The Derangement of an Estranged Mind

"It [the black pick-up truck] was damaged with blood."

"When they [police] got him [multiple-murder suspect] out of the vehicle, he was laughing." 

:He's really traumatized [the cabbie who had experienced seeing the accused in a mass murder atrocity in London, Ontario drive up to where his cab was parked]. It is terrifying. You're all to yourself."

Hassan Savehilaghi, president, Yellow Taxi London

Nathaniel Veltman, 20, in a sketch from his appearance via video from the Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre on Thursday. (Sketch by Pam Davies)

 

So traumatizing that the man hasn't returned to work yet, taking time off to collect himself. He had conveyed what he had seen and experienced to his supervisor at Yellow Taxi London. And asked Hassan Savehilaghi to speak on his behalf. He had been parked outside a mall, taking a coffee break on Sunday. The cabbie, seeing the front end of the pickup truck bloodied had the impression the vehicle was likely in a hit-and-run. He called 911. Still speaking with a police dispatcher, the cabbie saw a cruiser passing and ran to flag it down.

Almost simultaneous to this officer pulling into the parking lot, police reinforcements arrived expeditiously to make an arrest of the man who was seen to be wearing what looked like a bulletproof vest, topped by a headpiece resembling a military helmet. The cabbie felt certain he had seen swastikas on the helmet. And he definitely saw, he told his supervisor, that the man whom the police invited to exit the truck, laughed, asking the cabbie to record his arrest.

"Nate is not a radical terrorist. He is nothing like that. He is not an Islamophobe. That's not who this kid is."

"He wasn't an extreme Christian. He never seemed to hate people. He never said anything hateful. It seems completely out of his character."

"Nate was a very close friend and never said anything bad to me."

A friend, originally from the Middle East

"[Nate] never said anything 'hateful' about any groups."

"He's Christian and has a great relationship with God. He was always pretty calm toward other people."

"He seemed broken up over it [the death of a family member] on Friday. That's the last time I saw him."

"He's not a violent guy. He's a bit high-strung sometimes, but other than that, he's a good guy. He gets along with everybody at work."

Another friend and co-worker

"The management and staff of Grey Ridge Eggs were shocked and saddened to learn late Monday afternoon that Nathaniel Veltman ... has been arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder."

"We join our community in expressing our condemnation of this violent attack and offer our heartfelt sympathy to the family and the Muslim community."

William Gray, chief executive, Gray Ridge Eggs

A memorial at the scene of the attack, at the intersection of Hyde Park Road and South Carriage Road in London, Ont., after a Muslim family was hit by a truck. Four of the five died. (Greg Bruce/CBC)

 

That a violently horrific event took place in London, Ontario on Sunday is indisputable. A family of five people, out on their regular daily evening walk on a balmy late-spring evening had stopped at an intersection for the traffic light to change so they could cross the street. As they stood there, 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, 44-year old Madiha Salman, 15-year-old Yumna, 74 year-old Talat Afzaal -- parents, daughter, grandmother, among whom walked 9-year-old Fayez, a black truck appeared as though out of nowhere, sped over the curb and directly hit the family. 

 

The little boy, Fayez, the only survivor, though seriously injured will be in hospital for quite some time.

 

The driver, a 20-year-old man known by his neighbours to be an introvert, living alone in his unit, a white man who played video games with the sound on loud, at all hours, sufficiently so to annoy another neighbour, mother of a young child, disturbed enough by the noise to repeatedly demand he be more considerate of others. Typical behaviour for a young man, actually. He is the man who was arrested and charged with four counts of murder, another of intent to murder. 

 

And because the family was Pakistani-Canadian, members of the London Muslim community. collective minds leaped forward to a targeted slaughter of those of the Islamic faith. Quite possibly they were a random choice because they just happened to be there at that unfortunate time. Victims-in-waiting for a a final chapter of their lives brought to them by a possibly diseased mind.

 

Everyone, from the police service, the city's mayor, news media, the provincial premier and the prime minister instantly condemned Islamophobia for another terrorist attack by a white supremacist. Condemnation was gravely asserted, communities across Ontario commiserated not only over an incomprehensible act of mass murder, but one that targeted Muslims. A horrible, inexplicable act of hatred by someone tainted with Islamophobia. 

 

 

Paranoia and fear and victimhood expressed from within the Muslim community. From representatives of the London mosque, Muslim community members, people interviewed in the street, trembling with apprehension and terror that Canada, and London where the Muslim community has long settled is no longer safe for people of the Islamic faith. Canada, a racist country. People spoke of having left Pakistan where their lives were endangered as Muslims, for haven in Canada, a free and equal country. 

Muslims fearful of life in Pakistan, a Muslim country? Finding that Canada, after all, is not the beacon of hope they had sought and gained? In Pakistan Christians are sentenced to death should they defame Islam or Prophet Mohammad. There are minor Muslim sects which the dominant Sunni Muslim majority view with contempt and hatred and who are persecuted in Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan. Perhaps this is what drove those who spoke of emigrating from Pakistan for personal safety.

They did find the right country to offer them a new life. Canada is not a racist country. It was just that, at one time, but it is no longert. There are among Canadians as there are everywhere in the world people who are bigoted racists, people who hate those not like themselves -- people of colour, people of different backgrounds, religions, cultures, heritage. But by and large Canadians are tolerant and accepting of others. Much of that lies in the very fact that Canada is basically a country of immigrants; first, second, third generation.

There exists in all societies, sociopaths, psychopaths, people with severe mental illness, some of whom act on unpleasant impulses, some of whom become dangerous to themselves and to others. This man responsible for the death of four good people, talented, highly educated, a credit to their values and religion appears not to have been a hater, merely an introvert and possibly a severely troubled one. No one saw in him a potential killer. Reality is that somehow he became one.

What is passing strange is the leap to judgement over instantly assessing the carnage that ensued as the work of an Islamophobe. Strange, in that whenever an Islamist act of carnage, a terrorist atrocity takes place, authorities go to great pains to warn not to attribute such acts as reflective of Islam; fair enough, nor to characterize it as an act of Islamist terrorism, until that it indeed is, can no longer be denied. Yet here, in this dreadful instance, the leap to condemn an Islamophobic act of terror was instant.

One of Nathaniel Veltman's friends who found it incomprehensible that he could be capable of such violence, who attested to his never having expressed contempt or hatred for any identifiable group on religious, ethnic or cultural grounds, spoke of having been in his new Dodge Ram with him, when the steering seemed off. He was experiencing difficulties with the steering of his vehicle. "I actually drove with him on Thursday", his friend and co-worker said. 

There is much yet to know about this miserable event that deprived four people of their lives, that deprived a little boy of his sister, mother, father and grandmother. As for the military-style 'helmet' and the 'armoured' vest the man was wearing when he was arrested -- earlier on Sunday during a day shift when he showed up for work before the fatal attack that would take place that night, Veltman was involved in a competitive shooting game somewhat like paintball, using soft pellets.

A line of police officers look for evidence at the scene of a car crash in London, Ontario on Monday, June 7, 2021. Police in London, Ont., say four people have died after several pedestrians were struck by a car Sunday night. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Robins

French Values, Islamofascist Response

Candles are lit at a makeshift memorial as people gather to pay homage to Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was beheaded on the streets of the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, as part of a national tribute, in Nice, France, October 21, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo

"It’s as if the students are the mouthpiece for thinking that does not come from them ... but from people who want to impose a religious identity that keeps getting a little stronger."

Delphone Girard, French teacher since 2004 

"I self-censored a lot on issues around laicite. I felt a real hatred for French values."

"[After the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack] We held a minute's silence[in her class] and I moved on. I was cowardly."

Anonymous High School teacher

Secularism has a long history in Quebec dating from 1905, following anticlerical differences with the Catholic Church. It was then enshrined in French law, and the nation's national curriculum was created to provide the framework for the new education system. In its guidance to teachers, they are directed to websites recommending appropriate teaching materials and lesson plans. 

Samuel Paty, threatened with a fatwa  EPA

For lessons for 13-year-olds in Middle School on freedom of expression, such as the one taught by history teacher Samuel Paty, one common suggestion is the Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoons, to give context to the lesson of free speech. And it was just those very cartoons that set off a maelstrom of heated demands from some of the parents of his pupils in the middle class area of Paris where Mr. Paty's school was located.

After that class concluded, where he had beforehand suggested to his Muslim students that they were free to absent themselves from the class if they felt they would be upset over the use of the cartoons, parents of the students were informed of what had transpired, and one in particular began a campaign of lobbying the school administration for the teacher's immediate dismissal. The parent also produced a video condemning and identifying the teacher.

Mr. Paty was also the recipient of violent threats. All of which culminated in a young refugee of 18 of ethnic Chechen heritage, born in Moscow, deciding to avenge the Prophet Mohammad for the unforgivable act of insulting the divine nature of the prophet by parodying his message of sacred divinity. By beheading the teacher, his assailant satisfied himself that he had dispatched his duty to Islam.

Boasting of his success by sending a grisly, macabre photograph of the slain man with a message of triumphant satisfaction to French President Emmanuel Macron, the supreme infidel of France, the country that had granted the Russian-Chechen family haven. Some teachers in France admit to their level of intimidation leading them to censor what they say and do in their classes in a country where the given name 'Mohammad' is common among Muslim families.

 

The scene of the killing has been sealed off and investigation is under way   Getty Images

 

From primary school teachers to high school teachers, a wary mindset has prevailed for decades, and some profess to not having been entirely surprised that one of their own had been violently butchered by an enraged Muslim Islamofascist. Primary school teachers, fearful of giving offence to Muslim children refrain from reading the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs, lest a backlash ensue. Religious satire in particular gets a wide pass from history teachers.

But not, it was seen in a vicious Muslim community reaction, from the mosques and societies and groups enshrining Muslim values above those of the country they are citizens in, when one French history teacher chose to use the Prophet-mocking cartoons as a prop to help get his message across that in France, nothing is particularly sacred, and certainly not extreme religious values in a country that cultivates its secular character. 

 

History teacher Maxime Reppert, resorted to reason when expressing his opinion, a quality of intelligent perspective utterly absent from the emotions that belief in the almighty instills in the  faithful, when he declared: "Caricatures are not Mein Kampf. They are not a call to incite hate." But under Sharia law and in the minds of the fundamentalist Muslim population they are just that, and more.

“Should I bring this up with my students when they return, with a caricature of the Prophet to hand? [Silence, she continued, might be worse]."

"Today I am afraid. But even more so of what could become of such horrors if we let this fear interfere in the debate."

French art teacher, name withheld

That terrifying fear of consequences is called terrorism.

 

Flowers have been left at the school where the murdered man taught   Getty Images

 

Islamist Terrorism in France

"This evening, it's the Republic which is under attack with the despicable assassination of one of its servants, a teacher."

"Our unity and our resolve are the only responses, faced with the monstrosity of Islamist terrorism."

French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer

"A citizen has been murdered today because he was a teacher and because  he taught freedom of expression."

"The whole country stands behind its teachers. Terrorists will not divide France, obscurantism will not win."

French President Emmanuel Macron

 

France, its leaders appear not to have noticed -- has already been divided. Long since. Any society that is riven as France is, by a religious devotion so fundamentally extreme that a segment of the population views others with supreme contempt, and holds itself apart from the majority, has been divided. Divided means that in enclaves specific to certain ethnic/religious/tribal groups, other citizens of France dare not enter for to do so is seen as an unacceptable intrusion and there are consequences for such intrusions.

Consequences that municipal and federal services are not spared. Public emergency workers like police and firefighters, much less ambulance paramedics enter at their own risk. And the risk is high for the population within seethes with rage and hatred. It also seethes with crime and criminal activities. Not the least of which are plots against the Republic. From time to time episodes of contemptful rage rise front and center through the night-time bonfires of vehicles, a tradition of the banlieues.

But there are also much more life-destructive rampages where atrocities by Islamofascist groups target symbols of the Liberty, Equality and Fraternity that allowed them entry to the country of freedom and opportunity. As when nightclubs and sports arenas, piquant newspaper and magazine enterprises, along with Jewish businesses and synagogues are targeted, when shouts of 'Allahu Akbar' ring out presaging violent attacks.

 

People gathered at the site of the attack on Saturday. The 18-year-old suspect was shot to death by police on Friday, about 600 metres from where the teacher died. (Charles Platiau/Reuters)

 

In the aftermath of which a magazine known for its irreverence to all that take themselves seriously, and which paid the ultimate price for its casual but determined airing of Islamist-insulting cartoons of Mohammad, led Charlie Hebdo to write: "Intolerance has crossed a new threshold and does not seem to give ground to anything in imposing its terror on our country." Rather understated, given the recent history of Islamism in France and Belgium.

In a classic episode of trust in law and order and commitment to one of the Republic's most prized qualities of free speech entitlements, A middle-school teacher, 47-year-old Samuel Paty in Conflans Sainte-Honorine, a suburb north-west of Paris, invited his Muslim students to temporarily leave the classroom, advising them that what he was about to discuss and illustrate might be distressing to them. Those who chose to remain in the class were treated to a 'disrespectful' image of the Prophet Mohammad.

That teacher paid for his belief in the sanctity of free speech in a free country, through the classic Islamist penalty of beheading when an enraged young man still in his teens, incited by his indignant father, attacked and slaughtered the teacher, after having asked pupils exiting the school at the end of the school day, to identify the teacher for him. The young man had loitered around the school causing someone to alert police, but their arrival was too late to prevent the murder.

 

When the assassin's phone was examined there was a text wherein he claimed exultantly that he had succeeded what he set out to accomplish; penalize a teacher who had exposed students to the unthinkable, a disrespectful cartoon of Mohammad. Along with the text was the victim's photograph illustrating the depth of the unspeakable the faithful will go to in pursuit of their mission. A Twitter account in the name Abdoulakh A posted the decapitated head following the attack: "I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Muhammad down".

 

When the murderer turned his knife to threaten police, he was shot repeatedly and died soon afterward. Members of his family were taken into custody for questioning. In fact, police were tardy in other ways since the teacher had received a number of death threats, and in retrospect it might have been a good preventive measure to post a guard to protect him from retribution for showing his pupils cartoons assaulting the divine status of Prophet Mohammad.

Born in Moscow of a Chechen family, the 18-year-old attacker was spurred not only by his fundamentalist faith but also by his father's incitement. A young girl student in the family had reported back to her family the class discussion of freedom of speech where the Mohammad cartoons were being illustratively used. She reported back in evident distress to her family. Her father posted a video stating his daughter to be shocked and upset by the teacher's class in speech freedom in France. 

The paterfamilias posted the teacher's name, the school, and the teacher's home address, agitating for others to join  his protest to remove the teacher from his teaching position, by posing pressure on school authorities who had already dismissed the man's demands when he had approached them directly on an earlier occasion. President Macron plans to combat "Islamist separatism", speaking of Islam as "a religion that is in crisis all over the world" with problems stemming from a "very strong hardening" among Muslim views of Islam's relationship with the world at large.

It is not, however, 'Islamist separatism' that should concern France; that is the issue that concerns China. France (and Europe and much of the rest of the world) is faced with an Islamofascist agenda of conquest, of raising the flag of Islam everywhere; it is an ambition exemplified by Turkey's Islamofascist Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his Islam-first war with all non-Islamic countries, in his relish of the phrase, "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers".

 

Girls light candles on Saturday outside the school where a slain history teacher worked in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris. French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an 'Islamist terrorist attack' against the teacher, who was decapitated on Friday, urging the country to unite against extremism. (Michel Euler/The Associated Press)

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What Would the Reverend Martin Luther King Say?

"It breaks my heart to see what happened yesterday. I used the term anti-Semitism, and I do believe it is a hate crime. I do believe that the information that we have at this time supports that."
"[Video evidence from the shooting makes it] clear [the Kosher Supermarket was] targeted [by the shooters]."
"My sentiment is that it should be viewed as a hate crime. There's no question it was an attack on the Jewish community."
"Hate and anti-Semitism have never had a place [in Jersey City]."
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop

"We can't let the horrible hate go on and threaten us. It's too late already. The hate that springs up all over, now cut short lives so close to home."
"[Task forces between law enforcement, community groups and Jewish leaders should be created to] foster love, stop hate and intercept and take action against haters before it's too late."
United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn

"Our community has been terrorized once again by violent anti-Semitism."

"From Pittsburgh to Poway, and now to Jersey City, the disease that is anti-Semitism has clearly spread to epidemic proportions."

"But we will not be defeated, we will not stand down, we will not be intimidated."
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO, Anti-Defamation League

Police say Anderson, right, started firing seconds after exiting a stolen vehicle

"[Tuesday's deadly kosher market attack and the killing of a detective in New Jersey are being investigated as acts of domestic terrorism] fueled by both anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs."
"[Social media accounts believed linked to the shooters] espouse certain viewpoints." 
"[Investigators think all three slain victims in the store] were shot ... within minutes of the shooters entering the store."
"But for the actions of [police], they [the attackers] could have done more."
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal

Jersey City police Detective Joseph Seale, a father of five, and veteran police officer, was shot to death at Jersey City Bayview Cemetery as he approached a stolen vehicle that was known to have been involved in a previous murder. The shooters fled the cemetery driving a stolen U-Haul van five minutes away, parking it mid-street, directly across from the Jersey City Kosher Market. As they exited the van, first David Anderson, 47, followed by Francine Graham, 50, shooting immediately and directly toward the market, people panicked and scattered from the direct area, though the shooters were evidently not interested in them.

They were focused directly on their target, the kosher market and those within it. Three people who were in the market at the time, the store's co-owner, Mindy Ferencz, 31, whose husband was in a small synagogue next to their market was shot to death. Also lethally shot was a customer, 24=year-old Moshe Deutsch, and Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, an employee of the kosher market. One other man, another customer who had been in the store and had been shot, escaped to alert police.

Police arrived on scene 20 minutes after the attack began, around noon, and almost four hours later the shooting was finally over. For almost four hours shots rang out on the street as police and the killers exchange fire. When police finally entered the shop the two killers were dead and all five bodies lay amount hundreds of shell casings.

Motivation for the atrocity seemed obvious enough to those close to the scene. But authorities as usual, hesitated to call it a hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism, rather than a random crime scene.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop immediately identified the attack for what it was, an anti-Semitic terror attack. One of the killers had earlier posted messages online that left no doubt that he was motivated by both anti-Semitism and anti-police hatred.

And it didn't take long to link Anderson with the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.The Black Hebrew Israelite movement is united by the belief that African-Americans are the true descendants of biblical-era Jews, and anti-Semitism appears to be shared among them as well; Jews as imposters to Black Judaic heritage.

 

Street cameras close to the kosher shop clearly show the van pull up, a man emerging holding two rifles who "began firing from the street into the facility." Police who happened to be nearby on duty responded to a call for help, met with high-powered rifle fire and returned fire. For hours. Two officers were sent to hospital with superficial wounds. At 3:25 p.m. an armoured police vehicle rammed into the store; 22 minutes afterward there was no more shooting. When police later investigated the van they discovered a pipe bomb, along with two more rifles.

Schoolchildren were locked down in their nearby schools until late in the afternoon, when the shooting ceased, the attackers dead.

People from the neighbourhood converged around the scene of the tragedy. Some were overhead to complain of the presence of Jews having moved there in the last number of years, from Brooklyn. The neighbourhood, some complained, had never seen this kind of criminal shooting before; the Jews had brought it with them. Their children were locked down in their school classrooms because of the presence of Jews. 

 

The two shooters were Black. The hateful comments came from Black neighbours of the Jewish community.

Thousands of Orthodox Jewish men crowded Rodney Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Rocking the Appeasement Boat

"[Muslims] may have been the victims today, usually they are the perpetrators."
"The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today, is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place."
"Australians are facing dangerous African gangs and Muslim terrorists more and more frequently. We need castle doctrine and the right to bear arms so law abiding citizens can defend themselves against these murderous criminals."
"Another weekend of African gang violence in Australia. Africans sexually assaulting and bashing innocent women. This is disgusting behaviour that continues to occur more and more frequently as Legislators, Police and the Courts do nothing." 
Australian Senator Fraser Anning

Seventeen-year-old William Connolly beaks an egg on the head of Australian Senator Fraser Anning Saturday. The Associated Press

"I would normally not want to give this any oxygen, but I want to absolutely and completely denounce the statements made by Senator Anning ... on this horrendous terrorist attack, with issues of immigration, in his attack on Islamic faith specifically."
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison

"We call on the Australian government to assist in demanding a resignation from this man who blames victims for their own violent deaths, and uses references to genocide to further his hateful agenda."
"There is no place for bigotry. There is no place for hate speech."
Petition, Kate Ahmad Sydney, Harris Sultan, Melbourne

So a Senator in Australia becomes the victim of a teen who wants to post a video of himself starring in a role of avenger of scurrilous remarks about immigrants to Australia and New Zealand and finds himself penalized by said victim who reacts by pummelling him in return. An ego-driven kid with a cellphone and the opportunity to seek instant fame and notoriety by seizing the day stalking and opportunistically victimizing a parliamentarian to demonstrate how audaciously bold he is respecting no authority other than that he anticipates from social media, is defended - the senator mocked.

Of course Senator Anning did the unthinkable -- to provoke this kid's attention selecting him as a target -- by invoking the ideology of Islamism and the culture of lawlessness and violence that accompanies it, infiltrating Western democracies. Which would not of course, had spurred attention had it not occurred in the wake of a horrendous atrocity carried out by a non-Muslim psychopath against innocent Muslims worshipping at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The very name of the city invokes irony under the circumstances.

No one in their right mind would deny the barbarism of the attack, deliberately staged to slaughter innocent people to make an ideological statement which in the end demonstrates that hatred and violence and the wish to slaughter other human beings is the monopoly of Islamist jihadists. But the simple fact remains, attested to by the reality that jihadist attacks vastly outnumber any retributive attacks by non-Muslims, that it is violence carried out by Muslims against others of their faith and against Western democracies and non-Muslims that presents a global terrorist blight.

Anyone who protests against the continuing assault by Muslims actively involved in carrying out the Koranic-prescribed imperative of jihad by any and all means for the avowed purpose of religious-political-ideological conquest in view of the irrefutable reality of attacks around the globe, is held to a standard that the UN-based Organization for Islamic Cooperation would like to have enshrined in law as "Islamophobic", with attendant penalties. The migration of 'refugees' from Africa bringing with them societal criminal violence represents yet another aggravation.

The petition now going the rounds, initiated by a Sydney doctor and a Melbourne author both of the Muslim faith seeks to silence such critics of Islam as Senator Anning. By pointing out in his inimitable manner that Muslims all too frequently make poor prospects for integrating into Western society, accepting the norms of culture, social contracts and values of Western democracies, he speaks to the reality of the situation, considered unspeakable by Western authorities who prefer appeasement.

The tail, representing Muslim immigrants to Western democracies, by insisting on silencing critics and making it an offence under the law to criticize Islam and its practices, is now wagging the dog.

A little blighter and just desserts

 They Went To Worship: He Came To Kill

"[I would be honored to meet with any U.S. president.] I welcome him as an American. He is the president."

"Hate is not political. It is not blue or red, it’s not male or female, it doesn’t know any of those divisions. The hate rhetoric in our country is a real problem. I’ve seen examples in the last 24 hours. I chose to take the polite and respectful path. . . . Hate is all around us, and people are oblivious to it." "The hateful letters and e-mails about the president are just a renewed reminder of how divisive and painful this is."

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, survivor, Tree of Life Synagogue 

"We find strength in one another. This gunman went in to try and kill as many Jews as possible . . ."

"We will come through this. And hopefully this feeling of community that we all share today can be channeled into each of us doing our part of rooting out hate."

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D)

"The president is the grandfather of several Jewish grandchildren. His daughter is Jewish-American and his son-in-law is the descendant of Holocaust survivors."

"Tomorrow the president and first lady will travel to Pennsylvania to express the support of the American people and grieve with the Pittsburgh community."

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life/Or L'Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh, Monday, Oct. 29, 2018.    By Matt Rourke/AP Photo

Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 87
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69

A 46-year-old man who loved to hate and chose Jews as his very especial target armed himself with a deadly assortment of weapons, a Colt AR-15 rifle and three Glock .357 handguns during an attack on Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday morning, courageously shooting to death eleven elderly Jews engaged in prayer. Once he satisfied his blood-lust and felt his mission to deliver his message was done for the time being he decided to leave. But not just yet, since as he emerged from the synagogue, police officers and a SWAT team arrived, and he decided to re-enter the synagogue.

From the third floor he shot at police who were tasked with public security, not only to arrest his activities, restrain him and arrest and incarcerate him to allow the wheels of justice to begin turning toward a trial, but to evacuate the synagogue of its traumatized occupants, bringing them to safety. And then to assess the situation, where eleven people who had been communing with their God had been shot dead. In the process of confronting this heroic figure of anti-Semitic venom, four police were wounded and two other people as well, all taken to hospital.

One congregant, 90-year-old Joseph Charny, on the second floor of the synagogue. described afterward his experience -- hearing a loud bang from the floor below: "It sounded like some big thing falling over, like a coat rack", he said in an interview. In the pews alongside him, another six to eight worshippers sat, awaiting the arrival of the rabbi to begin the weekly services, all of them very well familiar to Mr. Charny. Suddenly the figure of a man appeared in the doorway and then gunshots rang out.

"I looked up and there were all these dead bodies", he said. "I wasn't in the mood to stay there", and he exited swiftly before any of the bullets could leave him as they had those he knew so well and would no longer speak with again. Concealing himself alongside the rabbi and his assistant in a storage room on the third floor, they heard bullets continuing to fire. "We all knew leaving too soon would have been our deaths. At first I felt numb, then thankful. I don't need to tell  you how terrible this has all been." But he survived that ordeal, his friends did not.

Everywhere that Jews congregate they are aware that they may be targeted. It is perhaps the more visible among congregants, Orthodox Jews, who see the obvious need for security. In the Reform synagogues, with their less visible presence, the attitude was more relaxed in the sense of normal disbelief that harm should come their way simply because they are Jews, and because they gathered in a house of worship to speak with God. It is, after all, inconceivable to most people that identifying themselves and their religious devotion represents a red flag of vitriolic hatred so deadly it could mean their death.

But it can and it does. And as Jews all over the world last Saturday gathered in synagogues and temples and any other type of normal social gathering became instantly alert to the atrocity that took place in Pittsburgh they knew it could have been where they were located. And it still can, any day of the week. They are Jews, after all, and from time immemorial Jew-haters and Jew-baiters have awaited their opportunity to muster the courage it would take to confront elderly Jews with lethal weapons.

And here in Canada, Jews are taking stock. "As a precaution [Saturday], police across the country signalled to us that they would immediately increase front line police presence in Jewish neighbourhoods and around Jewish community institutions which will likely continue for the next few days", announced Martin Sampson, vice-president of communications and marketing for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. "There is nothing whatsoever to indicate an increased security threat to Canadian Jews."

For the time being.

Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood following the shooting

 The Dire Inevitability of Anti-Semitism

"We simply cannot accept this violence as a normal part of American life."
"These senseless acts of violence are not who we are as Pennsylvanians and are not who we are as Americans."
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, Pittsburgh

"I'm afraid to say that we may be at the beginning of what has happened to Europe, the consistent anti-Semitic attacks."
"If it is not nipped in the bud, I am afraid the worst is yet to come."
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder, dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center

"It's a terrible, terrible thing what's going on with hate in our country and frankly all over the world, and something has to be done."
"The results are very devastating. [Had the temple] had some kind of protection, it could have been a much different situation."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"By the time I got there they [police officers and SWAT team] were already starting to extract people."
"Watching those officers  running into the dangers to remove people and get them to safety was unbelievable."
Chief Scott Schumbert, Pittsburgh police

Violence, despite Governor Wolf's stated assurances otherwise, is very much a part of American life, and it is becoming normalized within a society which politics has rent asunder and among whom bipartisanship has become increasingly viciously expressed and acted on. But this is not the dysfunction of mere politics, a topic that most people in society tend to disagree on, and usually with a modicum of discretionary remove. This is another sentiment altogether, a viral disease of the spirit that too often turns deadly as it did at the Tree of Life Synagogue early Saturday morning in Pittsburgh.

Just as the scourge of anti-Semitism has regained traction throughout Europe, it has gone beyond its usual foothold in the United States, home to the largest segment of diaspora Jews, second only to Israel itself. Just as anti-Semitism's volume was reduced following the Second World War and the devastation of the Holocaust entered the global conscience, it has risen in lock-step with the introduction into Europe and North America of Islamic populations from the Middle East and Africa bringing their own brand of heritage anti-Semitism with them to re-infect and retrench.

That brand re-ignited the remnants reduced to ashes to become the flames of a new anti-Semitism and it found a ready audience, more than eager to hold aloft the scorching hatred of Jews that remained alive within the old embers of anti-Semitism. The 46-year-old gunman who, carrying his weapons of choice against an unarmed congregation of elderly religionists was able to quickly kill eleven before the entrance of police. Police responded within a minute of the emergency call, the SWAT team arriving just as the killer emerged.

FBI agent Robert Jones, assigned to Pittsburgh, spoke of the atrocity that took place within the Tree of Life synagogue as the "most horrific crime scene" he had encountered in 22 years of service with the federal Bureau, where the innocent elderly, guilty of being Jews, were "brutally murdered by a gunman targeting them simply because of their faith". Of course, because the assault took place in a synagogue, those Jews were targeted because of their faith. But not all Jews are religious; many more are secular Jews, and it is not their faith that distinguishes them for carnage, but their origins.

When a Jewish organization, HIAS, planned a sabbath ceremony for refugees in various places around the country, this venomous hater posted a link to the Jewish website, his caption reading: "Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among  us?" Then later added just as he planned the assault on the synagogue: "HIAS likes  bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I'm going in."

Primitive and deadly.

Rapid reaction SWAT members leave the scene of the mass shooting on Saturday

Is He Muslim? Was He Mad? Was He ISIL Besotted? Perish The Thought!

Video posted on social media showed Hussain clad in black, firing at least three shots into a cafe or restaurant. (@ArielAnise/Twitter)

"Is he Muslim? Yes. Does he probably know Muslim extremists? Yeah. Is he mentally ill? Yeah, probably."
"Does he have access to guns from the guys in his neighbourhood? Yeah. But be real careful what road you go down."
"We may never know what was going on in his mind."
Toronto Police Services source

"Friends of mine, who I respect, say I don't have enough sympathy for disturbed people who wreak havoc. And I'm sure they're right. But it's hard for me not to have those feelings."
"For every one of me there are 500 people who say, 'oh, it's the total explanation'. Maybe they're right. I don't know."
"But I tried to argue mental illness was not a very satisfactory explanation for this kind of thing and all it does is stigmatize the mentally ill."
Memorial University anthropologist, researcher, Elliott Leyton

Dr. Leyton, who wrote the book Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, added his voice to the perplexing and inexplicable hatred that drives Islamists to erupt from time to time into warriors of Islamofascist jihad. It's doubtful he would use that nomenclature; as an academic he cannot afford to. He must retain some semblance of neutrality, not to condemn a sacred book, the Koran, and its instructions to the faithful to remember their duty to jihad, and to kill the infidels and the Jews.

But he gives little credit to the controversy steered toward discussions of gun control and mental illness by authorities careful not to stir the pot of Muslim clerics' Friday night sermons and the exhortations to remain faithful to Koranic precepts in honour of the exemplar of holy war, the Prophet Mohammad. Sunday night saw carnage on Toronto's Greektown when Danforth Avenue was turned into a killing spree leaving a ten-year-old girl and an 18-year old woman dead, with thirteen others wounded to varying degrees when Faisal Hussain stalked the streets coolly and with malice aforethought shooting the unaware and the helpless.

His firearms proficiency and studied demeanor indicate a well-planned execution. A 29-year-old loner, polite, restrained whom neighbours described as quiet, shy, reserved, having a "million-dollar smile", and whom his family described as someone who was forced to cope with a life of "struggle and pain" who decided to turn his contempt for others into a massacre, disrupting a quiet, warm evening crowded with passersby, cafe habitues, families out for an evening stroll.

In the process reminding 'pluralist' Toronto whose residents are 42% immigrant stock, that the city is not immune to the shocks that have roiled Europe.

It is undiplomatic, impolite, extremely rude-to-hostile, to make much of his heritage, a tribal, sectarian-infused, violence-inspired religion supported by cultural animus of non-believers and a sturdy anti-Semitism as having any import whatever on the atrocity he set out to burden Toronto with. Those hastening to remind shocked Canadians that they mustn't draw conclusions have no intention of sharing with them that intelligence forces have identified him on a list of suspected ISIS supporters, that he has flirted with that sinister claque of aspiring jihadists, and police surveillance was focused on his past unlawful activities.

We homespun Canadians who don't believe that evil exists, much less that a religious devotion to a Bedouin-inspired theocracy that lifted its infrastructure from Judaism which it holds now as a despicable conspiracy to control and corrupt the world while Islam is concerned with pacifying the world and bringing it to a state of universal peace under a guiding caliphate once those resistant to acknowledging the supremacy of Allah are summarily dealt with cannot conceive of such deep-seated anti-human conspiracy.

There are those among us who have given due warning over the years, their shout-outs of threats that hover over us, shunted aside, whose voices have grown more insistent, louder, as the threats intensified now sigh with frustration that the infiltration of Islamists in secular Canada, as elsewhere throughout the world is now fairly complete, having the sympathetic ear of government agencies recognizing them as the voice of that growing community. Ensaf Haidar and Tarek Fatah look on in disbelief and horror at the smooth manipulation Muslim Brotherhood representatives employ, succeeding in their mission to disarm and misinform.

For we mustn't submit to the unwarranted attitude that Muslims become an uncivil scourge among us though their criminal actions linked to crime, assault, drug gangs, murders of a sectarian nature, finding them overrepresented in numbers, betraying their cultural origins and susceptibility to violent action. And nor must we succumb to the fallacious belief that the Hussain parents who are "really good human beings" could possibly have a son who became an Islamist terrorist seeking to slaughter innocent Torontonians.

A teacher and a former classmate of the man who shot 15 people on a busy Toronto street on Sunday say he made disturbing comments that once prompted a call to police.
Faisal Hussain’s teacher at Victoria Park Collegiate says the school called the police nine years ago after a conversation he had with Hussain in class.
“I asked him, ‘What do you want to do? Like what do you want to do with your life?’” the teacher told CTV Toronto. “And (Hussain) said 'I want to kill someone.'”
The teacher, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he was stunned by Hussain’s comment, and asked him, “'Why, what did they do to you?'”
He says Hussain responded, “No, I just want to kill somebody ... I think it would be cool.”
Police took Hussain into custody and he was investigated under the Mental Health Act, according to the teacher.
CTV News

Faisal Hussain is seen in this Grade 12 yearbook photo.

Calm Throughout the Storm of the Assault

"He tried to fire it [semi-automatic .223-calibre rifle] outside the mosque at two men, but the firearm jammed. That's when he took out a hand-gun and shot Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, and Ibrahima Barry, 39. After they fell, he went to their inert bodies and shot each of them again."
"As the prosecution showed photos of the mosque and his rifle, [Alexandre] Bissonnette watched intently via a large screen about three metres in front of him as he sat in a glass-encased prisoner's dock."
"As one point, the hearing had to be adjourned when Bissonnette reacted as the prosecutor read through reports listing the injuries suffered by the victims. Bissonnette turned his head away from the courtroom and his lawyer said he was not well."
Andy Riga, National Post

About two dozen members of the Muslim community remained in their seats. Others left before the videos from the mosque's security cameras were shown. This was the first day of a sentencing hearing for Alexandre Bissonnette, charged with six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder for his attack on January 29, 2017 of the Centre Culturel Islamique de Quebec in Quebec City. Since he has pleaded guilty to all charges there will be no trial. The sentencing hearing, however has commenced.

And the first of ten videos began by showing 28-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette walking calmly toward the mosque, opening a guitar case and removing and loading a semi-automatic .223-calibre rifle. This is when the two Barry cousins, just leaving the mosque after prayers saw a man with a rifle aiming at them. And then their lives were over. Those within the mosque thought they were hearing firecrackers until they saw an armed man striding toward the door.

Entering by the front door just before 7:55 p.m., holding a handgun after discarding the jammed rifle, he shot and shot repeatedly, emptying a 10-round magazine before reloading. In total reloading four times for a total of 48 rounds. Some in the courtroom who had chosen to remain, to see the videos, watched the silent recordings. To kill six unarmed men and injure many more, it took all of two minutes, start to finish. There were 46 people in the mosque 15 minutes after prayers concluded.

The security cameras recorded Bissonnettte calm throughout the rampage, retreating to a safe area to reload four times, then returning to where he had shot men with the intention of shooting them again, directly in the head, to make certain they were quite dead. Some of the worshippers had fled to the prayer room taking shelter wherever they could, attempting to keep the children present unharmed.

Azzedine Soufiane, a 57-year-old grocer and butcher made an effort to encourage other men to help him stop Bissonnette; in the end he did it himself, rushing the shooter to tackle him, but pinned against a wall, Bissonnette shot Soufiane again and again. Retreated, reloaded, and returned, shooting him again. A Universite Laval professor, Khaled Belkacemi, 60, was shot and killed.

His evening's work done, Bissonnette left and went to sit in his father's car. Twenty minutes later, he dialled 911 to report the incident. The 911 responder told him police were on their way, and tried to calm Bissonnette, asking him to remain on the line, to breathe deeply. Bissonnette was terrified of being shot by police. Stay calm, he was told, keep your hands on the steering wheel, don't behave in a threatening way.

"I was watching TV and I learned that the Canadian government was going to take more refugees, you know, who couldn’t go to the United States, and they were coming here."
"I saw that and I like lost my mind. I don’t want us to become like Europe I don’t want them to kill my parents, my family."
“I had to do something, I couldn’t do nothing. It was something that tortured me. It’s not bad at all what I did."
Alexander Bissonnette, awaiting sentencing in the deaths of six men 

The shooting occurred just after Mr Trump implemented a travel ban Reuters

Something is obviously lost in translation here. In his defense, as a rationale for his dreadful slaughter of innocent people, Alexandre Bissonnette described his fearful mind on feverish overtime after the 2014 attack on Parliament Hill and the 2016 attack on Nice, France, which left 86 people dead. He was certain, he said, that the same thing would happen in Canada. He feared for  himself, for his parents.

And so, this logic-challenged man of compromised intellectual capacity set out to meet the oncoming threat head on.

A Mystery Within An Enigma

"It's not like a manifesto has been discovered that would give us direct insight. When I was a kid, my dad was a teacher. I didn't have any thoughts about crime and fame. Paddock had it modelled for him."
"The further away you are [from your target], the easier it becomes to kill. It becomes more like a video game and less like real life."
"I wonder, and this is more speculative, did his father have that desire for attention. There was celebrity bank robbers. Now we have celebrity mass killers. And so maybe it's a case where the son is kind of taking the contemporary version of that kind of quest for fame."
"[However], it is true that there  are certain mental disorders that increase the risk of suicide that can have a genetic component." 
"To me, the nature of the attack suggests that this is somebody who wanted to lash out, he wanted to, in a big way, but he did not want to risk getting caught. Suicide was his exit strategy."
"The research shows what you might think, which is the closer you are to someone the more resistant or the more difficult it is to harm him or her. You recognize their humanity. It's a more visceral experience, and your conscience is more likely to become a barrier."
Adam Lankford, criminologist, University of Alabama

"[Mass murderers are not necessarily] crazed lunatics [becoming unhinged to indiscriminately kill]. [They are] deliberate, determined to kill."
"You often time find that these men have experienced a history of frustration and failure, which is why oftentimes they're not young, but middle-aged."
"[They externalize blame] which is why when they decide if life isn't worth living, others have to share in their pain as well."
"They are bitter, disappointed, angry, but not mentally ill."
James Alan Fox, professor of criminology, Northeastern University, Boston

"We have no idea what his belief system was. I can't get into the mind of a psychopath."
Joseph Lombardo, Clark County Sheriff

Two criminologists freely give their academic opinions on the possible motivation of a psychopath's carefully planned-out foray into mass murder. They feel a certain degree of confidence in reading the mind posthumously of a pathological social hermit. On the other hand, another kind of professional, whose exposure to criminals and their actions places him directly within their precincts of operation, plainly states he has no insider views on what might possibly motivate such stupendous acts of human atrocity.

The man now known almost globally to have planned and executed this most devastating mass assault in the United States directly causing the deaths of 59 innocent people, and injuring a staggering 520 individuals when he aimed a lethal weapon converted into a machine gun into their crowded space where 22,000 music lovers had gathered for a celebratory music festival succeeded in gaining infamy of a rare and horrendous quality.

He acted out a god-fantasy of immense proportions, claiming for himself the privilege of destroying countless lives; those he killed outright and those suffering the calamity of a murderous assault which may have spared their physical lives but which will haunt their psyches till the tend of their living days. If this man, Stephen Paddock, with his carefully planned and arranged attack to achieve maximum damage, wanted to be noticed and to gain notoriety, he succeeded perhaps even beyond his own expectations.

If he had bonded as a child with his psychopathic criminal father who gained national attention at the top of the FBI's "most wanted" list of criminals for his conscienceless crimes, perhaps his son had set out to outdistance his father's criminal-celebrity record. No one can now deny that he met with great success. That alone may well have been what he lived an exhilarating ten minutes of continuous firing into a vulnerable crowd of people for, content to die having accomplished what he set out to do.

How he managed to conceal and establish 23 high-powered weapons over a four-day period into his 32nd floor hotel suite overlooking the grounds below where the music festival was taking place is perhaps a question of public conscience the people of America will ask of themselves at some date in the near future. Police theorized that ten suitcases were used to smuggle the weapons to his room. That's a lot of hardware. And nothing awry noticed by cleaning staff routinely tidying and making up his bed daily?

Of course he was also described as an "aggressive loner", so possibly he refused room service entirely. He did acquire those weapons legally. He took additional steps to video-record what he set out to do. A record for posterity? As a bloated gloat? As a contribution to the annals of criminality?
The theory advanced that the more distant an attacker is from his target, the more detached he can be in carrying out his deadly plan bypassing the nuisance factor of conscience, somehow doesn't seem to fit the pattern of the man's described attitude toward other people, as someone going out of his way to avoid social contact of even the most insignificant kind.

This killer didn't seem to need a distance between himself and others to encourage him to complete his planned attack; he evinced a total lack of interest in others in even the most casual of encounters. Yet his act of mass murder is so astonishing to a world in which this type of malignancy introduces itself with some degree of regularity, that it's difficult for people to imagine a total lack of humanity in a human psyche. Certainly, his family appears to be of the opinion that there was nothing particularly distinguishing about him that might mark him as a future fugitive from the human race.

"I am devastated about the deaths and the injuries that have occurred and my prayers go out to the victims and their families and all those who have been hurt by these awful events."
"I have faith in God and I will continue to pray for everyone who has been harmed or hurt."
"I am a mother and a grandmother and my heart breaks for all who have lost loved ones."
"I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man. I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together with him."
"He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen."
"Although more than two weeks ago Stephen told me he had found a cheap ticket for me to the Philippines and that he wanted me to take a trip home to see my family. Like all Filipinos abroad, I was excited to go home and see family and friends. While there he wired me money which he said was for me to buy a house for me and my family."
"I was grateful, but honestly I was worried that first the unexpected trip home and then the money was a way of breaking up with me. It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone."
"I have not made a statement until now because I have been co-operating with authorities and I voluntarily flew back to America because I know the FBI and Las Vegas Police Department want to talk with me and I want to talk with them. I will co-operate fully with them. Anything I can do to help ease suffering, I will do."
Marilou Danley, Las Vegas