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Iran to arm West Bank Palestinians for new Eastern Front to “efface”Israel

August 18, 2015

Iran to arm West Bank Palestinians for new Eastern Front to “efface”Israel, DEBKAfile, August 17, 2015

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Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani

Attesting to the seriousness of Iran’s intent, Jmail Majdalani, PLO executive committee member and personal representative of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, has arrived in Tehran. He is there to arrange his boss’s first visit in many years to the Iranian capital.

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Al Qods commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, acting on the orders of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week set up a new Iranian command to fight Israel, DEBKAfile reports exclusively from its military and intelligence sources.

It has been dubbed the Eastern Command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.The Al Qods Brigades, which are the external terrorist arm of the Guards, are organized according to sectors, with commands for Hizballah, the Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and the Gulf.

Their newest sector is the Eastern Command which, our sources report has been assigned as its first task to start handing out weapons, including missiles, to any Palestinian West Bank group willing to receive them. Tehran’s object is to transform the West Bank into a territory hostile to Israel on the model of southern Lebanon which is ruled by the armed Hizballah and the Gaza Strip under the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.

In the first week of August, Tehran published a book of 416 pages written by Ali Khamenei entitled “Palestine.” The cover image was labeled “The flagbearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem.”

The volume was released to Western sources, who reported that the most constantly recurring phrases in the text in relation to Israel are “nabudi” – meaning annihilation; imha – meaning disappearing or fading out; and “zaval” meaning effacement.

Khamenei asserts that Israel must be destroyed because it captured Islam’s third most sacred city and is the foremost ally of “Big Satan” – America.

The Iranian leader goes into detail about exactly how Israel should be annihilated – not by “classical wars” or “massacres of the Jews” but by means of a “long period of low-intensity warfare designed to make life impossible for a majority of Israeli Jews.”

When he visited Beirut on Aug. 12, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Zavad Zarif said it was necessary after the nuclear deal, to “confront the challenges of the region, the most important of which is the Zionist and extremist regime.”

Members of the Obama administration wave away these disclosures of Iranian intent as no more than letting off steam to pacify the hard-line opponents of the nuclear deal – US Secretary of State John Kerry said on July 24: “I also told them that their chants of Death to American and so forth are neither helpful and they’re pretty stupid.”

But in Iran, the supreme leader’s words are treated as decrees demanding obedience. Indeed, at the first conference of the new Eastern Command, Gen. Soleimani read out passages from Khamenei’s book and told the officers that they were under orders to carry those decrees out to the letter.

Attesting to the seriousness of Iran’s intent, Jmail Majdalani, PLO executive committee member and personal representative of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, has arrived in Tehran. He is there to arrange his boss’s first visit in many years to the Iranian capital.

Categories: Abbas, Al Qods, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Soleimani, West Bank
Tags: Abbas, Al Qods, Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, Iran military, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Soleimani, West Bank

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Our World: The anti-peace administration

August 12, 2015

Our World: The anti-peace administration, The Jerusalem Post, Caroline B. Glick, August 11, 2015

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President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and White House aides receive an update from Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz via teleconference in Lausanne. (photo credit:WHITE HOUSE)

The US has striven to achieve peaceable relations between the states of the Middle East for nearly 70 years. Yet today, US government is disparaging the burgeoning strategic ties between the Sunni Arab states and Israel.

In a briefing to a delegation of visiting Israeli diplomatic correspondents in Washington last week, a senior Obama administration official sneered that the only noticeable shift in Israel-Arab relations in recent years is that the current Egyptian government has been coordinating security issues “more closely” with Jerusalem than the previous one did.

“But we have yet to see that change materialize in the Gulf.”

If this is how the US views the state of Israel’s relations with the Arabs, then Israel should consider canceling its intelligence cooperation with the US. Because apparently, the Americans haven’t a clue what is happening in the Middle East.

First of all, to characterize the transformation of Israeli-Egyptian relations as a mere question of “more closely” coordinating on security issues is to vastly trivialize what has happened over the past two years.

Before then Egyptian defense minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the US-backed Muslim Brotherhood regime headed by Muhammad Morsi in July 2013, there was a growing sense that Morsi intended to vacate Egypt’s signature to the peace deal with Israel at the first opportunity. Just a month after Morsi ascended to power in January 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood began threatening to review Egypt’s continued commitment to the peace treaty.

The main reason Morsi did not cancel the peace deal with Israel was that Egypt was bankrupt. He needed US and international monetary support to enable his government to pay for imported grain to feed Egypt’s destitute population of 90 million.

During his year in power, Morsi used Hamas as the Brotherhood’s shock troops. He embraced Iran, inviting president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Cairo in February 2013.

If Morsi were still in power today, with its $150 billion in sanctions relief Iran would have been in a position to support Egypt’s economy. So it is possible that if Morsi were still president, he would have felt he had the financial security to walk away from the peace treaty.

In happy contrast, under Sisi, Israeli-Egyptian ties are closer than they have ever been. Just last week Egyptian diplomats told Al Ahram that Israel’s support was critical for building administration support for Sisi.

Over Ramadan, Egyptian television broadcast a pro-Jewish mini-series.

Israel is closely working with the Egyptians on defeating the growing threat of Islamic State, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups waging a bloody insurgency against the regime in Sinai.

Last summer, it was due to the close coordination between Sisi and Israel that the US failed to force Israel to accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms, as those were represented by the Islamist regimes of Qatar and Turkey.

In part due to Israel’s critical support for Sisi’s government, and in part owing to their opposition to Iran’s rise as a regional hegemon armed with nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan have all joined Egypt in viewing Israel as a strategic partner and protector.

Last year Saudi Arabia together with the UAE and Jordan supported Israel and Egypt in opposing Hamas and its American, Turkish and Qatari defenders. Had it not been for this massive Arab support, it is very likely that Israel would have been forced to accept the US’s demands and grant Hamas control over Gaza’s international borders.

In June, as negotiations between the US and the other five powers and Iran were moving toward an agreement, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York hosted a meeting between then incoming Foreign Ministry director general Dore Gold and retired Saudi General Anwar Eshki, a former advisor to the Saudi ambassador to the US. The two revealed that over the previous 18 months, they had conducted five secret meetings to discuss Iran.

Although President Barack Obama harangued Israel in his speech at American University last Wednesday, claiming that the Israeli government is the only government that has publicly opposed his nuclear deal with the Iranians, Monday US congressmen now shuttling between Egypt and Israel told Israeli reporters that Egypt opposes the nuclear deal.

As for the Gulf states, according to the US media, last week they told visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry that they support the nuclear deal.

Kerry addressed his counterparts in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

But the fact is that the only foreign minister who expressed such support was Qatari Foreign Minister Khaled al-Attiyah. To be sure, Attiyah was charged to speak for all of his counterparts because Qatar holds the GCC’s rotating chairmanship. But given that Qatar has staked out a pro-Iranian foreign policy in stark contrast to its neighbors and GCC partners, Attiyah’s statement is impossible to take seriously without the corroboration of his colleagues.

As for Qatar’s statement of support, Qatar has worked for years to cultivate good relations with Iran. It might have been expected therefore that Attiyah’s endorsement of the deal would have been enthusiastic. But it was lukewarm at best.

In Attiyah’s words, Kerry promised that the deal would place Iran’s nuclear sites under continuous inspections. “Consequently,” he explained, “the GCC countries have welcomed on this basis what has been displayed and what has been talked about by His Excellency Mr. Kerry.”

The problem of course is that Kerry wasn’t telling the truth. And the Arabs knew he was lying. The deal does not submit Iran’s nuclear sites to a rigorous inspection regime. And the GCC, including Qatar, opposes it.

In his briefing with Israeli reporters, the high-level US official rejected the importance of the détente between Israel and its Arab neighbors because he claimed the Arabs have not changed their position regarding their view of a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

But this is also nonsense. To be sure, the official position of the Saudis and the UAE is still the so-called Arab peace initiative from 2002 which stipulates that the Arabs will only normalize relations with Israel after it has ceded Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan and allowed millions of foreign-born Arabs to freely immigrate to the shrunken Jewish state. In other words, their official position is that they will only have normal relations with Israel after Israel destroys itself.

But their official position is no longer their actual position. Their actual position is to view Israel as a strategic ally.

The senior official told the Israeli reporters that in order to show that “their primary security concern is Iran,” then as far as the Arabs are concerned, “resolving some of the other issues in the region, including the Palestinian issue should be in their interest. We would like to see them more invested in moving the process forward.”

In the real world, there is no peace process. And the Palestinian factions are fighting over who gets to have better relations with Iran. Monday we learned that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas wishes to visit Iran in the coming months in the hopes of getting the money that until recently was enjoyed by his Hamas rivals.

Hamas for its part is desperate to show Tehran that it remains a loyal client. So today, no Palestinian faction shares the joint Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian interest in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear armed regional hegemon.

The administration showed its hand in that briefing with the Israeli reporters last week. For all their talk about Middle East peace, Obama and his advisors are not at all interested in achieving it or of noticing when it has been achieved.

Categories: Abbas, Arab nations, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Egypt, Foreign policy, Gulf states, Hamas, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Peace process, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sunni states
Tags: Abbas, Arab nations, Diplomacy, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Gulf states, Hamas, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Peace Process, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sunni states

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State Department Interferes in Favor of PLO Terrorists

August 11, 2015

State Department Interferes in Favor of PLO Terrorists, Israel National News, Tova Dvorin, August 11, 2015

US President Barack Obama is reportedly seeking to lower that fine – following a series of conflicts between officials from the State Department and the Justice Department over the issue, an official involved in the case told the New York Times Tuesday.

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Washington asks a judge presiding over terror victims’ compensation case to reduce money paid to Israelis injured during Second Intifada.

The Obama administration has asked a judge Monday to “carefully consider” the size of the bond demanded from the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its role orchestrating years of terror attacks against Israelis and Jews – directly interfering in a US court case.

In February, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – the terror group behind the PA – was found liable to pay $218.5 million to victims of terror, a figure that was set to be tripled to $655.5 million according to the anti-terrorism laws under which the case was brought.

Legal rights group Shurat Hadin (Israel Law Center) helped represent the 11 families who charge the PA and PLO of inciting, supporting, planning and executing the seven terror attacks which killed American citizens between 2000 and 2004.

In May, the PA admitted it cannot pay such a hefty fine, however – as it is struggling under billions of debt despite an ongoing stream of aid from Israel and other countries – and called the case “political extortion.”

Now, US President Barack Obama is reportedly seeking to lower that fine – following a series of conflicts between officials from the State Department and the Justice Department over the issue, an official involved in the case told the New York Times Tuesday.

In a document entitled “Statement of Interest of the United States of America,” the Obama administration expressed concerns over the payments hurting the PA’s basic government services.

Forcing the PLO to pay “a significant portion of its revenues would likely severely compromise the P.A.’s ability to operate as a governmental authority,” deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken wrote. “A P.A. insolvency and collapse would harm current and future U.S.-led efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Blinken stressed in the document, however, that the State Department allegedly values the rights of terror victims to seek “just compensation” and was not taking a position on the case itself, only on the high bond.

“The United States strongly supports the rights of victims of terrorism to vindicate their interests in federal court and to receive just compensation for their injuries,” Blinken claimed.

Justice Department officials have maintained throughout the proceedings that any State Department interference in the case would interfere with the victims’ rights for compensation and justice.

Categories: Abbas, Foreign policy, Human rights, Ideology, Israel, Obama administration, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, State Department, Terrorists, U.S. courts
Tags: Abbas, Foreign Policy, human rights, Ideology, Israel, Justice Department, Obama Administration, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, State Department, Terrorists, U.S. courts

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Netanyahu slams Abbas after attack on Palestinian family

August 2, 2015

Netanyahu slams Abbas after attack on Palestinian family, Times of Israel, Tamar Pileggi, August 2, 2015

Netanuahu on Jewish terrorism

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on August 2, 2015 AFP PHOTO / POOL / GALI TIBBON)

PM says Israel ‘condemns’ such violence, while the PA ‘names public squares after the murderers of children’

Speaking in the wake of a firebombing attack in the West Bank that left a Palestinian toddler dead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday lashed out at Mahmoud Abbas, accusing the Palestinian Authority president of failing to condemn acts of Palestinian terrorism.

Netanyahu, addressing the weekly cabinet meeting, compared Israeli officials’ swift condemnation of Friday’s alleged Jewish terrorist attack to what he said was an inadequate response on the part of PA officials after Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli civilians.

“We deplore and condemn these murderers. We will pursue them to the end,” he said. “They name public squares after the murderers of children. This distinction cannot be blurred or covered up,” he said.

“It is important to say this even as we utter our condemnations and unite against the criminals among our people,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister also said that there would be a “zero tolerance” policy toward such crimes in Israel, and vowed to punish the perpetrators to the full extent of the law.

Gay pride

Participants in the gay pride parade in Jerusalem flee stabber Yishai Schlissel, July 30, 2015. (screen capture: Channel 2)

“We recently witnessed two abhorrent crimes. Our policy toward these crimes is zero tolerance,” he said, referring both to the killing of the Palestinian child and a stabbing attack at the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade on Thursday.

Netanyahu recalled visiting the home of the historian Joseph Klausner as a child. Over the arched entrance to Klausner’s home, said the prime minister, the words “Judaism” and “humanity” were engraved in Hebrew.

The perpetrators of last week’s crimes did not represent Judaism, he said.

The prime minister said he had instructed security and law enforcement officials to use all legal tools at their disposal to apprehend the perpetrators of the arson attack and prosecute the perpetrator of the stabbing attack.

“We are determined to vigorously fight manifestations of hate, fanaticism and terrorism from whatever side. The fight against these phenomena unites us all.

“This is not a struggle by this or that faction. This is a matter of basic humanity and is at the foundation of our enlightened Jewish values,” he said.

The assailant in Thursday’s anti-gay attack was an ultra-Orthodox Jew, Yishai Schlissel, who had just been released after serving 10 years in jail for carrying out a similar attack at the 2005 Pride Parade. On Sunday, doctors said that one of the six victims, who suffered multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, remained in critical condition.

Duma village

A Palestinian man mourns alongside the body of a one-and-a-half year old boy, Ali Dawabsha, during his funeral in Duma village near the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, July 31, 2015. (Majdi Mohammed/AP)

On Friday, unknown assailants suspected to be Jewish settlers firebombed the home of a Palestinian family in the northern West Bank village of Duma, killing a toddler. The parents and brother of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha were hospitalized and are still fighting for their lives.

The family’s small brick and cement home was gutted by fire, and a Star of David spray-painted on a wall along with the words “revenge” and “long live the Messiah.”

The phrases were indicative of so-called “price tag” violence — a euphemism for nationalist-motivated hate crimes by Jewish extremists.

Categories: Abbas, Israel, Jews, Judaism, Netanyahu, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Settlements, Terrorists
Tags: Abbas, Israel, Jews, Judaism, Netanyahu, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Settlements, Terrorists

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Palestinian Authority and Kerry freed Muslim terrorists who burned Jewish family to death

July 31, 2015

Palestinian Authority and Kerry freed Muslim terrorists who burned Jewish family to death, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 31, 2015

(Israel is properly distraught when Israeli Jews murder Palestinian children, but at least a smidgen of perspective is needed. — DM)

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Nathaniel Weiss was 3 years old when Muslim terrorists burned him to death.

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Ephraim Weiss was 10 months old

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The Moses children were children.

The EU has demanded that Israel show “zero tolerance” for attacks on Muslims and yet it demands that Israel appease the terrorists who commit atrocities like these as a matter of state policy.

It is time for us to remember who the enemy is and what it does, not once in a blue moon, but day after day as part of a policy of violent genocidal hatred going back to Mohammed.

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The Palestinian Authority called their murderers heroes and Obama and Kerry obtained their release.

While the Israeli government is falling over itself to condemn a supposed arson attack, the government released Muslim terrorists involved in a horrific arson to get the PLO to peace negotiations. It did this under pressure from Obama, Kerry and the European Union.

Here’s the horrific case.

A shocked and angry Israel today buried Rachel Weiss, 26, and her three young sons. They were burned to death in a firebomb attack on an Israeli passenger bus on Sunday night. Seven others were wounded, and three are hospitalized in serious condition.

Israeli soldier David Delarosa also died in the bombing when he attempted to save the family.

The four charred bodies — Rachel Weiss, 26, in a white shroud and her three sons, Netanel, 3, Rafael, 2, and Efraim, 10 months, together in an open pine coffin — were interred in a small hole scratched out of the hard rock on a barren hillside.

Most of the passengers got out of the burning bus in time, but Rachel Weiss and her children remained inside, with the mother throwing herself on her children in a vain attempt to protect them. A soldier tried to get them out but was driven back by the flames.

Besides Weiss, two of the victims were Americans.

The Palestinian Authority terrorists who firebombed an Egged bus in the Jordan Valley in 1988, killing five and wounding five, made sure the wounds would be as painful as possible.

Juma’a Adem and Mahmoud Kharbish mixed glue with the gasoline, causing the flammable liquid to stick to the skin of the victims, two of whom were American-Israelis Sandy Bloom of New York City and her husband Dov of Pittsburgh.

They were walking free at the time they firebombed the bus, after having been previously jailed for attacking Jews with Molotov cocktails.

The terrorists struck at night Bloom told the Jewish Press.

“We left their children with the grandparents at the Kibbutz. We were on the bus when there was a flash and a boom,” he continued. “Within a second, we were covered with a flammable liquid and were burning up. The terrorists threw several firebombs, and one of them smashed through our window.

“The flammable liquid spilled on us, and we later found out that the terrorists mixed glue with the gasoline to cause more pain and more severe burns.

The Blooms were rushed to Hadassah Hospital. It was five weeks before Dov and Sandy could leave. “We also spent years of painful recuperation with more operations and skin grafts,” Dov Bloom added.

Obama and Kerry however backed the PLO’s demands that the terrorists, among many others, had to be freed by Israel before PLO boss Abbas would negotiate with Netanyahu.

When Kerry had first raised the prisoner issue in June, Netanyahu was adamant. “I can’t get that through my Cabinet,” he said. His right-wing Likud Party would never stand for it. Neither would the more hard-line Jewish Home Party. It wasn’t even certain that the coalition’s two centrist parties would.

But it happened anyway. The PLO threw a party for the terrorists it had extracted and the man Obama had described as Israel’s peace partner praised them as heroes.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held a celebration in Ramallah in honor of the second set of 26 Palestinian terrorists released by Israel as part of Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations, calling the prisoners “heroes” despite their violent history.

At the Ramallah celebration, Abbas told the crowd, “We welcome our brothers the heroes coming from behind the bars to a world of freedom and liberty.”

Every released prisoner will receive a special grant and monthly stipend from the PA, between $710-$1,280, Israel Hayom reported.

American taxpayers end up footing the bill for that. They always do.

The EU has demanded that Israel show “zero tolerance” for attacks on Muslims and yet it demands that Israel appease the terrorists who commit atrocities like these as a matter of state policy. Yair Lapid, currently throwing a tantrum by claiming that any act of violence against Muslims is a declaration of war against Israel… voted to approve the release of terrorists.

Such atrocities were not unique. And as the brilliant Guillio Meotti points out, the PLO state was built on them.

At the entrance to Alfei Menashe there is a monument remembering Ofra Moses and her son Tal. If you look closely, you can make out the figure of Ofra still in her car seat–with Tal closely behind her, burned to death by Arabs. “What else does a man, a terrorist like this, have to do in order to get the death sentence?”, the father, Avraham Moses said, after the sentence of life imprisonment was announced.

Ofra Moses, 35,from the settlement of Alfei Menashe, near Kalkilya, was burned to death and her 5-year-old son, Tal, died of burns three months later. Her husband, Abraham; their two other children, Nir, 15, and Adi, 9; and a friend, Yossi Hilleli, 14, were all badly burned, but they recovered.

Their faces and bodies are still scarred and they are still grieving over their loss. But the surviving members of the Moses family had an impromptu party at their home here Wednesday night to celebrate the capture of Mohammad Daoud of Kalkilya

Mohammed Daoud was another of the terrorists extracted by the PLO and Kerry and Obama.

“You know the story of my family. In 1987 a terrorist threw a firebomb at the car my family was travelling in. He murdered my mother and my brother Tal, and injured my father, my brother, his friend and myself. It is a story you know. But… Me, you do not really know. I was 8 years old when this happened.

While my father was rolling me in the sand to extinguish my burning body, I looked in the direction of our car and watched as my mother burned in front of my eyes.

This story did not end that day in 1987. This story is the difficult life I have led since then. I am still 8 years old, hospitalized in critical condition. Screaming from pain. Bandaged from head to toe. And my head is not the same. No longer full of golden long hair. The head is burnt. The face, back, the legs and arms, burnt. I am surrounded by family members, but my mother is not with me. Not hugging and caressing. She is not the one changing my bandages. In the room next door, my brother Tal in lying. Screaming in pain. I call out to him to count sheep with me so he can fall asleep. Three months later, little Tal dies of his wounds. I am seated, all bandaged up, on a chair in the cemetery and I watch as my little brother is buried.”

This is what we should be outraged about.

A policy of mass murder whose perpetrators are funded by American and European taxpayers and whose freedom is obtained on behalf of a terrorist group by our governments.

Even though Israel freed most of the terrorists that Kerry and his PLO pals wanted, Kerry blamed Israel when the PLO trashed the negotiations. That is what we are dealing with. It is time for us to stop apologizing and stop appeasing.

It is time for us to remember who the enemy is and what it does, not once in a blue moon, but day after day as part of a policy of violent genocidal hatred going back to Mohammed. And it is time for us to remember that the governments that appease Islamic terrorists and the media that defend them have the blood of children like this on their hands.

Categories: Abbas, Europe, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Israel, Kerry, Muslims, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Terrorism
Tags: Abbas, Europe, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, human rights, Israel, Muslims, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Terrorism

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Palestinians: Why Salam Fayyad Lacks Popular Support

July 1, 2015

Palestinians: Why Salam Fayyad Lacks Popular Support, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, June 30, 2015

It is no secret that several senior Palestinian officials see themselves as potential successors to Abbas. Like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas has stubbornly refused to share power with anyone. And like Arafat, he continues to run the Palestinian Authority as if it were his private fiefdom.
In Palestinian culture, it is more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from the University of Texas in Austin. A Palestinian who carries out an attack on Israel has more credentials among his people than one who studied at Harvard or Oxford universities.
It took Salam Fayyad too long to realize that no matter how many good things he does for his people, in the end he will be judged on the basis of his contribution to the fight against Israel, and not how much humanitarian and financial aid he provides.

In a surprise move, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has frozen the bank account of a non-profit organization headed by former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The decision is seen in the context of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s effort to undermine and discredit Fayyad. Abbas believes that Fayyad, who resigned in 2013, is seeking to replace or succeed him as president.

Following his resignation, the US-educated Fayyad established a Ramallah-based group called Future For Palestine. According to Fayyad, the group’s mission is to “enhance the resilience of Palestinian citizens in their homeland, especially in marginalized and severely impacted areas, by providing the basic development requirements.”

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority leadership did not like the idea from the beginning. Ever since Future For Palestine was established in August 2013, they have been working toward undermining the group and its founder, Fayyad.

The PA leadership is convinced that Fayyad is using the group to advance his own political goals and establish bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

During the military confrontation between Israel and Hamas last year, Fayyad’s group launched acampaign to aid the residents of the Gaza Strip. The campaign included the purchase of tens of thousands of bottles of mineral water that were supposed to be dispatched to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority thwarted the campaign.

To justify the crackdown on Fayyad back then, the PA said that the former prime minister was part of a “conspiracy” to overthrow the Abbas regime. Some reports even suggested that Abbas had ordered his security forces to detain Fayyad for interrogation, but backtracked after threats from the US and several European governments.

Later, Abbas sent security officers to raid the offices of Future For Palestine and conduct a thorough search of its files. Some of Fayyad’s top aides were taken into custody and questioned about the sources of the group’s funding.

Last week, the campaign against Fayyad reached its peak when the Palestinian Authority announced that it has seized the assets of Future For Palestine, and accused the former prime minister of “money laundering.”

PA officials claimed that Fayyad’s group had received $10 million from the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf country that supports Abbas’s political enemy, ousted Fatah leader Mohamed Dahlan. The officials accused Dahlan and Fayyad of working together to topple the Abbas regime. Dahlan fled the West Bank several years ago after falling out with Abbas, who accused him of attempting to stage a coup against the Palestinian Authority leadership.

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Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, pictured on January 25, 2013 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Image source: World Economic Forum)

Fayyad said this week that he is planning to take legal measures to cancel the decision to freeze his group’s assets. Denying the charge of “money laundering,” Fayyad added that Future For Palestine was operating within the framework of the law and did not commit any offense.

The decision to freeze the bank account of Future For Palestine came in the wake of increased talk about a behind-the-scenes power struggle to succeed the 80-year-old Abbas. The name of Fayyad has repeatedly surfaced as a potential successor to Abbas — a suggestion that has clearly enraged the Palestinian leader and his senior officials in Ramallah.

It is no secret that several senior Palestinian officials see themselves as potential successors to Abbas. These include, besides Dahlan, the chief of the PA’s General Intelligence Security Force in the West Bank, Majed Faraj, Palestinian Football Association Chairman Jibril Rajoub and Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Abbas believes that he has thus far succeeded in sidelining and discrediting at least two candidates: Fayyad and Dahlan. The charges made by Abbas against the two men are designed to depict them as agents of foreign countries who are plotting against him and the entire Palestinian people.

Like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas has stubbornly refused to share power with anyone. And like Arafat, he continues to run the Palestinian Authority as if it were his private fiefdom.

Fayyad’s chances of succeeding Abbas are, anyway, very slim, if not non-existent. Fayyad is an independent figure who does not belong to Fatah, Hamas or any other political group. When he ran in the January 2006 parliamentary election at the head of the Third Way list, his group received two seats out of 132.

The reason most Palestinians did not vote for Fayyad is because he had not played any role in the “revolution” against Israel. In this culture, it is more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from the University of Texas in Austin. Fayyad did not participate in any armed attack on Jews and never supported the armed struggle against Israel. Nor did he send his son to throw stones or firebombs at Israelis. That is the real reason why people like Fayyad lack popular support.

If and when Abbas steps down, the only candidate who has a good chance of replacing him is one who was part of the “revolution.” A Palestinian who carries out an attack on Israel has more credentials among his people than one who studied at Harvard or Oxford universities. It took Salam Fayyad too long to realize that no matter how many good things he does for his people, in the end he will be judged on the basis of his contribution to the fight against Israel, and not how much humanitarian and financial aid he provides.

Categories: Abbas, Arafat, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank
Tags: Abbas, Arafat, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian elections, Palestinians, Peace Process, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank

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Behind the French “Peace Initiative”

June 26, 2015

Behind the French “Peace Initiative,” The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, June 26, 2015

It is a desperate attempt by the French government to buy a few more days of quiet from its Muslim community, especially from the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organizations to which it gave birth — all waiting for the order to run riot through the streets of France.
If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead to an ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.
It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just to sit in the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread beneficence that could make your country look important to the other 190 members — even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient.
When the Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Empire, the churches, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, were turned into mosques; that is the dream of the Islamists today, to turn the Vatican into a mosque.
Currently, Qatar is currently investing millions to overthrow the Egyptian regime. It is investing millions to finance incitement among Muslims around the globe by means of its Islamist network and da’wah, the cunning preaching of the Muslim Brotherhood’s variety of Islam.
The Arabs always secretly believed that anyone who hated their mutual enemies, the Jews, as deeply as the Europeans did, and who actually tried to achieve their total physical destruction during the Second World War, would be their ally and help to expel them from occupied Palestine.
Apparently, the commonly-held hatred between the Europeans and the Arabs was not enough to halt the Jews, so now the Arabs pay huge sums to bribe the leaders of Europe to help them get rid of the Jews now.

The latest missile to split the skies over the Middle East is not a rocket; it is the French “peace” initiative.

No one in the Middle East has the slightest doubt that whatever its objective may be, it will not promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is a desperate attempt by the French government to buy a few more days of quiet from its Muslim community, especially from the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organizations to which it gave birth — all waiting for the order to run riot through the streets of France.

We, the Palestinians, have suffered, and continue to suffer, from the creation of the Islamist terrorist organizations within the Palestinian Authority territory; it is they who keep us from reaching a peace agreement with the Jews.

One has to be deaf, dumb and blind — or genuinely desperate, which is more likely — to present a unilateral peace agreement like the French one. If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead to an ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.

One also has to be simply ignorant not to understand that the Middle East is going up in flames and that the Arab states are disintegrating. There is no logical reason, therefore, to construct a new state, which will be both unstable and prey to local and regional subversion. It will also be subject to a quick takeover, and the first people who will suffer will be the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The Israelis know how to look out for themselves, but we will be left to the tender mercies of Hamas and ISIS mujahedeen. Just as they have done in Iraq and Syria, they will slaughter us without thinking twice, on the grounds that as we did not all become shaheeds [“martyrs” for Islam] trying to kill the Zionists, and even tried to reach a peace agreement with them, we are not sufficiently Muslim.

The French initiative is not a benevolent gesture meant to help the Palestinians. Without a doubt, the French government and its intelligence services know full well that the secret of the Palestinian Authority’s existence today — and its ability to function as a sovereign entity, demilitarized and de facto recognizing the State of Israel — is its security collaboration with the Israelis. It serves the interests of both sides. When, therefore, a Palestinian state is declared unilaterally, as the French propose, Israel will stop collaborating with it and the state, not even fully formed, will almost instantly fall prey to Islamist extremists. That is obvious to us: even our institutions of higher learning are ruled by Hamas today, as can be seen by Hamas’s landslide victory in the recent student elections in Bir Zeit University.

The recent visit of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham to Israel helped the Palestinians understand even more thoroughly that behind the French initiative is an attempt, as with many members of the U.N., to “be a player.” It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just to sit in the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread beneficence that could make your country look important to the other 190 members — even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient. One way of doing spreading such beneficence is to take over the peace process through the Security Council, force both sides into a unilateral solution, and not even to feign dismay when its first victims are the Palestinians.

Senator Graham referred to the drastic nature of the initiative and stressed that the United States supported the solution of two states for two peoples, according to the vision of Israel’s current Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. It favors a demilitarized Palestinian state that would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and make it possible for everyone, both Jews and Palestinians, to live with self-respect and independence.

Graham threatened the UN, saying that if promotes the French initiative, he would bid to halt American funding for the UN — nearly a quarter of its budget.

Today, the UN’s funds are twisted into sending peacekeepers, who have diplomatic immunity and therefore cannot be sued, out to Africa to demand sex, often from children, in exchange for food or other necessities; and to passing resolutions aimed at harming Israel, while the organization callously ignores floggings in Saudi Arabia, slavery in Mauritania; escalating executions, calls for genocide and violations of nuclear treaties in Iran, just for a start.

The situation is grotesque. They are basically accusing Israel of “terrorism” for defending itself against by rockets fired from Hamas, in a confrontation where Gazan children were hurt because Hamas used them as human shields — while ignoring the real terrorism against the children of Africa committed by the U.N.’s own peacekeepers, Boko Haram, Iran and Sudan. When they so twist logic as to accuse Israel of “terrorism,” while turning their back on the horrendous abuses by other states, they are essentially giving paedophile UN “peacekeepers,” Iran’s torturers, executioners, and nuclear weapons factories a green light.

Graham was very clear about the American point of view. He said that any country that tried to bring Israel to the International Criminal Court in The Hague would have sanctions imposed on it by the United States.

The parade of the grotesque is the direct result of the Western surrender to Islamic terrorism. Now, sadly, the Vatican has also joined France. The assumption that the Islamists can be pandered to and propitiated by harming the Jews is yet another prevalent misconception. Every gesture to the Islamists, even if it is aimed at “helping” the Palestinians, sends a message of weakness and vulnerability, and increases the Islamists’ aggression against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities.

In the Middle East, anyone who “turns the other cheek,” such as the Pope saying that the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, could be “an angel of peace,” will find his neck under the sword. When Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Empire, its churches, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, were turned into mosques; that is the dream of the Islamists today, to turn the Vatican into a mosque.

The dangerous European surrender to radical Islam is not only an attempt to hold off its threat to the free society of Europe just a little longer. It is also the result of the economic distress of the Western world, which is seeking to keep afloat by selling itself, literally, for petro-dollars. The Vatican is in desperate financial straits — there are fewer practicing Catholics and therefore fewer donating Catholics. It is hard not to feel that the anti-Israel manipulations of the Vatican administration are motivated not by a genuine desire to help the Palestinians or to save Christians in the Middle East, but by a genuine desire to extricate itself from its financial straits.

Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; Boko Haram sells girls for the price of a pack of cigarettes, and Europe is selling itself and the Israelis to Qatar.

Europe is in the same situation as the Vatican; and so are many American universities, which are selling radical Islamist education for petro-dollars from the Persian Gulf. This enables the Islamists to rewrite history and endanger the open way of life in the gullible West.

There is already a Muslim Brotherhood lobby in the United States, a syndicate trying to force the administration to undermine the current Egyptian president, who is an enemy of the murderous Muslim Brotherhood. Their aim is to restore to power the Islamist dictator Mohamed Morsi (who is also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), and to sabotage the measures Egypt is currently taking to rehabilitate itself.

The ease with which Qatar, the petro-dollar heavyweight, manipulates terrorist organizations in the Middle East is unnerving. The country both hosts and finances senior Muslim Brotherhood figures such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others responsible for spreading the doctrine of radical Islamism and terrorism around the world.

Qatar finances a wide range of subversive Islamist terrorist organizations, among them ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and various other global jihad organizations operating under the aegis of the Arab-Muslim regimes. Qatar also seeks to carve out enclaves in Africa and the West, and to turn the West’s pluralistic melting pot into a seething cauldron of terrorist operatives who will, when given the signal, bludgeon Europe and America to the ground.

The petro-dollars of the Qatari feudal lords, totalitarians who dictate their whims to a population with no rights, direct a global network of propaganda and incitement, through vehicles such as Al-Jazeera TV in Arabic, light years more toxic than Al Jazeera in English. It crowns kings and topples regimes throughout the Middle East, as it did by endlessly replaying the self-immolation of the young Tunisian fruit vendor who could not get a license, until it whipped up the Tunisians and Egyptians to start the “Arab Spring.” Currently, Qatar is investing millions to overthrow the Egyptian regime. It is investing millions to finance incitement among Muslims around the globe by means of its Islamist network and da’wah, the cunning preaching of the Muslim Brotherhood’s variety of Islam.

The Arabs always felt that the Europeans had a soft spot in their hearts for them. They always secretly believed that anyone who hated their mutual enemies, the Jews, as deeply as the Europeans did, and who actually tried to achieve their total physical destruction during the Second World War, would be their ally and help to expel them from occupied Palestine. Apparently, the commonly-held hatred between the Europeans and the Arabs was not enough to halt the Jews, so now the Arabs pay huge sums to bribe the leaders of Europe to help them get rid of the Jews now.

Just look at the extensive corruption of the heads of FIFA, bought and paid-for by Qatar. All it took was $100 million, and Qatar could host the World Cup. It makes one wonder what Qatar would be willing to pay for other projects, doesn’t it?

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Now where did that envelope of cash go…?
Joseph “Sepp” Blatter (R), then president of FIFA, is pictured patting his jacket pocket a moment after awarding the hosting of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (L), on December 2, 2010. (Image source: PBS Newshour video screenshot)

Categories: Abbas, Appeasement, Arab nations, Caliphate, Christians, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Egypt, Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, France, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Support for terrorism, Two state solution, United Nations
Tags: Abbas, Appeasement, Arab nations, Caliphate, Christians, Egypt, Europe, Fatah, Foreign Policy, France, Freedom, Funding terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Qatar, Support for terrorism, Two state solution, United Nations, Vatican

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Investigation Exposes AMP Leaders’ Ties to Former U.S-Based Hamas-Support Network

June 24, 2015

Investigation Exposes AMP Leaders’ Ties to Former U.S-Based Hamas-Support Network, Investigative Project on Terrorism, June 24, 2015

(Please see also, Obama Hosts Israel-Haters at Iftar Dinner ‘President’s Table’. — DM)

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Today, AMP routinely engages in anti-Israeli rhetoric, sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for Israel bashers, and openly approves “resistance” against the “Zionist state.” One AMP official acknowledged the goal is to “to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

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Federal investigators shut down a massive Hamas-support network in the United States between 2001 and 2008, prosecuting some elements and freezing the assets of others.

But the Investigative Project on Terrorism finds that many of the same functions – fundraising, propaganda and lobbying – endure, now carried out by a group called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). The IPT investigation identified at least five AMP officials and speakers who worked in the previous, defunct network called the “Palestine Committee.” It was created by the Muslim Brotherhood to advance Hamas’ agenda politically and financially in the United States.

Last year, AMP joined a coalition of national Islamist groups in forming the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is among the other founding members (for more on that coalition, click here). CAIR and its founders appear in internal Palestine Committee records admitted into evidence during the largest terror financing trial in U.S. history.

Several Palestine Committee entities were created by Mousa Abu Marzook, who remains a top Hamas political leader. One branch, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), was convicted in 2008 along with five senior officials, of illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas. HLF’s role in the Palestine Committee was the chief fundraising arm for Hamas in the United States, prosecutors say.

“The purpose of creating the Holy Land Foundation was as a fundraising arm for Hamas,” said U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis during a sentencing hearing.

A flow chart of other Palestine Committee entities includes the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and a Northern Virginia think tank called the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). IAP served as a propaganda outlet, organizing rallies and publishing magazines with articles supporting Hamas. CAIR was added to a Palestine Committee meeting agenda shortly after its 1994 creation.

UASR published an academic journal and, prosecutors say, was “involved in passing Hamas communiques to the United States-based Muslim Brotherhood community and relaying messages from that community back to Hamas.”

Today, AMP routinely engages in anti-Israeli rhetoric, sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for Israel bashers, and openly approves “resistance” against the “Zionist state.” One AMP official acknowledged the goal is to “to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

An April 2014 AMP-sponsored conference in Chicago, for example, hosted Sabri Samirah, the former chairman of IAP, as a speaker. There was little to no talk about how to achieve peaceful coexistence.

“We are ready to sacrifice all we have for Palestine. Long Live Palestine,” Samirah said. “We have a mission here [in the U.S.] also to support the struggle of our people back there in order to achieve a free land in the Muslim world, without dictators and without corruption.”

The U.S. government had earlier deemed Samirah a “security risk” and he was barred from reentering the country for several years following a trip to Jordan in 2003. While in Jordan, he served as a spokesman for the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, the Islamic Action Front. The charges against Samirah were subsequently dropped and he returned to the U.S. last year.

The AMP event also applauded Palestinian terrorist Rasmieh Odeh as “a great community member, a great member of the Palestinian cause, a great activist for the Palestinian cause.” Odeh was under indictment, and later convicted, on federal naturalization fraud charges for failing to disclose her conviction in an Israeli court for her significant role in a 1969 terrorist bombing at a Jerusalem grocery store that killed two university students. Those charges, the AMP claimed during an April 2014 event, were “politically motivated” so as “to hurt the active Palestinian solidarity movement and to hurt all strong Palestinian activists that are standing for the just cause of Palestine.”

AMP board member Osama Abu Irshaid has close affiliations to both the IAP and UASR. Abu Irshaid formerly served as editor of IAP’s Arabic periodical, Al-Zaitounah, a mouthpiece for pro-Hamas propaganda. The magazine also published advertisements by terrorist-tied charities, including HLF, the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), and the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF).

Abu Irshaid served on the board of the American Muslim Society (AMS), which served as another name for the IAP. He is listed as “Research Fellow at the United Association for Studies and Research” in a 1999 article published in the Middle East Affairs Journal, a UASR publication, titled, “Occupied Palestine or Independent Israel: ‘The Right to Existence’ After More Than Fifty Years of Occupation.”

In the article’s conclusion, Abu Irshaid argues against past peace agreements with the “Zionists” including the 1993 Oslo Accords: “The most unfortunate aspect of these agreements is that they put an end to the zero-sum game of ‘occupied Palestine or independent Israel,’ in favor of the latter, an independent Israel.” He adds, “The PLO effectively traded Palestinian historic and religious rights in its pursuit of a legacy for Yasser Arafat, the PLO Chairman. One motivation was its envy of the resistance, because the intifada earned greater admiration among the Palestinian people, who have consistently shown their support for the resistance by electing resistance candidates to various elected positions in lieu of PLO candidates. Perhaps Yasser Arafat and his cronies felt that the only way to stay in power and to defeat the resistance was to sell out the people and become a collaborator with the Zionists who promised them power, money, and peace.”

In addition to being formed by Marzook, UASR was headed by Ahmed Yousef who now serves as senior political advisor to the former HAMAS prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniya. In 1998, while serving as UASR’s executive director, Yousef gave an interview to the Middle East Quarterly in which he defended Hamas. When asked, “Is Hamas a terrorist group?” Yousef responded, “No. Hamas was founded during the intifada and it operated within the confines of the Geneva Convention. It later became a charitable and social service organization in the West Bank and Gaza, helping Palestinians forced off of their land and into unimaginable suffering, humiliation and poverty.”

Abu-Irshaid’s affection for Hamas continues today.

In a December Facebook post in Arabic, Abu Irshaid openly applauds Hamas war tactics against Israel and bashes the Palestinian Fatah party led by President Mahmud Abbas, alleging it “has grown old after deviating from the creed of liberation and resistance upon which it was established.” He writes: “There is a difference between those who resisted and those who compromise; between those who constitute an army for liberation, and those who ready battalions of lackeys; a difference between those who rise up for the blood of martyrs, and those who spill it in the wine glasses of Israel.” He then adds there is “a vast divide between those who hurt Israel and shattered its insolence and aggression in Gaza three times, and those who have conspired with Israel and are complicit with it.”

In a Feb. 28 tweet Abu Irshaid condemns Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization and refers to Sisi’s government as “Cairo Aviv” as a rebuke to existing close relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv.

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Salah Sarsour – A 2001 FBI reporttalks about Sarsour’s involvement with Hamas and fundraising on behalf of the Hamas charity, HLF. A 1998 Israeli police reportrecounting an interrogation of his brother Jamil Sarsour substantiates these claims, stating that Salah Sarsour was an HLF employee and “collected funds for this organization.”

Sarsour was arrested by Israeli authorities in the mid-1990s and sentenced to eight months in prison in Ramallah, allegedly for support to Hamas. While in prison, he became “very good friends” with Adel Awdallah, a former leader of Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, who was killed in an Israeli attack in October 1998. He also sent money to Awdallah “several times” through his brother Jamil Sarsour, who pleaded guilty to aiding Hamas and served a multiple year sentence in Israel before being deported to the U.S. in 2002.

Sufyan Nabhan (also Sufian Nabhan) – served on IAP’s Board of Directors. During a May 2010 event commemorating the Palestinian “Day of Catastrophe” (also known as “Al-Nakba”), Sufian criticized the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” He was reported saying, “Occupation is apartheid, occupation is segregation. Massacres are going on daily.”

Abdelbaset Hamayel – Formerly served as IAP executive director and secretary general. Hamayel was also a representative of the Illinois and Wisconsin offices of the terror-tied charity, KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development.

The U.S. Treasury froze the assets of KindHearts in 2006. The charity that was dissolved in January 2012 has made contributions to Hamas-affiliated organizations, including significant donations to Sanabil Association for Relief and Development, a Lebanese charity that was designated a Hamas front by the Treasury Department in 2003.

KindHearts was called “the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, which attempted to mask their support for terrorism behind the façade of charitable,” by then-Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey.

A 2002 U.S. Treasury Department press release announcing the designation of the Global Relief Foundation alleged it “has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al Qaida Network, and other known terrorist groups.” The press release further stated that GRF had received $18,521 from HLF in 2000.

Yousef Shahin – Identified in a feature article in Al-Zaitounah’s May 1997 issue as president of IAP’s new branch in New Jersey. “Then Yousef Shahin, president of the [IAP New Jersey] branch, spoke and thanked all who shared in the success of this project, and asked the sons of the community to support the project materially and morally,” a translation of the article in Arabic states.

Shahin has countered allegations against former British MP George Galloway for raising funds for Hamas: “He’s not taking money for terrorists,” Shahin was reported saying. “He’s buying medical supplies for the hospital. He’s not dealing with a terrorist organization. We were assured by him; he’s going to give everything to the hospital.”

Galloway’s now-defunct charity Viva Palestina claimed to “break the crippling siege of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid” to Palestinians. During the first Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza in 2009, Galloway stated, “I personally am about to break the sanctions on the elected government of Palestine…” because, “[We] are giving three cars and £25,000 cash to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Here is the money. This is not charity. This is politics. The government of Palestine is the best people where this money is needed. We are giving this money now to the government of Palestine.”

Shahin was also listed as a point of contact for an AMP banquet that included Galloway and Osama Abu Irshaid as speakers.

Hatem Bazian – AMP’s chairman spoke at a number of IAP events. According to IAP’s Al-Zaitounah, Bazian was a guest lecturer at an IAP event at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee on April 13, 1998. The event was titled, “Fifty Years of Despair and Punishment for the Palestinian People.” An article in IAP’s Al-Zaitounahmagazine summarizes Bazian’s lecture: “During the lecture he [Bazian] spoke on the practices of the loathsome Zionist entity [against] the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Bazian has called on Americans to create a violent uprising at home in 2004 similar to the Palestinian intifada.

“Are you angry? …Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country,” Bazian said. “It’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every – They’re gonna say some Palestinian [is] being too radical – well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.”

Further, at an AMP event at the University of California in Santa Cruz in November, Bazian provided the “victimization argument” to justify Palestinian violence. “Palestine is the victim that is being victimized once again by actually blaming them for the fact that they respond. Palestinians’ response to settler colonialism has been identical to every colonized people’s response when they are confronted by the colonization process,” Bazian said. He also failed to openly condemn Hamas, and instead held Israel responsible for the ongoing conflict in the region: “So the question—is Hamas good or not good for the Palestinians –it’s a question that is superficial because it does not address the context within the specificity of what is occurring on the ground of the Palestinians and how Israel is running a massive jail, shifting its powers and resources from one group to the other in order to manage an occupied colonized population.”

At an April fundraising dinner in Chicago, AMP National Media and Communications Director Kristin Szremski announced the recent opening of the organization’s Washington, D.C. office to advocate for the Palestinian cause. While claiming “we don’t lobby,” Szremski said that “for years the American Muslims for Palestine has been calling for an end to aid to Israel. Now Alhamdulillah (Praise to God) we are in a position to do something about it. Now the American Muslims for Palestine is in Washington, D.C., actually beginning the work with legislative staff in Congress to identify specific military units who receive foreign military financing from the United States.”

Szremski also named partnering organizations in its “educational and advocacy work in Congress” that included the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations and U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

There is no indication AMP is routing money to Hamas. But its rhetoric and ideology, emphasizing “resistance” – a coded reference to armed jihad – and the significant representation of leaders tied to an old Hamas-support network, raise serious questions about its true objectives. This is not a mainstream organization seeking a peaceful settlement to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Categories: Abbas, AMP, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinians, Support for terrorism
Tags: Abbas, AMP, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Gaza, Hamas, human rights, Ideology, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Jews, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Palestinians, Support for terrorism

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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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