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Op-Ed: Obama Knows Iran will Use its Nukes on Israel

July 28, 2015

Op-Ed: Obama Knows Iran will Use its Nukes on Israel, Israel National News, Mark Langfan, July 28, 2015

(The very notion that Iran wants to send the Jews of Israel to the ovens is ridiculous. Iran just wants to send the ovens to the Jews of Israel. Since they won’t even have to be transported and shoved in, why make a big deal of it? Hmmmm. — DM)

At first, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless it was finalized. Then, Obama said we couldn’t talk about his Iranian Nuke Deal unless we read it all – and simply didn’t disclose all of his side-deals. Now, he says Mike Huckabee’s comparison of shipping the Jews of Israel to the new ovens of the Iranian Auschwitz-Nuke is “ridiculous.”

Perhaps Obama wants to wait until Iran nukes Israel for it to be politically correct to call Iran’s wiping Israel off the map a “Holocaust.” But, make no mistake, Obama knows full well that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the map with its Obama-blessed Nukes.

Come on, does anyone (except the American left-wing cool-aid drinking Jews) really believe that Iran will abide by their “voluntary” protocols under the Vienna announcement? Of course not! Are Obama or any of the European Unionleaders so rank stupid and naïve that they think Iran won’t build a bomb just like North Korea? Does anyone not know that one of Iran’s first targets will be to annihilate Israel?

Of course Obama knows Iran will seek to annihilate Israel, so that must be what Obama wants.

Obviously, Obama doesn’t care if he enables the murder of another 6 million Jews through a Palestinian State’s chemical Sarin-tipped Katyusha rockets, or an Iranian Nuke. It’s simple: Obama wants Israel and its Jews offed. What is so difficult to understand about that? Every move Obama has made from the very first moment of his presidency has been to irreparably harm Israel and Saudi Arabia, and irrevocably empower Iran. It doesn’t matter what Obama’s specific motivation is. Obama may believe in Farrakhan’s and Rev. Wright’s virulent Chicago anti-Semitism; Obama may be merely steeped in anti-British anti-Colonialism; or both. All that matters is Obama is acting in ways that will allow others to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. If Obama walks like a Jew-hater, arms Iran like a Jew-hater, and creates a PA “West Bank” State like a Jew-hater, he’s a Jew-hater.

But, now here come the American Leftist Jewish “Holocaust” speech-police like Debbie Wasserman-Schulz who say one isn’t allowed to invoke the “Holocaust” or “Auschwitz” into a political debate when it is Iran’s highest leaders who have repeatedly, openly, and notoriously injected into the political debate that they intend to wipe Israel off the map. And, in plain sight, Obama is crowning Iran, the greatest openly Holocaust-threatening, terror-state in the world, the nuclear hegemon-state of the Middle East because Iran is “stable.” I guess Obama forgot he helped quash a popular uprising there as his first foreign policy debacle.

And, let’s also not forget that Iran’s “stability” in Syria has murdered over 250,000 Syrian Sunnis. The Hiroshima “Little Boy” Uranium Gun-type Nuke killed about 150,000 Japanese, and the Nagasaki “Fat Man” Plutonium Implosion Nuke killed about 40,000 Japanese. So, Iran has already killed 2 Hiroshima’s worth of Syrian Sunnis or 6 Nagasaki’s worth of Syrian Sunnis. So, the 150 Billion Dollars Obama is giving Iran is actually a weapon of mass destruction in itself. All of the additional hundreds of thousands of dead Sunnis spilt by Iran’s malign use of the 150 Billion dollars is on the hands of Obama, Susan Rice, John Kerry and Samantha Power.

What Is so loathsome, is that every word, every sentence Obama says is a lie tainted with a patina of truth, Take for example Obama’s statement that Iran had enough enriched Uranium for 10 nukes, but it will be cut down under the supposed deal. When exactly did Iran enrich 10 nukes worth of Uranium? Iran enriched the uranium solely in the last 6 years because the CIA’s published declassified number had virtually zero enriched Uranium when Obama became President. And, Iran’s method to cut down its enrichment is a chemical process that can easily be reversed by a chemical process.

And you have to love Obama’s “If Iran’s ‘stable’ give them nukes” foreign policy. Under Obama’s “Stability” theory, Obama would have also armed Hitler with an arsenal of nukes because Hitler’s Nazi Germany was very stable.

In short, Obama knows full well that Iran is building an Auschwitz-Nuke that it wants to use to annihilate Israel; and, Obama is doing everything he can to ensure that it can do so.

Don’t let Jew-haters like Obama and Wasserman-Schultz turn “Never again,” into “Too Late.

Categories: Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Holocaust, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian economy, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Israel, Jews, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Theocracy
Tags: Antisemitism, Foreign Policy, Holocaust, Iran Scam, Iran/Israel war, Iranian economy, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian threats, Israel, Jews, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Theocracy

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Steven Salaita Heads to Beirut, While Malcolm Kerr Spins in His Grave

July 8, 2015

Steven Salaita Heads to Beirut, While Malcolm Kerr Spins in His Grave, Middle East Forum, Winfield Myers, July 6, 2015

1132

Former Virginia Tech professor Steven Salaita maintains that Israel’s alleged excesses have transformed anti-Semitism “into something honorable.”

In 1980 Malcolm Kerr, the distinguished Middle East studies scholar who served as AUB president, wrote a gentlemanly but devastating critique of Orientalism in which he mentions almost forty excellent scholars whose work Said ignored because noting their contributions would undermine his thesis that Western scholarship on the Middle East was uniformly reductionist and racist. Four years after writing his review, Kerr was assassinated near his AUB office by members of Islamic Jihad.

********************

How utterly appropriate: Steven Salaita will be the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB) for the 2015/16 academic year. A supposed expert on Native Americans whose anti-Semitic attacks on Israel cost him a job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, Salaita will assume a chair named for the late Columbia University English professor whose 1978 book Orientalism contributed more than any other work to the systemic intellectual decadence that still characterizes Middle East studies.

Salaita is Said’s equal when it comes to producing polemical revisionist history that relies more upon postcolonial victimization studies than upon rigorous research. Although Illinois expected him to teach American Indian studies and he’ll teach American studies at AUB, all six of his books deal with modern Arab studies, Arab Americans, or Israel.

In the through-the-looking-glass historiography of Salaita and his academic allies, these disparate fields are connected by a typology of the victim that is easily transferred from antiquity to the present, so that Canaanites are Native Americans and ancient Hebrews are modern Zionists. It’s a handy way of attacking the entire history of a people or civilization without having to bother with facts, research, doubt, unanswerable questions, or the human agent at the heart of all genuine historical research.

In 1980 Malcolm Kerr, the distinguished Middle East studies scholar who served as AUB president, wrote a gentlemanly but devastating critique of Orientalism in which he mentions almost forty excellent scholars whose work Said ignored because noting their contributions would undermine his thesis that Western scholarship on the Middle East was uniformly reductionist and racist. Four years after writing his review, Kerr was assassinated near his AUB office by members of Islamic Jihad. If he could know that a chair named for Said now exists at AUB—and that next occupant will be a man as dedicated to politicized, vindictive scholarship as its namesake—he would be spinning in his grave.

Categories: Academia, American University of Beirut, Antisemitism, Ideology, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Middle East, Palestinians
Tags: Academia, American University of Beirut, Antisemitism, Ideology, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Middle East, Palestinians

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Obama: Muslim, Napoleon Bonaparte redux or worse

July 5, 2015

Obama: Muslim, Napoleon Bonaparte redux or worse, Dan Miller’s Blog, July 5, 2015

(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Napoleon sometimes claimed to be a Muslim. Obama often claims to be a Christian. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, power and glory through pretense.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon’s life and history are summarized at Wikipedia. He supported the French Revolution and was appointed General of the Army of Italy at the age of twenty-five. Three years later, he commanded an expedition against Egypt. This post compares his and Obama’s religious and political efforts to gain the confidence of Muslims. The lengthy quotations provided in this section of the post are from Worlds at War – the 2,500 year struggle between East and West, 2008, by Anthony Pagden.

While en route to conquer Egypt, Napoleon had his “Orientalists” compose a “Proclamation to the Egyptians.”

It is worth taking a closer look at this document for it summarizes not only the French hopes for the ‘Orient’, but also the ultimate failure of both sides to come to any approximate understanding of each other. It began with a familiar Muslim invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God. He has no son nor has he any associate in His Dominion’, which was intended to indicate clearly that the French were not Christians. It then went on to assure the Egyptian people that Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the French army, and ‘on behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundations of Liberty and Equality’, had not come to Egypt, as the Mamluks had put it about, ‘like the Crusaders’ in order to destroy the power of Islam. Nothing, Napoleon assured his readers, could be further from the truth. Tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring to you your rights from the oppressors, that I, more than the Mam-luks, serve God— may He be praised and Exalted— and revere his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an … And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and that the circumstances which distinguish one from another are reason, virtue and knowledge. 578 Having thus done his best to conflate the principle of human rights— in a language in which there exists no obvious translation for the word ‘right’ 579— with what the Orientalists had persuaded him were the basic tenets of Islam, the man whom Victor Hugo would later describe as the ‘Muhammad of the West’ continued,

O ye Qadis [judges], Shaykhs and Imams; O ye Sharbajiyya [cavalry officers] and men of circumstance tell the nation that the French are also faithful Muslims and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Holy See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war on Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta from where they expelled the knights who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims. 580 [Emphasis added.]

It is hard to say how much Napoleon believed in all this. One of his generals later told a friend in Toulouse that ‘we tricked the Egyptians with our feigned love of their religion, in which Bonaparte and we no more believe in than we do in that of the late pope’. 582 But Napoleon’s personal beliefs were largely beside the point. The point was policy. Napoleon had always practised religious toleration because he knew that religious faiths could make deadly enemies. Toleration, however, was one thing; credence, even respect, was another. It is indeed highly unlikely that Napoleon had read much of the Qur’an he claimed to venerate. As he told Madame de Rémusant, the only holy book which would have been of any interest to him would have been one he had written himself. [Pagden, pp 326 – 327] [Emphasis added.]

Egyptians did not appreciate Napoleon’s Proclamation.

Just as most Muslims today have failed to be persuaded that Western social values can be made compatible with the Holy Law, the Shari’a, so too were the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon. We know something of how they reacted to Napoleon’s profession of love for Islam from the account of the first seven months of the occupation written by a member of the diwan— or Imperial Council— of Cairo named Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti. Al-Jabarti was a well-read perceptive man who was not unimpressed by French skills and technology (he was particularly taken by the wheelbarrow) and ungrudgingly admired French courage and discipline on the battlefield, which he compared, glowingly, to that of the mujahedin, the Muslim warriors of the jihad. 585 But for all that he was a firm Muslim who could conceive of no good, no truth which did not emanate from the word of God as conveyed by the Prophet. He excoriated Napoleon’s declaration for its language, for its poor style, for the grammatical errors, and the ‘incoherent words and vulgar constructions’ with which it was strewn, and which often made nonsense out of what Napoleon had intended to convey— all of which was no tribute to the skills of Venture de Paradis or those of the French Arabists in the expedition. But al-Jabarti reserved his most searing criticism for what he repeatedly describes as French hypocrisy. The opening phrase of the declaration suggested to him not, as Napoleon had meant it to, a preference on the part of a tolerant nation for Islam; but rather that the French gave equal credence to all three religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism— which in effect meant that they had no belief in any. Toleration for a Muslim such as al-Jabarti was as meaningless as it would have been for any sincere believer. It was merely a way of condoning error. The years when some kind of rapprochement between Judaism and its two major heresies might have been possible were long since past. There could now be only one true faith, and any number of false ones. Napoleon could not claim to ‘revere’ the Prophet without also believing in his message. The same applied to the Qur’ an. You could not merely ‘respect’ the literal word of God. You had to accept it as the only law, not one among many. ‘This is a lie,’ thundered al-Jabarti; ‘To respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies only by believing in what it contains.’

Napoleon was clearly a liar. Worse he was also the agent of a society which was obviously committed to the elimination, not only of Islam, but of all belief, all religion. The invocation of the ‘Republic’, al-Jabarti explained to his Muslim readers, was a reference to the godless state which the French had set up for themselves after they had betrayed and then murdered their ‘Sultan’. By killing Louis XVI, the French had turned against the man they had taken, wrongly because their understanding of God was erroneous, but sincerely nevertheless, to be God’s representative on earth. In his place they had raised an abstraction, this ‘Republic’ in whose name Napoleon, who had come not in peace as he claimed but at the head of a conquering army, now professed to speak. Since for a Muslim there could be no secular state, no law which is not also God’s law, the French insistence that it was only ‘reason, virtue and knowledge’ which separated one man from another was clearly an absurdity. For ‘God’, declared al-Jabarti, ‘has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth.’ There are few things a believer, especially a believer in the fundamental sacredness of a script, dislikes more than a non-believer. To al-Jabarti the French seemed to be not would-be Muslims, but atheists. [Emphasis added.] [Id. at 329].

Obama

Napoleon, in his mix of religious and political doctrine, was a power-grubbing scoundrel and liar. How about Obama?

Obama has not claimed to be a Muslim and I don’t know what He is. To claim to be a Muslim would be politically inexpedient. However, He has proclaimed His respect and even reverence for Islam and for the “Holy” Qur’an.

In Obama’s June 4, 2009 Cairo address, He stated that Islam and (His) America,

overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. . . . People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it’s being challenged in many different ways. [Emphasis added.]

“Tolerance? Egyptian President al-Sisi is remarkable among Muslim leaders for his efforts to promote religious tolerance. Obama appears to despise him for supporting massive public protests against President Morsi and eventually becoming president. Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Obama appears to cherish the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization.

Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.

And, as Obama tells us, the Islamic State and other such groups are not Islamic.

That sort of stuff didn’t work out well for Napoleon. Are Islamists more dedicated to religious tolerance now than in the days of Napoleon? It does not seem that they are. See, e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic nations.

Shortly after the attack on the U.S. consular annex in Benghazi, Libya — where four Americans were murdered by Islamists — Obama told the United Nations General Assembly,

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

He sought power and glory by opposing those who ~~offend~~ “slander” Islam, including the maker of the You Tube video on which He and others in His administration blamed “spontaneous” September 11, 2011 “demonstrations” at the U.S. Benghazi annex.

I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

The Obama Administration promptly had the video removed from You Tube and jailed its maker on unrelated charges (see excerpts from Daniel Greenfield’s Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism below.)

Obama, who claims to want a peaceful “two state solution” for the Israelis and Palestinians, has said little if anything about the propensity of Israel’s “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority, to slander Israel and Judaism on a daily basis while honoring those who murder Jews.

Obama’s romance with Islam

Daniel Greenfield recently wrote a Front Page Magazine article titled Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but well worth the time. Mr. Greenfield notes, in connection with the Benghazi attack,

When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.^[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it [the Islamic call to prayer] “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”^[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.

Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.

Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”

The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,^[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.^[10]

The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”^{^[11]} had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.

At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”^{^[12]} Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.

. . . .

At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.^{^[20]} ^{^[21]} And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.^{^[22]}

Women’s rights? Obama supports those that don’t offend Islam. Continuing with Mr Greenfield’s linked article,

In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. ^[60]

A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.^{^[61]}^{^[62]}

Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.

Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.

What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.

The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.

By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.^{^[63]} It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.^{^[64]}

Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”^{^[65]}

That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.

The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”

Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,^{^[66]} was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”^{^[67]} was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.^{^[68]} Qaradawi was another moderate.^{^[69]} [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.^{^[73]} The next step after that is the White House.

Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.^{^[74]} In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.

Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.

The [American] left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word. [Emphasis added.]

With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.

Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.

Is ~~Osama~~ Obama worse than Napoleon?

Napoleon represented a nation which, during the French Revolution, had become largely secular. Obama’s America, under His “leadership,” is becoming largely secular. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, each in his own way, to promote himself as deserving the approbation of Islam. Napoleon sought power and glory by lying. Obama does much the same, but He most often lies to the denizens of His America.

In the years immediately following the French Revolution, France was considered a great nation. When Obama took office, America was as well. Although some still celebrate America’s freedoms from tyranny on Independence Day, during the Reign of Obama she has become less free and large numbers of “His people” have become increasingly dependent. It’s time to put America back the way she was.

Oh well. Please see also, Pulling down the slaver flags of Islam and Africa.

Postscript: I have read of no reported Independence Day incidents of ~~workplace violence~~ ~~random violence~~ Islamic terror attacks on Obama’s America. Might it be possible that Obama has convinced the (non-Islamic) Islamic State, et al, that, so long as He remains in power, terror attacks would interfere with His plans to promote Islam and otherwise to destroy the nation.

Categories: Antisemitism, Appeasement, Benghazi, Christianity, Christians, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Egypt, Foreign policy, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, Iran, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Judiasm, Koran, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Political correctness, Sharia law, Sisi, Theocracy, Two state solution
Tags: Antisemitism, Appeasement, Benghazi, Christianity, Christians, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Hamas, human rights, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Judiasm, Koran, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Political correctness, Sharia law, Sisi, Theocracy, Two state solution

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Hajj Amin Husseini’s Anti-Semitic Legacy

June 24, 2015

Hajj Amin Husseini’s Anti-Semitic Legacy, The Middle East Quarterly, Boris Havel, Summer 2015

(Islamic hatred of Jews goes back at least to the sixth century A.D. The pamphlet reproduced below, Islam and Judaism, was written by The Jerusalem Mufti, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini, apparently in the 1940s. A fascinating book by Anthony Pagden titled Worlds at War, The 2,500-year struggle between East and West, provides a scholarly account of rivalries and wars and includes highlights of the rise of Islam.

Jew hatred is now most visible in the Islamic Republic of Iran, soon to be welcomed into the “community of nations” by P5+1 “negotiators” under Obama’s guidance. — DM)

1379

The Jerusalem mufti, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini (left), meets with SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, April 1943.

Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been a bestseller for years in predominantly Muslim countries, including the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

***********************

The Jerusalem mufti, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini, leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, is widely known for his close collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Aspects of the collaboration remain to be more thoroughly scrutinized.[1]However, and without discounting his culpability for the collapse and dispersal of Palestinian Arab society (or al-Nakba, the catastophe, as it is called by Palestinians and Arabs), Hajj Amin’s role in shaping Muslim perceptions of Jews might be a far more important and lasting legacy than his political activism in Palestine, Germany, or elsewhere.[2] An important source supporting this fact is a booklet he authored for Muslim soldiers enlisted in the Nazi SS division in Bosnia.

During the mufti’s stay in Berlin in 1941-45, he befriended Hitler’s right-hand man, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler’s fascination with Islam and the mufti’s zealous support for the Nazi cause resulted in several common enterprises, notably the establishment of a volunteer Waffen-SS division in Bosnia, made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims, later named the Handzar division. Most books about the division display photographs of its soldiers—distinguishable by its insignia on uniform lapels and fez headgear—reading a booklet titled Islam und Judentum—most certainly the German version of the mufti’s Croatian or Bosnian pamphlet Islam i židovstvo (Islam and Judaism).

In whatever language the pamphlet was originally written, the intended readers were Muslims (Bosnian or otherwise) and not Germans. This author has been unable to locate a German copy of the pamphlet, but it is reasonable to regard the text written in the language of the Bosnian Muslims (at the time called Croatian) as the most relevant. A translation of the booklet is presented below, followed by an analysis of its significance and far reaching implications.[3]

_________________

Islam and Judaism (Islam i židovstvo)

For us Muslims, it is unworthy to utter the word Islam in the same breath with Judaism since Islam stands high over its perfidious adversary. Therefore, it would be wrong to carry out comparison of those two generally different counterpoints.

Unfortunately, it is insufficiently known that animosity between Islam and Judaism is not of a recent date. It reaches long back in history, all the way to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. This short historical overview will demonstrate the importance and perfidiousness of Jewry and its animosity toward the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad.

Jews are known in history only as a subjugated people. Their vulgar[4] nature
and insufferable stance toward the nations that offered them hospitality, and toward their neighboring nations, are the reason that those same nations had to resort to [certain] measures in order to suppress a Jew’s efforts to obtain his[5] desire by force.

The history of antiquity shows us that the pharaohs were already forced to use all means against Jewish usury and Jewish immorality. Ancient Egyptians finally expelled the Jews from their land. Led by Moses, the Jews then arrived in the Sinai desert.

Arab theologian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari [839-923 C.E.] narrates that the Jews even wanted to kill their leader and savior Moses when he came back from Mount Sinai. Because of that, God punished them, and they had to meander in the wilderness for forty years. It should have brought them to their senses, and the new generation should have been cleansed from the low esteem of their fathers.

Following that, the Jews spread like locust all over the Arab peninsula. They came to Mecca, to Medina, to Iraq, and to Palestine, which is the land of milk and honey. The group of the Jews that came to Syria and Palestine was now under Roman rule. The Romans, however, soon discerned the peril that threatened the land from the Jews, and so they introduced harsh measures against them. Besides that, a serious, contagious illness of plague erupted, which was by common opinion brought into the land by Jews. When even medical doctors stated that the Jews were indeed the source of the infection—and their opinion was obviously correct—there arose among the people such upheaval against the Jews that many Jews were killed. In addition, that event is the reason why the Jews have been called “microbes” in Arabia to this very day.

1380

The mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini, visits the volunteer Nazi Waffen-SS division in Bosnia, made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims. The mufti was instrumental in the division’s formation.

The Arabs have a particular understanding for introducing forceful measures against Jews in Germany and for their expulsion from the country. After the [First] World War, England and America enabled the Jews to settle in Palestine and to establish a Jewish state there. Jewish excrement from all countries assembled there, rascally striving to seize the land from Arabs. And indeed, they succeeded in buying land from the poorest of the poor and from unscrupulous landlords. By doing so, they took poor widows’ bread and stole food from children to fatten themselves.[6] When the Arabs opposed the Jewish settlement, the Jews did not shun bloody murders. So they robbed many families of their livelihood and threw the families into misery and troubles. (God will punish them for those disgraceful deeds).

The Jewish struggle against Arabs is nothing new for us, except that as time passed, the location of the battlefield changed. Jews hate Muhammad and Islam, and they hate any man who wishes to advance the prosperity of his people and to fight against Jewish lust for possessions and Jewish corruption.

Struggle between Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled Mecca to Medina where he created the base for the development of Islam. At that time, Jews were merchants, already permeated with guile, and they understood that Muhammad’s influence, in both the spiritual and business spheres, could turn into a danger for them. Thus they were possessed by a deep hatred toward Islam; hatred that intensified as Islam was growing more solid and powerful. The Jews breached the agreement they had concluded with Muhammad in Khaibar, of which we shall speak later. Moreover, their rage grew immensely when the Qur’an revealed the deepest inclinations of their soul, their heartlessness, and unscrupulousness by which their ancestors had been commonly known. At that time, the Jewish methods were already the same as they are today. Their weapon has been, as always, slander and quarrel, and so they attempted to humiliate Muhammad in the eyes of his followers. They claimed that he was a deceiver, an enchanter, and a liar. When they did not succeed in this, they attempted to undermine Muhammad’s honor by spreading a rumor that his wife Aisha committed adultery. The purpose of spreading such a rumor was to sow doubt in the hearts of Muhammad’s followers.

When that failed, they tried to show Muhammad’s teaching in a bad light. With that purpose, several Jews converted to Islam; only a few days later, they returned to the Jewish faith. When asked why they changed their mind so suddenly, they replied that they were very willing to settle in Islam but found that all of it is nothing but a lie. The following Qur’anic verse alludes to that:

Many of those knowledgeable in the Scriptures attempt to somehow render you infidels again by converting to our religion. It was, though, nothing but their souls’ envy, when they comprehended truth.[7]

When the Jews understood that they would not reach their goal by the means used until then, they started to ask Muhammad various meaningless and unsolvable questions. Thus, they wanted to convince others that Muhammad was poor in knowledge and wisdom. However, that method achieved no success. As they were thus persuaded that Islam was deeply rooted in the hearts of the Muslims, they commenced with the attempts to destroy the Muslims. Pursuant to that goal, they paid some non-Muslim tribes to fight against Muhammad. The almighty God, however, wanted it differently. With iron fist, Muhammad defeated the rebellious tribes and conquered their city. The Jews could not bear such a defeat, and so they decided to destroy Muhammad in every way. They hired men to murder him.

The Medina Jews lived in the city district of Banu Nadir. When Muhammad came to Medina, he concluded a contract with them. One day he set out to that city district, accompanied by only ten companions, to talk to the Jews and to try to convert them to Islam. Muhammad explained the principles of Islam to the Jews, and they seemed very interested and open-minded. Yet as Muhammad was talking in a friendly way with some of the Jews, another group prepared an attempt on his life. They persuaded a man to throw a piece of rock on Muhammad’s head. Surely Muhammad would have been killed were it not for God, who warned him. An inner voice advised him to leave that place, and so the treacherous Jews could not carry out their design. Consequently Muhammad sent a companion to deliver his message to the Jews to leave the city within ten days. They had breached the contract they concluded with him by trying to take his life. Any Jew found in the city after those ten days would be punished by death.

However, some of the Jews, who outwardly accepted Islam but in their innermost remained Jewish, persuaded other Jews not to leave the city. When the ten days passed, Muhammad was forced to expel the Jews from the city by armed force. Part of the Jews fled to Khaibar and part to Syria.

The Jews who fled to Khaibar, however, would not concede defeat and decided to avenge themselves on Muhammad. For that purpose, they turned to other Khaibar Jews and to the Jews of Taima and of Wadi Qura. Together they plotted a conspiracy: With large sums of money, they agitated non-Muslim Arab tribes to attack Medina. When Muhammad discovered their plan he quickly armed his men and set out toward the plotters’ base in Khaibar. Muhammad’s companions captured Khaibar and expelled most Jews from the site. With the remaining Jews, Muhammad concluded a contract by which peace was guaranteed.

Only after that devastating defeat [of the Jews] could an Islamic Empire peacefully develop. But when one takes into account the Jewish significance, it was not to be wondered that Jews, in spite of the agreements made, did not abandon their plans and continued to try to destroy Muhammad by all available means. They invited him to a feast, and he accepted the invitation suspecting no evil. In front of him was placed a roasted lamb prepared by the Jewess Zainab, wife of Sallam ibn Mishkam.[8] The [topic of] conversation around the table was the contract and a peaceful life in mutual agreement in which they now lived. Muhammad had not the slightest suspicion about treason. The Prophet and his faithful companion Bashr ibn Bara each took a piece of lamb meat. Muhammad, however, did not swallow his bite because its taste made him suspicious.

“The bone tells me that the lamb was poisoned,” he said and called the Jewess Zainab to ask whether the meat had been poisoned. She answered, “You know I am highly esteemed by the Jews, and I acknowledge that I have poisoned the lamb. In so doing, I thought that if you were a king, I would only kill a king, but if you were indeed a prophet, you would know that the meat had been poisoned.”

Muhammad’s companion soon succumbed to the poison’s effect, whereas Muhammad, despite spitting the poisonous bite, later suffered various health disorders, and the impact of the poison had always been evident. Some historians even believe that Muhammad’s death was a consequence of that poisoning. In this matter, they refer to a hadith by Abu Huraira, whereby the Prophet said shortly before his death, “The effect of Khaibar’s feast will manifest in me until I die!”[9]

1381

Many books about the Waffen-SS division in Bosnia display photographs of its soldiers reading a booklet titled Islam und Judentum—most certainly the German version of the mufti’s Croatian or Bosnian pamphlet Islam i židovstvo (Islam and Judaism). The booklet offers a stark illustration of the lengths taken by the mufti to demonize Jews and Judaism and clearly was produced for propaganda and incitement purposes.

Now, the Jews were persuaded that Muhammad was immune to their attacks. Therefore, they made a decision to spread discord among the Arab tribes, so as to break the power of Islam. When Muhammad went back to Medina, he succeeded in reconciling the Arab tribes of Kawsha and Karasha,[10] which had been fighting each other ceaselessly for 120 years. In doing so, he significantly strengthened Islam’s position. Members of those two [formerly] hostile tribes became brethren in Islam, and peace entered the city. In this regard, the Jews tried to undermine the Islamic empire.

A revengeful old man by the name of Shas ibn Qais one day walked with his friends and came across an assembly of the reconciled tribes held in city square. He could not bear to see how [the members of] those two tribes, formerly at war with each other, now communicated nicely, and so devised a hellish plan. He sent to their assembly a friend of his, knowledgeable in war poems, and persuaded him to recite some of his old poems that were full of hatred. That Jew, an outstanding orator, came indeed to the assembly and started to recite old war poems of both tribes. By doing so, he managed to find in each tribe a man in whom old hatred flared up. Those two men started to fight each other and then urged their fellow-tribesmen to take up arms. An immense tragedy would have ensued were it not for Muhammad, who learned about the fight amongst brethren and hurried up to the battlefield.

“Oh my God, are the old times returning even while I am still amongst you!” he shouted. “When I gave you Islam as religion, the old fratricidal discord was buried, and you became brothers in your hearts. Do you wish to slip into infidelity again?”

Both tribes understood that disturbances among them were sown by the Jews alone. They threw away their weapons and asked God for forgiveness, and then they hugged each other and concluded a new brotherly alliance. Regarding Shas ibn Qais the Jew, it is said in the Qur’an,

Oh, you scribes,[11] why do you prevent the believer from walking on God’s path when you are witnesses yourselves? But God is not blind for what you do.[12]

Regarding the tribes of Kawsha and Karasha, the Qur’an said,

Oh, you who believe, would you listen to those who received the Scripture, so that they would turn you into unbelievers again, after you have received faith! How can you be infidels when God’s words were read to you, and his apostle is among you? He who holds unto God has already been introduced to a straight path.[13]

Notwithstanding their attempts, the Jews never succeeded in spreading division among Muhammad’s followers and in dragging them back into infidelity. However, even after all these events should have taught them the futility of their efforts, they persistently continued to carry out their devilish plans. Once, they tried by deceit to even bring down Muhammad himself.

There was a quarrel between two Jewish tribes, and the side that was wrong held an assembly and sent its leaders to Muhammad. Those Jewish leaders said to Muhammad, “You know that we are influential people. If you support us in our dispute with our opponents, we will apply all our influence to make all Jews convert to Islam.” Muhammad, of course, dismissed them. There is a verse in the Qur’an about this event:

Be careful to make decisions according to what God has revealed and not to consider their desires. Keep your guard toward them so that they would not even partially shift you from what God has revealed to you. If they rebel, know that God will surely punish them for a part of their sins. There are, indeed, many men who are evildoers.[14]

Another example of Jewish subversive action was recorded by Ibn Abbas. At the time when Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina, prayers were directed toward Jerusalem. However, it lasted only for seventeen months. Then Muhammad received God’s revelation that the direction of prayers should be Mecca, and ever since, prayers are uttered with faces turned to Mecca. The Qur’an says about this:

We see how you turn your face toward heaven, and we would like to give it a direction which you will like: Turn your face toward the holy place of prayer; wherever you find yourselves, turn your face in that direction. Don’t you see that even those who had received the Scripture know that it is the truth before their Lord? And God is never heedless of what they do.[15]

When the Jews found out about this Qur’anic verse, they were angered and asked Muhammad to return to the previous direction of prayer, which was Jerusalem. Were he to do so, they promised, all Jews would accept Islam. Muhammad, however, did not allow himself to be led astray by such a proposal and to transgress against God’s command. We find the following in the Qur’an about that:

The direction to which you used to turn in prayer until now we have changed only for the purpose of distinguishing those who follow apostles from those who turn on their heel. That was surely difficult but not for those led by God. And God does not want to destroy your faith because God is full of goodness and compassionate to men.[16]

Here is another example how the Jews did not hesitate to stab Muhammad in the back at the time of his utmost distress. When Muhammad won the Battle of Badr, he sent a messenger on his own camel, because that camel was the fastest, to carry the news about his victory to Medina. The Jews, however, tried to bring confusion into the Muslims’ ranks by spreading false rumors that Muhammad had been killed in the battle. As evidence, they pointed out that Muhammad’s camel returned to the city with another rider.

When even that design failed, the Jews turned to Mecca to incite Muhammad’s enemies against him. Moreover, they declared their readiness to support the Meccans in their fight against Muhammad with an army of theirs. When the pagans of Mecca asked the Jews—since the Jews had received the Holy Scripture even before Muhammad—whether or not Muhammad’s religion was good, the Jews answered, “You know that we are men of letters. Believe us, therefore, when we tell you that your religion is much better.” The following verse is in the Qur’an about this:

Don’t you see those who received the Scriptures? They believe in Jibt and Taghut [superstition and idolatry], but they nevertheless say about pagans that their way is better than believers’ way. Those are the ones whom God has cursed, and he who was cursed by God cannot be helped.[17]

As we see, that curse came true. Without a homeland, the Jews are scattered throughout the whole world, and nowhere do they find true help and support. Another Qur’anic verse reads:

You will certainly find out that the greatest animosity toward the believers foster the Jews and the pagans.[18]

That idea has been even better expressed by words of Muhammad: “It will never be possible for you to see a Muslim and a Jew together without secret intention in the [heart of the] Jew to destroy the Muslim.”[19] Abu Huraira passed to us the following hadith:

Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims completely destroy the Jews, and when every tree with a Jew hidden behind will say to the Muslim, “There is a Jew behind me, kill him!” Only the gharqad tree, which is a small bush with many thorns growing around Jerusalem, will not participate in it because it is a Jewish tree! [Bukhari-Muslim VIII, p. 188].

_____________________

Assessing the Pamphlet

The booklet Islam and Judaism offers a stark illustration of the lengths taken by the mufti to demonize Jews and Judaism. Qur’anic passages are freely paraphrased without reference to sura and verse while apparent quotations (like those about Jews converting insincerely to Islam in order to drag Muslims away from their faith) are nowhere to be found in the Qur’an, certainly not in the translation by Muhammed Pandža and Džemaluddin Čaušević[20] used by Yugoslav Muslims since 1937. Indicating the pamphlet’s clear propaganda and incitement purpose, this sloppiness reflected both Hajj Amin’s poor religious credentials and his apparent conviction that the pamphlet would not be subjected to critical scrutiny or even read by believers well-versed in the Qur’an. For, though bestowed with the title of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine’s highest religious authority, it was common knowledge at the time that Hajj Amin did not possess the necessary religious credentials for such a lofty post. Indeed, he even failed to make the final short-list for the mufti’s post having received only nine of the electors’ sixty-four votes; but the Husseinis and their British champions forced one of the final three candidates to step down in his favor, paving the road to his appointment.[21]

Some of the pamphlet’s assertions indicate the mufti’s deficient familiarity with Islamic history and theology. Nor was Hajj Amin averse to introducing novelties and fabrications for the purpose of defaming Jews. His text contains details with an unconventional interpretation of Qur’anic accounts, some of them erroneous. He accuses the Jews of having “attempted to undermine Muhammad’s honor by spreading a rumor that Muhammad’s wife Aisha committed adultery.” But renowned Islamic scholars, including Tabari, to whom the mufti refers in the booklet, do not mention the Jews at all in the context of this event: Aisha’s accusers were all Arabs. Some came from the tribe of Kharzaj; at least one was from the Quraish, Muhammad’s tribe, and another was the sister of Muhammad’s wife. Their names are listed in both Ibn Ishak’s and Tabari’s accounts of the event. After God revealed Aisha’s innocence to Muhammad, some of the accusers were punished by flogging.[22]

Furthermore, the mufti claimed that Muhammad attacked Khaibar because its Jews bribed Arab tribes to attack Medina. The sources, however, do not mention any such activity by the Khaibar Jews. Khaibar was in alliance with the Arab tribe of Ghatafan—which at this point seemed to be rather defensive—with the Quraish, and with the Persians. Muhammad’s attack occurred shortly after he concluded the peace of Hudaibiya (March 628) with the Meccans. It is hard to envisage that Muhammad’s enemies would plot an attack from the north without Meccan support. On the contrary, it seems that he concluded the peace of Hudaibiya to secure his southern front so as to be able to attack the Khaibar Jews, whose Persian allies had just been defeated by the Byzantine army.[23]

1382

There remains a deep connection between Islamism and Nazism based on the common characteristics of racism, nationalism, religious bigotry, and intolerance. Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been a bestseller for years in predominantly Muslim countries, including the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

There was, however, an event reminiscent of the mufti’s story that occurred a year earlier. The Jews of Medina had invited the Quraish and Ghatafan tribes to attack Muhammad. It was at this point, after the Battle of Badr, that the Quraish asked the Jews whose religion was better, theirs or Muhammad’s. Encouraged by the Jews, the two tribes marched on Medina, and their subsequent abortive attack came to be known as the Battle of the Ditch. After their retreat, Muhammad attacked Medina’s Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza.[24] It seems likely that the mufti—unless he intentionally invented stories, a possibility that cannot be ruled out—confused the episode of the Banu Quraiza with that of Muhammad’s war on Khaibar.

Far more important than these technical details and idiosyncratic interpretations are the novelties the pamphlet introduces in Islamic political discourse regarding the Jews. By combining the Islamic canon with pre-Christian and Christian anti-Judaism, it attributes strengths and powers to Jews that cannot be found in Islamic tradition by portraying them as far more cunning and successful in their vicious designs than previous mainstream Islamic thought had recognized or permitted.

A simpler example of this anti-Jewish eclecticism can be found in the mufti’s accusation that Jews brought plague to Arabia. This statement evokes medieval European myths with similar themes. More significant is the notion that Muhammad’s death might have been a result of poison given to him by a Khaibar Jewess.

To be sure, Ibn Ishak and Tabari do mention how during the illness that led to his death Muhammad spoke to Umm Bashr, mother of his poisoned companion, and complained about his pain, caused by poisonous meat he had tasted three years earlier.[25] However, in classic Islamic thought, this tradition was not interpreted as proof that the Jewess had succeeded in her attempt on the Prophet’s life but as a desire to attribute to the Prophet the highest of virtues: martyrdom. In Ibn Ishak’s words, “The Muslims considered that the apostle died as a martyr in addition to the prophetic office with which God had honored him.”[26] Tabari repeats this explanation, as does Ibn Kathir (1300-73), who referred to eight different hadiths asserting that Muhammad had been warned by God about the poison: proof of his being a genuine prophet. Conversely, Ibn Kathir states that “the Messenger of God died a martyr.”[27]

The core theme of all these traditions is the Prophet’s martyrdom and not the Jews’ lethal craft; the reader is left with the clear impression that the two phenomena were unrelated. In contrast, the mufti’s pamphlet establishes the link and changes the emphasis from the Prophet’s virtue to the Jews’ mendacity. Apparently, his intention was to draw parallels with Christian traditions regarding Christ’s killing by the Jews. This accusation was intended to provoke more anger among Muslims, but it also violated Islamic tradition and theology.

The implications of the mufti’s claim that the Jews were successful in killing Muhammad despite God’s warning imply that Jews possess the power to defy God’s will. Such a blasphemous thought would be worse than Christian accusation of deicide. Jesus overcame death, and by his suffering, death and resurrection brought salvation to his community of believers; however, Muhammad not only remained dead but also failed to appoint his successor due to the rapid progression of his illness and his sudden, untimely demise. Consequently, the umma was split by different claimants to authority, and the dispute eventually led to the fiercest internecine strife in the history of early Islam, known as the fitna.

While the mufti’s Palestinian successors would not tire of reiterating this story (as late as November 2013, Palestinian Authority minister of religious affairs Mahmoud Habbash claimed that Yasser Arafat was poisoned by the Jews just as they had poisoned the Prophet Muhammad to death),[28]most contemporary Islamic scholars have a different understanding of this hazardous theology; inasmuch, the accusation that the Jews killed the Prophet has largely faded as a theological theme with mainstream Islamic commentary viewing the Jews, along the Qur’anic derision, as “adh-dhilla wa-l-maskan,” translated by Yehoshafat Harkabi as “humiliation and wretchedness.”[29] Bernard Lewis further explained:

The outstanding characteristic, therefore, of the Jews as seen and as treated in the classical Islamic world is their unimportance. … For Muslims, he might be hostile, cunning, and vindictive, but he was weak and ineffectual—an object of ridicule, not fear. This image of weakness and insignificance could only be confirmed by the subsequent history of Jewish life in Muslim lands.[30]

Departing from this conventional view, the mufti did not interpret contemporary events as a new historical phenomenon to which Muslims should respond in a new, ad hoc manner. Instead, he traced Jewish accomplishments of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the alleged Jewish power and ambitions, to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad. In doing so, he created a precedent, later followed by prominent Islamic actors in the Middle East and elsewhere, particularly after Israel’s stunning military victories over its Arab adversaries. Thus Hamas accuses the Jews of “wiping out the Islamic caliphate” by starting World War I and of starting the French and the communist revolutions, establishing “clandestine organizations” and financial power so as to colonize, exploit, and corrupt countries.[31] Likewise, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad accused Jews of ruling the world by proxy.[32] Attributing such gargantuan accomplishments to the Jews, many of them at the expense of Muslims, presents a theological innovation with an immediate political consequence. Linking early Islamic with medieval Christian depictions of Jews results in their portrayal as “a demonic entity,” thus making their “extermination legitimate.”[33]

______________________

[1] Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, trans. Krista Smith (New York: Enigma Books in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010), p. viii.

[2] Boris Havel, “Haj Amin al-Husseini: Herald of Religious Anti-Judaism in the Contemporary Islamic World,”The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 3 (2014): 221-43.

[3] The following text has been translated from the original pamphlet: Veliki Muftija Jeruzalemski Hadži Emin el-Huseini, Islam I Židovstvo (Zagreb: Hrvatski tiskarski zavod, 1943). I wish to thank the staff of the National and University Library in Zagreb for tracing the booklet. The Qur’anic verses and hadith are translated as they appear in the original text.

[4] The word “prostačkoj” can also be translated as: obscene, dirty, or indecent.

[5] This word was written in singular in the original text and introduces the notion that the average Jew was such; by referring to “a Jew,” the author refers to the whole people.

[6] The mufti fails to note that prominent members of his own family, including his father, were among the “unscrupulous landlords” selling plots of land to the Jews. See Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 15-19.

[7] Sura 2:109.-Ed.

[8] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s “Sirat Rasul Allah” by A. Guillaume(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004; repr., 1967), p. 516; Tabari, The History of al-Tabari [Ta’rikh al-Rusul Wa–l-Muluk] (New York: State University of New York Press, 1987-97), vol. VIII, pp. 123-4.- Ed.

[9] Bukhari’s Hadith, 4.394.-Ed.

[10] The author probably refers to the Arab tribes of Aws and Kharzaj though the transliteration (Kauša i Karaša) barely resembles those names.

[11] The word “pismenjaci” refers to the “People of the Book” (sljedbenici knjige in Čaušević-Pandža).

[12] Sura 3:99.-Ed.

[13] Sura 3:99-101.-Ed.

[14] Sura 5:41-5.-Ed.

[15] Sura 2:144-9.-Ed.

[16] Sura 2:142-3.-Ed.

[17] Sura 4:51-5.-Ed.

[18] Sura 5:82.-Ed.

[19] There is no Qur’anic verse with this message. The mufti perhaps refers to a non-canonical hadith or obscure tradition.

[20] Muhammed Pandža and Džemaluddin Čaušević (eds.), Kur‘an, Sedmo Izdanje (South Birmingham: Islamic Relief, 1937-89). Though the Qur’an condemns those who falsely feigned Islamic belief (e.g., sura 2:8-9, or sura 63), this condemnation does not specifically apply to the Jews but rather to the wider category of “hypocrites.”

[21] Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, p. 17; David Dalin and John Rothmann, Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 252.

[22] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 492-9; Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. VIII, pp. 57-67; Qur’an: sura 24:11-26.

[23] Michael Lecker, “The Hudaybiyya-Treaty and the Expedition against Khaybar,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 5 (1984), pp. 1-12.

[24] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 450-69.

[25] Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol VIII, p. 124.

[26] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad, p. 516.

[27] Ibn-Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya), trans. Trevor Le Gassick (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2000-06), vol. 3, pp. 283-7.

[28] Palestinian Authority TV, Nov. 8, 2013; “PA: Arafat was poisoned by Jews like Islam’s Prophet Muhammad,” trans. Palestinian Media Watch, Nov. 12, 2013.

[29] Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972), p. 220.

[30] Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (London: Phoenix, 1997), pp. 117-39.

[31] See, for example, “Hamas Covenant 1988,” Yale Law School Avalon Project, accessed Mar. 14, 2015.

[32] CNN, Oct. 16, 2003.

[33] Moshe Sharon, Jihad: Islam against Israel and the West (Jerusalem: Moshe Sharon, 2007), pp. 77-8.

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Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State

June 23, 2015

Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, June 23, 2015

The United Nations’ verdict of guilty to Israel, in its “Schabas Report,” issued yesterday, was written even before the trial began.
Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.
All public opinion polls in the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas — whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel — would win in a landslide, as in 2006. Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity.
Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last summer, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him.

The Middle East is at it again. At the top of the list, no one, it seems, is even thinking of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability — and by extension at least several other countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt.

First, It is dangerous enough for any openly expansionist regime, theological or not, to have nuclear weapons; Iran has recently shown itself to be nothing if not expansionist. Second, and, if possible, worse, several of the countries around Iran — who correctly feel in its crosshairs, have already announced that they will be building or buying nuclear weapons as well; and have probably already started. The Islamic State (ISIS) is also rumored to be on the market for a nuclear warhead; you too can apparently buy one for around $400 million. So we shall all have uncontrolled and uncontrollable nuclear proliferation to look forward to.

On top of all that, the Americans and Europeans are rumored to be at it again, pressuring the Palestinian Authority (PA) to renew peace negotiations with Israel. The London-based newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, recently quoted a senior Palestinian who suggested that the PA Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to jump-start the stalled negotiations.

New signs of triggering antagonism between the Palestinians and Israel are also reflected in the Vatican’s recognition of the Palestinian Authority as the State of Palestine, despite the vandalizing of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and other acts that led to the mass-exodus of persecuted Christians from the Palestinian territories, and despite the PA having joined with the terrorist group, Hamas, in the so-called Palestinian National Consensus Government [“Unity Government”]. This union enabled Israel to accuse it of responsibility for the war crimes that really only Hamas committed against Israeli civilians during the last war. At the same time, the tottering Palestinian Authority is trying to delegitimize Israel by accusing it of war crimes in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Neither of these attacks bodes well for either Israel or the PA.

The ICC in The Hague also recently announced that it would unilaterally investigate Israel for alleged war crimes committed in the last clash in the Gaza Strip. This project will not end well for the Palestinians, the Israelis or the politicized “Jim Crow” International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Unite Nations’ verdict of guilty, in its “Schabas Report,” issued this week, was written even before the trial began.

The Obama Administration has also increased its pressure on Israel with not-so-subtle threats. Susan Rice and other sources within the US administration openly claimed in early March that, in view of Israel’s “refusal” to make peace, and because of its interpretations of statements made by Netanyahu during this Israel’s elections this year, Washington would not veto unilateral European proposals to establish a Palestinian state.

President, Barack Obama, on May 22, tried to reassure the Jewish community to the contrary and said that he was “an honorary member of the [Jewish] tribe,” but his assurances are suspicious. Obama has earned a reputation for not telling the truth, from blaming the 2012 slaughter of Americans at Benghazi, Libya on a YouTube video (even two weeks after he knew the video was not the reason), to welching on his “red line” commitment when Syria’s government used chemical weapons on its own people.

The Israelis regard the American stance as an anti-Israeli vendetta based on Obama’s personal dislike of both Israel and Netanyahu. Although Netanyahu has said that now might not be the best time for a Palestinian state, he has, in fact, never changed his fundamental policy: that a Palestinian state could potentially be in Israel’s best interests.

What Netanyahu did say, with justification — as hard as it is to admit he was right — is that, given the current regional chaos, establishing a Palestinian state at this time would mean establishing a terrorist state in the West Bank. To do so now would simply lead to what is euphemistically called “further regional destabilization” — namely, war. Recognizing a Palestinian state at this time will also encourage terrorist activities by giving extremist Islamic elements — presently operating throughout North Africa, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq — even more territory from which to expand their operations.

This new Islamic extremist land-and-power grab would be similar to that of Hamas after it took over the Gaza Strip, after when Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005; or the ISIS takeover of Syria and Iraq when the US withdrew or failed to act. Currently, Hamas and ISIS in the Gaza Strip menace the security of both Israel and Egypt.

A new Islamic emirate in the West Bank at this time would also be dangerous for Jordan. Even without an Islamic emirate, Jordan has to cope with waves of refugees, among whom are Islamist terrorist operatives infiltrating the kingdom with the goal of overthrowing the Hashemites and turning Jordan into a territory ruled by ISIS or the Muslim Brotherhood. Given Iran’s efforts to exploit the weakness of Sunni Islam in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain, there seems no need for another extremist Islamic arena in Jordan.

Considerable pressure is also now being directed at the Palestinian Authority to renew negotiations with Israel. Some of the pressure comes from former President Jimmy Carter’s possibly well-intentioned but totally counterproductive demand that the Palestinians hold elections.

All public opinion polls in the PA indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas, as in 2006, would win in a landslide.

Unfortunately, many decision-makers in both the United States and Europe view the situation through the lens of Western democracy and practices. The overwhelming Hamas victory in the student council elections at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, should have been a wake-up call. Unfortunately, it was ignored.

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Hamas supporters march during a student council election rally at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, on April 20, 2015. The overwhelming Hamas victory in the student council elections should have been a wake-up call to the U.S. and Europe.

Mahmoud Abbas has a dilemma. If elections are held in the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas– whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel — wins, the PA will cease to exist and Israel will be able to avoid the peace process for all time.

If, however, elections are not held, Mahmoud Abbas will continue to rule without international or Palestinian legitimacy. Not only did his four-year term expire six years ago, but at this point, he barely represents the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The almost two million Palestinians on the other side of Israel, in Gaza, are represented almost exclusively by Hamas, with continuing attempted inroads by ISIS. Abbas is thus unable to represent “the Palestinian people” in any serious political process. The proposal for elections is therefore an embarrassment for Abbas, and is generally ignored.

Tragically, to shore up its status locally, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has taken a series of hasty, contradictory and dangerous steps. Since the PA’s chance at controlling the Gaza Strip has disappeared forever, the PA, to ensure its own continued survival, coordinates security with Israel to prevent further Hamas subversion in the West Bank.

In the meantime, senior figures in the PLO and the PA compete with Hamas in issuing strident, extremist messages to the Palestinian populace, which is consequently being radicalized — to the point now of supporting Hamas and ISIS.

Mahmoud Abbas and his high-ranking associates, nevertheless, continue to hold formal ceremonies to honor terrorists killed during attacks on Israeli targets.[1] Abbas also continues to commemorate “shaheeds” [those who die in the cause of Islam, often called “martyrs”] who killed dozens of Israeli civilians in suicide bombing attacks. Abbas erects monuments, names town squares after them, and holds sports and chess tournaments in their honor.

On this year’s Nakba Day — “the day of catastrophe,” which commemorated the 67^th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel — during the May 15 ceremonies, Mahmoud Abbas promised the Palestinian masses that the occupied territories and the Palestinian diaspora would soon be restored to the independent state of Palestine. He also swore that the “resistance” — that is, armed violence and terrorism against Israel — would continue until the goal was achieved: destroying the State of Israel and establishing the Palestinian state on its ruins.

These intentions are not a secret to Israelis. They therefore do not trust his sincerity when he claims he wants “peace.” Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.

The deliberate tension crafted by the Palestinian Authority has, as its only objective, bloodshed — both Palestinian and Israeli. This tactic can usually be seen when the level of violence falls below what the PA finds acceptable. It then trots out the old saw, first coined by the anti-Israeli Islamist sheikh Ra’ed Salah (whose right to free speech is protected by Israeli law), “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger!”

At the beginning of May 2015, Sheikh Yusuf al-Dayis, the PA Minister of Religious Endowments [Waqf], made headlines in the Palestinian daily, Al-Quds, with the incendiary statement that the fate of the entire Muslim nation hung on the 35 acres of the Temple Mount. He even provided a list of what he claimed were Israeli “attacks” on Al-Aqsa mosque. Sadly for him, visitors to the Temple Mount can see every day the exorbitant security measures taken by the Israelis to protect the site. In point of fact, the record shows that every time the Palestinians want to provoke another pointless round of violence and slaughter, they say, “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger!” It invariably causes hundreds of casualties on both sides and achieves absolutely nothing.

The last time a mosque actually was damaged was recently, in the Gaza Strip, when Hamas’s security forces removed the holy books, then used three bulldozers to raze a Salafist mosque. Hamas claimed it was in retaliation for an alleged Salafist attack on Hamas “jihad fighters” south of Khan Yunis. Sources in Gaza confirmed that seven Salafist-jihadi operatives were arrested in the mosque, and that Hamas had recently arrested 30 Salafist-jihadi Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis members. Having started terrorism in the Gaza Strip, Hamas is now reaping the result: terrorism there is “going viral.”

All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would quickly turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity. Each time governments encourage Islamist movements, or ignore them in the hope that they will attack someone else, these movements have boomeranged into their own backyards and then moved on to their neighbors’. This will be the fate of Syria’s Bashar Assad, who let Hamas and other terrorist groups set up shop in Damascus. Former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat let Hamas into the neighborhood, and the Palestinian people are now being repaid by Hamas. Arafat wrongly assumed that letting Hamas in the door would serve him by forcing Israel to make concessions. Mahmoud Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last August, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him. “We have a national unity government and you are thinking about a coup against me,” he said to Hamas’s leader, Khaled Mashaal.

The Islamist terrorist enclaves are wholly the fruit of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine freely being spread around the Middle East and the democratic West. The so-far isolated incidents of bloodshed in Europe, Africa and the United States are just at the beginning stages of a long, bloody campaign to engulf the world.

Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. Libya and Lebanon may follow next. If the West pressures Palestinians and Israel to create a Palestinian state now, the West Bank and Jordan will be sure to follow. Enabling an expansionist Iran to have a nuclear threshold capability will also throw the region into war.

We, the Palestinians who live in the Palestinian Authority and within Israel, have not stopped dreaming of a Palestinian state, but we also witness the chaos around us and are relieved that so far the catastrophe has not harmed us or our families.

Some Palestinian politicians have turned to more extreme rhetoric to find favor with Israeli Arabs, but despite the tendency in Palestinian society towards extremism and terrorism, what is certain is that even if the establishment of the Palestinian state is postponed, most Palestinians hope the West will not make the mistake of permitting Iran to go nuclear. A nuclear Iran will create a nightmare that will make the Nakba look like a coming attraction.

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[1] For recent examples, see: “Fatah glorifies arch-terrorist who planned killings of 125,” May 14, 2015; “PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists,” May 11, 2015; “PA sports presents terrorist murderers as role models,” May 4, 2015.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Caliphate, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Jordan, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace process, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Two state solution
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Jordan, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace Process, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Two state solution

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The Palestinians’ Real Strategy

June 22, 2015

The Palestinians’ Real Strategy, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, June 22, 2015

Marzouk’s remarks refute claims by some in the Arab and Western media that Hamas is moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas’s true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic — to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel.
The current strategy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The ultimate goal of the PA is to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it.
Their strategy is no longer about a two-state solution so much as it is about inflicting pain and suffering on Israel. It is more about seeking revenge on Israel than living in a state next to it.
Hamas’s terrorism also helps the PA’s anti-Israel campaign in the international community. Each terrorist attack provides the PA with an opportunity to point out the “urgent” need to force Israel to submit to Palestinian demands as a way of “containing the radicals.”

All signs indicate that the Palestinians are planning to step up their efforts to force Israel to comply with their demands. But as the Palestinians are not united, they are working on two fronts to achieve their goal.

One party, headed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), believes that, with the help of the international community, Israel will be forced to fully withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, and accept the “right of return” for millions of refugees and their descendants to their former homes inside Israel.

The second party, represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and several other terror groups, continues to reject any form of compromise, and insists that the only solution lies in the elimination of Israel. Unlike the first party, this one believes that direct or indirect negotiations with the “Zionist enemy” are a waste of time and that terrorism is the only means for the Palestinians to achieve their goal.

The two Palestinian parties, the PA and Hamas, have been at war with each other since 2007, when Hamas seized full control over the Gaza Strip and forced the Palestinian Authority to flee to the West Bank.

But while the two rival parties are fighting each other, they are also working separately to overpower Israel.

On June 19, a Hamas-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the shooting attack that killed Danny Gonen, a 25-year-old man who was visiting the West Bank.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups rushed to “welcome” the killing of the young Israeli man who, by the way, was not a “settler,” but a resident of the Israeli city of Lod, near Ben Gurion Airport.

In separate statements, these terror groups explained that the attack came in the context of Palestinian efforts to “preserve the resistance” against Israel in the West Bank. They said that such attacks were “legitimate means” to achieve Palestinian rights and aspirations.

These groups made it unavoidably clear that their real objective is not to “liberate” the West Bank, but to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. As one of them said, “We will continue to support any resistance action on the land of Palestine until it is liberated, from the (Mediterranean) sea to the (Jordan) river, and cleansed from all Zionist usurpers.”

Hours after the West Bank attack, a senior Hamas leader, Musa Abu Marzouk, repeated that his movement was seeking to replace Israel with an Islamist state: “Hamas wants a state not only in the Gaza Strip, but in all of Palestine; we won’t give up our weapons and will continue to fight in order to liberate our land.”

Marzouk’s remarks refute claims by some Arab and Western media that Hamas has been moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas’s true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic — to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel. To Hamas’s credit, this message is often repeated in English and other languages.

While Hamas and its allies work toward destroying Israel through terrorism, the Palestinian Authority seems more determined than ever to step up its worldwide campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel with the help of various international parties, such as the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Some senior Palestinian officials like to describe this campaign as a “diplomatic war” against Israel. They argue that this war has thus far proven to be much more “effective” than rockets and suicide bombings. “When we launch rockets at Israel, we don’t get any sympathy,” explained one official. “But everyone in the international community is now supporting our diplomatic efforts. That’s why we believe that what Hamas is doing right now is harmful to Palestinian interests.”

Shortly before the Israeli man was fatally shot in the West Bank, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, revealed his plan to rally the world against Israel so that it would be forced to submit to the Palestinian Authority’s demands, above all a complete withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

Erekat’s plan calls for working very closely with EU countries and members of the UN Security Council, to increase pressure on Israel to comply with the Palestinian demands. It also calls for recruiting international support for recognition of a Palestinian state and paving the way for it to join various international organizations and conventions.

In his plan, Erekat warns against endorsing any UN Security Council resolution that would include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, or offer concessions on the “right of return” for refugees. He also repeats the Palestinian Authority’s rejection of the idea of land swaps between the future Palestinian state and Israel. In addition, Erekat emphasizes his opposition to the idea of creating a demilitarized Palestinian state or giving up any part of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority’s current strategy is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The PA knows that it is not going to get from Israel all that it is asking for. That is why the Palestinian leaders have chosen to negotiate with France, Britain, Sweden and the US. The Palestinians are hoping that these countries will give them what Israel cannot and is not prepared to offer at the negotiating table.

Even if Israel wanted to give one hundred percent of what it gained in 1967, the reality on he ground does not allow it. Since 1967, both Jews and Arabs have created irreversible “facts in the ground,” such as the construction of tens of thousands of houses for both Arabs and Jews. A full withdrawal would mean that tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs would lose their homes both in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

The ultimate goal of the Palestinian Authority is, with the help of the international community, to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it. The PA wants to see Israel degraded, isolated and turned into a rogue state. It wants to see Israelis brought before the International Criminal Court and expelled from as many international organizations as possible.

From talking to senior Palestinian Authority officials, one is left with the impression that their true goal is to see Israel in a state of surrender and defeat. Their strategy is no longer about a two-state solution so much as it is about inflicting pain and suffering on Israel. It is more about seeking revenge on Israel than living in a state next to it.

In many ways, the PA’s “diplomatic war” on Israel also helps Hamas. By constantly accusing Israel of “war crimes” and “atrocities,” the PA is helping Hamas justify its terror attacks against Israelis. The PA’s anti-Israel campaign also helps in creating sympathy and understanding for Hamas’s terror attacks.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s terrorism also helps the Palestinian Authority’s anti-Israel campaign in the international community. Each terrorist attack provides the PA with an opportunity to point out the “urgent” need to force Israel to submit to Palestinian demands as a way of “containing the radicals.”

This is how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, although remaining sworn enemies, complement each other’s role against Israel.

And many in the international community seem to be helping these two Palestinian camps in their effort to undermine and destroy Israel.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (r) meets with the Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal in Qatar, July 20, 2014. (Image source: Handout from the PA President’s Office/Thaer Ghanem)

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Jews, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Settlements, Terrorists, Two state solution, United Nations
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Europe, Foreign Policy, France, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic Jihad, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Jews, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama Administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Settlements, Terrorists, Two state solution, United Nations

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Op-Ed: Obama’s Faith in anti-Semites and the Cost

June 20, 2015

Op-Ed: Obama’s Faith in anti-Semites and the Cost, Israel National News, Steve Apfel, June 18, 2015

(Please see also, State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence.– DM)

Perhaps it’s more self-deception than ignorance. But it’s atrocious for a leader with the balance of human survival on his shoulders to deal a joker like this: “…The fact that (Iran’s leaders) are anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all their other considerations.”

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It is one thing to hate Greeks or Turks, for want of example, and quite a different thing to hate Jews. Likewise, to hate this country or that one is not akin to hating Israel. The faultless logic of a felon explains all. Asked why he robbed banks Willie Sutton explained, “That’s where the money is.” Well, Israel is where six million Jews are, and Iran is not the only power that, day and night, aches to wipe them off the face of the earth.

Clearly there’s more to hating Israel than meets the eye. By ”more” I mean a human condition – the raising of blind hatred to such a power that incendiary rhetoric is not enough to contain an imperative for violence. And right at this point the leader of the free world commits a cardinal error. By papering over this special hatred, American President Obama tilts the globe towards an ultimate catastrophe.

Calculated or innocent, the error is mighty convenient for that do or die Iran deal. To get the piece of paper signed it helps Obama to make light of the risk posed by Jew-mad fanatics. It’s not enough to decouple Tehran’s world-wide web of terrorism from the nuclear talks. To placate mullahs and ayatollahs he must downplay the rabid anti-Semitism from that quarter, already guilty of two heinous attacks on Jewish targets, in Borges and Buenos Aries. Now there’s talk of US complicity. Diplomatic sources told World Tribune that the US pressed Argentina to end, or at least fudge the investigation of Iran’s involvement.

Pacts with the devil come at a price. That was Tehran’s price, and at the wink of an eye Washington paid it. Lately Obama declared himself an honorary member of the ‘tribe.’ And he has always had “Israel’s back” should Iran’s bite prove to be worse than its bark. A President for whom Democrat Jews voted for twice is duty-bound to give assurances of the kind. Certainly he can’t afford to be seen making a Chamberlain look-alike pact with a bunch of Fuhrers.

To drive his message home, Obama gave The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a morale booster to pass onto American Jewry: they needn’t be overly concerned. “There are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core regime,” Goldberg’s ‘Pres’ conceded, “but they also are interested in maintaining power.”

Even Goldberg was left wide-eyed. “It’s my belief,” he told the President, “that it is difficult to negotiate with parties that are captive to a conspiratorial anti-Semitic worldview; not because they hold offensive views, but because they hold ridiculous views… I don’t believe that the regime can be counted on to be entirely rational.”

The truth is somewhat more profound. True, there’s nothing calculated in verbal attacks of the kind that Iran makes. Like a volcano they seem to emanate from a deep-down superheated disturbance. But when anti-Semites spew vitriol at Israel they do more than distort facts or recite a miscellany of canards. Seldom do anti-Semites react to provocation, to something that Jews did. When a core figure warns that Iran needs only 24 hours and an excuse to wipe Israel off the map, he’s not mad at Israel’s deeds. No, he is passionately in love with hating Jews.

Anti-Semites are not, as the phrase goes, in their right minds. In a real sense they are out of their minds. A passion can do that. And the passion that collects around Israel is like no other. It consumes whole countries. It sweeps up domestic and international affairs in a maelstrom. It distorts trade. Quite sane leaders when it comes to Israel lose their minds. According to Walter Russell Mead, “nations and political establishments warped by this hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another — starting at shadows, warding off imaginary dangers, misunderstanding the nature of problems they face.”

It’s what Goldberg was getting at, and also what left him nonplussed that his revered leader did not get it. Debriefing Foreign Policy Journalafterwards he bemoaned the great man’s obtuseness. “Obama doesn’t seem to fully understand that anti-Semites actually believe the dangerous and idiotic things they say.” Had he not been a died-in-the-wool Democrat, perhaps Goldberg would have paid closer attention to the President’s own ‘take’ on the subject. Had he done so Obama would not have slipped that cardinal error past him. Here it comes.

“The fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that (Iran’s) supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

The dead give-away lurks where? We hit on it here, there and everywhere in that snatch from an Obama lecture. It makes us want to interject with, ‘How about the Third Reich!’ For how can the President be that ignorant about the last word in Jew-mad regimes? No one taught Obama that the extermination of Jews was not a means to an end but an end in itself? He doesn’t know that the Final Solution was not a part of the war effort, it was fully equal to the whole war effort? He’s not aware that resources needed for winning the war were diverted to the higher priority of putting Jews to death? He never read about the failure of Operation Barbarossa, a turning point in the fortunes of the Third Reich, in no small measure caused by the diversion of trains for Hitler’s genocide project? Hitler condemned his own troops to the pitiless Russian winter so that trains to death camps would continue to run and oven chimneys would continue to smoke.

Perhaps it’s more self-deception than ignorance. But it’s atrocious for a leader with the balance of human survival on his shoulders to deal a joker like this: “…The fact that (Iran’s leaders) are anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all their other considerations.”

For the good of the world so fatuous a notion ought not to pass muster. Yet Obama-voting Jews passed it. Tehran warns that it will not abide the “Zionist tumor.” The White House says, don’t worry, the mullahs and ayatollahs will keep cool heads. Tehran declares that destruction of Israel is non-negotiable. Obama says ignore it. Maybe Tehran will play ball. Maybe it will behave so as not to ruin the American leader’s pet project.

Iran of course is not Obama’s only pet project. If it’s learning he’s in want of, there’s a textbook case of Jew-hatred and its cost near the top of Washington’s foreign agenda. Everyone knows how desperately Obama wants to secure a state for Palestinians. Hark to the appeal from the President’s very Jewish heart. If your age-old values still mean anything to you, Oh Israel, set the oppressed Palestinians free.

Now here’s the thing. If Jordan was still occupying the “West Bank” and Egypt was still occupying Gaza, the Palestinians would not be pleading to be set free. They’d be as happy as the day was long under the occupying powers. We know, because for nineteen long years, ending in 1967, Palestinians told the world they were happy not to have a state to call their own. They were more than happy; Arafat and his cronies inscribed it in the founding PLO Charter. We like what we have. Life under Egypt is fine; we accept the King of Jordan as our sovereign ruler. As for the Arab world, it would be wrong to say it was happy.

The wants and wishes of subjugated people in Gaza and “West Bank” never entered the mind of the Arab world. No Arab leader offered hisbrothers living on Israel’s doorsteps a home to call their own. Only Jewish leaders did that – a couple of times after 1967. Even then Arafat said ‘Nein! and with his Intifadas bit the Jewish hand that proffered the prize. Abbas said ‘Nein! after Arafat – a few times.

And here are the Palestinians, half a century on, wallowing in self-pity even as they insist they’ll not live with a Jewish state for a neighbour. If that is not a self-inflicted wound from hating the Jew then pigs can fly.

Categories: Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamism, Israel, Nazis, Obama, Obama administration, P5+1, Two state solution
Tags: Antisemitism, Foreign Policy, Freedom, human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamism, Israel, Nazis, Obama, Obama Administration, Two state solution

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State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence

June 19, 2015

State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jume 19, 2015

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.

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The U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2014 issued Friday minimizes official Palestinian incitement to violence against Israel and completely overlooks Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

The annual report lists major terrorist incidents worldwide and outlines each country’s counterterrorism efforts and legislation. Terrorism attacks and their resulting deaths spiked last year, the report found, an increase largely driven by attacks by the Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist groups.

With respect to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the report praises the PA for taking “significant steps to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank that fall under its control do not create content that leads to incitement to violence.” The report acknowledges that “some instances of inciting taking place via official media” still occur, listing only three examples. However, the report diminishes the fact that incitement to violence is a systematic and institutionalized PA phenomenon.

Click here for an Investigative Project on Terrorism comprehensive outline of Palestinian violent incitement focused only on incidents last fall.

The State Department assessment also ignores the direct participation of senior PA officials in praising terrorists and inciting violence against Israelis and Jews.

For example, the report does not mention PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ call last October for Palestinians to prevent Jews from going to the Temple Mount compound “in any way.” The video clip of Abbas’ Oct. 17 speech was shown 19 on PA television times in three days, implicitly calling for Palestinians to use violence against Israelis.

Instead, the report described PA efforts “to ensure” Friday sermons in more than 1,800 mosques controlled by the PA “do not endorse incitement to violence … the guidance is that no sermon can discuss political or lead to incitement to violence.”

In February, however, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs and other prominent religious officials resorted to an age-old blood libel accusing Jews of attacking Muslims sites and that Israel is trying to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports. Such accusations are baseless and encourage Palestinians to conduct terrorist attacks against Israel.

The State Department report also omits any reference to official Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

For example, after the October shooting of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, Abbas sent a condolence letter to the family of terrorist Mutaz Hijazi who was killed by Israeli authorities in a firefight during a raid for his capture. In the letter, Abbas called the terrorist a “Shahid,” a martyr, who “rose to Heaven while defending our people’s rights and holy places,” PMW reported.

Moreover, a senior Fatah official claimed that Hijazi was a Fatah operative and expressed pride in his actions, a PMW translation shows.

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign policy, Israel, Jerusalem, Obama, Obama administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Temple Mount, Terrorism, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Israel, Jerusalem, Obama, Obama Administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, State Department, Temple Mount, Terrorism, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank

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The Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies

June 15, 2015

The Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, June 15, 2015

middle-east-scholarships

Middle East Studies programs, Kramer writes, “came under a take-no-prisoners assault, which rejected the idea of objective standards, disguised the vice of politicization as the virtue of commitment, and replaced proficiency with ideology.” The ideology, of course, comprised the old Marxist narrative of Western colonial and imperial crimes, a Third Worldism that idealizes the dark-skinned, innocent “other” victimized by Western depredations, and the juvenile romance of revolutionary violence.

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In theory, Middle East Studies programs are a good idea. One of the biggest impediments to countering modern jihadism has been the lack of historical knowledge about the region and Islam. But even the attention and urgency that followed the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have not led to such knowledge. The result has been policies pursued both by Republicans and Democrats that are doomed to fail, as the current chaos in the region attests.

Rather than enlightening citizens and policy-makers, Middle Eastern Studies programs have darkened our understanding. As Martin Kramer documented in his important 2002 study Ivory Towers on Sand, most programs have become purveyors not of knowledge but of ideology. Under the influence of literary critic Edward Said’s historically challenged book Orientalism––“a work,” historian Robert Irwin has written, “of malignant charlatanry, in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from willful misrepresentations”––Middle East Studies programs, Kramer writes, “came under a take-no-prisoners assault, which rejected the idea of objective standards, disguised the vice of politicization as the virtue of commitment, and replaced proficiency with ideology.” The ideology, of course, comprised the old Marxist narrative of Western colonial and imperial crimes, a Third Worldism that idealizes the dark-skinned, innocent “other” victimized by Western depredations, and the juvenile romance of revolutionary violence.

Yet Said’s baleful influence has not been limited to Middle East Studies programs, one of which has been created at my campus of the California State University, replete with the problems Kramer catalogues. It has insidiously corrupted much of the humanities and social sciences, operating under the innocuous rubric of “postcolonial” studies, which to the unwary suggests a historical rather than an ideological category. Through General Education courses that serve students across the university, and in departments like English that train primary and secondary school teachers, Saidian postcolonial ideology has been shaping the attitudes and presumed knowledge of Islam and the Middle East far beyond the reach of Middle East Studies programs.

Said’s dubious argument in Orientalism is that the work of Western scholars on the Middle East embodied “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient,” thus creating the intellectual infrastructure for justifying colonialism and imperialism. As such, every European scholar perforce was “a racist, an imperialist, and totally ethnocentric.” For social science and humanities departments committed totally to the multiculturalist melodrama of white racism and oppression of the dark-skinned “other,” Said’s work seemingly provides scholarly bona fides to ideas that are in fact expressive of illiberal grievance politics.

English departments have been particularly vulnerable to Said’s work, for he overlaid his bad history with watered down Foucauldian ideas about the relationship of power to discourse. Thus English professors seduced by the poststructuralist theory ascendant in 1978 when Orientalism was published found in that book a seemingly sophisticated theoretical paradigm that shared both poststructuralism’s disdain for objectivity and truth, and its “hermeneutics of suspicion,” the notion that the apparent meaning of a discourse is a mask for the sinister machinations of power at the expense of the excluded “other.”

More important, postcolonialism is a politically activist theory, bound up as it is in the politics of the Middle East, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now English professors could avoid the legitimate charge that poststructuralism, despite its patina of leftist ideology, was in fact an evasion of politics, a “symbolic politics,” as historian Russell Jacoby put it, “a replacement for, and a diversion from, the gritty politics of the community and the street.” On the contrary, the purveyors of postcolonialism were on the barricades, struggling to liberate Palestinians and other Muslims oppressed by a neo-imperialist America and its puppet Israel. Rather than pampered elitists guaranteed jobs for life, now the professors could fancy themselves freedom fighters and champions of the ex-colonial brown peoples still exploited and oppressed by the capitalist, racist West.

Finally, the dogma of multicultural “diversity” now firmly enshrined in American universities likewise has found Saidian postcolonialism a useful tool for interpreting and teaching literature, one that exposes the Western literary canon’s hidden racism and oppression. Moreover, in a university like Fresno State, half of whose students are minorities, a postcolonial perspective can establish a rapport with minority students who are encouraged to interpret their own experiences through the same lens of unjust exclusion and hurtful distortions of their culture and identity. At the same time white students are schooled in their privilege and guilt, minorities can be comforted by a narrative that privileges them as victims of historical oppression, one masked by the unearned prestige of the classics written by “dead white males.” Now minority students learn that Shakespeare’s Caliban is the true hero the Tempest with whom they should identify, the displaced victim of rapacious colonialists and slavers like Prospero who unjustly define the indigenous peoples as savages and cannibals in order to justify the brutal appropriation of their lands and labor.

Over the thirty years I have taught in the California State University, I have seen this transformation of the English department. Reading lists dominated by contemporary ethnic writers are increasingly displacing the classics of English literature, and even when traditional works are on the list, the books are often taught from the postcolonial perspective. New hires more and more comprise those Ph.D.’s whose specialties lie in ethnic or “world” literature, replacing the Shakespeare scholars and others trained to teach the traditional English and American literary canon. The traditional content of a liberal education––“the best which has been thought and said in the world,” as Matthew Arnold wrote––is disappearing, replaced by multicultural melodramas of Western crime and guilt.

More important for the culture at large, many of these students will go on to earn teaching credentials and staff public schools. They will carry the postcolonial ideology into their own classrooms, influencing yet another generation and reinforcing a received wisdom that will shape their students’ understanding of the important threats to our national security and interests emanating from the Middle East, especially jihadism. And it will encourage ordinary citizens to assent to the demonization of our most valuable regional ally, Israel, currently battling the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement that can more easily gain traction among those who from grade school to university have been exposed to the postcolonial ideology.

The damage done to our foreign policy by Middle East Studies is obvious. The influence of the godfather of such programs, Edward Said, on the social sciences and humanities departments like English is more insidious and subtle. But it is no less dangerous.

Categories: Antisemitism, Christianity, Culture, Diversity, Human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Judiasm, Leftists, Middle East, Peace process
Tags: Antisemitism, Christianity, Culture, DIversity, human rights, Ideology, Imperialism, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Judiasm, Leftists, Middle East, Peace Process

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Turkey’s View of Israel

June 9, 2015

Turkey’s View of Israel, The Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, June 9, 2015

The media’s unethical coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict seems to be the number one reason why people in Turkey have remained so misinformed and brainwashed about the issue. It is not just anti-Semitism, but also anti-Zionism, that is racist and hateful.
The houses and apartments Israelis built in their historic homeland are called “illegal settlements.” But there were no “settlements” before 1967. What, then were the Israelis supposedly “occupying” between 1948 and 1967? Why was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) even then trying to destroy Israel? What did it think it was “liberating”?
This “occupation” myth seems, instead, to have a lot to do with the “Islamization” of history and geography. Since the creation of the world, it goes, there has been only one religion: Islam. All our religious teachers have taught us that earlier historical figures were prophets — Isa [Jesus], Musa [Moses], Davut [David] and so on — were Muslims and that the original religions they brought were Islamic. These prophets, we are told, preached the teachings of Allah, but their followers, who came later, distorted their messages, changed the writings in their holy books, and fabricated these fake, untrue religions called Judaism and Christianity. Then Islam came as the last, the perfect and the only true and unchanged eternal word of Allah, which led to Muhammad to this world as a “liberator.”
If someone says, “there is a place related to King David and it is a Jewish place,” then a Muslim would say, “Yes, but David was also a Muslim. So this place actually belongs to Muslims.” There is never Islamic invasion; there is only Islamic liberation. If these people truly cared about Palestinian Arabs, they would do their best to stop the incitement and help to achieve a sustainable peace where both Arabs and Jews would be safe.

A large number of the citizens of Turkey, a NATO member, see Israel and the United States as enemies.

A survey conducted recently in Turkey found that nearly half the country’s citizens (42.6%) see Israel as the biggest security threat, followed by the United States (35.5%), and only then Syria (22.1%).

How do they visualize Israel, a country with which they have made several military and trade agreements, as being a security threat? Do they think Israel would ever invade Turkey? Bomb Turkey? Nuke Turkey? This view seems to be based on either religion-induced paranoia caused by Islamic anti-Semitism, or else their understanding of reality has been distorted Nazi-style by Turkish leaders and the media.

The problem is that the false myth of Israel’s being an “occupier” and “troublemaker” has been indoctrinated into the minds of most Turkish children from their early years. Almost all of us — including myself — grew up with an extreme prejudice against Israel. The media’s unethical coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict — including both the Islamist and Kemalist (secular nationalist) media — seems to be the number one reason why people in Turkey have remained so misinformed and brainwashed about the issue.

Only the intensity of the prejudice changes according to what newspaper or TV channel you follow or what family raises you. Islamic anti-Semitism, even if we might not be aware of it, has a lot to do with this kind of upbringing.

A short scanning of Turkish newspapers and TV channels would also clearly show their continual hateful propaganda against Israel.

No other state or organization has been demonized and delegitimized by the Turkish media to this extent.

Unfortunately, even the media that calls itself “progressive” has bought and reproduced the propaganda that Israel is the “invader” and the “oppressor.” One of their most popular slogans is, “We are not anti-Semitic, but just anti-Zionist.”

Zionism defends the concept that Jews — like any other people — have human rights, and are entitled to live their original Biblical homeland. Although forced out of their land many times, as by the Babylonians or the Romans, they never entirely left it.

If the demand of Jews for equality and independence disturbs anyone, it is due to his own racism — in whatever name he is trying to dress it up — and not to anything the Jews might have allegedly done. It is not just anti-Semitism, but also anti-Zionism, that is racist and hateful.

Every person who comes up with the genius idea of “not being anti-Semitic but just being anti-Zionist” should also offer their idea of what kind of a Jewish state they would like to see or whether they would like to see a Jewish state at all. If it is the political system of Israel they oppose, then they should clarify how their own alternative system would be better than the current one, and what they would do to convince Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to achieve peaceful coexistence with Israel.

They should also clarify why they are so obsessed with Israel, which has the most democratic political system in the Middle East, while autocratic, theocratic, despotic regimes abound in the region.

They might also please explain what makes the non-existent, imaginary “democratic Palestine” preferable to already existing, thriving and democratic Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah is essentially no better than Hamas; just sometimes less violent. The Palestinian Authority (PA), as stated in its charter and “phased plans,” says it prefers to displace Israel diplomatically, through the dictator-controlled United Nations and European governments, and economically through boycotts and sanctions, rather than with missiles.

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Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meeting with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and Ismail Haniyeh on June 18, 2013, in Ankara, Turkey. (Image source: Turkey Prime Minister’s Press Office)

Now that so many Jews are all in one place, the progressives can pretend to themselves that it is “just Israel,” and not “the Jews,” who are the target of their hate. As the former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said, Israel, only slightly bigger than the city of Beijing, is a “one-bomb country.”

The progressive media’s representation of Israel as an “occupier” only caters to the genocidal desires of these anti-humanitarian regimes or groups. They never point to Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, China’s occupation of Tibet, or Pakistan’s occupation of Kashmir — not to mention Russia’s recent flamboyant occupations.

For the past 2000 years, Jews have been exposed to unending persecution accompanied by expulsions, forced conversions, mob attacks, pogroms, property confiscations, massacres, and the 1938-45 Holocaust. Attacks against Jews in Europe continue today.

After Jews were forced from their Biblical home into the Diaspora, their lives were painful for centuries. When they were in exile in Europe, they were disposable. Now that they are back home in Israel, they are “occupiers;” again not wanted.

Under Nazi rule, Jews were “illegal,” slaughtered wholesale, tortured with fake “medical experiments” and not even considered fully human.

To end their history of 2000 years of suffering and to finally be free, Jews have returned to their home, Israel.

They have brought their light back to the land and presented gifts to the Middle Eastern peoples that no other nation there has experienced: democracy, tolerance, freedom of speech, human rights — as well as countless medical and technological innovations. This tiny country has produced some of the most brilliant minds in history, and has become the second most educated nation on earth.

What they have done is to build a truly open and productive society on sand dunes and deserts, where even the Muslim citizens, who make up 20% of Israel’s population, have the freedom to say the most horrendous things about anyone they wish, including the prime minister — and they do. In short, even the Muslims in Israel enjoy privileges that in any other country in the region would get them incarcerated.

Israel’s neighbors, however, have not shown much appreciation for these admirable traits — only more jealousy and hatred.

As thanks for the endless good the Israelis bring the region and the world, they are vilified by the anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, Jew-hating, politically-driven blocs in the Arab countries, Turkey, Europe and the UN, which clearly want to destroy them, on one pretext or another.

The houses and apartments Israelis build in their historic homeland are called “illegal settlements.” But there were no “settlements” before 1967. What, then, were the Israelis supposedly “occupying” between 1948 and 1967? Why was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) even then trying to destroy Israel? What did it think it was “liberating”?

This “occupation” myth seems, instead, to have a lot to do with the “Islamization” of history and geography.

According to Islamic ideology, all history is actually Islamic history and most of the major historical figures were actually Muslims. Islam does not recognize other religions as either genuine or original.

Since the creation of the world, it goes, there has been only one religion: Islam. Others are irrelevant, fabricated by those who came later but went astray. All our religion teachers have taught us that the earlier prophets — Issa [Jesus], Musa [Moses], Davut [David] and so on — were Muslims, and that the original religions they brought were Islamic. These prophets, we are told, preached the teachings of Allah, but their followers, who came later, distorted their messages, changed the writings in their holy books, and fabricated those fake, untrue religions called Judaism and Christianity. Then Islam came as the last, the perfect and the only true and unchanged eternal word of Allah, which led to the coming of Muhammad to this world as a “liberator.”

If someone says “there is a place related to King David and it is a Jewish place,” then a Muslim would say “Yes, but David was also a Muslim. So this place actually belongs to Muslims.”

The Islamization of history leads to the Islamization of geography. All those religious figures were Muslims, so the places in which they resided were also Muslim places. So Muslims never call their invasions “invasions.” They consider them all liberations of former Muslim places. There is never Islamic invasion; there is only Islamic liberation.

This view is the view behind the recent call of Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for “Liberating Jerusalem” from the Jews. “Conquest is Mecca,” said Erdogan in a speech in Istanbul on June 1, before millions who were celebrating the 562^nd anniversary of the fall of Constantinople. “Conquest is Saladin,” he said, “It is to hoist the Islamic flag over Jerusalem again; conquest is the heritage of Mehmed II and conquest means forcing Turkey back on its feet.”

Erdogan is calling for an invasion of Jerusalem, which basically means a call for death and destruction. He was doing that just prior to the elections, because he knew that such anti-Semitic outbursts will most likely increase the votes of the AKP party.

The biggest problem is that this statement was made by the head of a NATO member.

Why would a Turk or a Muslim want to “liberate” Jerusalem? To turn it into another Muslim land where discrimination and persecution against minorities and all kinds of human rights violations run wild? Turkey does not even treat its own minorities with respect and discriminates against them daily, for instance by not giving the Kurds even the right to be educated in their native language. For what purpose, or based on what right, should Turkish authorities want to rule over Jerusalem?

Do they want to slaughter the Jews just as they slaughtered Christians in 1915, and still deny it even today? Do they want to ban the Hebrew language just as they ban the Kurdish language in Turkey? Do they want to rape Jewish women as they raped Kurdish and Greek Cypriot women during ethnic cleansing campaigns? Do they want to convert Israel’s synagogues and churches into stables as they did those in Turkey? Or do they want to turn Israel’s prisons into centers of torture just as they did in Turkey’s Kurdistan? What on earth could Turkish authorities give to Jerusalem if they could capture it?

These people need to understand and accept the fact that the Ottoman Empire is dead and that none of its former colonies wants it back.

This is not the first time that anti-Semitism is promoted by a Turkish state authority. Anti-Semitism has a very long history in Turkey. Some of the most horrible crimes committed against Turkey’s Jews happened during the 1934 pogrom, when about 15,000 Jews in Thrace were forcibly driven out of their homes. During the pogrom, Jews were boycotted and attacked, their property was looted and burned down, and Jewish women were raped.

Just prior to the outbreak of the 1934 pogrom, Ibrahim Tali Ongoren, the inspector general of Thrace (the highest state official in the region) made a four-week inspection tour of the province. According to Tali Ongoren’s report, “The Jew of Thrace is so morally corrupt and devoid of character that it strikes one immediately.” The Jew, he wrote, possessed a “fawning, deceitful character that hides its secret intentions, always applauds the powerful, worships gold and knows no love of the homeland.”

“The Jews represent a secret danger and possibly want to establish communist nuclei in our country through the workers’ club and it is therefore an indispensable necessity for Turkish life, the Turkish economy, Turkish security, the Turkish regime and the revolution in Thrace and for Turkish Thrace to be able to recover, to finally solve [the Jewish] problem in the most radical way.” [1]

According to the historian Corry Guttstadt, although the 90-page report Ongoren prepared for the government and for the ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) contained a wide range of topics, he seemed to be, “outright obsessed with the ‘Jewish problem,’ which comes up in nearly every chapter.”

“Tali’s report” Guttstadt wrote, “is laced with the crudest of anti-Semitic stereotypes. This contradicts not only the government’s assertion that anti-Semitism in Turkey was only a fringe phenomenon [Tali was the highest ranking official of the Republic in this region] but must also be considered proof that the expulsion of the Jews from Thrace and from the Dardanelles was in keeping with the state’s objectives, just as foreign diplomats had reported.

“The rights of the non-Muslim minorities were protected by the international Treaty of Lausanne, at least on paper. To circumvent these legal obstacles, The Turkish authorities had apparently opted for the strategy of putting the Jews under such pressure with boycott activities and anonymous threats ‘from the population’ that they would leave the area ‘voluntarily’.

“The period that followed was characterized by further boycott attempts and intimidation in Edirne and even in Istanbul.”[2]

While these crimes against Jews were committed, there was no Jewish state in Israel. But Jew-hatred was clearly rampant.

The main offenders to be held responsible for anti-Semitism in Turkey are the Turkish state authorities. A state that is an EU candidate, as well as a NATO member, is supposed to be a true ally of the West. It is supposed to fight anti-Semitism and promote a peaceful, diverse and pro-Western culture. It is supposed to provide its schoolchildren with a kind of education in which the children will rid themselves off the traditional Jew-hatred and other racism, and embrace at least some humanitarian values that will help them recognize all peoples as equal and worthy of respect.

Sadly, Turkey has done none of that. It has made a record number of military and commercial deals with the state of Israel, but domestically it has systematically propagated anti-Semitism and racism, as well as Turkish-Islamic supremacy, through its institutions and media. As a result of this propaganda, a great number of Turkish people see Israel and the USA as the biggest security threats today.

In Turkey, being Westernized has been restricted to benefiting from the technical and material innovations of the West, but rejecting the social values of the West on grounds that those values would not fit into the Turkish culture. More perplexingly, being politically and socially pro-Western is almost associated with being a “traitor.”

“Israel wants peace. Period,” wrote the journalist Israel Kasnett. “The Jewish people have never held a desire to rule over others and this remains true today. Not only are we ohev shalom [‘lovers of peace’], but we are also rodef shalom [‘active pursuers of peace’].”

Is anyone listening? Are Turks listening? Many, apparently, are not.

Throughout much of the world are bloodbaths and persecution of human beings, but it is only Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East, that is targeted and singled out for defending itself, and is accused of “occupation.”

To many of the people here in Turkey, the problem does not seem to be whether Israel wants peace, or whether Israel is a democracy, or whether Palestinian Arabs are really suffering, or why. If these people truly cared about Palestinian Arabs, they would do their best to stop the killings and incitement and to help achieve a sustainable peace where both Arabs and Jews would be safe.

But they do not really care about the Palestinians. They do not want peace. They do not want a “two-state solution.” They want to see Jews dead. And they could not care less about how many Arabs will lose their lives in the meantime.

But there is one thing they do not seem to be aware of: Their genocidal Jew-hatred can never strip Israel off its right to self-defense. It can only empower and further legitimize this right.

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[1] Guttstadt, Corry (2013). Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. More slurs include: “Although (the Jews) underwent natural selection as a result of constant mixing with different blood in the last century and have almost entirely lost the physical characteristics specific to Jewry, they have completely retained the typically Jewish fawning, deceitful character that hides its secret intentions, always applauds the powerful, worships gold, and knows no love of the homeland, and have even developed these harmful traits so much further that they could inflict torment on humanity.

“In the Jewish value system, honor and dignity have no place. The Jews of Thrace owe their rise to the destructive effects of the wars on the Turkish population, that is how [the Jews] have become rich and enchanted their influence.

“The Jews of Thrace are intent on making Thrace the equivalent of Palestine. For the development of Thrace, it is of the utmost necessity that this element [the Jews], whose hands are grabbing for all the treasures of Thrace, not be allowed to continue to suck out the Turks’ blood. In the establishment of new military facilities… we must keep our administrative and military activities entirely secret from this element [the Jews].

“Above all, it is essential that this element [the Jews] be neutralized so completely that they cannot engage in spying…”

[2] Guttstadt, Corry (2013). Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press.

“In the light of this, it hardly seems coincidental that Tali himself had travelled the entire region until a week before the events erupted and then remained in Ankara during the boycott activities and the threats. It seems that the operations then ‘got out of hand’ locally, with the nationalist mob putting itself in charge in some places and committing looting and acts of violence.

“After the reports of the riots reached the international public, the government was forced to condemn both the events and anti-Semitism in general. In the end, however, the episode achieved, for the most part, the intended goal and largely ‘solved’ the ‘Jewish problem’ in Thrace in the way favored by Tali.”

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Terrorism, Turkey
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Terrorism, Turkey

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