Jan. 8, 2009 Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Arab regimes secretly rooting for Israel? Larry Elder: Israelis and Palestinians: Who's David, Who's Goliath? Jeff Jacoby: Yes, it's anti-Semitism Jan. 7, 2009 Jonah Goldberg: Who are the real Nazis? Anne Applebaum: Pointless Peace Proposals Jan. 6, 2009 Caroline B. Glick: Iran's Gazan diversion? Dennis Prager: Dissecting Dershowitz Jan. 5, 2009 Mark Steyn: Gaza has its version of rocket scientists Mona Charen: The So-called International Community Jan. 2, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Having a holy tongue Caroline B. Glick : Hamas' march to victory Dec. 31, 2008 Dore Gold: Is Israel Using 'Disproportionate Force'? Renee Enna:: Succulent 'stewp' is quick, easy fix Dec. 30, 2008 Jonathan Mark: Israel's Response Is Disproportionate Wesley Pruden: It's time once more to blame the Jews Dec. 29, 2008 Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Chanukah: 'Give me Judaism or give me death' Michael B. Oren: A crisis and an opportunity Dec. 26, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: When the past meets the future Caroline B. Glick: Iran and Hamas do Christmas Dec. 24, 2008 Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Judaism's Santa problem The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman CHANUKAH FORK-FINGER FOOD FEAST Dec. 23, 2008 Caroline B. Glick: Repeating failure in Gaza Dec. 22, 2008 Rabbi Boruch Leff: Too many Jews today are missing the intended purpose of one of Judaism's most beloved holidays Barry Rubin: Liar, liar, pants on cease-fire Dec. 19, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Final Battlefield Caroline B. Glick: Betting on a dead horse Dec. 18, 2008 The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Juicy Chef's hella top, hella bottom, hallelujah in the middle Craig Crossman : More gifts for geeks --- and those who love them Dec. 17, 2008 Dion Nissenbaum: Israel kicks out outrageously biased UN official Craig Crossman : Gifts for geeks --- and those who love them Dec. 16, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: The Gift of Joy Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Uncle Shariah Dec. 15, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Expert witnesses who put themselves first Barry Rubin: What they say isn't what you hear Dec. 12, 2008 Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Can the Bible be a secular language? Caroline B. Glick: What a PM Netanyahu faces from Washington Dec. 11, 2008 Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Our role in the Divine's global corporation, World Inc. The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: A retro-tasting pareve pot pie made with a light hand Dec. 10, 2008 Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn: Groom admits he was caught "red handed" Kara McGuire: No money for gifts? No problem Dec. 9, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Can I make my boss treat me fairly? Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Next Steps in the Indo-Pakistani Crisis Dec. 8, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: 'Chanukah Bush' flap and graciousness Mark Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable Dec. 5, 2008 Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Truth --- The Key to Gratitude Jeff Jacoby: UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 7, 2005 /5 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766 Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands By Mark Steyn http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February. Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.'' ''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois. The notion that Texas neo-con arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness. The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. — as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' — or ''the Hammer.'' Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was ''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.'' Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman. They're in Brussels, where Belgian police officers are advised not to be seen drinking coffee in public during Ramadan, and in Malmo, where Swedish ambulance drivers will not go without police escort. It's way too late to rerun the Battle of Poitiers. In the no-go suburbs, even before these current riots, 9,000 police cars had been stoned by ''French youths'' since the beginning of the year; some three dozen cars are set alight even on a quiet night. ''There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,'' said Michel Thooris of the gendarmes' trade union Action Police CFTC. ''We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting.'' What to do? In Paris, while ''youths'' fired on the gendarmerie, burned down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic. A few years back I was criticized for a throwaway observation to the effect that ''I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." But this is why. In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, these young men are less assimilated than their grandparents. French cynics like the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, have spent the last two years scoffing at the Bush Doctrine: Why, everyone knows Islam and democracy are incompatible. If so, that's less a problem for Iraq or Afghanistan than for France and Belgium. If Chirac isn't exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren't doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn 'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Mark Steyn is North American Editor of The (London) Spectator. Comment by clicking here. Mark Steyn Archives STEYN'S LATEST "The Face of the Tiger and Other Tales from the New War."   In this collection of essays, Mark Steyn considers the world since September 11th - war and peace, quagmires and root causes, new realities and indestructible myths. Incisive and witty as ever, Steyn takes on "the brutal Afghan winter", the "axels of evil", the death of Osama bin Laden and much more from the first phase of an extraordinary new war. Sales help fund JWR. © 2005, Mark Steyn