We’re all familiar with TV news broadcasts of protest rallies in parts of the Middle East chanting “Down with the USA” and similar slogans.
But a video published by The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s website, takes it one step further.
The July 4 rally brought together a group of Muslims in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria where slogans were chanted promoting the downfall of the U.S. and violence toward Jews.
The thing is, the rally took place not in the Middle East but in The Hague in the Netherlands.
“The anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric at this rally is deeply disturbing," a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League in New York told Aleteia. "Police are justified in taking all legal measures to crack down on European jihadists who want to go to the Middle East, receive terrorist training, and perhaps return to Europe. Such jihadists committed the murders at a Jewish museum in Brussels and a Jewish school in Toulouse.”
“Holding black flags associated with ISIS and with some of their faces covered by black masks and keffiyehs, demonstrators chanted in unison, ‘Down, down USA!’ ‘Down, down Israel!’ and ‘Allahu akbar!’” said The Blaze’s report.
The report continues:
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that demonstrators shouting “menacing slogans” gathered in Schilderswijk, one of the largest immigrant neighborhoods in the Netherlands that has been described in the local media as the Dutch “Shariah triangle.”
The crowd is heard on the video shouting in Arabic, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.”
Khaybar refers to the battle in 629 in which Muslims massacred Jews and later expelled them from the Arabian peninsula town. The historical event is often invoked by anti-Israel protesters.
JTA reported that the group was also protesting Dutch police efforts to locate Muslims who had traveled to or were planning to travel to Syria to join the jihadist group trying to establish a caliphate in the Middle East and beyond. Protesters were heard describing local police activity as “terror and intimidation.”
European officials have voiced alarm at the large number of Muslim youths raised in the West who have disappeared to Syria where they gain terrorist training and pose a potential future threat to the European home front.
Not only European officials. AP reported that US Attorney General Eric Holder called on European nations Tuesday to deal more aggressively with the threat posed by the thousands of Westerners who have traveled to Syria to join the fighting there.
"In a speech for Norwegian diplomats in Oslo, Holder encouraged European countries to pass laws that make it illegal to prepare for or plan an act of terrorism; to conduct undercover operations to identify individuals planning a trip to Syria; to better share information and data with the U.S. and other countries about foreign fighters; and to develop programs to counter radical extremism," the AP report said.
"This is a global crisis in need of a global solution. The Syrian conflict has turned that region into a cradle of violent extremism," Holder said in his speech, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. "But the world cannot simply sit back and let it become a training ground from which our nationals can return and launch attacks. And we will not."
Intelligence officials believe there are roughly 7,000 foreign fighters in Syria, including dozens of Americans, the attorney general said in the speech, which was at the U.S. ambassador’s residence.
In May, a 22-year-old man from Florida carried out a suicide bombing mission in Syria. A Colorado woman who authorities say was intent on waging jihad in the Middle East was arrested in April as she boarded a flight she hoped would ultimately get her to Syria, according to court documents unsealed last week.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently ordered the Transportation Security Administration to call for extra security measures at some international airports with direct flights to the United States. American intelligence officials said earlier this week that they have picked up indications that bomb makers from Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula have traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there.
And today we celebrate...