Archive for the ‘Jerusalem’ category

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Divine Islamic Revelation Now International Law

December 31, 2016

Divine Islamic Revelation Now International Law, American Thinker, Jonathan F. Keiler, December 31, 2016

Who is the real winner in the passing of U.N. Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli “settlements” in so-called Palestinian land? It is not the Arabs who live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, nor the leftist BDS movement, nor the world community which acted in usual blind lock-step in condemning Israel, or even the Obama administration which sacrificed American stature and credibility to express personal pique, though all appear to be gleefully rubbing grubby hands. The real winner is radical Islam, which the aforementioned parties claim to oppose.

For all the talk of preserving a “two-state” solution between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, and its attendant equivocating between Arab violence and incitement and the peaceful building of Jewish homes, the real heart 2334 is the first paragraph, which states that the Resolution

Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law…

That “international law” is the creation of U.N. Security Council, which invents such law with the passage of resolutions, regardless of whether standard principles of law-making, such as precedent, judicial or statutory authority are present. If the U.N.S.C. passed a resolution declaring Mars and its “inhabitants” a country, that would be international law. Its resolutions on Israel are almost pure exercises in self-referential circular reasoning. But that does not mean that they are without legal or practical impact, especially when endorsed by the United States, still — if barely — the world’s preeminent power.

With Resolution 2334 the U.N.S.C. and the United States (thanks to President Obama) have endorsed and enshrined in international law the idea that Jerusalem is a historically Arab city, a bit of myth-making that could have come directly from an ISIS spokesman. For while it is a fact that Jerusalem (East and West) is and mostly has been a Jewish city, about which there can be no reasonable historical cavil, it has been the mission of Islam to convince otherwise.

That Islamic mission is part and parcel of the broader Muslim conception which sees Islam as the true and culminating expression of the god of Abraham. By extension Jews and Christians are, at best, deluded inauthentic monotheists, who may pay to be tolerated by Muslims, but nothing more. Denying Jerusalem’s Jewish identity denies its Christian identity as well. Thus, this resolution is as much an attack on Christians and Christianity as it is on “Israeli settlement activity.”

A couple days before the passage of the Resolution 2334, historian Bat Ye’or carefully delineated the U.N.’s continuing attack not only on Israel but on the West and Christianity in criticizing last April’s Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO which ignores historical Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and declares the entire area Muslim.  Unlike U.N.S.C. resolutions, the decisions of UNESCO’s executive council are not considered binding international law, but taken in conjunction with Resolution 2334 that is now the practical effect.

This is yet another example of how Islam, including its most radical adherents, is winning the war of ideas with the Judeo-Christian West, a war that has been going on physically and intellectually since Mohammed’s first “revelation” in the early 7th Century.

From the start, Mohammed was acutely aware that to spread the new faith he had to give it legitimacy in the eyes of pre-Islamic pagan Arabs who were already gravitating toward monotheistic beliefs, some tribes having already adopted Christianity or Judaism. Mohammed supplied this legitimacy in large part by tying Allah’s revelations to existing belief systems, pagan and monotheistic alike. Thus, the Quran famously references Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and several other notable New and Old Testament figures. Per Mohammed these men were all Muslim prophets whose words and deeds were misinterpreted by the Christians and Jews who created the Old and New Testaments.

So obviously, Christians and Jews have long presented a problem for Islam. Mohammed believed that they would be eager converts to Islam, since they were already monotheists and Allah’s “revelations” acknowledged those Christian and Jewish prophets. When this did not happen, Mohammed and his successors variously slaughtered, enforced conversions or reduced the status of the “people of the book” and taxed them.

Jerusalem plays an important role in this process as I explained in detail here. While Jerusalem in not mentioned in the Quran, supposedly, early in Mohammed’s time in Medina — possibly to encourage Jewish conversion to Islam — Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem. Mohammed gave this up after a few months and turned toward Mecca.

Islam’s second caliph, the very capable Umar, captured Jerusalem a few years after Mohammed’s death. He deliberately chose the Temple Mount, where the Jewish temple stood and where Jesus walked, as the site of Islam’s first work of monumental architecture, the Dome of the Rock. He claimed the space for Islam not only physically, but spiritually, asserting that the rocky outcrop within the shrine was the very rock upon which Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed, and Muslim scholars began to claim that the “furthest precinct” referenced in the Quran as part of Mohammed’s “night journey” was Jerusalem.

Of course, this was a lot of hooey and still is. Certainly, medieval and later Christians didn’t buy it, nor Jerusalem’s Jews then or now, but evidently President Obama and the U.N.S.C. does. Because between the UNESCO decision and Resolution 2334 it now appears that “international law” (with the concurrence of the sitting U.S. Government) establishes East Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and its ancient Jewish Quarter as historical Arab territory, although it most assuredly is not.

Unlike the New and Old Testaments, the Quran eschews narrative. It is neither a story nor a history. Muslims believe it is the direct revelation of Allah given to Mohammed as Allah saw fit, which is not man’s role to question. In failing to veto Resolution 2334 in the wake of the UNESCO move, the United States along with the rest of the international community, has now officially bought into the Islamic version of Jerusalem’s history, and with that, effectively the Muslim assertion of divine revelation in support of Islamic activity and the implementation of international law. That is a godsend to Islamic terrorists and they will see it that way too.

Categories: Islam and Israel, Islam and Jews, Islamic law, Islamic myths, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Jerusalem, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama and the UN, UN and Islamic law, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The UN vote teaches much but changes nothing and affects even less

December 25, 2016

The UN vote teaches much but changes nothing and affects even less, Israel National News, Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, December 25, 2016

The so–called “Two-State Solution” died years and years ago.  No one told Obama that he helped kill it by siding so unilaterally with Arab demands against Israel.  Obama induced Mahmoud Abbas almost a decade ago to stop talks with Israel, leaving Obama and Hillary, succeeded by Kerry, to do the dirty work.  As a result, stasis ensued, and Jews continued moving in. There now are more than 750,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria, including Jews living in East Jerusalem.  The Arabs will not allow them to remain there, and Israel cannot logistically relocate them.  Israel could not even relocate or successfully re-employ 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif who were forcibly uprooted and displaced during Ariel Sharon’s Gaza give-away.  Israel cannot remove 800,000 people, place them in alternate homes and find them productive jobs.  It is logistically impossible.  Only Adolf Hitler could remove a million Jews from their homes and ‘resettle’ them. 

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

1.  The U.S. Jewish organization J Street applauded the move, saying the resolution advances the goal of a two-state solution, also a longtime U.S. objective. “This resolution conveys the overwhelming support of the international community, including Israel’s closest friends and allies, for the two-state solution, and their deep concern over the deteriorating status quo between Israelis and Palestinians and the lack of meaningful progress toward peace,” the organization said.

2.  Obama will be out in 28 days.  Had Hillary Clinton been elected, this United Nations vote now would launch a real long-term headache.  Not a disaster, but a real headache.  Nothing ever can obstruct the will of G-d, certainly not those in Migdal Bavel — the Tower of Babel — but they still can cause headaches.  However, Hillary instead is an asterisk to history.  A minuscule small asterisk, best remembered as a Public Liar who lost two “Can’t Miss” elections, first to Obama and then to Donald Trump.

3.  It was a miracle that Donald Trump ever was elected.  Even on Election Day the exit-poll reports were that he was in big trouble in Florida and elsewhere.  The miracle goes back generations.  His grandfather never wanted to be in America in the first place, but the Kaiser would not let him back in after the grandfather traveled to America without paying a mandatory fee that permitted people to leave and then to return.  So the grandfather got stuck in America against his will.  Two generations later, Trump emerges as President of the United States.  Before that, his elegant and refined daughter converts to Judaism and undertakes to live a Modern Orthodox Jewish life, and she marries into an Orthodox family with long-standing ties to Israel and with demonstrated sympathies to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

President-elect Trump has been a friend of Israel and of Jews all his life.  He has been awarded for his friendship, has been a Grand Marshall of an Israel Day Parade, has donated to Bet El.  He surrounds himself with Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews who are deep and committed friends of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.  His front-line non-Jewish supporters, including Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Dr. Ben Carson, Steve Bannon, and others are huge supporters of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and they all support moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Mr. Trump is very close with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and he deeply admires scrappy, strong men who do not back down in the face of adversity.

4.  Obama now goes out — along with Kerry — with exactly the legacy they have earned but camouflaged from the public’s view.  By acting against Israel, Obama revealed his enmity and small churlish pettiness in his last month of the eight years, so that all could see and know what so many liberal Jews refused to acknowledge.  His legacy with the Jews is sealed, and his churlish pettiness will define him for the rest of his life as Jimmy Carter’s anti-Semitism has defined him.

5.  If Mr. Trump contemplated wavering on fulfilling his pledge to move the embassy, as so many other American Presidents before him have done, now he himself will be self-motivated to move the embassy — “just because” — because that is how Donald Trump is in the core of his being: “You push me, and I hit you back twice as hard.”  That is Donald Trump.  Thus, the short-term anti-Israel moment in which Israel’s enemies exult will guarantee Israel a much more satisfying long-term result.  This U.N. vote virtually assures that President Trump will move the embassy to Jerusalem.

6.  Notably — and excellently for those who love Israel — the U.N. vote also equates East Jerusalem completely with all the rest of Judea and Samaria, putting all Jewish communities there in the same category.  This is excellent because even most of the Israelis who are prepared to compromise on parts of Judea and Samaria are not prepared to compromise on East Jerusalem.  Although people anticipated that President Trump would move the embassy to West Jerusalem if he would honor his promise, this vote even may induce Trump miraculously to move the embassy to East Jerusalem.  I do not know whether he would go that far, but now he might.

7.  If Prime Minster Netanyahu wants to remain in office and not see the utter break-up of his coalition, this U.N. vote will induce the Israeli Government to expand Jewish populating of Judea and Samaria (“West Bank settlements”) as a response of defiance, particularly once Trump is in.

8.  The U.N. voted in 1975 that Zionism is Racism.  In time, they voted to retract the measure because it cost them dearly.  Mr. Trump is the sort, and he has the Republican Congress to back him, to cut American dollars to the United Nations so significantly — and he already believes that America spends far too much on too many overseas commitments — and that itself may be useful.

9.  More than 70 percent of American Jews voted foolishly for Hillary against Trump.  G-d blessed Israel that, at her time of need, there is a Christian community in America — the conservative Evangelicals — who back Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria fully and who made clear to Mr. Trump that, along with religious and social issues dear to them (and, by the way to Orthodox Jews) — opposition to abortion, issues regarding the traditional family, Government interference in religion — they insist on supporting Israel, support moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and support the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “Jewish settlements in Occupied Palestine”).

10.  The so–called “Two-State Solution” died years and years ago.  No one told Obama that he helped kill it by siding so unilaterally with Arab demands against Israel.  Obama induced Mahmoud Abbas almost a decade ago to stop talks with Israel, leaving Obama and Hillary, succeeded by Kerry, to do the dirty work.  As a result, stasis ensued, and Jews continued moving in. There now are more than 750,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria, including Jews living in East Jerusalem.  The Arabs will not allow them to remain there, and Israel cannot logistically relocate them.  Israel could not even relocate or successfully re-employ 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif who were forcibly uprooted and displaced during Ariel Sharon’s Gaza give-away.  Israel cannot remove 800,000 people, place them in alternate homes and find them productive jobs.  It is logistically impossible.  Only Adolf Hitler could remove a million Jews from their homes and ‘resettle’ them.

So there is no “Two-State” solution because, except for displacing a few families in Amona, who will one day live in even better homes, it will not happen anyway because Israel is not going to put a million Jews in cattle cars and ship them to camps of concentration. Israel simply does not have alternate housing and employment for a million people.  It simply will not happen because it now is logistically impossible.

11.  Israel made major concessions in past negotiations, reaching agreements under Clinton and George W. Bush to make major concessions in return for American assurances and guarantees that included assurances that America would recognize the legality of certain major populations of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Today’s experience at the U.N. marks America reneging fundamentally on its pledged commitments made in these deals, thus nullifying the legal binding of those deals.  It also reminds Israel that only she can watch out for her survival because other countries have their own interests, and government leaderships change.  Even President Trump will not be forever, though he does have four years ahead with a good chance of eight years if he jump-starts the economy successfully, and there is a reasonably good chance for some extra time afterwards with Vice President Mike Pence succeeding him in eight years if the Republicans rule properly, effectively, and generously.

12.  It is particularly satisfying the Myth of Obama in the American Jewish community to be exposed and remembered.  Israeli Jews already “had his number” eight years ago. This is an effete who characterized the Radical Islamist terrorist murders of Jews in France, in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders, as having been the result of some violent people attacking a “random grocery store.”  That world view accorded with Obama characterizing the Radical Islamist murders at Fort Hood as “workplace violence.”

American Jews, more than others, need to remember whom they supported and what he and his ilk are.  Jews also need to know now that Charles Schumer, Democrat Senator from New York and the Democrats’ Senate Minority Leader, is not their savior but rather is their deep embarrassment, and Schumer has no influence on matters concerning Israel’s survival. He is utterly useless. Likewise, the Orthodox Jew in Obama’s cabinet — Jack Lew, Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury — could not influence the day. He, too, was utterly useless, and it is valuable that he be remembered that way, now that his uselessness has been exposed.

In the end, Jews need to know who their friends are, who their obvious enemies are, who their covert enemies are, and most importantly, as we embark on commemorating the Hanukkah miracle in the Beit Hamikdash — the Holy Temple — Jews need to know that their survival is in the hands of G-d.

13.  I conclude as I began.  J Street is an organization supported in no small measure by George Soros. There has been some public discussion the past ten days in America as to whether it is fair to call the pathetic self-hating back-stabbers in J Street “worse than Kapos.”  The record will show that, on the day that Obama ineffectually took one last swipe at Israel, J Street issued the statement it did.  Res Ipsa Loquitur.  The thing speaks for itself.

Categories: Israel, Israel - Jewish state, Israel and UN, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, Obama and Israel, Obama and the UN, Trump and Israel, Two state solution, U.S. Embassy, UN Security Council
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Krauthammer’s Take: Abstention on Anti-Israel Vote a Disgrace: ‘U.S. Joined the Jackals at the U.N.’

December 24, 2016

Krauthammer’s Take: Abstention on Anti-Israel Vote a Disgrace: ‘U.S. Joined the Jackals at the U.N.’ Fox News via YouTube, December 23, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crEicBxcfwA

Categories: Israel, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, Obama and Israel, Obama and Jews, UN Security Council
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem

November 30, 2016

Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel National News, Dr. Max Singer, November 30, 2016

(Please see also, Jimmy Carter wants UN to impose a Palestinian state by fiat, with US recognition. — DM)

The US State Department, which has always opposed moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, understands very well that any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will leave at least western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and part of sovereign Israel. So why will the State Department nevertheless advise President-Elect Donald Trump not to fulfill his promise to move the embassy?

Moving the embassy to Israel’s actual capital would provoke Arab anger at the US and lead to protests that might turn violent. The foreign policy establishment wishes to prevent this result and protect America’s status as an “honest broker.” It therefore continues to insist that because Jerusalem’s ultimate status can only be determined by agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and that it would be wrong for the US to “prejudge” the outcome by acting on the truth that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem.

This is a perfect example of the kind of politically-correct establishment pettifogging that Trump campaigned against. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is a low-cost action that he could take as soon as he is inaugurated, and one of the easiest and quickest changes in policy that he could implement. The new US consulate in Jerusalem was built with security features that would be needed for an embassy, so the move could be started almost immediately, without any prejudice to the Palestinian claim to eastern Jerusalem.

The State Department’s insistence on the diplomatic fiction that none of Jerusalem is part of Israel helps preserve the Palestinian hope that, someday, Israel will be forced to give up its capital and will be destroyed as the independent, democratic Jewish state.

That Palestinian hope is the main obstacle to peace. The Palestinians can only make peace when their community – and perhaps the Arab world of which it is a part – comes to understand that international pressure will never force Israel to acquiesce in its own destruction. One of the best ways the US can demonstrate that it will never consent to the Palestinian destruction of Israel is for Washington to stop ignoring blatant Palestinian lies that work against peace.

There is another way that an American truth-telling strategy could encourage peace.  Palestinian leadership now tells its people – and most of them believe – that compromise with Israel would be immoral because Israel is a colonial invader that stole Palestinian land by force. By that argument, Israel has no moral claim to any of the land, and any concession to it would be dishonorable.

But Israel is descended from Jewish kingdoms that ruled parts of the land for centuries in ancient times. It too has a traditional base for moral claims to the territory (in addition to legal claims from the League of Nations mandate). If the Palestinians recognized this truth, they would see that compromise between the two groups, each of which has valid claims to the land, could be an honorable way to end the dispute and not a cowardly yielding to force.

To undermine this moral basis for compromise with Israel, Palestinian leadership flatly denies any ancient Jewish connection to the land. They claim, for example, that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount from which Jesus could have chased the money-changers. Yet their own history belies this claim. In 1929, the Supreme Moslem Council in Jerusalem, in its guide to the Mount, wrote: “[The Temple Mount’s] identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”

The US may not be able to induce the Palestinian Authority to stop inciting its constituents and teaching its children to hate Israel. But there are ways in which the US can expose and eventually defeat Palestinian lies that work against peace; ways that do not require getting agreement from anyone.

Exploring these new approaches would constitute a striking change in diplomatic direction. There are many examples of the West rejecting truth on behalf of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. For example, some Western countries went along with the recent denial by UNESCO of any ancient Jewish connection to the land of Israel. The US politely ignores the Palestinian lie that there was never a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.

If the US consistently tells the truth about the ancient Jewish presence in Palestine, and publicly refuses to swallow the Palestinians’ false and anti-peace denials of history, the Palestinian leadership will not for long be able to keep the truth from their people, or at least from the large educated class.

The US has followed a policy of avoiding truths that are painful or embarrassing to the Arabs for at least 50 years. It hasn’t worked. Maybe it is time to try the strategy of telling the truth. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, in accordance with the long-standing congressional position, would be a good way for President Trump to make a start on a truth-telling strategy – as well as to fulfill a campaign promise.

Categories: Israel, Jerusalem, Obama and Israel, Palestinians, Trump and Israel, U.S. Embassy, United Nations
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Qatar’s Shopping Spree to Buy and Displace the West?

November 11, 2016

Qatar’s Shopping Spree to Buy and Displace the West? Gatestone Institute,Giulio Meotti, November 11, 2016

Qatar sits on the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency that has just erased 3000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and has set its sights on the main chair at UNESCO: as the successor of UNESCO’s secretary general, Irina Bokova.

Human rights organizations have already promoted a campaign to prevent Qatar’s Kawari from taking the UNESCO seat. Citing a vast amount of anti-Semitic material present at the Doha Book Fair, Kawari’s flagship, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign against his candidacy.

Qatar is the puppeteer behind UNESCO’s anti-Semitic resolution on Jerusalem, and a world center of Islamic extremism. Qatar does not make a secret of trying to submit Western culture to the Muslim crescent.

The Soviet Union, during the Cold War, invested in propaganda operations in the West to subvert capitalism and democracy. Communism found precious allies in the so-called “useful idiots” who facilitated Soviet work in academia, newspapers and publishing houses. Political Islam has been using the same convenient outlets and mechanisms to spread Islamic sharia law in the West.

The old role of Soviet propaganda has now been taken up by Islamic regimes. Qatar, for instance, is not only interested in buying large segments of Europe’s economy (Hochtief, Volkswagen, Porsche, Canary Wharf and Deutsche Bank), but also in playing a key role in Europe’s culture.

Qatar sits on the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency that has just erased 3000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and has set its sights on the main chair at UNESCO: as the successor of UNESCO’s secretary general, Irina Bokova.

The favorite for this race is, in fact, the former minister of culture of Qatar from 2008 to 2016, Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari, who currently serves as “cultural adviser to the Emir,” Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. In 2017, the UNESCO leadership is supposed to go to a representative of the Arab world, according to the rule of geographic rotation; Kawari will have to defeat the candidacy of a Lebanese and an Egyptian.

Kawari recently landed in Rome, apparently to start his promotional tour, and he met with its mayor, Virginia Raggi, who received the Islamic emirate’s delegation. Kawari received an honorary degree from Tor Vergata University, Rome’s second most important university. The photo of the ceremony speaks volumes about political Islam’s level of penetration in Europe’s academic culture. Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah, Qatar’s former deputy prime minister, even spoke at Tor Vergata.

2037Qatar’s Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari (center), who serves as “cultural adviser to the Emir,” is pictured receiving an honorary degree from Rome’s Tor Vergata University last month. (Image source: Askanews video screenshot)

Kawari also had a meeting with Italy’s minister of culture, Dario Franceschini and minister of education, Stefania Giannini.

Last June, Kawari was also in the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis and sign an agreement between the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education. Kawari, fluent in Arabic, English and French, is an affable man of the world, at home in Paris, where he graduated from Sorbonne University; his climb to the leadership of UNESCO has the support of the rulers of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

Human rights organizations have already promoted a campaign to prevent Kawari from taking the UNESCO seat. Citing a vast amount of anti-Semitic material present at the Doha Book Fair, Kawari’s flagship, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign against his candidacy. In a letter to Kawari, Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center, said the material on display every year in Doha “violates the values promoted by Unesco“.

Samuels listed at least 35 anti-Semitic titles, including nine editions of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, four editions of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and four editions of Henry Ford’s The International Jew. “From this point of view, Doha is far from Paris,” said Samuels, referring to the general headquarters of UNESCO.

Qatar is the puppeteer behind UNESCO’s anti-Semitic resolution on Jerusalem, and a world center of Islamic extremism. Doha just held a meeting between the Palestinian Authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the heads of Hamas, a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of the State of Israel. Qatar does not make a secret of trying to submit Western culture to the Muslim crescent. The only question is, which country’s culture will UNESCO erase next?

The Qatari royal family is now much involved in “the arts.” According to the BBC, “To take a recent example, the Qatari royal family sponsored the Tate’s Damien Hirst retrospective. It’s now moved to Doha, where Tate director Nicholas Serota attended the official launch.” Major works by Warhol, Bacon, Rothko, Koons and Hirst are all thought to have made their way to Qatar.

Qatar is buying academic chairs in Europe’s universities, such as the pact between Doha and Rome’s Tor Vergata. What is the university presumably expected to do for Qatar in exchange for that? Qatar academic purchases are also the subject of Le Monde’s investigation entitled, “Tariq Ramadan: le sphinx,” which details how Tariq Ramadan, the well-known European Muslim intellectual, was been able to obtain a chair at the University of Oxford. Mediapart, the French leftist magazine, ran a long exposé about Tariq Ramadan as “Qatar’s showcase.”

The Qatari monarchy, in 2015 alone, donated £11 million to renew Oxford’s St Antony’s College, where Tariq Ramadan works. Sheikha Moza, the wife of Emir Al Thani, inaugurated the magnificent building designed by the late architect, Zaha Hadid.

Qatar also financed the creation of an Islamic section at the Bloomsbury publishing house and the “Doha Debates” program that aired on the BBC. It would be interesting to know how Qatar’s sharia can find agreement with the sybaritic Bloomsbury’s British culture.

The attorney-general of Qatar also signed an agreement with the president of Sorbonne University, Philippe Boutry, in Paris, for the enrollment of hundreds of migrants from the Middle East. The Sorbonne accepted 600,000 euros a year, for three years.

Many British universities also receive large donations from Qatar. University College London, for example, has an archeology campus in Qatar. The Qatar Development Fund recently donated $4.3 million to the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust at Oxford University.

Qatar is also having a shopping spree in American universities, and is funding their university departments in the Arabian desert. Universities such as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth have all signed agreements with Emir Al Thani. Each will receive $320 million dollars a year.

Students of American Universities based in Doha are also invited to attend the sermons of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is known for his hate-ridden religious edicts. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called it “outrageous” for Cornell University to decide to open a campus in Doha while the kingdom funds Hamas’s war against Israel.

The Financial Times once called Qatar “the world’s most aggressive deal hunter.” Emir Al Thani is now promoting a takeover of Western culture. But very few in Europe seem to care about that. Is it because “it is difficult to avoid its money and influence“, especially for an economically depressed Europe? With their telling silence, are they simply aligning with Qatar’s sharia rulers, and hoping they will chosen to be bought out next?

Categories: Academia and Islamists, Antisemitism, Arab nations, Human rights organizations, Islamist organizations, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestinians, Qatar, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

As rioting in Jerusalem area continues, Palestinians open fire on IDF troops

October 12, 2016

As rioting in Jerusalem area continues, Palestinians open fire on IDF troops, DEBKAfile, October 12, 2016

Rioting broke out in the Ras al-Amud and Sheikh Jarrah areas of Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, with Palestinians blocking streets and throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli security forces. Large numbers of elite Israeli police and border policemen were on the scene. Meanwhile, in the village of Naalin south of Jerusalem, a number of Palestinians approached IDF troops and opened fire on them, but none of the troops were wounded. Several Palestinians were arrested and taken in for questioning during a manhunt for the shooters.

Categories: Jerusalem, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian rioters, Palestinian terrorists
Tags: , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

“Palestinians” hail jihad attack in Jerusalem as “heroic act”

October 10, 2016

“Palestinians” hail jihad attack in Jerusalem as “heroic act”, Jihad Watch, , October 10, 2016

Said his sister: “We are proud of his actions. Bless us, don’t offer condolences. My brother died a holy death. We thank Allah for that.”

This is yet another indication of how the jihad against Israel is fueled by Islamic principles, which have, of course, been ruled out of consideration by Washington policymakers tasked with trying to figure out how to deal with the conflict.

neutralized-terrorist-jerusalem

“Palestinians laud terrorist attack in Jerusalem as ‘heroic act,’” Israel Hayom, October 10, 2016:

Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Sunday praised the deadly terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which two Israelis were killed and several were wounded, while dozens of east Jerusalem residents arrived at the terrorist’s home, where large pictures and banners with his name hung from a wall, to celebrate his “heroic act.”

The terrorist, a 39-year-old married father of two from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, killed Police 1st Sgt. Yosef Kirma, 29, and Jerusalem resident Levana Malihi, 60, and wounded three others before he was shot dead by police.

His name, as well as the details of the investigation, have been placed under a gag order.

While Hamas did not claim responsibility for the attack, it lauded the terrorist and urged young Palestinians to follow in his footsteps.

“The attack in Jerusalem is more proof of the resistance’s determination to continue despite the challenges and obstacles,” said Husam Badran, a spokesman for Hamas’ headquarters in Doha, Qatar. “The attack proves what Hamas has always said — whoever thinks the Palestinian people will wave a white flag is mistaken.”

Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas’ spokesman Gaza, said, “This heroic act bears witness to our determination and shows the Jerusalem intifada is not over.”

Islamic Jihad also praised the attack, saying it was “proof the Jerusalem intifada continues. There will be more attacks as the occupation’s murder machine continues.”

The Jerusalem branch of Fatah — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ party — declared a general strike in solidarity with the terrorist. Businesses across east Jerusalem closed as praise for the terrorist echoed through the streets….

The terrorist was scheduled to report to a Ramla prison on Sunday, where he was to serve a four-month sentence for minor security offenses.

In a video apparently posted on social media shortly before he carried out his nefarious act, the terrorist is shown urging terrorist attacks “to protect Al-Aqsa.” It is unknown when he filmed the video, but his Facebook page was rife with hatred for Israel and incitement to violence. The page has since been suspended….

The terrorist’s sister said, “We are proud of his actions. Bless us, don’t offer condolences. My brother died a holy death. We thank Allah for that.”

Categories: Fatah, Hamas, Islamic jihad, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Islam
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Trump Really Would Recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

September 26, 2016

Trump Really Would Recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital, PJ Media, Roger L Simon, September 26, 2016

jerusalem-pic

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton met with Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday.  Interestingly, Trump was with the Israeli prime for nearly ninety minutes, Clinton for less than an hour.

The Republican candidate obviously had more of substance to discuss with Netanyahu – the efficacy of security walls and their mutual distrust of the Iran nuclear deal being two obvious examples.  For Hillary, the encounter was more of a quick check on her bucket list, and probably an uncomfortable one.

After his meeting, Trump’s people made clear that Donald had pledged that, if elected president, he would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.

This has been a bone of contention (to put it mildly) from, we could almost say, time immemorial, because the Jewish claim on the city dates from at least the construction of Solomon’s temple, estimated to be 832 BCE. (Actually, there’s lots of earlier evidence of Jewish presence in Jerusalem, including the extensive excavations of David’s City, but I’m keeping it simple here.) Islam, currently occupying Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, has its origins in the beginning of the 7th Century CE, over 1400 years after Solomon, and in Mecca and Medina (not Jerusalem).  No one sane disputes this.

Several American presidential candidates – when running for office – have made pledges similar to Trump’s, then, upon election, basically reneged, usually by ignoring the situation or telling the Israelis to wait until the Palestinian question is resolved.  That gave those presidents a fair amount of cover because it would take Solomon himself to tell us when that would be – and even in his case I’m not sure.

So it’s natural that Trump’s pledge would be met with some skepticism.  On Twitter Sunday night, several Republican stalwarts attacked a tweet I had written in support of Trump on this matter, implying (or even stating) that I was promoting a lie.  The candidate would never go forward with the recognition.

While I think these attacks were basically masked, last-ditch NeverTrumpism, this would be a significant decision on Trump’s part with great international ramifications and I owe my critics a bit longer response than I could give in 140-character tweets.

To begin with, Trump attended the meeting Sunday in the company of his son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Kushner – a real estate investor himself and publisher of The Observer who has emerged as one of Trump’s key advisers – is an Orthodox Jew and therefore takes the Jerusalem issue quite seriously, far more than almost any politician or political professional would.  This could only signal to Netanyahu – and should to all of us – that Trump was not taking the meeting, or anything he said in it, lightly.

Yes, he could have been using Kushner as an emblem of some sort, but I suspect Kushner himself would have been unhappy about that.  So I further suspect the reverse was true here.  This was a gesture meant to say to the Israelis – I’m with you in the deepest sense.  (Clinton was accompanied in her meeting by Jake Sullivan, who has been frequently besmirched by the email scandal.)

More importantly, Trump, not being a lifetime politician, would be the first president, basically ever, well-positioned to follow through on the pledge. He has never participated in the seemingly endless rounds of Middle East negotiations.  The ins-and-out of the increasingly dubious Oslo Accords were not his doing.  He can come to all of this fresh, with, let’s hope, common sense.

Recognizing  Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is just the kind of action I think Trump would enjoy taking because, after the initial brouhaha, everybody would realize that nothing really had changed.  The facts on the ground would be the same, Israel would still be allowing Muslim worship at Al Aqsa, and the absurdity of Jerusalem not being recognized as the capital of Israel when it really is would be unmasked.

Most of all, it would be a sign that Western Civilization is not prepared to give up its dominant role in the future of humanity – something, at this moment, that is sorely needed.

Categories: 2016 elections, Donald Trump and Israel, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Jerusalem, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Archaeologists Restore Second Temple Tiles Desecrated by Waqf

September 7, 2016

Archaeologists Restore Second Temple Tiles Desecrated by Waqf, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, September 7, 2016

tiles-restored-second-temple-ip

It is motivated by the same contempt for the non-Islamic past that led the Islamic State to destroy so many of Syria and Iraq’s irreplaceable ancient ruins.

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

A team of Israeli archaeologists have reconstructed the floor tiles used in the biblical Temple of Herod the Great. The find marks a breakthrough in biblical archaeology, but also shows how the Jordanian Waqf, which controls the site, has been careless at best with the site’s Jewish heritage.

In 1999, the Waqf which controls the Temple Mount (known as the Haram al-Sharif to Muslims), created a new entrance using bulldozers.

“Approximately 400 truckloads saturated with the history of Jerusalem were illicitly removed – barbarically removed – from the Temple Mount by the Islamic Waqf in November 1999 to promote a political agenda,” said Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-founder of the Temple Mount Sifting Project and professor emeritus of the Hebrew University, speaking to the Jerusalem Post.

“All of that was dug up with bulldozers in a place where even a toothbrush is too large a tool to carry out excavations.”

At the time, Israeli archaeologists charged that the process of building the entrance should have been documented carefully and all debris sorted through during the construction process.

Instead they removed thousands of tons of debris full of archaeological treasures and dumped them at a nearby landfill. A team of Israeli archaeologists has been sifting through the dirt for the last 10 years. They have found thousands of antiquities.

Now the project has been vindicated as it has been able to piece together the floor tiling used by King Herod in his renovations of the Temple, proof that the Waqf’s excavations damaged antiquities from the site. Herod ruled at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, and it is at Herod’s temple that many episodes recorded in the gospels took place.

“This represents the first time that archaeologists have been able to successfully restore an element from the Herodian Second Temple complex,” Zachi Dvira, co-founder and co-director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project announced at an unveiling of the restored tiles. “It enables us to get an idea of the Temple’s incredible splendor.”

Islamist supremacists have long sought to deny Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and to secure it as a site only for Muslims. This is symptomatic of the extremist ideology that brooks no dissent or pluralism and which seeks to eliminate all culture it does not control.

It is motivated by the same contempt for the non-Islamic past that led the Islamic State to destroy so many of Syria and Iraq’s irreplaceable ancient ruins.

And, it is the same drive which leads to attempts to use bodies like UNESCO to erase Jewish history on the Temple Mount and formally declare it a Muslim shrine.

This discovery proves both the non-Islamic connections to the site as well as the damage done to antiquities by the actions of the Jordanian authorities.

Categories: Islamists and Jewish history, Israel, Jerusalem, Jordan, Temple Mount, UNESCO
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

State Department Objects to Jewish Homes in Jerusalem

July 8, 2016

State Department Objects to Jewish Homes in Jerusalem, PJ Media, P. David Hornik, July 8, 2016

John-Kirby-US-State-afp.sized-770x415xc

Israel has announced that it will be building 800 new housing units. Of these, 560 will be in Maale Adumim, a town of 40,000 located four miles east of Jerusalem, and 240 will be in three Jerusalem neighborhoods.

State Department spokesman John Kirby reacted with unusually strong language:

If it’s true, this … would be the latest step in what seems to be the systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalization of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution. We oppose steps like these which we believe are counterproductive.

Kirby added that Washington was “deeply concerned”:

This action risks entrenching a one-state reality and raises serious questions about Israel’s intentions.

It should be added that Maale Adumim and the three “East Jerusalem” (actually eastern, northern, and southern Jerusalem) neighborhoods are located on land that was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and that Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War after Jordan attacked Israel.

It should not, though, have to be added.

The notion that Israel, by building homes in such places, jeopardizes chances of resolving the Palestinian issue is fundamentally flawed, and the State Department — if it were not wedded to that notion — would be able to find out why by doing a little fact-checking.

As Evelyn Gordon illuminates, since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 2009 (he has been reelected twice), Israel has not been engaging in a “systematic process of land seizures” or anything of the kind. Actually, construction in “settlements” — a term now used even for Jerusalem neighborhoods — has slowed to a crawl:

As data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics unambiguously shows, since taking office … Netanyahu has built far fewer units in the settlements than any of his predecessors. True, he periodically announces grandiose building plans, as he did this week. But most are quietly frozen again immediately afterward; very few ever get built.

Gordon also reports on an investigation by Shaul Arieli — a leftist Israel who opposes Israeli construction in land previously occupied by Jordan — that finds:

In 2015, as in the preceding five years, almost 90 percent [of population increase in the “settlements” was] a result of natural population growth.

In other words — scandalous as some may find it — Israelis living in these communities have babies.

Arieli wrote further:

Last year, as in all the preceding 40 years, 75 percent of the population growth occurred in settlement blocs.

Gordon notes:

In short, almost all the increase, from both births and migration, is happening in a handful of settlements near the Green Line that every peace plan ever proposed has agreed will remain Israeli. Thus it hasn’t affected the prospects of a two-state solution at all.

Such “settlements” emphatically include, of course, Maale Adumim and the three Jerusalem neighborhoods in question.

So much for the facts. But beyond that level, Kirby’s castigation of Israel harbors “smelly little orthodoxies,” as George Orwell once called them, that are worth unpacking and exposing.

One of these is that the “two-state solution” is desirable.

In the imploding Middle East, amid severe violence and the disintegration of states like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, would it be wise to create another Arab state? One rubbing up against Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and constricting Israel to a nine-mile width in its most populated region? Would it be in America’s interest?

That assumption is disputable, to say the least. It also implies that there is no other possible solution to the Palestinian issue, when in actuality other possible, eventual solutions are proposed and discussed all the time.

The solutions include, for instance, a one-state solution in which West Bank Palestinians would be offered full Israeli citizenship; or an arrangement with Jordan that would offer them full Jordanian citizenship.

Also implicit, even more problematically, in Kirby’s words is the notion that no further construction for Jews of any kind should occur in any of the land that Israel won in 1967.

If even construction in Maale Adumim and “East Jerusalem” neighborhoods “raises serious questions about Israel’s intentions” and warrants a sharp rebuke from Washington, then the inference is that the land is solely Palestinian. That Israel’s only role is to hold it, keeping Jews out of it, until the Palestinians deign to receive it and set up their state in it.

That notion is, of course, morally problematic on several grounds. It erases Jews’ profound historical and religious attachment to the land. It sentences existing Jewish communities in the proscribed places to slow strangulation. It permanently confines Israel to the tiny 1949-1967 domain that is too small for its rapidly growing population. And it ignores the fact that without at least parts of the West Bank, Israel is militarily indefensible.

Israel and the United States are allies. How long will the robotic State Department denunciations continue?

Categories: Department of State, Israel settlements, Jerusalem
Tags: , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »