Archive for the ‘Temple Mount’ category

Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of Hate

December 15, 2014

Western Indifference to the Palestinian Culture of Hate, Front Page Magazine, December 15, 2014

(Here is the video of the Islamic preacher.

The New York Times is by no means alone in making the “news” fit its ideological narrative. For an excellent analysis of how and why it happens, please read Sharyl Attkisson’s recent book Stonewalled.– DM)

The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.

Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.

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A shockingly, disturbing video has recently surfaced exposing the true and pernicious face of Palestinian extremism and xenophobia. The video, made available by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows a bearded sheikh giving what appears to be an impromptu sermon on the Jews. (After all, what else is there to talk about?) The venue is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered by those who practice the “religion of peace” to be their third holiest site after Mecca and Medina.

The speech itself is filled with gut-wrenching anti-Semitism, the kind that would even make the editors of the New York Times blush. The sheikh describes how the Jews possess the vilest of traits, how they were responsible for killing the “prophets,” how they attempted to assassinate Muhammad, how their time for “slaughter is near,” how they will be slaughtered “without mercy,” and of course there’s the perfunctory, “Jews are apes and pigs” thing.

Interestingly, the speaker doesn’t mention the longing for Palestinian statehood or independence. Instead, he talks of the establishment of the “Islamic Caliphate.” “Oh Allah’” he states, “Hasten the establishment of the State of the Islamic Caliphate,” and further rants, “Oh Allah hasten the pledge of allegiance to the Muslim Caliph.” He spews forth the latter statement three times to chants of “Amen!” from the large, approving crowd congregating around him.

These comments, which would register horror and revulsion in the West (at least in some quarters) are almost banal among Palestinians. In fact, a similar video featuring a different speaker some days earlier at the same venue, conveyed identical sentiment, expressing admiration for the Islamic State and calling for murder of Jews and annihilation of America.

Guttural anti-Semitism is ingrained and interwoven in the fabric of Palestinian society. Despite their minuscule numbers, 78% of Palestinians believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars while a whopping 88% believe that Jews control the global media and still more believe that Jews wield too much power in the business world.

Much of the blame for this can be placed squarely on the doorstep of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which subjects the Palestinian population to a steady diet of hate-filled, Judeophobic rhetoric through state-controlled media and educational institutions. It is so well entrenched that the process of deprogramming, if it were ever attempted, would take generations to reverse.

Some of the blame however, rests with the Obama administration and the European Union, which continues to fund the Palestinian Authority with an endless supply of taxpayer money without demanding any form of accountability. Western money is openly used to fund the Palestinian Authority’s hate apparatus with money flowing into institutions that propagate anti-Semitism and encourage terrorism.

Some Western media outlets are also culpable in perpetuating the Palestinian culture of hate. The New York Times for example has frequently and diligently covered so-called “price tag” vandalism attacks; a practice universally condemned by nearly all Israelis and vigorously prosecuted by Israeli authorities but rarely, if ever, covers the type of venomous hate speech witnessed in the above-noted videos.

Hate crimes inspired by this type of pernicious speech are also routinely ignored. Highlighting this point is the disturbing case of Asher Palmer, an American citizen who, along with his infant son was murdered when a rock thrown by a Palestinian crashed through the windshield of the car he was driving, hitting him flush in the face. The New York Times ignored the gruesome murders and only mentioned the incident in passing a few days later in the context of a reprisal “price tag” attack against a mosque. Under the unbelievably skewed editorial policies of the New York Times, it took an act of vandalism, ostensibly committed by Jews, to highlight the horrific murder of Asher Palmer and his infant son at the hands of Arabs.

The practice of ignoring such malevolence partly stems from the fact that the New York Times wishes to present a certain narrative at the expense of the facts and partly stems from a systematic inability of some Western media outlets to hold Arabs to a Western standard of decency and morality. Thus, Arab anti-Semitism, the same kind of anti-Semitism practiced in Europe some 75 years ago, is either ignored or attributed to mere cultural differences.

Indeed, the New York Times no longer even bothers to hide the fact that it engages in duplicitous double standards when it comes to reporting Palestinian-Arab racism and hate speech as evidenced from a telling exchange between New York Times’ opinion page staff editor, Matt Seaton and Tamar Sternthal, a director at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Rarely is the sort of vitriol witnessed in the videos expressed in English to Western audiences. Only the crassest among them publicly share their feelings about Jews, and the West for that matter. But behind closed doors it’s an entirely different story. Groups like MEMRI, CAMERA, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and many others do an excellent job in exposing the malevolence hiding just beneath the surface. The problem is no one seems to care. No one cared 75 years ago either.

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse

December 14, 2014

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse, Israel National News, Ted Belman, December 14, 2014

(Please see also Caroline Glick tells off Danish ambassador and Preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Jews: “We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy” — DM)

From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

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The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.

Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs.  Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.

The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.

Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference.  He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps?  He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.

The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.

The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington  Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement  with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.

Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.

At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement.  The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”

Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed  the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”

I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.

The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.

Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome.  He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.

Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.

The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.

And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place.  He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.

Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.

Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.

He also argued that:

“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”

And went further:

“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”

According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.

MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:

“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”

Is there any making peace with these people?