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Column One: Responding to the slaughter

November 21, 2014

Column One: Responding to the slaughter, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, November 20, 2014

Jerusalem terror attackTerror attack scene in Jerusalem . (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred.Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.

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What we are seeing in Jerusalem today is not simply Palestinian terrorism. It is Islamic jihad. No one likes to admit it. The television reporters insist that this is the worst possible scenario because there is no way to placate it.

There is no way to reason with it.

So what else is new? The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder to pretend away the obvious fact that we cannot placate our enemies.

No “provocation” by Jews drove two Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.

No “frustration” with a “lack of progress” in the “peace process,” can motivate people to run over Jewish babies or attempt to assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.

The reason that these terrorists have decided to kill Jews is that they take offense at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They take offense because all their lives they have been taught that Jews should live at their mercy, or die by their sword.

They do so because they believe, as former Jordanian MP Ya’qub Qarash said on Palestinian television last week, that Christians and Muslims should work together to forbid the presence of Jews in “Palestine” and guarantee that “not a single Jew will remain in Jerusalem.”

Our neighbors are taught that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, signed the treaty of Hudaybiyah in 628 as a ploy to buy time during which he would change the balance of power between his army and the Jews of Kuraish. And 10 years later, once his army gained the upper hand, he annihilated the Jews.

Throughout the 130-year history of modern Zionism, Islamic Jew-hatred has been restrained by two forces: the desire of many Arabs to live at peace with their Jewish neighbors; and the ability of Israeli authorities and before them, British authorities, to deter the local Arab Muslims from attacking.

The monopoly on Arab Muslim leadership has always belonged to the intolerant bigots. Support for coexistence has always been the choice of individuals.

Haj Amin el-Husseini’s first act as the founder of the Palestinian Arab identity was to translate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and serialize them in the local press.

During the Arab jihad of 1936-1939, Husseini’s gangs of murderers killed more Arabs than the British did. He targeted those who sought peaceful coexistence with the Jews.

His successor Yasser Arafat followed his example.

During the 1988-1991 Palestinian uprising, the PLO killed more Palestinians than the IDF did. Like Husseini, Arafat targeted Palestinians who worked with Israel.

Since Israel imprudently embraced Arafat and the PLO in 1993 and permitted them to govern the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and exert direct influence and coercive power over the Arabs of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s governing institutions have used all the tools at their disposal to silence those who support peaceful coexistence with Israel, and indoctrinate the general public in Islamic and racial Jew-hatred.

Much has been made of the recent spike in incitement of violence by Palestinian leaders led by Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. But the flames Abbas and his comrades are throwing would not cause such conflagrations if they hadn’t already indoctrinated their audience to desire the destruction of the Jews.

You cannot solicit murder among those who haven’t been taught that committing murder is an act of heroism.

Today Israel must take swift, effective action to stop the slaughter. The damage that has been done to the psyches of the Arabs of Jerusalem and their brethren in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, cannot be repaired in a timeline relevant to the task of preventing the next massacre.

This means that for the time being, on the tactical level, Israel’s only play is strengthening its deterrence.

Israel faces two major constraints in meeting this challenge.

First, the European Union and the Obama administration, as well as the US foreign policy elite, are obsessively committed to a policy of empowering the Palestinians against Israel.

The Spanish parliament’s decision to go ahead with its planned vote to recognize the “State of Palestine,” just hours after the massacre at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood shows that the EU’s dedication to strengthening the Palestinians against Israel is entirely unrelated to events on the ground.

They don’t care who the Palestinians are or what they do. For their own reasons they have made supporting the Palestinians at Israel’s expense their top foreign policy priority.

Similarly, US President Barack Obama couldn’t contain his compulsion to pressure Israel even in his statement condemning the massacre. Even there, Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians equally to restrain themselves.

Obama’s unabated hostility toward Israel was brought to bear on Tuesday afternoon when the State Department restated its rejection of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem and its desire to see the homes of terrorist murderers left intact for the welfare of their terror-supporting families.

On Tuesday, Israel’s social media outlets were filled with angry rebukes of Western media outlets from CNN to MSNBC to CBS, to the BBC. All these networks, and many others, did everything in their power to explain away the synagogue slaughter as just another instance of a cycle of violence. That is, they all sought to frame the discussion in a way that would lead their viewers to the conclusion that the slaughter of praying rabbis was justified.

While appalling, the coverage was not the least surprising. The Western elite media’s devotion to their false narrative of Israeli culpability for all the problems in the region is absolute. Networks would rather wreck their professional reputations than tell the truth.

Together with the EU, the American policy elite and the Obama administration, the media place Israel’s leaders in a bind. Every step they take to defend the country and protect the rights of Jews meets with automatic and libelous condemnation.

The other impediment Israel faces in deterring anti-Jewish violence against its citizenry is its own weakness. Since the inception of the phony peace process, Israel has continuously rewarded the Palestinians for their murderous violence against its citizenry.

From Israel’s transfer of control over all the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria, to its forcible expulsion of its own people from Gaza, to its repeated releases of terrorists from prison, to its continued transfer of hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenues to the PA, Israel has showed the Palestinians at every turn that far from being punished for murdering Jews, they will be rewarded for doing so.

Given the US and European support for the Palestinians, Israeli declarations that there will be no future releases of terrorists have no credibility. If terrorists aren’t killed on the spot, they can assume that they will eventually be released; if not in exchange for an Israeli hostage, Israel will release them in an attempt to placate the White House.

But even with these constraints on its actions, Israel can take steps to deter its hate-filled enemies from attacking.

Since the current campaign of murder is being carried out by terrorists largely acting on their own accord, the measures Israel adopts to stop the attacks should be directed primarily against individual terrorists. As for action against the PA, it needs to be credible, consistent and directed to where it will hurt Palestinian leaders the most: their wallets.

With regard to the individual terrorists, the government has made much of its intention to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it sounds good, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this punitive measure, which is a relic of the British Mandate.

Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.

All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.

If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children’s inheritance of the homes of their fathers’ killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.

Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise.

Just as Israel has repeatedly buckled under US pressure to release terrorists from jail, so it has bowed to US pressure to continue to fund the PA by transferring the tax revenues it collects on goods imported to the PA.

Assuming that the government is too weak to stand up to the Americans, at a minimum it can see that the money is properly used.

To that end, the Knesset should pass a law permitting Israeli terror victims to sue the PA for actual and punitive damages in Israel courts. The sums awarded to the victims should be taken from the tax revenues Israel collects for the PA. The law should apply retroactively to all victims of Palestinian terror carried out since the establishment of the PA in May 1994.

Not only should the law permit Israeli terror victims to sue the PA. It should dictate actions the Justice Ministry must take to assist them in bringing suit.

Israel should also revoke citizenship and residency rights not only from terrorists themselves, but from those who enjoy citizenship and residency rights by dint of their relationship with the terrorists.

Wives who received Israeli residency or citizenship rights though marriage to terrorists should have their rights revoked, as should the children of the terrorists.

Since Tuesday’s massacre, aside from Abbas’s phony condemnation, the Palestinian leadership and public from Fatah to Hamas have been unanimous in their praise for the atrocity.

Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.

If our leaders fail to take these or similar actions, and suffice with complaining about incitement, their condemnations of the murder of Jews will ring as hollow as those sounded by the BBC, Obama and Abbas.

Categories: Antisemitism, Demolitions, Islam, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Kerry, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process
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Obama on Ferguson and Jerusalem

November 20, 2014

Obama on Ferguson and Jerusalem, American Spectator, , November 20, 2014

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On the one hand, in Ferguson, with an entire population on edge, the president and his attorney general are plainly siding with the lynch mob. On the other hand, when it comes to the Israelis and Palestinians in response to the killing of rabbis in a synagogue, the response is moral equivalence.

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Moral equivalence on parade.

Ferguson, Missouri, where the facts of the police shooting that killed Michael Brown have yet to be presented by the grand jury, an entire community braces for violence if the “wrong” decision is announced. While waiting, the Obama administration huddled with those who have a history of inciting racial violence and are heading to Ferguson.

In Jerusalem, where the bloody trail of Jihad streams from a synagogue, the response of the Obama administration is to play the moral equivalency card between Palestinians and Israel.

The contrast could not be more stark — or more telling.

First Ferguson: As headlined at The Gateway Pundit reports:

President Obama met with Ferguson protest leaders on November 5th, the day after the midterm elections. The meeting was not on his daily schedule. He was concerned that the protesters “stay on course.”

There was no Oval Office meeting or similar words of encouragement for those supporting either officer Darren Wilson or the simple concept of letting a grand jury work its will without intimidation.

Meanwhile, about Jerusalem, the New York Times tells the story this way:

The Orthodox Jewish men were facing east, to honor the Old City site where the ancient temples once stood, when two Palestinians armed with a gun, knives and axes burst into their synagogue Tuesday morning, shouting “God is great!” in Arabic. Within moments, three rabbis and a fourth pious man lay dead, blood pooling on their prayer shawls and holy books.

The assailants, cousins from East Jerusalem, were killed at the scene in a gun battle with the police that wounded two officers; one died of his injuries Tuesday night. Politicians and others around the world condemned the attack and the rising religious dimension of the spate of violence, which has been attributed mainly to a struggle over the very site the victims were praying toward.

And what was the president’s response? Mr. Obama read a statement in which he said that “too many Palestinians have died,” and “I think it’s important for both Palestinians and Israelis to try to work together to lower tensions and reject violence….We have to remind ourselves that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis overwhelmingly want peace.” There was no summoning of the Israeli ambassador no suggestion for Israel to “stay the course.”

What are we seeing here? It’s very clear and utterly unsurprising. On the one hand, in Ferguson, with an entire population on edge, the president and his attorney general are plainly siding with the lynch mob. On the other hand, when it comes to the Israelis and Palestinians in response to the killing of rabbis in a synagogue, the response is moral equivalence. Moral equivalence uttered while — quite literally, as seen here — Palestinians take to the streets to wave hatchets, and hand out food to gleefully celebrate the murders. Just as, it should not need to be reminded, Palestinians were in the streets celebrating on 9/11 when the twin towers fell and some 3,000 Americans were murdered.

This follows six years worth of the Obama administration absolutely trashing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel itself — whether rudelyleaving Netanyahu waiting around the West Wing while the president went off to dinner, or having an anonymous minion snarking to the Atlantic that Israel’s prime minister is a “chickens–t.” Recall the moment that played out in front of cameras at the 2012 Democratic Convention when it was discovered that somehow, mysteriously, the Democratic platform refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — and it had to be undone while delegates booed? As seen here it wasn’t pretty, the cameras picking up a delegate loudly shouting “no” while displaying an “Arab American Democrats” sign. Not to be forgotten is Obama’s personal history with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, both of whom have frequently been labeled as anti-Semites.

Thus the vivid illustration of the core of the modern left. A president stands with the lawbreakers in Ferguson as the town braces for riots. At the same time, confronted with the murder of rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue — another chapter in the war of Islamic fascism against the Jews — he responds with moral equivalence. The Palestinians this…but on the other hand the Israelis that. And so on.

From Ferguson to Jerusalem, this is the mindset of the modern left that is on display. That mindset isn’t just ugly — it’s dangerous.

Categories: Fatah, Hamas, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jihad, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Obama, Palestinians, Two state solution
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Abbas aide: Execute Palestinians who sell land to Israelis

November 15, 2014

Abbas aide: Execute Palestinians who sell land to Israelis, Times of Israel, Tamar Pileggi, November 15, 2014

(What, if anything, will Kerry say? — DM)

Screen-Shot-2014-11-15-at-6.53.13-AM-e1416059307979-635x357Sultan Abu Al-Einein, a Fatah Central Committee official (screen capture: MEMRI, YouTube)

Einein, who also serves as an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Iranian Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam that “anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.

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Fatah official praises Yehudah Glick’s shooter, calls for public killings of those who engage in property transactions with Jews.

Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein said Palestinians who sell their land to Jews should be publicly executed.

Einein, who also serves as an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Iranian Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam that “anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.”

The October 31 interview was posted and translated Friday by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, a US-based watchdog group.

Under Palestinian law, land sales to Israelis are illegal and a crime punishable by death. The PLO’s Revolutionary Penal Code (1979) applies the death penalty both to “traitors” and to those accused of “transferring positions to the enemy.” Since the late 1990s, Palestinian courts have been dealing out death sentences to convicted land dealers, though Abbas has not authorized the implementation of executions since his election in 2004.

In response to recent Israeli acquisition of apartments in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods last month, Abbas issued an executive order amending the penal code to establish punishments for those who sell land to “hostile countries.”

Abbas’s new punishments for Palestinians who engage in property transactions with Israelis include hard labor and life imprisonment.

In the interview, Einein also praised Mutaz Hijazi, a member of Islamic Jihad who attempted to assassinate Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehudah Glick last month, saying “the way to defeat the Israeli occupation is the way of the martyr Mutaz Hijazi.”

“If the people do not fight the Israeli occupation in the way they see fit, in order to liberate their land, they do not deserve to live,” he said.

 

 

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Apartments, Executions, Fatah, Islam, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Jihad, juden ist verboten, Multiculturalism, Palestinians, Terrorism, Two state solution
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A Turkish Quest to “Liberate” Jerusalem

November 13, 2014

A Turkish Quest to “Liberate” Jerusalem, Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, November 13, 2014

Both Turkey’s President Erdogan and its Prime Minister Davutoglu have declared countess times that Gaza and Jerusalem (in addition to Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, and the Maghreb) are Turkey’s “domestic affairs.”

In truth, there is no mention of any city’s name in the Qur’an.

Turks have a different understanding of what constitutes an occupation and a conquest of a city. The Turkish rule is very simple: The capture of a foreign city by force is an occupation if that city is Turkish (or Muslim) and the capture of a city by force is conquest if the city belongs to a foreign nation (or non-Muslims).

For instance, Turks still think the capture of Istanbul in 1453 was not occupation; it was conquest.

In a 2012 speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (then Prime Minister) said: “Just like Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul are cities of the Qur’an.” In truth, there is no mention of any city’s name in the Qur’an. Never mind.

“Conquest,” Turkey’s top Muslim cleric, Professor Mehmet Gormez, declared in 2012, “is not to occupy lands or destroy cities and castles. Conquest is the conquest of hearts!” That is why, the top Turkish cleric said, “In our history there has never been occupation.” Instead, Professor Gormez said, “in our history, there has always been conquest.” He further explained that one pillar of conquest is to “open up minds to Islam, and hearts to the Qur’an.”

It is in this religious justification that most Turkish Islamists think they have an Allah-given right to take infidel lands by the force of sword — ironically, not much different from what the tougher Islamists have been doing in large parts of Syria and Iraq. Ask any commander in the Islamic State and he would tell you what the jihadists are doing there is “opening up minds to Islam, and hearts to the Qur’an.”

Both President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have declared countless times that Gaza and Jerusalem (in addition to Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia and the Maghreb) are Turkey’s “domestic affairs.”

This author wrote in this journal on Oct. 30:

In reality, with or without the normalization of diplomatic relations between Ankara and Jerusalem, the Turks have never hidden their broader goals in the Arab-Israeli dispute: that Jerusalem should be the capital of a Palestinian state; and that Israel should be pushed back to its pre-1967 borders. Until then, it will be ‘halal’ [permitted in Islam] for Erdogan to blame Israel for global warming, the Ebola virus, starvation in Africa and every other misfortune the world faces.

As if to confirm this whimsical view, Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan has blamed Israel for democratic failings in the Arab world. “Israel works with [undemocratic] regimes and keeps its ship afloat.” So, it is because of Israel that Arab nations have never established democratic culture — before or after 1948; or before or after the Arab Spring revolts. But fortunately, Palestinians have a new “protector.”

From Prime Minister Davutoglu’s public speech on November 7:

Al-Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem] will one day be liberated. The Israelis should know that the oppressed Syrians have a protector. The oppressed Palestinians too have a protector. That protector is Turkey. Just as Bursa [the Turkish city where he spoke] ended its occupation, the honorable Palestinians, honorable Muslims will end the [Israeli] occupation. Just as Osman Gazi [a sepulchre in Bursa] was liberated, al-Aqsa too will be liberated. Al-Quds [Jerusalem] is both our first prayer direction and has been entrusted with us by history. It has been entrusted with us by Hazrat Omar. The last freedom seen in Jerusalem was under our [Ottoman] rule. Al-Quds is our cause. It is the occupying, oppressive Israeli government that has turned the Middle East into a quagmire.

Echoing that view, President Erdogan said that protecting Islamic sites in the Holy Land is a sacred mission (for his government), and bluntly warned that any attack against the al-Aqsa mosque is no different than an attack on the Kaaba in the holy city of Mecca.

792Spot the difference: In the eyes of Turkey’s political and religious leadership, Istanbul and its Hagia Sophia (once a Greek Orthodox Basilica) were legitimately “conquered” by the Muslim Ottomans, while Jerusalem and its al-Aqsa mosque (built atop the ruins of the Jewish Temples) are illegally “occupied” by Israel. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)

No doubt, after Gaza, al-Aqsa (and Jerusalem) has become a powerful Turkish obsession, and a treasure-trove of votes, especially in view of Turkey’s parliamentary elections next June. And do not expect the Turkish leadership only to corrupt facts. Plain fabrication is a more favored method. All the same, someone, sometimes, would unwillingly reveal the truth often when trying to corrupt other facts.

Since Davutoglu claimed that “Jerusalem has been entrusted with the Turks by Hazrat Omar,” it may be useful to refresh memories. Hazrat Omar is Omar bin Al-Khattab (579-644), one of the most powerful and influential Muslim caliphs in history. Within the context of “conquest vs. occupation,” he was referenced by the top cleric, Professor Gormez in a 2012 speech:

After Hazrat Omar conquered al-Quds [Jerusalem], he was invited to pray at a church [as there were no mosques yet in Jerusalem]. But he politely refused because he was worried that the [conquering] Muslims could turn the church into a mosque after he prayed there.

Since medieval historical facts cannot have changed over the past two years, the top Turkish ulama [religious scholar], referencing a most powerful Muslim caliph, is best witness that when the Muslims had first arrived in Jerusalem there was not a single mosque in the city. Why? Because Jerusalem was not a Muslim city. Why, then, do Turkish Islamists claim that it is Muslim? Because it once had been “conquered.” Would the same Turks surrender Istanbul to the occupying forces that took the city after World War I because its capture in 1920 made it a non-Turkish city? No, that was not conquest, that was occupation!

Had Messrs Erdogan and Davutoglu been schoolchildren, such reasoning might have been called bullying and cheating.

Categories: Caliphate, Egypt, Gaza, Islam, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Middle East, Turkey, West Bank
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Palestinian song glorifies terror trend of driving into crowds

November 11, 2014

Palestinian song glorifies terror trend of driving into crowds, Fox News, , November 11, 2014

(Why won’t “apartheid” Israel be reasonable, as Obama demands, and commit suicide? — DM)

palpic2Images in Palestinian media glorify terrorists who drive their cars into crowds of innocent Israelis. (PalWatch.org)

The disturbing Palestinian trend of driving into crowds – dubbed “vehicular terrorism” by the Israeli government – has been celebrated in a twisted new hit song called “Run Over the Settler.”

The car attacks, coupled with random stabbings that have occurred with frightening frequency in recent weeks, have sparked fears of a new “intifada,” or uprising, in Israel. But in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, the attacks are being glorified in song, and in the words of leaders.

“Run them over, burn the next in line,” goes the song, sung by Anas Garadat and Muhammad Abu Al-Kayed and translated by Palestinian Media Watch. “Don’t leave a single settler. Wait for them at the intersection. Let the settler drown in red blood.”

The car attacks began on Oct. 22, when a Palestinian named Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi slammed his car into a crowded train station in Jerusalem in an apparently intentional act that killed a 3-month-old Israeli-American baby and an Ecuadorian woman. Last Thursday, Palestinian and known Hamas operative Ibrahim Al-Akari rammed a van into a group of pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing a police officer, and on Monday morning, two terrorist attacks occurred hours apart, leaving one woman dead and several others injured. The attacker in the second incident, who stabbed three people at a bus station, had originally intended to use his vehicle as a weapon, according to reports.

In the song, the apparently accidental death of a 2-month-old Palestinian girl is used as justification for the intentional attacks. In that case, the Israeli driver reportedly even called for an ambulance for the stricken child and her brother.

Israeli Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the attacks have prompted extra measures to safeguard the public.

“Extra police units have been mobilized in different areas with the emphasis on Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, following yesterday’s attack there,” Rosenfeld told FoxNews.com. “We have also stepped up Border Police operations around Palestinian areas such as Nablus, Bethlehem, and Hebron, and there is increased security being implemented on a ground level, including regular patrols and road blocks.”

But stopping Palestinian terrorists from suddenly veering onto sidewalks and striking with easily concealed knives is a daunting task, Rosenfeld acknowledged.

“We’re working both on an intelligence level and an operational level,” Rosenfeld said. “The intelligence level consists of finding potential suspects before they manage to reach the streets, and on an operational level we have larger numbers of undercover officers in public places ahead of time, that can immediately respond and react when necessary.”

He also confirmed that despite the violence of the last few weeks, regular co-operation is continuing between Israeli and Palestinian police.

Not so with Palestinian media and cultural institutions, however. Local newspapers and television programs have used cartoon images to laud the killings, adding fuel to an already combustible situation.

On Monday, the Hamas-supported Al Quds University in Jerusalem proudly unveiled an exhibit glorifying Mutaz Hijazi, who attempted to assassinate the controversial Rabbi Yehuda Glick at the Begin Center in Jerusalem on Oct. 29.

Glick, who was shot four times at close range, had been in the forefront of calls for Jews to be allowed to pray freely on the Temple Mount, site of the Golden Dome and Al Aqsa Mosque, and previously of the Second Jewish Temple. Their demands, supported by only a handful of extreme right-wing politicians who have come in for heavy criticism in the Israeli mainstream for inflaming religious tensions, seek to change the status quo at the religious site that has existed since Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967.

Glick is recovering from his injuries, but Hijazi, a long-standing member of Islamic Jihad, was tracked down by Israeli security services and killed. He is being hailed as a heroic martyr by Palestinian media and by some Palestinian politicians who, in contrast to their Israeli counterparts, appear to be doing little publicly to ease the spiraling situation.

But while Israeli leaders have called for Glick to stifle demands to pray at the sacred site, Palestinian leaders continue to praise violent terrorists. A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently referred to terrorist killers as “heroic martyrs… saturating the land of the homeland with their pure blood and igniting the flames of rage.”

Categories: Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Islam, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Two state solution, West Bank
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Temple Mount Advocate Yehuda Glick Shot in Jerusalem

October 30, 2014

Temple Mount Advocate Yehuda Glick shot in Jerusalem | By Tova Dvorin and Ari Soffer, Arutz Sheva, 29th October 2014, 10:37 pm

(This is what happens when the police are politicised and are more concerned about preventing Jewish “provocations” than in apprehending their Arab attackers — AP)

Terrorist deliberately targets leading advocate for Jewish Temple Mount rights, leaving Glick seriously injured.

Yehuda Glick, a leading advocate for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, has been very seriously wounded after being shot in Jerusalem on Wednesday night, Arutz Sheva has learned.

Glick was shot outside the Begin Heritage center in the capital, witnesses said, after a terrorist pulled up in a scooter or motorcycle and shot him before fleeing the scene.

Initial reports are indicating that Glick – who founded and heads the LIBA Initiative for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount – was deliberately targeted for nationalistic reasons, but police have not yet officially announced a motive.

The Begin Center had been hosting an event to help in efforts to re-establish a greater Jewish presence on the Mount Wednesday night, just before the activist was shot.

He has been rushed to Sha’arei Tzedek Medical Center for immediate medical treatment.

Magen David Adom (MDA) spokesman Zaki Heller said that Glick was shot in the upper body no fewer than three times and paramedics had barely had time to speak to him during the initial stages of treatment.

Activists have asked that prayers be said for the urgent recovery of Yehuda Yehoshua ben Rivka Ita Breindel.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, and MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) are currently at the scene.

The Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, but under pressure from Islamist groups including the Jordanian-run Waqf Islamic trust, Jews are forbidden to worship there under pain of arrest.

Glick has been an ardent opponent of the current status-quo on the Mount, which Jewish groups have condemned as discriminatory. Numerous Israeli court decisions have backed their claims – only for police to invoke “security concerns” as a way of circumventing the courts and maintaining a blanket ban on Jewish worship there.

Watch: Arutz Sheva TV joins Glick on Temple Mount tour:

Watch: Glick implores Jews to stand up for Temple Mount (2012)

Much of the recent Arab violence in Jerusalem has centered around the Temple Mount, with Islamist and Palestinian Authority leaders branding Jewish visitors to the site as “invaders” and “settlers”, and Muslim worshippers harassing and even physically attacking them. Islamist rioters have also been frequently clashing with Israeli police at the site.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas recently made a public effort to fan the flames of violence, urging Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount using “all means” necessary.

Abbas’s comments have been replayed well over a dozen times on official PA TV – part of what appears to be a calculated campaign to incite more violence in the capital.

(All photos by Arutz 7)

 

Categories: Israel, Palestinians, Terrorism
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The Islamization of Jerusalem

October 29, 2014

The Islamization of Jerusalem, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 29, 2014

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The murder of little girls like Chaya Zissel Braun does not take place in a vacuum. The Islamizers of Jerusalem gain confidence when they see that the international community stands behind their demands. In 1920, racist Muslim settler mobs in Jerusalem had chanted “Mohammed’s religion was born with the sword”, “Death to the Jews” and “the government is with us” as Muslim policemen under British colonial rule had joined with them in the rape and murder of the indigenous Jewish population.

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Chaya Zissel Braun was murdered on her first trip back from the Western Wall where the indigenous Jewish population of Israel continues to pray in the shadow of the shrine established there by the Muslim conquerors from which the racist Muslim settlers rain down rocks on the Jewish worshipers.

The three-month old baby girl died when a Muslim terrorist rammed a car into a crowd hurtling her into the air and headfirst onto the pavement. Her death did not take place in isolation. It was not caused by a tiny minority of extremists. Her blood was spilled on the street for the Islamization of Jerusalem.

The Islamization of Jerusalem is an international cause. It does not just come out of Gaza City or even Ramallah. Nor Doha or Istanbul. The politicians and diplomats of every major country demand the Islamization of Jerusalem. When they talk about a Palestinian State with its capital in Jerusalem what they are really demanding is the restoration of the Muslim ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem in 1948.

They demand it with words and boycotts, but the Muslim settlers on whose behalf they cry for the Apartheidization of Jerusalem are writing their murderous demands with the blood of little girls.

The baby girl was murdered to Islamize a city. She died as the Israeli soldiers had died reunifying Jerusalem after the Arab Legion had ethnically cleansed the Jewish population and as ordinary Jerusalemites had died at the hands of Jordanian snipers searching the city for Jewish and Christian targets. The victims of those years of Muslim occupation included Yaffa Binyamin, a 14-year-old girl sitting on the balcony of her own house, and a Christian carpenter working on the Notre Dame Convent.

Like Chaya, I was born in Jerusalem. Like Yaffa, I lived in a building targeted by Muslim snipers. But the Six Day War had ended the reign of Muslim snipers over the city. The building where my parents made their home had been cheap once because living there could mean instant death for anyone looking out of a window at the wrong time. The liberation and reunification of Jerusalem had made it a place where Jewish children could play on balconies and Christians could repair churches without being murdered.

Under Muslim occupation, while Jordanian snipers were cold-bloodedly murdering their children, the Jewish residents living under fire couldn’t so much as put up an outhouse without being reported to the UN for illegal construction. In one case a UN observer organization held four meetings to discuss an outhouse for local Jewish residents before condemning Israel for illegal construction.

It did not however condemn Jordan when one of its soldiers opened fire on a train wounding a Jewish teenage girl.

Muslim outrage over Jewish outhouses mattered more than the Muslim murder of Jewish children. It still does. Today the State Department calls the murder of that little girl a traffic incident while warning that Jews living in Jerusalem will end any possibility of peace.

Hillary Clinton spent 45 minutes shrieking at Netanyahu over the phone after a planning committee allowed new housing in Jerusalem to advance to the public comment stage, and told the media that the proposal that Jews live in a part of Jerusalem that she believes should belong to Muslims is “insulting” to the United States.

The latest firestorm exploded over seven Jewish families moving into homes that they had bought legally in an area from which Jews had been ethnically cleansed by racist Muslim violence in the twenties and thirties. Earlier the State Department and White House had warned that Israel was alienating “even its closest allies” by proposing to build houses on Airplane Hill, a place mainly known for having an Israeli plane crash there during the Six Day War that had formerly hosted temporary housing for Russian and Ethiopian immigrants.

Meanwhile when Chaya was murdered, the State Department urged “all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident.” It wasn’t as if anything important had happened. Just an Israeli-American baby murdered in pursuit of their shared goal of Islamizing Jerusalem.

Secretary of State John Kerry did not call President Abbas, the unelected president of the PLO’s Palestinian Authority, to berate him when one of his advisers called the murderer of that child a “heroic martyr”. Hillary Clinton did not come out of retirement to shriek at him over the phone when his party suggested that the killer would be receiving his 72 virgins in paradise.

If only something more important had happened than a presidential advisor to an Obama-backed terror state calling the murderer of an American child a hero; like planning for new housing “advancing”.

No one objects when Muslim settlers build houses in Jerusalem or anywhere else. But the objections pour in when the indigenous Jewish population builds so much as a house or an outhouse.

What we are talking about here is not peace, but ethnic cleansing. In 1948, the Jews were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem to Islamize the city. Their synagogues were blown up by the Muslim occupiers. Their tombstones were used to line the roads traveled by the racist Muslim settlers.

“For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter,” Abdullah el-Talal, a commander of the Muslim invaders, had boasted. “Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”

In his memoirs he wrote, “I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty…. Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.”

Life magazine published photos of the atrocity writing that, “Muslim censors, not only in Palestine but in   neighboring Arab countries which have major communication outlets, tried for a fortnight to keep the news from leaking out.”

The Life photographer who took the photos was sentenced to death by the Arab High Committee.

This ethnic cleansing is what Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been defending. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the thrust of all the peace plans put forward.

The entire phony “Palestinian” narrative in which the regional Sunni Arab Muslim majority that is busy slaughtering Christians, Kurds, Shiites acts as if it’s the victim because its racist ethnic cleansing plans were frustrated when its Jewish victims fought back and won.

The Muslim occupiers have added insult to injury by pretending to be the indigenous population to aid in their attempts at displacing the indigenous Jewish population through terror and lies.

Abdullah el-Talal said, “I have seen in this defeat of the Jews the heaviest blow rendered upon them, especially in terms of morale, since they were evicted   from the Western Wall and from the Jewish Quarter, for the first time in fifteen generations.”

Every politician denouncing Jews for building houses in Jerusalem, but not Muslims doing the same thing is endorsing Abdullah’s genocidal vision and all the terrorism that goes with it.

The murder of little girls like Chaya Zissel Braun does not take place in a vacuum. The Islamizers of Jerusalem gain confidence when they see that the international community stands behind their demands. In 1920, racist Muslim settler mobs in Jerusalem had chanted “Mohammed’s religion was born with the sword”, “Death to the Jews” and “the government is with us” as Muslim policemen under British colonial rule had joined with them in the rape and murder of the indigenous Jewish population.

Too many governments still stand with those who wave the sword of Mohammed and cry death to the Jews. They encourage them, defend their agenda and issue weak rebukes when blood is spilled in the name of Islamizing Jerusalem.

Those politicians who endorse the Islamization of Jerusalem cannot escape responsibility for the crimes of the Islamizers.

Categories: Antisemitism, Apartments, Hamas, Islam, Islamic jihad, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Jews, juden ist verboten, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Two state solution
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Obama Admin: Palestinians Who Throw Molotov Cocktails at Israelis Are Not Terrorists

October 28, 2014

Obama Admin: Palestinians Who Throw Molotov Cocktails at Israelis Are Not Terrorists, Washington Free Beacon, October 27, 2014

(The dear lad was Islamic, so how could he possibly have been involved in terrorism? Islam is the “religion of peace.” Or something.– DM)

The Obama administration insisted Monday that a Palestinian who was killed by the IDF while attempting to throw a Molotov cocktail at Israeli civilians is not a terrorist.

The Palestinian, a teenager with U.S. citizenship, was shot on Friday and buried this weekend wearing a green Hamas headband. The Obama administration said in a statement on Friday that it “expresses its deepest condolences to the family.”

At a State Department briefing today, Associated Press reporter Matt Lee asked spokesman Jen Psaki whether it is appropriate to offer deepest condolences to the family of someone killed while attempting to carry out an attack on civilians.

“There are reports … that [the Palestinian teenager] was throwing Molotov cocktails at cars on a highway, and I’m wondering, if that is the case, would you still have been so speedy in putting out a statement and offering your condolences to the family?” asked Lee. “The argument that is being made by some in Israel is that this kid was essentially a terrorist, and you don’t agree with that, I assume,” Lee continued.

“Correct, we don’t,” replied Psaki. Lee then asked whether the fact that the teenager was buried wearing a Hamas headband was “of concern at all.” Psaki replied, “I just don’t have any more on this particular case.”

Categories: Heresy, Islamic jihad, Islamism, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Obama, Terrorism
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Terror attack by vehicle in Jerusalem – 3-month old baby killed

October 23, 2014

Terror attack by vehicle in Jerusalem – 3-month old baby killed | Anne’s Opinions, 23rd October 2014

 

3-month old Chaya Zissel Braun HY’D, murdered in a terrorist car attack in Jerusalem

 

As if predicted by my previous post, a Palestinian terrorist with previous form drove his car directly into a group of people waiting at the Ammunition Hill light rail stop, killing a 3-month old baby and injuring several others.

A three-month-old girl was killed Wednesday afternoon and eight others were injured when a car crashed into a crowd at a light rail station in Jerusalem in what officials said was a terrorist attack.

The suspect, identified by an Israeli official as a member of terror group Hamas, attempted to flee the scene on foot and was shot and badly hurt by police, a police spokesperson said.

“A private car which arrived from the direction of the French Hill junction hit a number of pedestrians who were on the pavement and injured nine of them,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

“Initial indications suggest this is a hit-and-run terror attack,” Samri said.

The baby, Chaya Zissel Braun, died at the nearby Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus a few hours after the incident. A spokesperson for Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom said a 60-year-old woman and seven other people, including the baby’s parents, were also lightly and moderately wounded in the attack.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said that both Chaya Zissel Braun and her parents were American citizens. US State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf couldn’t immediately confirm whether the family was American, but condemned the attack.

The alleged attacker is Abdelrahman al-Shaludi, a former Palestinian prisoner from the flashpoint neighborhood of Silwan.

a baby stroller at the scene of a terror attack at a Jerusalem light rail station, by Ammunition Hill (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

 

After the incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino and Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen to receive a briefing about what happened. Netanyahu ordered increased security in the capital.

“This is how [PA President Abbas’s] partners in government act, the same Abbas who just a few days ago incited attacks on Jews in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

As if this terrible news were not bad enough, it takes an even more tragic turn, as Arutz Sheva reports:

The grandfather of the three-month-old girl murdered in this evening’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem has issued a heartbreaking statement in response.

The baby girl, named Chaya Ziso was among nine people wounded when an Arab terrorist mowed down pedestrians with his car at a light rail station in Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill. She succumbed to her wounds shortly afterwards; another victim suffered serious wounds while the remainder were moderately or lightly injured.

“Her parents waited for a child for many years during which they did not merit to have children,” said grandfather Shimon Halperin. “Today they were coming back from praying at the Kotel (Western Wall) and a terrorist came and ran over their baby.”

He told of her parents’ joy after she was born, and described how he enjoyed playing with his granddaughter during her tragically short life. He and his wife had just arrived in Israel from the US to meet his grandchild, but only had a few short hours with her.

May Hashem avenge the blood of little Chaya Zissel Braun, and may He bring comfort to her grieving parents and family amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. May all those wounded have a speedy and full recovery.

But while we Jews await Hashem’s vengeance, the Palestinians have no such compunction. Instead of keeping a low profile, and maybe even apologizing for such a dastardly attack, what do our “peace partners” do? Why, they riot and throw firebombs of course!

A few hours after the suspected attack, dozens of masked Palestinian youths blocked roads in Silwan, set tires alight and fired off firecrackers. Clashes were reported with police forces in Silwan and Issawiya. One police officer was reported injured by a firebomb in Silwan.

A Hamas spokesperson said in response to the reports that if indeed it was a terrorist attack, then it was a natural response to Israel’s actions in Jerusalem, particularly Jewish incursions into the al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel Radio reported.

Just imagine if we Jews were to avenge ourselves on the Arabs for their desecration of our holiest site in a similar manner. There would be no Palestinians left! Trying to justify a terrorist attack against civilians is simply beyond the pale. Except for the Palestinians of course.

As for the Americans – since the baby and her parents are American citizens – what was their reaction? You can guess it I’m sure (from the previous link):

US State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf couldn’t immediately confirm whether the family was American, but condemned the attack.

“The Israelis are currently looking into the incident. We are in touch with them and we’ll see what more information we can get, also urge all sides to exercise restraint and maintain calm,” Harf said.

They should have addressed that demand to the rioting Palestinians, not to the Israelis who show nothing BUT restraint.

In truth we must stop restraining ourselves. It has only brought more terror and devastation upon ourselves. It’s about time we stood up for ourselves and fought back with our full strength. It’s time Israel and our leaders stopped fearing the nations and took responsibility for our own safety.

In a particularly nasty piece of reporting which has now gone viral round the internet, AP reported the incident thus (via Israellycool):

How AP reported the terror attack in Jerusalem

 

Words fail me – and everyone else. As Brian of London remarks:

It’s hard to describe how evil this is. It immediately (and automatically) was pushed out by Yahoo! and hundreds of other sites that just run any AP story without modification.

It’s all over Google News and the Middle Eastern sites are loving it.

Many people are blaming Yahoo! That’s not entirely fair, the real evil was done by the headline writers at AP. It matters not that they’ve changed the headline now (many times). The damage is done.

The AP need to be kicked out of Israel. I’m too angry to even link to all the pieces I should.

A twitter response has been gaining steam with the ironic use of the hashtag #HowAPWouldReport:

Thus we have the following examples intended to embarrass AP:

https://twitter.com/TheRealBeadle/status/525051937189031936

https://twitter.com/JudgeDan48/status/525039543943049216

All fun and snarkiness aside, this is no laughing matter. Seth Mandell at Commentary Magazine call this a case study in media bias:

If you want to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, those two stories are a good introduction. The Israeli government built rail access to Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem to better integrate them into Israeli society. Arab Jerusalemites have made the very instruments of Israeli outreach and integration into targets of sporadic violence.

…

The Associated Press got plenty of attention for its initial headline of the story: “Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem.”

…

But the AP wasn’t alone. Scanning the BBC, I had noticed their initial headline (since changed as well): “Nine hurt as car hits pedestrians at Jerusalem station.” As the Jerusalem Post’s Seth Frantzman pointed out, the headline on the version he saw, and took a screenshot of, was “Car hits people at Jerusalem station.” Either the BBC was deliberately downplaying the story, or the editor in charge thought he was posting a story about an evil car magically becoming sentient only to lash out, like Black Sabbath’s Iron Man, at the humans around him.

Later in the day, after executives at the BBC located a shred of integrity hidden somewhere in the sofa cushions, that was changed as well. It now reads: “Jerusalem car ‘attack’ kills baby at rail station.” I say “a shred of integrity” because the BBC still saw fit to wrap “attack” in scare quotes. What are the options, here? Was it a car “love tap”? It was a terrorist attack, perpetrated by a member of a terrorist organization.

Addressing the Americans’ call for restraint, Mandell says:

I suppose if the driver of the car had said something mean about John Kerry, she’d really let him have it.

In any event, all sides are not exercising restraint and maintaining calm. Only the Israeli side is. The Palestinians are agitating for more, relying on an international press to obfuscate and deploy scare quotes as needed.

And that encapsulates the dangers of anti-Israel media bias. The Palestinians are always excused, the Israelis are always accused – and are demanded to show restraint. This what encourages the Palestinians in their maximalist demands and their rejection of anything resembling peace and normalization. And they are never required to pay the price for their rejectionism.

If ever there is a reason for the “cycle of violence” between Israel and the Middle East, Western encouragement is one of the major ones.

Categories: Hamas, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Terrorism
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The battle for Jerusalem

October 21, 2014

The battle for Jerusalem | Anne’s Opinions, 21st October 2014

Arab anti-Jewish violence in Jerusalem is predicated on the theory that the Jews are trying to “Judaize” Jerusalem – as if it could be anything else! And also on the widely spread myth that the Jews are out to destroy Al Aqsa and replace it with the Third Temple. “If only” is what I say. –AP)

Jerusalem has been under fire, both literally and diplomatically, for a long while now, but in recent weeks the situation has deteriorated sharply. If the authorities, i.e Binyamin Netanyahu and his Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharanovitch don’t get matters in hand very soon I dread to think what might happen next.

Starting with the Silwan neighbourhood: contrary to the received wisdom, this is no “Arab East Jerusalem” neighbourhood. This was once a Jewish or mixed area, settled (oops, there goes that word again) by Yemenite Jews at the end of the 19th century.

Yemenite Jew in Shiloah (Silwan) c. 1882

The Jews were driven out in the Arab riots of 1929 and were finally ethnically cleansed in 1948 by the marauding Arabs. The area remained Judenrein until Jerusalem was liberated in 1948. Somehow, since those 19 years of Arab occupation, the “Arab identity” of the area stuck and it is considered unacceptable for Jews to live there.

However over the last few years, Jewish individuals and organizations have started buying property in Silwan, which in any other area literally anywhere in the civilized world (I do not consider most Arab countries civilized) would not even raise an eyebrow. In the last few weeks two properties were purchased by Jews and the purchasers moved in, thereby doubling the Jewish presence in Silwan.

The Arabs have been seething ever since. Because Silwan is designated nowadays as an “Arab neighbourhood”, these purchases have been called provocation, theft and generally outrageous and inflammatory. The condemnations have come in swift and sharp from the likes of the PLO and various foreign ministries.

The fact is that it is an outrage that these people consider it an outrage for a Jew to buy a house, and – gasp! – move into it, in his own capital city, or any other city anywhere in Israel. The outrage, faux or real, only encourages the Palestinian irredentists to entrench themselves in their rejectionist positions. If the world is so concerned about peace in the region, they ought to internalise for themselves, and then teach the Palestinians that Jews are allowed to buy property and live in it wherever they so wish, just as the Israelis are pushed to allow the Palestinians to live where they wish.

“Deebo” at Israellycool has an excellent take-down of the Palestinian point of view as reported by the Palestinian newspaper Ma’an, which illustrates so clearly how slanted is the view about Israel, Jews and Jerusalem. One small example – with Deebo’s remarks in brackets:

The (previous) owners of the buildings, Salah al-Rajabi and Imran al-Qawasmi, sold the properties to a Palestinian man identified as Shams al-Din al-Qawasmi, who in turn sold the buildings to Jewish settler groups, the center said. (Oh that guy is dead meat now)

The previous Palestinian tenants left the buildings over four months ago. (so they “raided” and “occupied” an empty home, that was legally purchased, but some will still claim the previous inhabitants were forced into homelessness)

For more background and history of Silwan, and Jerusalem in general, read this scholarly article by Shaul Bartal in Middle East Quarterly. One very important point that he makes is this:

The ultimate goal of the Palestinians and their allies is to advance the idea that Jerusalem in general, and neighborhoods like Silwan in particular, have no Jewish ties. Archeological remnants found in Jerusalem are thus presented as either Canaanite or Muslim.

On the Temple Mount, Arab riots and Muslim provocations continue against Jewish visitors. I use the word “visitors” advisedly because Heaven forfend that they should be worshippers for that is forbidden by the Waqf and the Israeli police.

In the latest incidents Mahmoud Abbas has called Jewish visitors to their holiest site “herds of cattle”, and has now called for Jews to be banned completely from the Temple Mount, using “all means”. If that is not a call to violence I don’t know what is.

This follows the shocking daubing of swastikas on the Temple Mount, discovered this week:

Swastikas daubed on the Temple Mount

Avigdor Liberman got it right when he said that Abbas is an anti-semite trying to ignite a holy war in Jerusalem. The terrifying thing is that Abbas might well get what he wants. But he will be the loser – yet it will be blamed on Israel as usual.

The American blogger Meryl Yourish (so glad she has resumed writing) takes AP to task for calling Abbas’s inflammatory words “a suggestion” and concurs with Liberman’s accusations against Abbas:

In a speech quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Abbas said Jewish “settlers” should be prevented from entering the site “by any means.”

“This is our Noble Sanctuary … they have no right to enter and desecrate it,” Abbas added.

That is outright religious hatred. He’s not talking about the mosque. He’s talking about the entire Temple Mount. You know, the holiest site in Judiasm. And “suggested”? really? You know what a suggestion is? “Hey, I think you should try putting a purple streak in your hair and see how it looks.” That’s a suggestion.

This? This is outright saying Jews have no right to their own holy place. No right to the site where both Temples stood, where the Ark of the Covenant resided, where Jewish priests blew the shofar on Rosh Hashanah–the site, in fact, where Judaism was practiced for centuries before Islam existed. This is part of the Palestinian strategy to pretend that the area was wholly Muslim and Jews have nothing to do with it. It is, straight out, a lie. And the AP calls it a suggestion.

The Muslim desecration of Jewish holy places extends even to the dead, as Arabs vandalised over 40 graves at the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

Jewish graves vandalised on the Mt. of Olives cemetery

Meanwhile, Arab anti-Jewish violence in Jerusalem continues, with lynching attempts, stonings, firebombings, not to mention the severe damage caused to the Jerusalem light rail, putting almost 40% of the line out of action.

Damage to Jerusalem light rail station

 

Jerusalem light rail train carriage windows smashed by Arab rioters

 

It has taken until now, but PM Binyamin Netanyahu has finally lost patience with the incompetence of the police and their lack of response to the Arab violence in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday demanded Israeli police and security agencies take a harsher stand against escalating firebombing, stoning, and vandalism attacks against Jewish residents by pro-Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem in recent months.

Calling to bolster police presence in the streets of the capital as a show of deterrence, Netanyahu “instructed that forces be increased in the confrontation areas and that vigorous action be taken against those who disturb the peace.”

…

However, despite the staunch calls for a crackdown on crime, a government official told the 0404 news site that Netanyahu is “furious” at Aharonovitch over his inability to quell the burgeoning violence.

According to the source, Netanyahu has expected that Aharonovitch know what steps to take in order to get the streets under some semblance of control.

“Netanyahu is furious with Aharonovitch’s lack of treatment on the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem,” the official said. “The situation is catastrophic. Aharonovitch ‘fell asleep on his watch,’ and now everyone’s getting hit by the ricochets.

“This verges on scandalous,” the official said.

Eyewitnesses at the meeting earlier in the day between Netanyahu, Aharonovitch, Barkat, police officials, and others who deal with the attacks in Jerusalem, said Netanyahu slammed his fist on the table as he turned to speak with Aharonovitch.

Netanyahu, according to those present, gave Aharonovitch five days to boost forces and stop the violence.

But since Netanyahu was the one who appointed Aharonovitch in the first place, why does he not fire him and find a more competent replacement?

This is not a matter of mere politics any more.

Unfortunately, the battle for Jerusalem is not only in our own hands. As Shaul Bartal in the above-mentioned Middle East Quarterly article sums up with these sad words:

Sadly, the battle over Silwan (and for that matter the wider Palestinian-Israeli conflict) is likely to continue as long as Palestinian Arabs and their brethren refuse to recognize that another people, the Jews, have a claim to the Land of Israel.

Categories: Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem
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