appreciation of how that stands at the moment in Europe and European attitudes towards Israel as well.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

Well, in one word I believe that there is evidence that anti-Semitism has been revived in Europe because of Muslims immigration. Muslim immigrants coming to European countries, Muslim immigrants and their children and their offspring are totally impervious to the moral re-examination of Jewish-Christian – Christian relations that has taken place in the Christian world after the Holocaust, after the Shoah. And the actual presence and growth of candid anti-Semites within Europe has reactivated those, let’s call them native anti-Semites, who are for decades, the past Holocaust decades, didn’t – were very much unwilling to express their views. There has been a phenomenon all over European countries, a kind of alliance, unwritten, unspoken alliance between traditional, let’s call them – I hate calling them Christian anti-Semites because I believe that Christians have done a fantastic job in trying to grow out of anti-Semitism over the past decades, but anti-Semites with a Christian background, between those anti-Semites and the Muslim anti-Semites. Now, of course, and again, you may have many cases of Muslims, European Muslims, or Muslims even in Muslim countries, who resist anti-Semitism. And there are many cases like that. I would like to stress, for instance, one personality like the Algerian writer Sansal who writes in French but still lives in Algeria. And who has been a courageous critic of both jihadis and Arab nationalism and anti-Semitism in the Arab world. And this man who, again, let’s consider the fantastic courage of the man who still insists on living in Algeria and nevertheless, he’s expressing frankly and in a clear-cut way what he really thinks about these evils that are befalling his own nation.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me ask you, though, quickly in closing, Michel, you’ve pointed out to me that there is a sort of irony that on the one hand this anti-Semitic attitude which is manifesting itself, I think, often even in official circles, as a kind of anti-Israel attitude, is in contrast with what seems to be a growing appreciation, shall we say, of Israel’s effective counter-terrorism practices. Quickly, just discuss that if you would.

MICHEL GURFINKIEL:

First of all, I would like to insist that were it not for some kind of brainwashing by many European media, including media that are in fact government controlled media, this is the case of France, for instance, I think that there would be much more natural sympathy in Europe to Israel than there is today. And there is still a very large sector of European public opinion in all European countries who still is very much sympathetic to Israel. But what is important is that in the wake of the new situation, that open war waged by the jihadists against Western countries and European countries, out of necessity so to say, many people now are referring to what they call the Israeli model in combatting and resisting the jihadist onslaught.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

This is, I guess, called being mugged by reality. It changes people’s attitudes rather dramatically. Michel, I am afraid we are hard out of time. This hour has flown by for me and I hope for you and our listeners. I hope that we will have a chance to visit at length on another occasion soon and preferably without the catalyst of some terrible attack. We appreciate tremendously the work that you’re doing. It’s a very courageous kind of work as well in Europe at a time that is increasingly fraught for people who are standing up against and warning of the danger of the jihad. Keep up that good work, my friend, at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute and in your various other outlets on both sides of the pond and come back to us again very soon. I hope that the rest of you will come back to us tomorrow. Same time, same station. Until then, this is Frank Gaffney. Thanks for listening.