Belgium must accept failure of its open-border policies
- THE AUSTRALIAN
- SAVE
The EU is reaping what it has sowed. Islamic State’s jihadist attack on the EU’s de facto capital, Brussels, is a direct consequence of lax immigration policy that has produced an Islamist core in Belgium prepared to enact jihadism against the West.
The Belgian ambassador to Australia, Jean-Luc Bodson, has underplayed state culpability for the attacks and claims it is not a reflection of European immigration policy. He is wrong on both counts.
Two months before Belgium was targeted by jihadists, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump warned it had become “a hellhole” because of sharia law advocates who refused to integrate. He was excoriated for it.
Late last year, Tony Abbott urged Europe to adopt a rational border security policy and offered the Australian immigration model as an example. The Left was so upset by the prospect that Europe might see the light, they rushed to defend the lax border policies that are ushering jihadists into the West. The New York Times’ editorial board warned European officials against the Australian model, sowing shameless agitprop under the headline, “Australia’s brutal treatment of migrants”.
In the wake of the Brussels attack, Malcolm Turnbull confirmed the success of the Australian immigration model that combines strong border policy with national security and gives priority to the intake of genuine asylum-seekers from UN refugee camps. The Belgian ambassador reacted rather unproductively. Instead of considering the benefits of the Australian model, he prosecuted the fallacy that there is no link between European refugee policy and Islamist terrorism.
Yet the emergence of pan-European jihadism demonstrates immigration and national security policies are indivisible. Despite Bodson’s claim to the contrary, the jihadists involved in the Paris and Belgium terror attacks have benefited directly from the EU’s open-border and refugee policies. A key planner of the gruesome Paris attacks, Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was a jihadist with Islamic State before re-entering Europe by posing as a refugee. Suicide bomber Ibrahim Abdeslam was a returned jihadist from Syria. Another Paris jihadist entered Europe posing as a refugee under the name Ahmad al-Mohammad. He was reportedly welcomed in refugee camps before slaughtering dozens of innocents in Paris.
The bomb-maker Najim Laachraoui also travelled to Syria in 2013 before returning to Europe with Algerian jihadist Mohamed Belkaid under a false identity.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims that Belgian authorities ignored his country’s warning that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the two Belgian brothers responsible for the latest terrorist attacks, was a returning jihadist.
It is not the first time Belgium’s lax approach to national security has been connected to international jihadism. Two days before 9/11, Tunisian-born Belgian Tarek Maaroufi aided in the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a champion of anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The Belgian government was implicated in the jihadist killing because it had refused Tunisia’s request to extradite Maaroufi on suspicion he belonged to a terrorist group.
In Europe, Belgium is the biggest per capita supplier of jihadists for Syria and Iraq. It appears that for well over a decade, the Belgian government has known about the nation’s Islamist problem.
For example, a 2002 report by the Belgian parliamentary committee of state intelligence services detailed the failure of the state to screen Islamist radicals properly.
The failure was attributed to poor funding, the mistaken belief that Belgian Islamists wouldn’t attack on home soil and officials’ fears of being accused of xenophobia or racism towards immigrants and Muslims.
Brussels developed into a hub for terrorism because of lax immigration policy and the refusal of many politicians to counter the Islamist threat.
But the complex administrative structure of Belgium also impedes the policy cohesion and political bipartisanship required to combat terrorism.
Across Europe, Muslim communities tend to vote Left, which provides an incentive for progressivist politicians to minimise any problems therein and refuse bipartisan alliances with the Right.
A survey for Le Figaro newspaper, for example, found that 93 per cent of French Muslims voted for the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande in 2012.
Hollande continued to defend the open-border policy even after jihadists’ exploitation of it to slaughter French citizens became public knowledge.
The role of Socialist politicians has loomed large in the development of Islamism in Belgium. From 1992 to 2012, the suburb of Molenbeek was governed by socialist mayor Philippe Moureaux. Molenbeek is home to several terrorists implicated in the Paris and Brussels attacks, and Salah Abdeslam was harboured there.
During his term, Moureaux pursued an aggressively open-border position and attacked those who criticised it as racist.
Following the Paris attacks, a former resident of Molenbeek, Teun Voeten, reflected on its demise from a multiculturalists’ dream into a dilapidated monoculture ruled by conformist Islam.
Writing for Politico, he chronicled the closure of Jewish shops, gay persecution and the abuse of women, who were spat at on the streets and called whores.
As a result of the EU’s failure to uphold its primary duty of care to protect law-abiding citizens, the Schengen Agreement on a borderless Europe is all but over.
The European political elite and the Belgian ambassador to Australia should tell the truth about the root causes of the continental jihadist crisis.
The EU’s politically opportunistic approach to immigration coupled with an aggressive open-border policy has facilitated the growth of transnational jihadism as a European condition.
Bodson’s apparent attempt to reframe reality by blaming jihadism primarily on poverty and unemployment rather than European open-border policy is unpersuasive.
He would do well to consider the Australian immigration model rather than dismiss it with the insular attitude long associated with the European political class.
Good article. We're totally fed up with feeble specious arguments from those who will not face reality like the Bodson types.
We have to get serious! I agree. The vetting process of these supposed 12,000 send shivers down my spine. We need to suspend that, hold a stop delay order on it until this mess is sorted. This is all just too serious if they are trying to make dirty nuclear bombs. This is highly highly serious. We don't need politicians more concerned about their own careers than our well being. Blair says it will only get worse. We are dealing with religious fanatics.
Come on Mr Di Natale and Sarah Hanson-Young, what do you have to say about the Green Party's open-border policy for Australia?
"Across Europe, Muslim communities tend to vote Left, which provides an incentive for progressivist politicians to minimise any problems therein and refuse bipartisan alliances with the Right."
Therein lies the rub.
Are there any statistics for this in Australia?
"93 per cent of French Muslims voted for the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande in 2012."
I don't think my conclusion drawn from these statements will be published, but a large part of the silent (maybe silenced!) majority may come to the same conclusion for the politics of the left in Australia as I.
With the rise of Donald Trump I have hope for the first time that the irrational policies pursued by white, western nations since the 70's, will finally be exposed as irrational, and perhaps be overturned.
Multiculturalism was the essential plank in what has been an international plot to get North African Muslims into all these nations, creating a diaspora that was unimaginable before the seventies.
Multiculturalism informed !8C which suppressed any debate on immigration, just as now it supresses debate on changing the age old meaning of the word marriage as still followed by all world religions.
Multiculturalism, by design, subordinates the existing culture so that even cultures with religious laws cannot easily be contained once ensconced and in receipt of welfare state largesse.
Without an iconoclast like Trump, willing to risk all, we would be hamstrung by bipartisanship such that even conservative politicians are afraid to speak out.
In time, Brussels is entirely possible in Sydney, Australia.
There is still time for us.
Europe, as we have known it, is finished.
@Graeme re : Europe finished ... that is what Adolf said !
@Peter @Graeme
Don't quote me and leave out key words.
Your ethics suggest you're a socialist.
Without the Brits, Australia, NZ and latterly the US to help put Europe together again, Europe would have been well and truly finished off by Adolph.
Alot of what everyone says can be whitewashed by .. their ABC!
Theres the problem. Until this behemoth is put under control again, it has too much influence on politics in Australia. Sell the ABC.
Gazza .
The ALA have a policy of privatising SBS, slashing the ABCs budget and getting them back to basics.
They have my vote.
Can I urge everyone to go to U tube and view "Orban's historic speech".
This is not regarded as news in any Australian news outlet that I have found.
Agree or disagree, it is ominous that our news is so obviously censored.
Jennifer says: "Bodson’s apparent attempt to reframe reality by blaming jihadism primarily on poverty and unemployment rather than European open-border policy is unpersuasive".
It is much worse than merely "unpersuasive".
It is a disgraceful, sick joke uttered by some governmental appointee who personally encapsulates all that is wrong in Europe, and which has been wrong for decades.
The words he used confirm that he is so bound up in Political Correctness that his permanently-fitted, rose-coloured welding goggles make it impossible for him to admit the reality that is literally right before his leftard eyeballs: the problem is islam and his nation has spent decades smiling benignly and impotently whiles radical islam has constructed its key European base right in the middle of their capital city.
Ambassador Bodson is so clueless that he wouldn't know that a Melbourne tram was fair up him unless the conductor rang the bell.
When anti immigration parties consistently get 25% support across national elections, the European political elite will become more distant from the people. They are the unrepresentative swill of Europe.
One day some politician will be charged with recklessness & treason
One can only hope.
The EU is about one or two mass casualty events away from an epiphany, alas still many innocents yet to die.
@greg
Good comment.
Eventually, after the "Nth" terrorist attack, even the left will capitulate and admit there is a problem with islam and with muslim enclaves.
This epiphany will happen.
Even Ayer's Rock can be gradually worn away by a constant drip of water.
@Bernie @greg I wish it was true but I don't think it will happen. While the Left's hatred for the West and the US is greater, it will remain silent, or continue to apologise for 'those who wish to do us harm' as the ABC put it. They cannot even bring themselves to name the religion of the perpetrators. Perhaps we should cll the radicals of this religion "Voldemort."
"Poverty and unemployment". That is what happens when your immigrants have neither the skills, the education, the training or the aspiration for 21st century jobs in first world nations. There are few production-line and labouring jobs in Europe for poorly schooled and spoken.
Certainly, idle hands are the devil's plaything ,, but western welfare (particularly if you have many children and/or more than one wife) generates household income far greater than anything they experienced at home ,, and the desire to get a job, pay tax and assimilate simply isn't there.
If you don't set standards -- and enforce them -- regarding who moves to your country to live what chance do you have of attracting high quality citizens (and investment capital)??
The poverty and unemployment of your Arabs is going to get worse not better: and their violence is not going to diminish.
Thank you Jennifer, for your precision accuracy.
Australia please don't elect a socialist government at this critical time in our history!
@David The social-democrats represented by Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis are bad enough. Broadly speaking -- regarding s18C of Australia's Racial Discrimination Act, our politicians fall into two categories --
(1) Libertarian, Classic Liberals and Conservatives who believe the section should be extensively modified.
(2) Social Democrats who believe the section is right fir and proper.
Malcolm Turnbull and Anthony Albanese are on the same page on every single policy.
It is TweedleDee and TweedleDum ,, unless centre-right voters abandon the Liberal Party.
The trouble is that the parties led by MT and BS are Labor-lite and Labor respectively.
Surely the message to come out of the Brussels disasters, for Australia, is obvious. Simply screen the 12,000 Syrian refugees we've committed to accepting (after being able to prove their identity) on the basis of religion: non-Muslims would move to the next level of screening (e.g. criminal record), but Muslims fall at the first hurdle and so must remain in a refugee camp awaiting assistance from another middle eastern (Muslim) country, or perhaps Ms Merkel's tolerant, all-welcoming Germany!
@Richard Spot on Richard , however Peter Dutton has already announced this( last week in Aus).
True Greg,
Good on Peter
Good thought however, how could you be sure of the religion they claim to follow?
The screening must focus on the most persecuted minorities and those that have no prospect of returning. This would include christians, Yazidis and others. It should also focus on family units with both parents plus children. No single young men with no family
The root cause of the worlds drift to becoming progressively more Socialist is simple. Each and nearly every Government endeavours to gain our vote at election time. The only way to do that is to use OUR money to buy our vote. Unfortunatly each party is forced to out bid the other.
As soon as a government tries to reverse this trend they are penalised. TA went down in the polls as a result of doing just that. Ref the 2014 budget. His attempt to do this was easily exploited by the opposition.
He went down in the polls because we, the mob,like having all these goodies showered upon us and will resist any attempt to reverse the trend. It is a habit that we have no intention of breaking.
My guess would be that we will continue this trend until the system fails big time.
@AlanGP Well put. I am reminded of an email I received which puts it well
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the
University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the
Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "A democracy is always
Temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent
Form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until
The time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous
Gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
Always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from
The public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally
Collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a
Dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the
Beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200
Years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Great post Colin.
"Across Europe, Muslim communities tend to vote Left" This is a reversal of cause and effect. Muslim communities vote left because the Left stand for anticapitalism and anti-USA. This is the same reason that progressives cannot bring themselves to accept that the PLO is/was a terrorist orgsanisation - it was fighting the Great Satan's manifestation in the Middle East, aka Israel... but somehow this was not in their small mindedness antisemitic, because only the far right could be that...
Wahhabist Sunni Islam is spread not by poverty, but by Saudi petro dollars. Our ally is our deadliest enemy.
The US cannot espouse any plausible response to ISIS while maintaining this flawed alliance. Rather than ask the Republican nominees how the US should respond in Syria, they should be asked how they would extricate the US from its relationship with Saudi Arabia, allowing the US to then threaten the Saudis for further support of Wahhabism.
I see that Belgian citizens gathering to express their concerns that they and their loved ones may be soon subject to random slaughter.........have been dispersed by the Belgian State...using riot police and water cannon......they have of course all been labelled by the authorities and the world's journalist as "far right extremists "
@John They have also been branded as "racists" for their anti-Islamic chanting. Islam is not a race. It is a religion. When was the last (or the FIRST time) that someone was branded a racist for chanting anti-Christian slogans?
Belgium deserves all it gets. It"s no use crying over spilt milk.
As serious as the jihadist threat is, by far the greater threat to the West is the drip drip water torture of Islamisation by stealth. A mosque here, madrassa there and you end up like the proverbial frog in boiling water. One day, the almost incessant lobbying for a watered down Sharia law to be allowed in a muslim majority community will succeed (as is the case in many areas in the UK) - it only takes a weak politician in a vulnerable electorate and Molenbeek, here we come...
@Mark well said
Donald Trump, Fred Bloggs ... whoever : Brussels is a hell-hole because of sharia law advocates who refuse to integrate. Suck it up, socialist princesses. You can cat-wail all you want and the facts remain the facts. No more Muslim immigration to Australia. Why in the name of God ... and Allah ... would we encourage the disintegration of our society and culture. Why why why ???
Those naive fools who blame "inequality" and "marginalisation" for the rise of militant jihadism fail to grasp that the violent culture that this jihadism seeks to spread has long held inequality and oppression at its very heart including the marginalisation and cruel mistreatment of women. These jihadists could be thrown mountains of gold and given infinite life opportunities but would still continue to pursue their fanatical and horrific goals. It is an ancient ideology that drives them - an ideology completely incompatible with a modern world.
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