Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton met with Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday. Interestingly, Trump was with the Israeli prime for nearly ninety minutes, Clinton for less than an hour.
The Republican candidate obviously had more of substance to discuss with Netanyahu – the efficacy of security walls and their mutual distrust of the Iran nuclear deal being two obvious examples. For Hillary, the encounter was more of a quick check on her bucket list, and probably an uncomfortable one.
After his meeting, Trump’s people made clear that Donald had pledged that, if elected president, he would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.
This has been a bone of contention (to put it mildly) from, we could almost say, time immemorial, because the Jewish claim on the city dates from at least the construction of Solomon’s temple, estimated to be 832 BCE. (Actually, there’s lots of earlier evidence of Jewish presence in Jerusalem, including the extensive excavations of David’s City, but I’m keeping it simple here.) Islam, currently occupying Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, has its origins in the beginning of the 7th Century CE, over 1400 years after Solomon, and in Mecca and Medina (not Jerusalem). No one sane disputes this.
Several American presidential candidates – when running for office – have made pledges similar to Trump’s, then, upon election, basically reneged, usually by ignoring the situation or telling the Israelis to wait until the Palestinian question is resolved. That gave those presidents a fair amount of cover because it would take Solomon himself to tell us when that would be – and even in his case I’m not sure.
So it’s natural that Trump’s pledge would be met with some skepticism. On Twitter Sunday night, several Republican stalwarts attacked a tweet I had written in support of Trump on this matter, implying (or even stating) that I was promoting a lie. The candidate would never go forward with the recognition.
While I think these attacks were basically masked, last-ditch NeverTrumpism, this would be a significant decision on Trump’s part with great international ramifications and I owe my critics a bit longer response than I could give in 140-character tweets.
To begin with, Trump attended the meeting Sunday in the company of his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner – a real estate investor himself and publisher of The Observer who has emerged as one of Trump’s key advisers – is an Orthodox Jew and therefore takes the Jerusalem issue quite seriously, far more than almost any politician or political professional would. This could only signal to Netanyahu – and should to all of us – that Trump was not taking the meeting, or anything he said in it, lightly.
Yes, he could have been using Kushner as an emblem of some sort, but I suspect Kushner himself would have been unhappy about that. So I further suspect the reverse was true here. This was a gesture meant to say to the Israelis – I’m with you in the deepest sense. (Clinton was accompanied in her meeting by Jake Sullivan, who has been frequently besmirched by the email scandal.)
More importantly, Trump, not being a lifetime politician, would be the first president, basically ever, well-positioned to follow through on the pledge. He has never participated in the seemingly endless rounds of Middle East negotiations. The ins-and-out of the increasingly dubious Oslo Accords were not his doing. He can come to all of this fresh, with, let’s hope, common sense.
Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is just the kind of action I think Trump would enjoy taking because, after the initial brouhaha, everybody would realize that nothing really had changed. The facts on the ground would be the same, Israel would still be allowing Muslim worship at Al Aqsa, and the absurdity of Jerusalem not being recognized as the capital of Israel when it really is would be unmasked.
Most of all, it would be a sign that Western Civilization is not prepared to give up its dominant role in the future of humanity – something, at this moment, that is sorely needed.
It is motivated by the same contempt for the non-Islamic past that led the Islamic State to destroy so many of Syria and Iraq’s irreplaceable ancient ruins.
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A team of Israeli archaeologists have reconstructed the floor tiles used in the biblical Temple of Herod the Great. The find marks a breakthrough in biblical archaeology, but also shows how the Jordanian Waqf, which controls the site, has been careless at best with the site’s Jewish heritage.
In 1999, the Waqf which controls the Temple Mount (known as the Haram al-Sharif to Muslims), created a new entrance using bulldozers.
“Approximately 400 truckloads saturated with the history of Jerusalem were illicitly removed – barbarically removed – from the Temple Mount by the Islamic Waqf in November 1999 to promote a political agenda,” said Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-founder of the Temple Mount Sifting Project and professor emeritus of the Hebrew University, speaking to the Jerusalem Post.
“All of that was dug up with bulldozers in a place where even a toothbrush is too large a tool to carry out excavations.”
At the time, Israeli archaeologists charged that the process of building the entrance should have been documented carefully and all debris sorted through during the construction process.
Instead they removed thousands of tons of debris full of archaeological treasures and dumped them at a nearby landfill. A team of Israeli archaeologists has been sifting through the dirt for the last 10 years. They have found thousands of antiquities.
Now the project has been vindicated as it has been able to piece together the floor tiling used by King Herod in his renovations of the Temple, proof that the Waqf’s excavations damaged antiquities from the site. Herod ruled at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, and it is at Herod’s temple that many episodes recorded in the gospels took place.
“This represents the first time that archaeologists have been able to successfully restore an element from the Herodian Second Temple complex,” Zachi Dvira, co-founder and co-director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project announced at an unveiling of the restored tiles. “It enables us to get an idea of the Temple’s incredible splendor.”
Islamist supremacists have long sought to deny Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and to secure it as a site only for Muslims. This is symptomatic of the extremist ideology that brooks no dissent or pluralism and which seeks to eliminate all culture it does not control.
It is motivated by the same contempt for the non-Islamic past that led the Islamic State to destroy so many of Syria and Iraq’s irreplaceable ancient ruins.
And, it is the same drive which leads to attempts to use bodies like UNESCO to erase Jewish history on the Temple Mount and formally declare it a Muslim shrine.
This discovery proves both the non-Islamic connections to the site as well as the damage done to antiquities by the actions of the Jordanian authorities.
The Republican Party is in the process of changing its platform on Israel to include language that is more in favor of Israel, Israeli media reported Monday.
In advance of the party’s nominating convention, the GOP platform committee held its first meeting Monday in Cleveland, where it discussed reinstating a reference to Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital and removing a reference to “Palestine.”
This new draft marks a significant change from the platform from four years ago, which did not include the word “undivided” in reference to Jerusalem, but did include mention of “Palestine.”
The 2012 platform read, “We support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with secure, defensible borders; and we envision two democratic states – Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine – living in peace and security.”
On Monday, CNN reported, the subcommittee reviewing the platform specifically rejected language affirming the party’s commitment to what is known as the two-state solution.
The draft platform could change several times before the start of the Republican National Convention on July 18.
The amendments to the platform are in line with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Last month a senior official in the Trump campaign said that if elected president, Trump would back Israel annexing portions of Judea and Samaria.
In an interview with Israeli daily Haaretz, Trump’s co-adviser on Israeli affairs, David Friedman, addressed issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how the presumptive republican nominee would handle them if elected in November.
“I think there are parts of the West Bank that will stay part of Israel in any peace deal. I am sure he [Trump] wouldn’t have any problem with that at all,” he said.
“Regarding the entire West Bank I think that’s a legal issue. I don’t think he will have a problem with that but he would expect Israel to continue seeking peace. He has no doubt that Israel wants peace,” Friedman continued.
Asked if Trump would support annexing parts of Judea and Samaria, Friedman said that “I would expect that he would. I haven’t had this discussion with him but I expect he would.”
Regarding the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, Friedman said that Trump recognizes Israel has a “commitment to its citizens in Judea and Samaria” and says that there is no reason not to continue building.
Achieving peace does not need to focus on land, Friedman said
“There are always creative ways to allow people to live in peace. It is not always about the land. We don’t accept the idea it is only about land. Nobody really knows how many Palestinians actually live there.”
An independent Palestinian state, said Friedman, will not happen without Israel’s consent.
“This is an issue that Israel has to deal with on its own because it will have to deal with the consequences,” Friedman said.
“The Israelis have to make the decision on whether or not to give up land to create a Palestinian state. If the Israelis don’t want to do it, so he doesn’t think they should do it. It is their choice. … He [Trump] does not think it is an American imperative for it to be an independent Palestinian state,” he continued.
Trump’s viewpoint is that Israel shouldn’t have “to wait for another generation for the Palestinians to hold more realistic expectations and show less hostile motivation,” Friedman explained. “Trump’s position is that we have to deal with reality and not hopes and wishes.”
Israel has announced that it will be building 800 new housing units. Of these, 560 will be in Maale Adumim, a town of 40,000 located four miles east of Jerusalem, and 240 will be in three Jerusalem neighborhoods.
If it’s true, this … would be the latest step in what seems to be the systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalization of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution. We oppose steps like these which we believe are counterproductive.
Kirby added that Washington was “deeply concerned”:
This action risks entrenching a one-state reality and raises serious questions about Israel’s intentions.
It should be added that Maale Adumim and the three “East Jerusalem” (actually eastern, northern, and southern Jerusalem) neighborhoods are located on land that was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and that Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War after Jordan attacked Israel.
It should not, though, have to be added.
The notion that Israel, by building homes in such places, jeopardizes chances of resolving the Palestinian issue is fundamentally flawed, and the State Department — if it were not wedded to that notion — would be able to find out why by doing a little fact-checking.
As Evelyn Gordon illuminates, since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 2009 (he has been reelected twice), Israel has not been engaging in a “systematic process of land seizures” or anything of the kind. Actually, construction in “settlements” — a term now used even for Jerusalem neighborhoods — has slowed to a crawl:
As data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics unambiguously shows, since taking office … Netanyahu has built far fewer units in the settlements than any of his predecessors. True, he periodically announces grandiose building plans, as he did this week. But most are quietly frozen again immediately afterward; very few ever get built.
Gordon also reports on an investigation by Shaul Arieli — a leftist Israel who opposes Israeli construction in land previously occupied by Jordan — that finds:
In 2015, as in the preceding five years, almost 90 percent [of population increase in the “settlements” was] a result of natural population growth.
In other words — scandalous as some may find it — Israelis living in these communities have babies.
Arieli wrote further:
Last year, as in all the preceding 40 years, 75 percent of the population growth occurred in settlement blocs.
Gordon notes:
In short, almost all the increase, from both births and migration, is happening in a handful of settlements near the Green Line that every peace plan ever proposed has agreed will remain Israeli. Thus it hasn’t affected the prospects of a two-state solution at all.
Such “settlements” emphatically include, of course, Maale Adumim and the three Jerusalem neighborhoods in question.
So much for the facts. But beyond that level, Kirby’s castigation of Israel harbors “smelly little orthodoxies,” as George Orwell once called them, that are worth unpacking and exposing.
One of these is that the “two-state solution” is desirable.
In the imploding Middle East, amid severe violence and the disintegration of states like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, would it be wise to create another Arab state? One rubbing up against Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and constricting Israel to a nine-mile width in its most populated region? Would it be in America’s interest?
That assumption is disputable, to say the least. It also implies that there is no other possible solution to the Palestinian issue, when in actuality other possible, eventual solutions are proposed and discussed all the time.
The solutions include, for instance, a one-state solution in which West Bank Palestinians would be offered full Israeli citizenship; or an arrangement with Jordan that would offer them full Jordanian citizenship.
Also implicit, even more problematically, in Kirby’s words is the notion that no further construction for Jews of any kind should occur in any of the land that Israel won in 1967.
If even construction in Maale Adumim and “East Jerusalem” neighborhoods “raises serious questions about Israel’s intentions” and warrants a sharp rebuke from Washington, then the inference is that the land is solely Palestinian. That Israel’s only role is to hold it, keeping Jews out of it, until the Palestinians deign to receive it and set up their state in it.
That notion is, of course, morally problematic on several grounds. It erases Jews’ profound historical and religious attachment to the land. It sentences existing Jewish communities in the proscribed places to slow strangulation. It permanently confines Israel to the tiny 1949-1967 domain that is too small for its rapidly growing population. And it ignores the fact that without at least parts of the West Bank, Israel is militarily indefensible.
Israel and the United States are allies. How long will the robotic State Department denunciations continue?
(There seems to be no suggestion the GOP pro-Israel platform for 2016 has yet been weakened, although there appear to be efforts to that end that AIPAC may make. — DM)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference in Washington, Monday, March 2, 2015. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the nation’s foremost pro-Israel lobby, pursued a quiet campaign to weaken pro-Israel language in the Republican Party’s 2012 platform, according to video obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and sources who attended the 2012 platform committee deliberations.
The sources described AIPAC’s bid to weaken the GOP’s language on Israel as an attempt to bring it more in line with the Democratic Party’s platform, in order to reinforce the perception long promoted by AIPAC that both parties are equally pro-Israel.
The lobby’s ultimately successful effort to weaken the 2012 pro-Israel language left some Republicans angered, according to sources who told the Free Beacon that the fight over the platform’s Israel language is likely to revive next week in Cleveland, when AIPAC will again face Republicans who advocate language that is more pro-Israel than that of the Democratic Party. AIPAC denies working to water down pro-Israel language in the 2012 GOP platform.
AIPAC-backed changes to the 2012 platform included the removal of support for an “undivided” Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as well as the removal of language calling for the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The 2008 Republican platform stated: “We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.”
That language was not included in the 2012 version, which states: “[W]e envision two democratic states—Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine—living in peace and security.”
During the 2012 discussions, the removal of the 2008 language was carried out at the behest of members of the platform committee who were allied with AIPAC, according to video of the session obtained by the Free Beacon.
The video shows amended language being proposed on behalf of Sue Lynch, a past president of the National Federation of Republican Women, a staunch pro-Israel advocate, and a close ally of AIPAC who has spoken at AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference. Free Beacon sources involved in the platform fight said that the language changes proposed by Lynch were encouraged by AIPAC.
When reached for comment, Lynch told the Free Beacon that during the 2012 platform meetings she “worked with AIPAC to insure strong language supporting” Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. When asked about the video footage showing an amendment bearing her name removing the “undivided” language and the endorsement of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, she said, “that doesn’t seem correct” and added that “my memory recalls supporting Jerusalem as the capital.”
Yet when delegates who opposed the AIPAC-supported changes presented alternative language that reaffirmed the GOP’s 2008 position, Lynch and others succeeded in defeating it according to subsequent video footage obtained by the Free Beacon.
The alternate language stated, “We desire Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its undivided and eternal capital, and call for the American embassy to be moved there in fulfillment of U.S. law,” according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.
Lynch told the Free Beacon that “I did not support their efforts” to revive the 2008 language.
The initial platform-drafting meeting ended without resolution and the dispute was taken up at a meeting the next day.
In the hours between the two meetings, AIPAC allies are said to have privately persuaded delegates to oppose the alternative resolution.
A live broadcast of the platform committee’s final meeting hints at the internal discord that had erupted behind-the-scenes over the Israel language.
Randy Page, a delegate from South Carolina, led the failed effort to replace the AIPAC-approved platform with the alternate language supported by a significant number of Republican leaders.
“With all due respect, I believe that our present plank on Israel is way off base,” Page said during a live CSPAN broadcast of the platform committee’s meeting.
“Our present Israel platform is a nearly identical copy of the Democrat’s Israel platform,” Page said. “Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me. Now let me ask: How many of you here today agree with President Obama’s policy of pressuring Israel? Because our platform sure seems to. That is not what’s in the heart of everyday Republicans who stand with Israel.”
The platform committee again ended its session without resolving the Israel issue.
Top Republican leaders aligned with AIPAC completed the final language behind closed doors, sources said. Excluded from that meeting were delegates who had backed the alternative pro-Israel language.
When the final platform was unveiled at the 2012 convention, all of AIPAC’s recommended changes were included, sources claimed. References to an “undivided” Jerusalem and the relocation of the U.S. embassy were omitted.
AIPAC denies that it worked to strip language advocating an undivided Jerusalem and moving the U.S. embassy there.
The charges are “not true,” an AIPAC spokesman told the Free Beacon. “AIPAC’s position has consistently been that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, should remain undivided, and we have supported moving the U.S. embassy there—and that remains our position.”
“AIPAC actually worked to strengthen the 2012 Republican platform on Jerusalem,” the spokesman said. “When it was noticed that Jerusalem was omitted from the original draft, we urged that language be included reflecting Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”
A source close to AIPAC told the Free Beacon that the only discussion AIPAC was involved in surrounded the issue of a two-state solution, which AIPAC supports.
The source further maintained that the original GOP platform proposal did not include any language mentioning an undivided Jerusalem. AIPAC staffers noticed this omission and recommended that such language be included, according to the source, who added that there was never any effort from AIPAC to weaken the platform language, but instead strengthen it.
While language on Jerusalem was ultimately added to the platform, the term “undivided” was rejected.
One source involved in drafting the 2012 platforms told the Free Beacon that AIPAC sought to ensure that the Republican and Democratic platforms used similar language with regards to Israel—despite objections from leaders in both parties.
GOP delegate Alan Clemmons, a South Carolina state representative, maintained AIPAC was behind efforts to suppress the alternate language and drag the GOP closer in line with the Democratic Party.
“The Obama years have proven a disastrous misery for anyone who cares about Israel,” Clemmons said. “AIPAC’s only responding tactic has been to pull the Republicans leftward in order to manufacture the appearance of bipartisanship. This has significantly lowered the bar in the process of making policy, so much so that we may now have to live with a nuclear Iran for example.”
Another source involved in the fight to strengthen the platform’s language told the Free Beacon that AIPAC is working to undermine its own agenda. The lobby played a key role in pushing 1995 legislation requiring the U.S. embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem.
“It’s strange that AIPAC, which led on this issue in 1995 with the Jerusalem Embassy Act that requires the U.S. government to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move our embassy there, has now gutted support for the same policy in both parties’ platforms,” the source said. “Major leaders in the Democratic Party today like Harry Reid, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Patty Murray, Diane Feinstein, Charles Rangel, Charles Schumer, and Dick Durbin, were all co-sponsors of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act.”
“So not only has AIPAC walked the Democrats back from an undivided Jerusalem, they’ve succeeded in steering the Republican party away from an undivided Jerusalem as well. And they did it by tricking people,” the source said.
The 2012 controversy is viewed by some members of the platform drafting committee as a prelude to a similar dispute that will play out in the 2016 drafting meetings. Clemmons says he will lead the charge to change the 2016 platform.
“Public polling has consistently proved that the GOP base does not support many of the positions being promoted by AIPAC,” he said. “The new language I will propose in Cleveland will accurately reflect the views of the base, and put support for Israel back into the hands of those everyday Americans whose support for Israel is the most honest and sincere.”
“Having been at the 2012 GOP Convention to personally witness AIPAC’s staff and operatives shamelessly kill the party’s support for an undivided Jerusalem, I can say that it was easily the most tragic and dishonest political episode I have ever witnessed,” Clemmons said.
Supreme Court decides: March of Flags will begin earlier than scheduled due to Ramadan Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on a petition aimed at preventing the traditional “March of Flags” from entering the Muslim Quarter. According to the ruling, the march will officially begin at 5:15 PM, earlier than originally scheduled. In addition, from around 6:15 PM, marchers will not be allowed to enter the Old City through the Damascus Gate.
Jews celebrating Jerusalem Day will not be allowed to enter the Damascus Gate today (Sunday) from 6:15 PM to 7:30 PM, according to a Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court’s decision is a compromise between the Israel Police and the Ir Amim organization, which filed the petition regarding the matter. In the petition, Ir Amim demanded that March of Flags participants be prohibited from entering the Muslim Quarter. Prior to the ruling, in fear of possible clashes between the Jewish marchers and Muslims, the Israel Police decided that the march will be held an hour earlier than scheduled.
The March of Flags will begin in the late afternoon, starting from 4:00 PM, just as thousands of Muslims are expected to be in the area because this evening marks the beginning of the Ramadan fast. Several MKs, including Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On, asked Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Israel Police Chief Roni Alsheikh to use their authority in order to change the route of the march so that it would not pass through the Muslim Quarter.
More than a thousand of uniformed and undercover police officers will be scattered throughout the city today. “The police will show zero tolerance to any acts of physical or verbal violence, and will use all the means at its disposal against rioters and those breaking the law, and will see they are [punished] to the full extent of the law,” said the Israel Police in a statement.
Jerusalem was ours and will remain ours,’ PM says In Jerusalem Day Knesset session, Netanyahu rules out a return to pre-1967 divided city, slams ‘absurd’ UNESCO resolution
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset during a special session to mark Jerusalem Day, on June 1, 2016. (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear Wednesday that he was opposed to a return to the pre-1967 division of Jerusalem in a future peace deal, and slammed a UNESCO resolution eliding Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.
“Our roots are deeper than any other nation’s, including to the Temple Mount. Jerusalem was ours and will remain ours,” he said, speaking in a special Knesset session marking Jerusalem Day.
Israel doesn’t need to “make excuses for [its] presence in Jerusalem,” he added, but he did not definitively rule out any territorial concessions in the city.
“We remember Jerusalem up until the [1967] Six Day War,” he said, when the city was split, with Israelis excluded from the Old City and its eastern neighborhoods. “We certainly do not want to return to that situation.”
“I believe the Six Day War clarified to our enemies that we are here to stay,” he added.
The prime minister also lashed out at an “absurd and outrageous” UNESCO resolution from April that omitted the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and Jerusalem generally. The resolution accused Israel of “planting fake Jewish graves in Muslim cemeteries” and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”
“These historical distortions are reserved solely for Jews,” Netanyahu said.
The Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem, as seen from the Israeli Air Force’s annual flyby on Independence Day, May 12, 2016. (Judah Ari Gross/Times of Israel)
In his address, Herzog said Israel must strive for an agreement to keep Jerusalem “Jewish and moral, whole and secure.”
“Your talk about regional opportunities is very impressive, but you must take care that they are not seen as flip-flopping or empty statements,” he said to Netanyahu, referring to the prime minister’s joint press conference on Monday with new Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman in which the two pledged support for parts of the 2002 Arab proposal.
“Jerusalem will not remain Jewish and moral, whole and secure if there is no dramatic change and unless we reach a peace deal,” said Herzog.
Meretz leader Zehava Galon, meanwhile, accused Jewish Home’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel of visiting the Temple Mount earlier in the day, an allegation later denied by Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein looks on as Meretz leader Zehava Galon addresses the Knesset during a special session to mark Jerusalem Day, on June 1, 2016. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Galon said Ariel had broken a Knesset ban on lawmakers visiting the Temple Mount on Wednesday morning. Edelstein said that the information was false, and because the issue was so “volatile” it was important to emphasize that no Knesset members had visited the holy site since they were barred from the area late last year amid rising tensions in the capital.
Jerusalem Minister Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) urged the government to improve infrastructure in the city’s eastern Arab neighborhoods, but emphasized that Jerusalem would remain united under any future peace agreement.
“Unfortunately, one hears talk that in order to save Jerusalem, one must divide it. The Israeli public doesn’t want the city divided, and that’s why we will remain in power,” said Elkin. “If we place a clear red line against dividing Jerusalem, as has been for years, we will be able to reach a [peace] deal, it doesn’t matter with which initiative — French, Saudi, or any other initiative.”
Israel on Sunday will mark Jerusalem Day, a national holiday that celebrates the 1967 Israeli capture of the Western Wall and Temple Mount holy sites, along with the city’s eastern half.
The Israeli Left is a one trick pony. As it sees things, all of Israel’s problems – with the Palestinians, with the Arab world, with Europe and with the American Left – can be solved by giving up Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem (along with Gaza which we gave up already).
Once Israel does this, the Left insists, then the Palestinians, the Arab world, Europe and Bernie Sanders voters will love us as they’ve never loved us before.
The events of the past quarter century have shown the Left’s position to be entirely wrong. Every time Israel has given the Palestinians land, it has become less secure. The Arabs have become more hostile.
The West has become more hostile. The Palestinians have expanded their demands.
Because of their negative experience with the Left’s policy, most Israelis reject it. This is why the Right keeps winning elections.
Given the failure of its plan, the Left could have been expected to abandon it and strike out on a different course. But it didn’t. Instead it has tried to hide its continued allegiance to its failed withdrawal strategy by pretending it is something else.
A central component of the Left’s concealment strategy is its use of former generals.
Over the past quarter century, and particularly since the Palestinians began demonstrating in 2000 that they have no interest in a state living side by side with Israel, the Left has carted out retired generals at regular intervals to proclaim that continued allegiance to the Left’s failed policy of withdrawal is not irrational.
Every couple of years, a new initiative of former generals – often funded by the EU – is published.
Each in turn uses whatever the popular memes of the day may be to repackage their call for withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and the partition of Jerusalem.
The media, itself dominated by the Left, backs these initiatives. The retired war heroes are paraded before the cameras and presented to the public as responsible adults who have grudgingly entered the political fray, despite their aversion to it, because of their patriotism. Just as they heeded the call of duty and led forces in wars of earlier generations, so today, we are told, they heed the call again, in yet another last-ditch effort to save the country.
Just in time for Avigdor Liberman’s swearing in as defense minister, a new group of old generals released a new version of their old, discredited plan.
A group calling itself “Commanders for Israeli Security” has mobilized an impressive roster of 214 generals that have signed on to a new position paper called “Security First: Changing the rules of the game, a plan to improve Israel’s security-diplomatic position.”
The group has a great website replete with a highend web commercial that has been flooding social media feeds for the past several days. The ad shows a person ripping up a “Peace Now” bumper sticker and replacing it with a call for “Security now, peace later.”
Their plan, the ad proclaims, will improve Israel’s security, strengthen its international position, repair the cleavages in Israeli society and set the conditions for future negotiations with the Palestinians.
Unfortunately, like every leftist plan to date, if the generals get their way and the government takes their advice, the results will be precisely the opposite of what they promise. As has been the case with every other well-packaged withdrawal plan, Israel’s security will be harmed. Our international position will be wrecked. Bernie Sanders voters along with the Europeans will expand their devotion to bashing Israel. And the Sunni Arab states that now flock to us will again abandon us.
The generals’ new package involves opening their plan with a hawkish call for continued Israeli security control over Judea and Samaria, until the Palestinians decide to make peace with us.
But as we soon see, that was just throat clearing.
Having established their sober-mindedness, the generals turn to the Left’s unchanging fantasy.
They call for the government to formally relinquish Israel’s sovereign rights over the vast majority of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
They call for the government to permanently stop respecting the property rights of Jews in the areas of Judea and Samaria outside of the security perimeter.
The more than one hundred thousand Jews who live in those areas, they insist, must be denied all right to property, save the right to sell whatever they now own.
They must not be allowed to build anything – no new houses; no new communities; no new infrastructure.
As for the communities inside the perimeter, the generals insist that those should be permitted to continue respecting Jewish property rights, within limits, albeit. For instance, those communities must not be permitted to expand beyond their current construction boundaries. In other words, Jews can build up, but not out.
Jerusalem, which they believe should never have been unified in 1967, should be effectively partitioned.
The generals call for the municipal government to stop administering the city as a unified mixed Jewish and Arab city. Instead, they say, the city should set up a separate governing authority for Arab neighborhoods in eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem. That separate authority should be responsible for all planning and zoning activities in Arab neighborhoods as well as the education system and every other aspect of the daily lives of the Arabs of the city.
Gaza, which has been operating as a Hamas state since 2007, is also brought in from the cold. The generals call for the government to continue to supply Gaza with everything that Hamas demands – water, electricity, employment in Israel, a Hamas-controlled port. They even call for Israel to allow Europe to pay the salaries of Hamas terrorists.
Moreover, the generals recommend that the government announce that Gaza, Judea and Samaria and partitioned Jerusalem are one political entity, despite the fact that they aren’t.
The generals insist that by taking these steps, Israel will prove its devotion to peace and keep the dream of a Palestinian state alive. As a consequence, they say, the Palestinians will be happy and stop trying to murder Israelis. The Arab world will line up to sign peace treaties with Israel. Europe along with Bernie Sanders’ voters will bury the hatchet and embrace Israel.
The problem with the generals’ newest plan and the ones its replaces is that they all ignore basic facts.
There is no Palestinian constituency for peace with Israel. The more Israel offers the Palestinians, the less interested they are in settling.
By announcing that Israel renounces its claims to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and treating the Jews east of the 1949 cease-fire lines as second class citizens, the generals will not only widen Israel’s social cleavages. They will tell the Palestinians that they are right to feel contempt for us. The worse they behave, the more we will offer them. The more Jews they murder, the more the Jews will turn against one another.
As for improving Israel’s international position, it is hard to understand why the generals refuse to learn the lessons of the Gaza withdrawal. Despite the fact that Israel uprooted 24 Jewish communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, and removed its military forces from the area, without exception, the international community insists that Israel still “occupies” Gaza. How can the generals expect the world to act more fairly towards a more limited withdrawal plan from Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem? As for Gaza, Operation Protective Edge brought out into the open the fact that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab states support Israel in its war against Hamas. They do so because they fear Islamic State and Iran more than they hate Israel, whose power they trust.
If Israel announces its intention of leaving Judea and Samaria, which the Arabs know will become a Hamas enclave faster than Gaza did, the Arab faith in Israel’s power will diminish. As a consequence, if Israel follows the generals’ advice our relations with the Sunnis will worsen, not improve.
It is a tragedy for Israel that the generals have allowed the Left to use them in this way. Their role in perpetuating Israel’s destructive adherence to the devastating two-state policy model diminishes their past contributions and endangers Israel’s future.
UNESCO’s poisonous, fraudulent resolution is not only biased: it is negationist. All traces of Jewish presence in Jerusalem and Judea in ancient times are eliminated at the stroke of a pen.
Only six countries voted to reject the resolution: the United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. France, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia accepted the text and voted yes. The resolution was presented with the support of several Muslim countries — some often described as “moderate”: Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
UNESCO is a branch of the United Nations, and the UN is an organization where democracies are in the minority, surrounded by a huge majority of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes imbued with hatred toward the West. Israel is virtually the only country designated as guilty of violating human rights by the so-called Human Rights Council, and where, in 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was welcomed as a hero.
On April 11, 2016, the Executive Board of UNESCO adopted a resolution called “Occupied Palestine.” The title immediately exposes it as a biased document. That is not surprising. All the texts adopted by UNESCO concerning the Middle East are biased.
However, those who read it carefully can see that a further step was taken.
UNESCO’s resolution is not only biased: it is negationist. All traces of Jewish presence in Jerusalem and Judea in ancient times are eliminated at the stroke of a pen. The Temple Mount is never mentioned. It is only called by the name al-Aqsa Mosque / Haram al Sharif. The name “Western Wall” is placed between quotation marks, to indicate that it is an invalid name: Al Buraq Wall is used without quotation marks. The graves of Jewish cemeteries are described as “Jewish fake graves.”
It is a radical anti-Semitic resolution: denying historical fact, claiming that what exists does not, presenting the history of Judaism and the Jews as lies. Accusing Jews of “planting Jewish fake graves” is the lie. It is saying that Judaism is a sham and Jews are liars and falsifiers.
The document is absolutely anti-historical, anti-fact and “anti-Zionist”: it tries unambiguously to “prove” that Israel was founded on an imposture and has no reason to exist. The document constantly describes Israel as the “occupying power” and presents it as a predatory and arbitrary country.
Voting for such a text means would endorsing historical negationism, radical anti-Semitism, and absolute “anti-Zionism”.
Correctly deciphering the meaning of the resolution and its implications, the representatives of six Western countries — the United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom — voted no.
Representatives of other Western countries — France, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia — accepted the text and voted yes.
The resolution was presented with the support of several Muslim countries — some often described as “moderate”: Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
The text was written by Palestinian Authority (PA) “experts.” Since 2011, the Palestinian Authority has had a seat at UNESCO under the name “State of Palestine.”
The Israeli government immediately expressed its anger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “anyone, let alone an organization tasked with preserving history, could deny this link which spans thousands of years.”
A petition was circulated by Stand With Us and the International Legal Forum, demanding that UNESCO change its attitude and remains “true to its founding principles.”
The anger of Israel’s government and indignation of others other is legitimate. The petition is fully justified.
However, expecting that UNESCO will change its attitude is illusory. Expecting that UNESCO will remain true to its founding principles is hoping for something that will not happen. UNESCO long ago abandoned its founding principles.
UNESCO is a branch of the United Nations, and the UN is an organization where democracies are in the minority, surrounded by a huge majority of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes imbued with hatred toward the West.[1] Israel is virtually the only country designated as guilty of violating human rights by the so-called Human Rights Council, and where, in 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was welcomed as a hero.
In October, 2015, UNESCO had already started down path it follows today. It defined Rachel’s Tomb as the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque and the Cave of the Patriarchs as the Ibrahimi Mosque, and declared them “Palestinian sites.”
What is worrisome is that only six Western countries were ready to reject a totally poisonous, fraudulent resolution.
The Western countries that voted for the resolution evidently approve of its contents. These countries have lost all legitimacy to claim they want peace in the Middle East. By approving the resolution, they show they are at war: against Judaism, Jews and Israel. One of them, France, claims it will hold a meeting to revive the “peace process”: in this context, the claim is grotesque.
The fact that a group of Muslim countries, often described as “moderate,” supported the resolution can only lead to the question: How can a country that supports such a document be described as “moderate?”
That Palestinian Authority “experts” have written such a resolution should be sufficient to show that the PA is not “moderate.” It clearly has no intention at all of creating a State alongside Israel; instead, as its leaders often openly admit, its plan is that Israel has to be demonized, crushed and replaced.
The underlying problem is that this negationism, anti-Semitism and “anti-Zionism” are deeply rooted in both Europe and Islam.
The Quran says Jews and Christians (“Crusaders”) have falsified their sacred books, and the history of Judaism and the Jewish people is false. Muslim tradition says that Muhammad ascended to heaven from al Aqsa, and that the Al Buraq Wall is the wall where he attached the winged creature on which he flew to heaven. No room is left for the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, even though they were there, with countless archeological artifacts, for more than a thousand years before Muhammad was even born.
Muslim tradition also says that Jews, as disbelievers, are condemned to the humiliating status of dhimmi,[2] and that all territories conquered by Islam have to remain Muslim forever.[3] Muslim tradition cannot accept a country ruled by Jews or Christians on land that was once conquered by Islam — whether Israel, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, or large swaths of Portugal and Spain.
The resolution adopted by the Executive Board of UNESCO on April 11 is “Islamically correct.” “Moderate” Muslim countries cannot contradict the Quran and Muslim tradition without risking being accused of irtidad (apostasy).[4] Palestinian Authority “experts” are being true to the Quran and to Muslim tradition.
Western countries that approved the resolution showed their submission and dhimmitude to “Islamic correctness.” Dhimmis, in Islamic history, are second class, “tolerated” citizens, who are subjected to special laws which remind them of their inferiority as well as a tax, the jizya, to purchase “protection” for their homes, possessions and lives.[5]
Countries that rejected the resolution would be considered insubordinate.
Refusing such a resolution is not enough. It is about time to ask the Muslim world to leave behind its heavy load of noxious traditions, blackmail threats and violence.
It is also time to do more.
Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the United States left UNESCO in 1984, because UNESCO was obviously subservient to the Soviet Union, and was serving interests contrary to those of freedom, liberty and Western values.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in French to a gathering of UNESCO representatives in Paris, on Oct 18, 2015, assuring them that “the engagement of the United States with this organization has never been as strong as now.”
The United States returned to UNESCO in 2003. In 2011, when the Palestinian Authority was admitted to UNESCO, the U.S. froze its financial contribution.
The United States badly needs to leave UNESCO again. UNESCO is obviously subservient to “Islamic correctness,” and serving interests contrary to those of freedom, liberty and Western values. Eighty years ago, negationism and anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust. It is urgent to say, “Enough.”
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
[1] Dore Gold, Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos, Crown Forum, 2005.
[2] Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.
[3] Robert Spencer, Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World’s Fastest-Growing Faith, Encounter Books, 2003.
[4] Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations are winning. Islamic terror in America, Europe and Israel has killed a thousand or so people. That’s a lot, but Islamization kills entire civilizations; with the death of our civilization, more deaths than Islamic terrorism has brought can be expected.
Should we give up and voluntarily commit civilizational suicide? Much of Europe has already done so and that’s what Obama and His minions are seeking for America. The forces pushing for it are strong and we can react with greater strength only if we have the will. Do we?
Part I – America
a. Muslims already in Obam’s America
The video embedded above promotes a new book titled See No Sharia, which deals with the Muslim Brotherhood and related Islamist organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood’s vision for America is laid out in a document put in evidence at the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial of several Islamist Muslim Brotherhood conspirators for funding Hamas, a terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law.
[w]ritten in 1991 by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative, Mohamed Akram, and entitled “The Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America,” this internal correspondence was meant for the eyes only of the organization’s leadership in Egypt. So, the document is direct and to the point: It explicitly states that the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America is “destroying Western civilization from within … by [the infidels’] hands and the hands of the believers so that Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” [Emphasis added.]
Following guilty verdicts against indicted conspirators, the Obama administration could (and should) have sought indictments against their multiple unindicted co-conspirators. It chose not to do so, most likely because pursuing the matter further would have been inconsistent with Obama’s world view — which seems to be consistent with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, et al.
See No Sharia, and to some extent the related video, illuminate ways in which Obama’s America has been seduced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim Brotherhood-related Islamist groups into requiring our law enforcement agencies to reject the notion of Islamist Terrorism and to accept instead that of non-denominational “Violent Extremism.” We are repeatedly told that Violent Extremism has nothing to do with Islam.
It was the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Cairo in 1928, that established Islamic Jihad as a mass movement. The significance of the Muslim Brotherhood to Islamic Fascism is comparable to the significance of the Bolshevik Party to Communism: it was, and it remains to this day, the ideological reference point and the organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including Al Queda and Hamas. [Emphasis added.]
While British colonial policy contributed to the rise of Islamic radicalism, the Brotherhood’s jihad was not directed against the British, but focused almost exclusively on Zionism and the Jews.
Membership in the Brotherhood rose from 800 members in 1936 to over 200,000 in 1938. In those two years the Brotherhood conducted a major campaign in Egypt, and it was against the Jews, not against the British occupiers. This campaign against the Jews, in the late 1930s, which established the Brotherhood as a mass movement of Islamic Jihadists, was set off by a rebellion in Palestine directed against Jewish immigration from Europe and Russia. That campaign was initiated by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini. [Emphasis added.]
Al-Husseini was extremely impressed with Adolf Hitler and his anti-Jewish rhetoric. In 1941 he visited Hitler in Berlin. He was so enthralled with Hitler and the Nazis, and their plans to exterminate the Jews that he decided to remain in Berlin. He lived there from 1941 to 1945, recruiting Muslims in Europe for the Waffen-SS. He was very close to Hitler. Husseini’s best friends were Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann.
He convinced Hitler that he would be able to persuade his Muslim brothers in the Arab world to carry out the extermination of Jews in the Middle East, just as the Nazis were doing in Europe.
Back then, Hitler was largely focused on the elimination of Jews. That remains the focus of Hamas, of which the Muslim Brotherhood remains a principal supporter. Might it be due to long-standing Muslim Brotherhood ideas that many blame all of the conflicts in the Middle East on the Jewish “occupation” of Israel? That view is held by Obama and members of His administration. Hence, their persistent efforts to turn parts of Israel over to the “Palestinians,” culminating in a two state solution giving Hamas and the Palestinian Authority enhanced leverage in driving Jews from Israel.
Under pressure from the Obama administration, our law enforcement agencies cooperate with Islamist organizations to implement Sharia principles to fight “Islamophobia” rather than to locate, arrest and prosecute Islamist terrorists and wannabe Islamist terrorists. One possible rationale is that if we are nice, they may reduce their efforts to “radicalize” Muslims and, perhaps, stop some Islamic attacks. Another more likely rationale is that our dear leaders actually believe that Islamophobia (along with the Jewish “occupation” of Israel) is the principal cause of Islamic terrorism and that Sharia compliance (along with the “two state solution” and death of Israel) will solve the problems.
America has no blasphemy laws and should want none. They would violate our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The Organization for Islamic Cooperation, consisting of fifty-seven Islamic nations, has been pushing the United Nations to impose Sharia law-style laws prohibiting blasphemy. They do not seek such laws for their own nations because they already have them to protect Islam. They seek them for America and the rest of what’s left of Western civilization, but seem to have little or no interest in prohibiting “blasphemy” against Judaism or Christianity.
The cartoon is blasphemous under Sharia law because it depicts Muhammed; some Muslims seek to kill those who produce such material. An “art exhibit” featuring an image of the Virgin Mary in a glass of urine is considered sacrilegious; some Christians seek to have government funding removed. I am reminded of this rather old Andrew Klavan video:
The issue of the admission of Syrian refugees into the United States has understandably ignited a firestorm of protest by Americans concerned about their safety and the safety of their families. These Americans are not exhibiting “xenophobia,” the usual claim made by the open borders immigration anarchists. They have simply been paying attention to what James Comey, the Director of the FBI, and Michael Steinbach, the FBI’s Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division, have stated when they testified before congressional hearings about the Syrian refugee crisis. They made it clear that these refugees cannot be vetted. There are no reliable databases to check and no capacity to conduct field investigations inside Syria to verify the backgrounds of these aliens. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
I focused on these issues in my October 7, 2015 article for FrontPage Magazine, “Syrian ‘Refugees’ and Immigration Roulette: How the government is recklessly playing with American lives.”
Further reports have provided disturbing information that ISIS operatives have seized blank Syrian passports and other identity documents, along with the printing devices used to prepare passports and other ID, and have sold these documents to reporters in false names. These identity documents are indistinguishable from bona fide documents because they are bona fide documents — except that the photos and biometrics do not relate to the original person but create credible false aliases for anyone willing to pay for them.
Even if we had the documentation referred to above, it would be of little help because due to pressure from Muslim Brotherhood-related groups, we are not allowed to “profile” Muslims. As noted here,
obeisance to politically correct proscriptions against “profiling” is just one of the myriad ways in which we tell the jihadist enemy we really aren’t serious about the latest battle in the 14-century-long war of Islam against the infidel West.
. . . .
This lack of seriousness is endemic in this administration. Refusing to call ISIS “Islamic,” even going so far as to censor comments by French president François Hollande that used the word, bespeaks a dangerous frivolity. . . .
Our problem, however, goes beyond the politicians. Too many of us have failed to understand that this war did not begin on 9/11. It did not begin when al Qaeda declared war on us in the 90s and attacked our embassies and naval vessels. It did not begin in 1979, when our alleged neo-colonialist depredations supposedly sparked the Iranian revolution and created today’s Islamic (N.B., Mr. President) Republic of Iran, the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism. It did not begin in 1948, when five Arab nations, all but one members of the U.N., violated Resolution 191 and attacked Israel. It did not begin when after World War I the victorious Entente powers exercised mandatory powers, granted by the League of Nations and codified in international treaties, over the territory of the Ottoman Empire that had sided with the Central Powers.
All these acts of aggression were merely the latest in a war begun in the 7th century when Islam attacked the eastern Roman Empire and began its serial dismemberment of the heart of Christendom, the old word for the West. For a thousand years the armies of Allah successfully invaded, conquered, occupied, enslaved, and raided the West, in accordance with its doctrine of jihad in the service of Muslim domination, and in homage to Mohammed’s injunction, “I was told to fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah.” This record of success began to end in the 17th century with the rise of the modern West and its technological, economic, and political advantages. [Emphasis added.]
But the war didn’t end with that Muslim retreat, even after what bin Laden called the “catastrophe” –– the demise of the Ottoman Caliphate, and the division of its territory into Western-style nation-states. The West won that battle, but it did not win the war. One reason is the Muslim nations of the Middle East never suffered the wages of their aggression. They sided with the Central Powers in World War I. They sat out World War II––apart from the many thousands who fought on the side of the Nazis––and received fugitive Nazis as guests after the war. Their serial aggression and terror against Israel has never been repaid with bombed-out capitals or punitive postwar reprisals. Their governments have never been punished for funding and proliferating mosques and madrassas teaching hatred of the infidel and terrorist violence in the service of jihad. [Emphasis added.]
Instead of paying the price of aggression, partly because of the Cold War, more recently because of Western failure of nerve and civilizational exhaustion, Muslims have been the beneficiaries of billions in Western aid, Western arms, Western defense against enemies, Western lax immigration policies, Western appeasement, and Western suicidal ideas like cultural and moral relativism. In short, Muslims have never accepted their defeats, and have never experienced the humiliating cost of their aggression, because the modern West has never forced them to pay for it. [Emphasis added.]
Thus they look at our unserious, godless culture of consumption and frivolity, of self-loathing and guilt, and these serious believers are confident that 350 years of defeat in battle have not led to defeat in the long war. And so the war goes on. The frivolous Western dogs bark, but Allah’s caravan moves on. [Emphasis added.]
Part II — Israel
Israel is constantly attacked by various UN organizations, most recently UNESCO, which has named the Western Wall after Muhammed’s flying horse, Barack Buraq.
There is a concerted effort among “Palestinians” and their supporters to erase all evidence of the historical connection of Jews to Israel. The UN, controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, is a willing partner in these efforts. Besides being motivated by Islamic Jew-hatred, this endeavor is in line with the Islamic supremacist tendency to appropriate the holy places and sacred figures of other religions.
Buraq is claimed to have transported Muhammed from Mecca to Jerusalem, hence giving Palestinians valid claim to all of Israel. Here’s one depiction of Buraq. Obviously, there are no photographs of Muhammed actually riding him, because images of Muhammed are prohibited. Look closely at the picture. Where did the horse’s head come from?
Here’s an explanation of the Muslim nexus with the Western Wall:
Various scholars and writers, such as Ibn al-Faqih, Ibn Abd Rabbih, and Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, have suggested places where Buraq was tethered, mostly locations near the southwest corner of the Haram.[7]However, for several centuries the preferred location has been the al-Buraq mosque, just inside the wall at the south end of the Western Wall plaza.[7] The mosque sits above an ancient passageway that once came out through the long-sealed Barclay’s Gate whose huge lintel remains visible below the Maghrebi gate.[7] Because of the proximity to the Western Wall, the area next to the wall has been associated with Buraq at least since the 19th century.[8]
A New York Times editorial published in October of last year purported to compare the Jewish and Muslim claims to the Temple Mount. An article by Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine posed a few questions for the NUTNYT editorialists.
The Temple Mount is holy to Jews because of the Temples. So the New York Times chose to discuss whether the Temples really existed. It’s holy to Muslims because Mohammed supposedly flew there on a flying horse (with a woman’s head).
. . . .
Let’s interview some of the same scholars and archeologists as to whether the entire Muslim basis for laying claim to the area has any basis in reality. The New York Times discusses the need for “independent scientific verification” of the Temples. How about “independent scientific verification” of this?
1. Buraq was a flying horse with a woman’s head. Can we get any verification that such a creature ever existed.
2. Buraq flew from Mecca to Jerusalem and back in one night. “The distance between Mecca and Jerusalem is 755.1 miles. To complete this feat in one night would have meant that Buraq must have been jet propelled in the 7th Century.” Please provide independent scientific verification of the existence of a flying horse with a woman’s head that can travel faster than the speed of sound.
Oddly the New York Times doesn’t appear to be interested in independent scientific verification of Islamic Supremacist myths.
Evidently, UNESCO puts more stock in flying horses than in Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.
In view of the gravity of the Islam vs. Everybody Else situation, I decided to try to inject a bit of humor into only one of the many problems Israel faces with the UN, the OIC, Obama’s America, Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and others. I had originally intended to write a more comprehensive piece on Islam vs. Israel, and will probably do so after I post Part III of this series dealing with the Islamisation of Europe.
A better and more detailed account of the UNESCO – Temple Mount absurdity is provided here.
Conclusions
Obama’s America has the will to “win,” but confuses winning with eradicating Islamophobia and slicing Israel into pieces to give to the “Palestinians” and perhaps Syria, hence bringing “peace” to the Middle East. Under that definition of “winning,” Israel, the only democratic nation and the only solid ally of the United States in the region, will cease to exist; the Islamists will have won.
We need a very different version of “winning,” one under which our constitutional freedoms and our democratic nature will be cherished and protected. Both are inconsistent with Sharia law and are not part of any definition with which Obama would agree.
We can win against Islamist encroachments on our government and in our society only if enough of us recognize the dangers they entail. Then, we will have not only the means to win but the will to do so. A first step will be to bid Obama good riddance and to welcome a successor who recognizes the dangers of Islamism and is prepared — and wants — to move quickly and effectively against it.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in French to a gathering of UNESCO representatives in Paris, on Oct 18, 2015, assuring them that “the engagement of the United States with this organization has never been as strong as now.”
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