♦ The Swedish municipality of Malmö, with only 318,000 inhabitants, is providing tens of thousands of dollars in tax revenues each year to organizations that spread extreme anti-Israeli messages.
♦ Apelgårdsskolan elementary school in Malmö lends its premises on Sundays to an association called Framtidsföreningen [“The Future Society”]. The organization holds a Sunday school, where, among other things, maps are handed out to children where Israel has been removed, and schoolbooks are distributed in which “resistance” against Israel is celebrated. Framtidsföreningen has also received $4500 from Malmö’s recreational board since 2014.
♦ That pro-Palestinian organizations will use tax-funded operations as a tool to spread hatred against Israel is a given. This means that organizations that spread hatred against Israel in Sweden in many cases have tax revenues at their disposal at several levels.
♦ There are no effective lobbying organizations in Sweden that fight for the cause of Israel.
In recent years, aid that finances hatred against Israel has received much attention. Organizations such as NGO Monitor have shown time and again how European countries and international organizations provide financial support to projects in which the sole purpose is to spread lies about Israel and erode its legitimacy as a nation.
But the European war going on against Israel has deeper presence and is more widespread than just some European governments or international organizations providing assistance to organizations that are spreading hatred against Israel.
The Swedish municipality of Malmö, for instance, with only 318,000 inhabitants, is providing tens of thousands of dollars in tax revenues each year to organizations that spread extreme anti-Israeli messages.
The association Kontrakultur has, since 2012, received $167,000 in tax revenues from the municipality of Malmö. If you visit the website of Kontrakultur, you can see that two of their partners are the International Solidarity Movement Sweden and Isolera Israel [“Isolate Israel”]. Both the International Solidarity Movement and Isolera Israel are organizations that have extreme views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Both organizations say they believe that Israel is an apartheid state conducting ethnic cleansing and is to be boycotted; they support Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, which they call “resistance.”
When Isolera Israel in March 2015 carried out a campaign during “Israel Apartheid Week,” when they sent out “apartheid inspectors” to Malmö’s stores to encourage shop owners to remove Israeli products, they had their headquarters located on premises owned by the municipality of Malmö.
Apelgårdsskolan elementary school in Malmö lends its premises on Sundays to an association called Framtidsföreningen [“The Future Society”]. The organization holds a Sunday school, where, among other things, maps are handed out to children where Israel has been removed, and schoolbooks are distributed in which “resistance” against Israel is celebrated.
Framtidsföreningen has no business being in a Swedish school: it is a pro-Palestinian association that cooperates with organizations such as International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza, one of the founding organizations behind the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
Apelgårdsskolan is located in the area of Rosengård, which is, according to Swedish police, a “particularly vulnerable” area. According to the Swedish police’s definition, there are, among other things in “particularly vulnerable” areas, parallel society structures, extremism, people traveling to take part in combat in conflict areas and a high concentration of crime. That the municipality of Malmö makes it possible to spread hatred against Israel among children in such an area is enabling a future war against Israel.
In addition to having used municipal premises to indoctrinate young children that Israel does not exist and teaching children that they should carry out militant actions against Israel, Framtidsföreningen has also received $4500 from Malmö’s recreational board since 2014.
Although these might seem shocking details to any sensible person, this kind of activity is normal in Sweden. Tobias Pettersson, Chairman of the pro-Israeli think tank Perspektiv På Israel [“Perspective on Israel”], sent information about Framtidsföreningen to Malmö’s largest newspaper, Sydsvenskan. However, Sydsvenskans journalists responded that the subject was not something for them to cover.
No newspaper in Sweden has written anything about these events. The anti-racist organization Motargument [“Counterpoint”] wrote a blog about the events in Apelgårdsskolan but tried to downplay the incident by saying that it was just a matter of “Arabic-speaking pupils” who were having “Palestinian studies.”
On March 3, the organization “Malmö’s Young Muslims” held a lecture on municipal premises about “Palestinian lobbying in Sweden.” This lecture was directed at young people and held by Adnan Abou-Chakra, a person who among other things, acts as interpreter when Hamas writes articles for Swedish newspapers. This lecture also took place in Rosengård. It is a mystery for anyone why a Swedish municipality should make it possible for young people to learn about “Palestinian lobbying in Sweden.”
These are just some examples of how pro-Palestinian organizations that spread hatred against Israel or have extreme views on the Israel-Palestine conflict have created a local infrastructure in Malmö financed by taxes.
They have managed to do this through effective lobbying. Beside the Sweden Democrats, there is no political party in Malmö that sees any of this as a problem. That pro-Palestinian organizations will use tax-funded operations as a tool to spread hatred against Israel is a given. This means that organizations that spread hatred against Israel in Sweden in many cases have tax revenues at their disposal at several levels.
While there are pro-Palestinian organizations on the municipal school premises that indoctrinate children that Israel is not on the map and teach young people in municipal premises how they should conduct lobbying on behalf of Palestinian causes, there are no effective lobbying organizations in Sweden that fight for the cause of Israel.
While municipal tax revenues go to organizations that spread hatred against Israel, the local synagogue is financing its own security without any financial support from Malmö. Such an inequitable situation in itself shows how effective the pro-Palestinian groups have been in their lobbying.
Even when someone is fighting against anti-Semitism in Sweden, it is important that the person condemns Israel. Siavosh Derakhti, who has received several awards for his fight against anti-Semitism in Sweden and has met President Obama in 2013, wrote the following about Israel in an article from 2011; he tells young Muslims in Sweden why they should distance themselves from anti-Semitism:
“But we must also be critical of Israeli policies and military. Where there is oppression and discrimination against civilians in Palestine. We must show courage and hope for the future. We need to influence our politicians so that they can take up the fight in parliament and hopefully strengthen demands against Israeli policy and listen to the young people. The children and the civilian population in Palestine should live in peace and live in freedom. Israel must cease its military attacks and discrimination and the oppression against the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank and Gaza. I think our politicians show little support for the Palestinians and the European Union must have the courage to strengthen the tone against Israel, possibly threatening a boycott if things continue. The attacks against the civilian population of Palestine must end. The world should boycott cooperation with Israel, as long as the country carries out attacks against civilians in Palestine.”
Even the one person in Sweden who has been praised for his struggle against anti-Semitism evidently feels compelled to remind people how evil Israel is, and in contradiction to the facts on the ground there. Derakhti’s approach towards Israel may also explain why he has received awards from the Swedish establishment.
The Palestinians may not be able to run a country, as the chaos in the Palestinian territories demonstrates, but they can apparently run Swedish politics better than anyone. As long as this imbalance, composed of Palestinian lobbying activities at all levels of Swedish policy-making, from local to national, exists, and is unopposed by any real lobbying for Israel’s cause, then Sweden will be a pro-Palestinian country with a pro-Palestinian establishment.
This disinformation and imbalance also ensure that Swedish taxpayers, at all levels, support operations that spread hatred against Israel.
It is not that Swedish politicians have misunderstood anything, except facts about Israel; it is that a pro-Palestinian lobby has been very successful and has achieved all its goals, while whoever supports Israel has been either silent or passive and not taken to heart how effective grassroots organizations can be. You can be very charming, and if you are pro-Palestinian building grassroots organizations, it is easy to convince Swedish politicians.
There are many people who now analyze Sweden and ask how this country in northern Europe could recognize Palestine so fast and criticize Israel so much. It is the pro-Palestinian lobbying organizations that have caused this to happen. The only way to reverse the trend is to build or support effective pro-Israeli lobby organizations that are as ambitious as the pro-Palestinian lobby organizations.
If the people who support Israel do not confront these pro-Palestinian lobbyists, more countries like Sweden will become platforms from which to delegitimize Israel. This European confrontation is essential and of the most urgent, strategic importance.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) defended the right of a terrorist-affiliated Palestinian media outlet to incite murder against Israelis, according to Honest Reporting.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently closed down “Palestine Today” – a Palestinian Islamic Jihad radio and television station – for inciting violence and glorifying Palestinian terrorists. Instead of condemning the Palestinian media outlet, the IFJ accused Israel of engaging in a “wave of violence targeting journalists.”
“The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents 600,000 journalists across the globe, stands by its affiliate the Palestinian Journalists Union (PJS) in condemning this brutal attack against free press and ask for UN immediate reaction to the escalation of attacks against the press in the occupied territories,” reads an IFJ statement.
The IFJ statement bestows journalistic legitimacy upon the propaganda arm of an organization designated as terrorists by the United States, European Union and other major Western countries. The IFJ also failed to point out that Palestine Today calls for Palestinians to kill Israelis.
“Freedom of the press does not extend to terrorist propaganda and to those who incite to murder,” Israeli parliamentarian Yair Lapid in a statement to the IFJ. “The content on Palestine Today would not pass the editorial guidelines of any of your members. I was a journalist for over three decades; this isn’t journalism. This isn’t free speech, this is hate speech. You are not defending press freedom; you are defending incitement to murder.”
The IFJ has a history of supporting other “journalists” who were exposed as terrorist operatives. The IFJ pressured the Newseum, a Washington D.C. based museum specializing in media, to maintain two Hamas terrorists on its journalist commemoration list, despite revelations of their true identities.
The IFJ also failed to condemn Hamas for intimidating Western journalists in Gaza covering the 2014 summer war between Israel and the terrorist organization. Hamas operatives threatened and harassed journalists for reporting cases of the terrorist groups’ use of human shields, inhibiting the ability for journalists to report the conflict accurately.
♦ These novelists hold a deep, uninformed, irrational hatred. Instead of backing the only country that gives full rights to all its citizens, they are instrumental in attacking not only Israel but the Jewish people.
♦ What is notable is that every single time, these most illustrious writers “forget” to say why Israel built those fences, checkpoints and roadblocks in the first place.
♦ Saramago, while he was visiting Ramallah, chose not to see and talk about the Israeli restaurants, malls and hotels turned into carpets of human bodies. The wholesale slaughter of Jews was the only reason Israel had to send tanks and soldiers back into the Palestinian cities after the Oslo Accords. Saramago did not mention the context; he preferred to give credence to a distorted, demonizing vision.
What is the only country about which can be said that its very existence is disputed? Clue: Not Zimbabwe, not Tuvalu, not even overrun Tibet. Which country’s boundaries, bought with blood in wars initiated by others, are challenged by all nations, who now seem determined to destroy it through boycotts, unjust defamation and purported “laws” that are applied to no other nation?
Which country fully respects the rights of women and every kind of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, notwithstanding that it is condemned at the United Nations for being “the worst violator of women’s rights” — worse than Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan?
Which country provides its own enemy with water, electricity, food and medical treatment? Its military, to avoid enemy civilian casualties, warns its enemy to evacuate buildings before attacking them, and — instead of simply carpet bombing the enemy as all other nations do, including most democracies — sends its own soldiers possibly to die in ground operations?
The country is Israel — the only country that even famous writers, intellectuals and Nobel laureates target, demonize and criminalize.
There was a time when Nobel laureates for Literature, such as the German Heinrich Böll, the French Jean-Paul Sartre and the Italian Eugenio Montale, rushed to denounce injustice. Earlier, in the name of best Europe’s values — justice, freedom and solidarity — they condemned the threats to the State of Israel’s existence.
But today, these novelists hold a deep, uninformed, irrational hatred towards the same place. Instead of backing the only country that gives full rights to all its citizens, they are instrumental in attacking not only Israel but the Jewish people. In Germany, Hitler’s Mein Kampf is the new best-seller. In Europe today, you can even find a great number of books that wipe Israel off the map. And a provincial council near Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire, banned Israeli books from local libraries.
In the chorus of those who speak from journals, poems and novels, there have been a few noble exceptions. The Albanian writer Ismail Kadaré, a Muslim candidate positioned every year to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, turned down a request to boycott the tiny Jewish State. Israel, he says, faces “the threat of disappearance,” and he compared Israel to Albania under Nazi occupation. Also the author of the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, refused to add her name to the list of Israel’s boycotters.
Their brave, solitary gestures highlight the sluggish, uninquiring conformity of the “intelligentsia’s” campaign to pile unmerited calumnies on Israel.
Worse, supposed “intellectuals” often spout raw anti-Semitism while giving a pass to the truly barbarous people among us. If the Nobel Committee had any decency, it would revoke the prizes it awarded for “Peace” to such “humanitarians” as Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat. It is painful to watch the Nobel Committee make a fool of itself year after year, and it is painful to watch these so-called intellectuals be so unaware and filled with prejudice against the people who least deserve it.
An Italian writer, Dario Fo, a laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature, just gave an interview to the newspaper, La Repubblica. Fo, talking about the Jewish patriarch, Moses, said: “Moses was killing women and children because they worshiped idols.” Mr. Fo went on blaming “the Jews’ brutality against those who follow other religions, as it happens today.” Excuse me? Is it the Jews who are burning people alive, drowning them in cages, slitting throats or crucifying anyone for following a different religion?
Mr. Fo’s comparison is as wrong as it is ghastly. It is not the Jews who suicide-bomb Palestinian buses, cafes, wedding halls and discotheques. It is not the Jews who now try to mow down Palestinians with cars or stab them in the street. It is the reverse — and has been for years.
The daily newspaper La Stampa charged Dario Fo with “recycling anti-Semitic stereotypes.” Fo is not new at this. In the 1970s, in one of his theatrical operas, “Resistance: Italian and Palestinian people speak,” the future Nobel Prize laureate compared Nazism to Zionism and the Palestinian fedayeen terrorists to the anti-Fascist partisans.
A few days after the 9/11 attacks, Fo also said that,
“the great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre, this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation.”
Who gave this famous writer the right to defame, earlier, not only Israel’s name but also 9/11’s victims?
Another Nobel prize-winning novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as the Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Eggers, are among a group of international novelists who will contribute to a book of essays next year about “50 years of Israeli occupation” that will be published by Harper Collins, one of the publishers that wiped Israel off the map.
The book is part of an initiative by Breaking the Silence, a non-governmental organization (NGO) which makes sweeping charges against the Israeli army “based on anonymous and unverifiable hearsay ‘testimonies.'” while refusing to disclose the names of the Israeli soldiers who “testified.” Worse, it is being funded specifically “to incriminate the IDF” (Israel Defense Forces) and, was explicitly directed by European charities to prove that Israel acted improperly. In an article entitled, “Europe to Breaking the Silence: Bring Us As Many Incriminating Testimonies As Possible,” the watchdog group NGO Monitor disclosed that:
Contrary to BtS’ claim that “the contents and opinions in this booklet do not express the position of the funders,” NGO Monitor research reveals that a number of funders made their grants conditional on the NGO obtaining a minimum number of negative “testimonies.” This contradicts BtS’ declarations and thus turns it into an organization that represents its foreign donors’ interest, severely damaging the NGO’s reliability and its ability to analyze complicated combat situations.
Are these “prestigious” writers aware of the organization’s predetermined bias which is going to fund their new book?
There is also, of course, the problem of double standards and hypocrisy. These writers did not decide to put their pen at the service of the Syria’s civil war victims or the Christians and Yazidi who are suffering a genocide in Iraq. No, these writers targeted Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and its supposed “occupation” — which they fail to disclose was backed by the Palestinians themselves in the Oslo II Accord of 1995, Chapter 3, Article XVII Jurisdiction [1], which in fact turned the Palestinian people into the most protected Arab population in the entire Middle East. Go to Ramallah and Jenin and you will see the difference between how they live compared to the people living in Aleppo, Sana’a and Mosul.
The most prolific novelists in the Israel-Bashing Industry are, sadly, the British. “Sadly,” especially as Iran has within the last month raised the bounty offered on the head of a British citizen, Salman Rushdie, by another $600,000, in addition to the $3 million issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. That brings the incentive for murdering a novelist to roughly $4 million. About that, the British government has been shamefully silent. The only condemnation so far seems to have come from the Iranian journalist, Amir Taheri, the British journalist, Douglas Murray and from PEN.
Another “intellectual,” John Berger, a Booker Prize winner, called for artists to decline being published by Israeli publishers and to undertake a boycott of the Jewish State. Harold Pinter, the late Nobel Laureate playwright, has gone so far as to declare Israel “the central factor in world unrest,” presumably forgetting about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan. Showing how thin is the line separating criticism and anti-Semitism, Tom Paulin, poet, essayist and academic at Oxford, said Jewish “settlers” in Israel “should be shot dead.” A Scottish National Poet, Liz Lochhead, also joined a group calling for the boycott of Israel.
Dozens of the world’s literary stars, including Nobel laureates in literature such as J. M. Coetzee, Herta Mueller, Orhan Pamuk and the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney, added their names to a petition against Israel’s “occupation’s giant, cruel hand.” What is notable is that every single time, these most illustrious writers “forget” to say why Israel built those fences, checkpoints and roadblocks in the first place.
Donald Trump wants to build a wall with Mexico, the Arab sheikhdoms are closing the border with Oman, Spain built fences to keep out Moroccans, India is walling off Bangladesh, South and North Korea share a fortified border, Cyprus is divided by walls and Belfast is a fenced city of barriers.
But only Israel’s fence — built for defensive, humanitarian reasons, merely not to get blown up — is condemned by the International Court of Justice and receives round-the-clock coverage on CNN and front page stories in the New York Times. Why? Because the security barrier that saves lives was perverted by unjust people into an unjust barrier, with no mention of what happened to Israelis before that fence was put up. To paraphrase attorney Alan Dershowitz: If you made a fair and objective list of all the countries in the world that comply with human rights, from best to worst, Israel would have to be near the top, among the best.
One of the most chilling accusations against Israel has come from a northern European writer, Jostein Gaarder, an ostensible humanitarian, whose book, “Sophie’s World,” was translated into 53 languages, and with 26 million copies sold. Penning an article in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Gaarder wrote:
“If the entire Israeli nation should fall … and part of the population must flee to another Diaspora, then we say: may their surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. Shoot not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now — like snails without shells! … Give the Israeli refugees shelter; give them milk and honey!”
Gaarder envisages the expulsion of the entire Jewish people from their land, and again dependent on European charity — in recent years not exactly a commodity in great supply.
Israel has been humiliated also by a German writer and Nobel Prize for Literature, Günter Grass, who published a poem in several European newspapers, in which he treated Israel as the purveyor of all ills and the instigator of every type of disorder. According to Mr. Grass, it is Israel that threatens Iran with a nuclear genocide, not the reverse.
This sanctimony should not have come from that writer: Grass, in fact, served in Nazi Germany’s armed SS force and defined East Germany’s Communism “a comfortable dictatorship.”
After a visit in the Palestinian Authority’s de facto capital, Ramallah, during the Second Intifada, after there were about 1,500 Jewish dead from terrorism, another winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, José Saramago, stated that the Israeli blockade of Ramallah was “in the spirit of Auschwitz” and “this place is being turned into a concentration camp.” A year later, Saramago commented that the Jewish people no longer deserve “the sympathy for the suffering they went through during the Holocaust.”
Nobel laureates who demonized: German novelist Günter Grass (left), who served in Nazi Germany’s armed SS force, claimed that Israel threatens Iran with a nuclear genocide. Portuguese novelist José Saramago (right), gave credence to a distorted, demonizing vision that culminated in the perverse comparison between Hitler and Israel.
Mr. Saramago, while he was visiting Ramallah, chose not to see and talk about the Israeli restaurants, shopping malls and hotels turned into carpets of human bodies. The wholesale slaughter of Jews was the only reason Israel had to send tanks and soldiers back into the Palestinian cities after the Oslo Accords. Saramago did not mention the context; he preferred to give credence to a distorted, demonizing vision that culminated in the perverse comparison between Hitler and Israel, and the transformation of the Jewish State — the historical home of the Jews for nearly 4000 years, and lately the only sanctuary not to turn away Jews being persecuted or rounded up for death — into an “imperialist base.”
It is by repeating lies that Europe even accepted the big Mohammed al-Dura lie: a boy supposedly riddled to death with Israeli bullets, but there was not one drop of blood! Not only that, but after he was dead, he moved his hand to look out. Quite a feat. For a time, the lie even became the favorite table conversation for Europe’s upper classes.
This is how millions of Europeans have been persuaded to see Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinian terrorists as the victims. They read the inverted, Orwellian revision of history every day on the front pages. Look at what is happening now during this “Third Intifada”: it is filled with knives, stabbings of Jews, even charts on the internet showing where to stab a Jew to do the most damage. The many dead Israeli civilians and soldiers have totally disappeared from the television screen, but when Israeli soldiers shoot a Palestinian in the process of stabbing a Jew, they are labelled by a corrupt and racist media as “illegal executioners.”
What would these supposed intellectuals do if citizens were being stabbed in London, Rome or Berlin? The “intellectuals” and the media seem to be trying to make the Jews unable to defend themselves. The “intellectuals” and the media are preaching for Israel’s destruction.
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[1] From the Oslo II Accord — Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, September 28, 1995, CHAPTER 3 – LEGAL AFFAIRS, ARTICLE XVII — Jurisdiction:
4. a. Israel, through its military government, has the authority over areas that are not under the territorial jurisdiction of the Council, powers and responsibilities not transferred to the Council and Israelis.
b. To this end, the Israeli military government shall retain the necessary legislative, judicial and executive powers and responsibilities, in accordance with international law. This provision shall not derogate from Israel’s applicable legislation over Israelis in personam.
epa05173718 Visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) speak to each other during their meeting in Amman, Jordan, 21 February 2016. Kerry arrived in Amman on 20 February for an official visit during which he also will meet Jordan’s King Abdullah II to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East. EPA/JAMAL NASRALLAH / POOL
US Secretary of State John Kerry came away empty-handed from his latest meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in Amman on Sunday, February 21,- which shouldn’t have surprised him as it was par for the course. DEBKAfile’s Middle Eastern sources report that Kerry was finally persuaded that Abbas would not give Israel an inch on any political or security-related matters. The Palestinian leader has never swerved from his conviction that it was the duty of the international community to force Israel to present the Palestinians with a state of their own – without direct negotiations.
To this end, Kerry found Abu Mazen clinging to the initiative put forward by French President Francois Hollande, for an international conference that will establish a Palestinian state, while letting the Palestinians off the hook of talks with Israel.
France in fact warned Israel that without progress towards a two-state solution of the conflict, Paris would go ahead and recognize a Palestinian state on its own.
The Palestinian leader is determined to campaign on behalf of the French initiative in the coming month, undeterred by the US Secretary’s repeated warning that Washington will not go along with it, even if France puts it before the UN Security Council.
But Kerry was most of all taken aback to find himself rebuffed by Abu Mazen when he asked him to make a speech or issue some statement calling on the Palestinians to halt their terrorist attacks against Israel now entering their fifth consecutive month. Al his efforts to persuade the Palestinian leader to tamp down the violence were in vain.
A senior member of Kerry’s entourage told DEBKAfile’s sources: “Abbas obviously thinks that terrorism in its present form serves his policy, although he won’t admit as much in public.” The source described the US Secretary’s mood after this encounter as “disappointed and shocked.”
DEBKAfile’s military sources note that Abbas is treading a very fine line. While he finds a measure of violence useful for letting the Palestinians vent their resentments, he nonetheless instructs his security services to partially cooperate with Israel so that Palestinian violence does not get out of hand and make him their next target.
And before him is the constant sight of the consequences of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the rise of Hamas rule. This must be prevented from happening on the West Bank avoided at all costs.
Notwithstanding this reality, the age-old controversy dogging Israeli politics erupted again this week, when the IDF military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi, was quoted (or misquoted) as commenting some weeks ago at a security cabinet session that diplomatic traction between Israel and the Palestinians might cool the current wave of terror,
This theory, disproved each time a new round of peace talks sparked a fresh outbreak of Palestinian terror in the last three decades, was strikingly refuted once again in the Kerry-Abbas meeting in Amman.
Recent leaks from Israel’s security cabinet, although often taken out of context, show that intelligence evaluations are too often wide of the mark – both on the Palestinian issue and the prospects of the Syrian conflict.
This may have something to do with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahus delay in appointing a new National Security Council Director to take over from Yossi Cohen who has been appointed Mossad Director.
Netanyahu, it appears, is not happy with the intelligence evaluations put on his table and may decide to dispense with yet another evaluator.
Netanyahu, it appears, is not happy with the intelligence evaluations put on his table and may decide to dispense with yet another evaluator.
Also short on substance were the remarks made by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Feb. 22 from the deck of the American destroyer, the USS Carney, which is anchored at the port of Haifa in the framework of the joint US-Israeli Juniper Cobra 2016 missile defense.
Yaalon said, “The United States and Russia, both of which are currently active in the Syrian civil war, recognize Israel’s freedom to act in defense of its interests.”
While the two powers may indeed recognize this freedom in principle, Israel will be certain to avoid any action that makes it liable to being accused of damaging the chances of a ceasefire going into effect in Syria on Feb. 27. Both the US and Russia will also make sure that no outside power, whether Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Israel, intervenes militarily in the Syrian conflict whatever their security interests may be.
Arab MK Ahmed Tibi on the Temple Mount with PLO flag. Photo Credit: Channel 2: Taamar Abidat
Israel Joint Arab List MK Ahmed Tibi was hosted for meetings over the past several days in Washington DC by officials at the White House and State Department.
Tibi met with U.S. President Barak Obama’s chief adviser to the Middle East, Robert Malley, and other senior officials at the White House.
The Israeli Arab lawmaker met with U.S. Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Frank Lowenstein, and Christopher Henzel, director of the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, at the State Department as well.
“Simultaneously with our struggle within Israel, the Knesset and outside it, it is necessary to spread the word regarding the Arab public’s situation and distress to the international community, including the United States,” Tibi told journalists at a news conference.
He spoke about the “institutionalized discrimination against Arab citizens in all walks of life, including the demolition of homes, the lack of employment and racist legislation.
“Once again I found a lack of knowledge on our social and political situation, and this requires all of us to increase our efforts in the important international forum,” Tibi said.
“There is not a single member of the current Israeli government, including [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who publicly supports the vision of the two states and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state; whereas all the Palestinian ministers support that vision,” he added.
It is especially important for readers to understand exactly who MK Tibi is, and which “struggle” he refers to when he appears in the White House and the State Department to lobby for “his people.”
Tibi — who is currently Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and paid generously with Israeli taxpayer money – was seen at a September 2011 Palestinian Authority event carried on PA TV openly praising Arab terrorists with the symbol of the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (the black-and-white keffiyeh) around his neck. The footage is provided and his remarks are translated by thePalestinian Media Watch (PMW) monitoring organization.
“Nothing is more exalted than those whom Israel dubs ‘terrorists-shahids,’” he said. In local Arab culture, the word – which literally translates as “martyrs” – is used to refer to those who die while trying to murder Israelis. “In the history and struggles of nations, the shahid is the ultimate glory,” Tibi told his audience at that time. “There is no value more August than the Shahada (the act of dying for Allah.) The shahid is the trailblazer, drawing with his blood the path to freedom and liberation. The shahid is the symbol of the homeland.”
While Tibi has been visiting with U.S. officials his party colleagues in Israel were visiting with the families of Arabs who were killed while carrying out terror attacks against Israelis.
Four years ago, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton considered a secret plan created by her advisers to clandestinely foment unrest among Arabs in Judea and Samaria, in order to push the Israeli government back to the negotiating table.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that in a December 18, 2011, email, former US ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering suggested that Clinton consider restarting peace negotiations by stirring up Palestinian demonstrations against Israel.
Pickering described the idea as a potential “game changer in the region.” Clinton reportedly asked that his email be printed.
“What will change the situation is a major effort to use non-violent protests and demonstrations to put peace back in the center of people’s aspirations as well as their thoughts, and use that to influence the political leadership,” Pickering wrote.
“This is far from a sure thing, but far, in my humble view, from hopeless,” he added, and suggested that the protests be led by women, because they are less likely to turn to violence.
“It must be all and only women. Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use force,” Pickering wrote. “Palestinian men will not for long patiently demonstrate – they will be inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated and use force. Their male culture comes close to requiring it.”
Pickering added that the US must keep its role in the demonstrations secret.
“Most of all the United States, in my view, cannot be seen to have stimulated, encouraged or be the power behind it for reasons you will understand better than anyone,” he wrote, suggesting that the government enlist leftist non-profit groups in Israel. “I believe third parties and a number (of) NGOs on both sides would help.”
Another Clinton confidant, Anne Marie Slaughter, sent an email to Clinton staffers recommending that they undertake a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign to convince US millionaires and billionaires to donate significant portions of their wealth to the Palestinian cause.
Slaughter wrote in the September 2010 email that the campaign would include “a certain shaming effect re Israelis, who would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”
As in other, previously leaked emails from Clinton’s server, the ideas discussed are largely broached by Clinton’s confidants, and she usually does not respond to them, either positively or negatively. However, the emails do appear to indicate the atmosphere that surrounds Clinton, and the way the people closest to her regard the Jewish state.
At a ceremony marking the 51st anniversary of the establishment of Fatah, the movement’s Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub, former head of the Preventive Security force, addressed the Israelis, saying: “You sons of bitches, we will accept nothing less than a Palestinian state. We own this place, we are its people, while you are alien here.” Rajoub, who serves as the head of the Palestinian football association and the head of the Palestine Olympic committee, further said: “To this day, resistance has remained a genetic code among all Fatah members.” The ceremony, held at Burqin, near Jenin, was broadcast on the Palestinian Awdeh TV channel on January 6, 2016.
(The views expressed in this article are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Judeo-Christian civilization has nothing in common with, and nothing to gain from, Islamic civilization as it now exists. They have been clashing for centuries. Now, Islamic civilization appears to be winning in much of the European Union and, to a lesser degree, in America.
Can anything be done to slow and then to halt the spread of fundamentalist Islam? Ayan Hirsi Ali hopes there is and that Muslims will do it. I also hope they will, but am quite dubious that it will happen in the foreseeable future. We need to take other steps promptly.
Preliminary disclosure
As I wrote here in 2012, I am an Agnostic and have been for more than half a century. I do not believe that one or more Gods exist, nor do I believe that none exist. I simply do not know and have no way to know. However, Judeo-Christian society has given me what I love most, freedom to think and to speak as I choose. That freedom is now under severe attack and is withering away. Far too few Christians and Jews seem to have noticed or to care.
When I was in tenth grade, my parents and I decided that I would have a better chance of being admitted to and succeeding at a good college if I were to transfer from public high school to a private high school. We researched area private schools and settled upon St. Stephen’s School for Boys, an Episcopalian school. The headmaster was an Episcopalian priest. During my admissions interview, I volunteered that I was an Agnostic. It did not seem to bother him, but he told me that I would be required to attend a daily religious opening ceremony and, during my senior year, a weekly sacred studies class which he would lead. The first did not bother me and I looked forward to the second.
During the morning religious ceremonies, I stood when the other boys stood and sat when they sat. When they sang hymns and recited creeds and bible verses, I did not. Nobody seemed to notice. During the sacred studies class, I voiced my views, the other boys voiced theirs and the Headmaster voiced his. Our discussions were collegial, not contentious.
These experiences have colored my views of Judeo-Christian culture as it has evolved through today: with increasing exceptions, it remains a culture of freedom and kindness. Sometimes, as with outreach to Islamists, it goes too far. Christian outreach to fundamentalist Islam is like bone cells inviting cancer cells in to discuss how they can be friends and get along. In the end, they can’t and won’t. The cancer cells will thrive and the owner of the infested bones will die painfully.
Fundamentalist Islam is a culture of compulsion and hate
Americans should learn far more than we have from the recent experiences of Sweden, Germany, England, France and other European Union countries in welcoming Muslims to Islamise their cultures. I posted a lengthy article on that on December 13th. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so now. It provides very helpful background for an understanding of the clash of Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilizations.
Here is a lengthy video by Walid Shoebat, once an Islamic jihadist and now a Roman Catholic opponent of Islam. Born in “Palestine,” he imbibed the Islamic culture of hate and compulsion as a youth, as did most of his acquaintances. Eventually, he changed from what he was to what he now is.
Here’s are Shoebat’s 2007 comments:
Most of Shoebat’s comments are consistent with my understanding of present-day Islam, which is largely fundamentalist, of “Palestine” and of its leaders. Here are videos of three who lead the “heroes of Palestine:”
Here’s are Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s 2015 comments on the possibility of an Islamic reformation, for which she argues in her recent book Heretic. (I just bought the Kindle version. After I have read it, I may post an article about it.) A former Muslim and now an Athiest, she is far more conciliatory than was Shoebat because she wants to promote change for the better within Islam. In her closing comments, she offers hope that someday Muslims will become as tolerant and peaceful as Christians and Jews. She does not expect that to happen during her life time, or for a long time thereafter. At seventy-four, I certainly don’t expect it during my remaining time on Earth.
Education today in Obama’s America
Obama’s America has become a multicultural, moral-equivalence based society dominated by political correctness. Many — including some nominal Christians and Jews — rail against Christianity and Judaism. Islam, on the other hand, has become a protected species: any suggestion that it is evil is condemned as “Islamophobic.”
At my alma mater, Yale (1959 – 63), freedom of speech and of thought now take back seats to politically correct condemnations of anything that anyone (except Christians and Jews) might find offensive.
I understand that the same sickness is spreading throughout the country. Maybe some fine day we will have an educational system like this:
Efforts to spread multicultural, moral-equivalence and hence Islamic values are not confined to our colleges. According to an article by The Clarion Project,
Controversy over the way public schools are presenting Islam has been making headlines in many school districts around the U.S. and worldwide:
♦ In Tennessee, a bill was introduced to prevent schools from teaching classes on “religious doctrine” before the 10th grade. The bill is in reaction to objections by parents to a three-week curriculum under the topic of world religion for middle-school students that covers the “Five Pillars of Islam” that obligated children to write assignments about Islamic principles of faith, such as “Allah is the only God.” Parents particularly objected because no other religion was taught at the same time and the amount of time spent on Islam was considerably more than that spent on any other religion.
♦ In Maryland, parents objected to the way Islam was taught in the school’s “World History” class, presenting Islam in an historically untrue way and listing all the “benefits” of Islam.
♦ After being threatened with a lawsuit, an Ohio school district agreed to remove a video about Islam from a seventh grade world-history curriculum that was challenged as falling under the category of proselytizing and favoring one religion over another (a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause). The video, titled 30 Days: Muslim and America, features a young Christian man who agrees to totally immerse himself in Islam for a month by living with a Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan. It was shown to students as part of a course that requires students to “describe achievements by the Islamic civilization and how these achievements were introduced into Western Europe in the time period between 750 BC – 1600AD.”
♦ In Massachusetts, the Wellesley Middle School, another public school was caught in a controversy when a video (see below) of a student trip to the Roxbury megamosque was released. On the trip, students were taught propaganda – among other things, that Muslim women got the vote before women in the West – by the mosque staff. The boys can be seen prostrating themselves to Allah alongside Muslim men. The video was covered extensively on Boston TV and radio.
♦ In Massachusetts, the Newton public school system became enmeshed in a similar controversy about deceptive and anti-Semitic lessons concerning Muslim women being taught to their students. Even though the curriculum was removed, school administrators refused to tell the children the information was inaccurate (as was the case above with the Wellesley Middle School).
Here’s the referenced video of a 2010 high school trip to a mosque in Newton, Massachusetts:
Fethullah Gulen’s movement is just one more manifestation of what the Muslim Brotherhood has called civilization jihad, albeit a particularly sinister one with its large footprint, penetration of our educational system and well-established, sophisticated and successful influence operations. With this new monograph – the [eighth] in the Center for Security Policy’s Civilization Jihad Readers Series, we hope to sound an alarm about this multi-faceted and dangerous Islamic supremacist cult that – despite significant setbacks in its native Turkey – constitutes a true Trojan Horse in our midst. [Emphasis added.]
It must be noted that those setbacks [in Turkey] are being dealt the Gulen cult and its empire by a rival Islamic supremacist movement: the AK Party and government of Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan. Like erstwhile allies in organized criminal racketeering, these two Islamist mafia dons have had a toxic falling-out after they jointly took down the Ataturk legacy of secular governance in Turkey. Welcome as the rolling up of the Gulen empire and the extradition of its cult leader from the United States would be, nothing in this monograph should be seen as an endorsement of the no-less problematic Erdogan regime’s civilization jihadism and its ambitions to restore the Caliphate.
The state of Hesse has become the first in Germany to offer Islamic education in public schools, with religious instruction starting as early as the first grade.
Giving young children religious and moral instruction might sound like a good idea, if not for the content of the newly written Islamic curriculum and the influence of Islamist elements over the recruitment of teachers. [Emphasis added.]
The writing of textbooks is being overseen by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB). In an agreement reached between the State of Hesse and DITIB, the organization will play a key role in setting the curriculum, selecting the teachers and monitoring the Islamic religious instruction. The organization is apparently assuming a similar role in several other key German states. [Emphasis added.]
DITIB is the largest Muslim organization in Germany and controls several prominent mosques. The group depends heavily on the Turkish government for its funding, and maintains close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist party, the AKP.
Our “great ally” Saudi Arabia is also spending lots of money to promote fundamentalist Islam.
[T]he Kingdom funded Western tax exempt Islamic organizations engaged in dawah (proselytization for Islam). Among them were networks of charitable organizations that provide financial aid to prisoners (including non-Muslims to lure them to Islam) in Western jails, lavishly funded academic chairs in Middle East Studies in universities around the world, student-exchange programs and spending many millions of dollars to increase Saudi political influence in the West — even contributing $100 million to coordinate and assist the United Nations international counterterrorism efforts.
. . . .
The public outrage and rejection of Saudi King Salman’s offer to fund 200 new mosques for more than 800,000 new Muslim refugees in Germany, and the Vice Chancellor’s statement: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over” point in the right direction. But don’t hold your breath. Germany, the United States and the rest of the West have been turning a blind eye to Saudi funding of thousands of mosques, madrassas and Islamic centers that have propagated radical Islamic ideology for decades and are unlikely to face reality anytime soon. [Emphasis added.]
Far from being limited to a number of elitist leaders and institutions, the Western empowerment of the jihad is the natural outcome of postmodern thinking—the real reason an innately weak Islam can be a source of repeated woes for a militarily and economically superior West. [Emphasis added.]
Remember, the reason people like French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in power—three prominent Western leaders who insist that Islam is innocent of violence and who push for Muslim immigration—is because they embody a worldview that is normative in the West. [Emphasis added.]
In this context, the facilitation of jihadi terror is less a top down imposition and more a grass root product of decades of erroneous, but unquestioned, thinking. (Those who believe America’s problems begin and end with Obama would do well to remember that he did not come to power through a coup but that he was voted in—twice. This indicates that Obama and the majority of voting Americans have a shared, and erroneous, worldview. He may be cynically exploiting this worldview, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s because this warped worldview is mainstream that he can exploit it in the first place.) [Emphasis added.]
Western empowerment of the jihad is rooted in a number of philosophies that have metastasized into every corner of social life, becoming cornerstones of postmodern epistemology. These include the doctrines of relativism and multiculturalism on the one hand, and anti-Western, anti-Christian sentiment on the other. [Emphasis added.]
Taken together, these cornerstones of postmodern, post-Christian thinking hold that there are no absolute truths and thus all cultures are fundamentally equal and deserving of respect. If any Western person wants to criticize a civilization or religion, then let them look “inwardly” and acknowledge their European Christian heritage as the epitome of intolerance and imperialism. [Emphasis added.]
Add to these a number of sappy and silly ideals—truth can never be uttered because it might “hurt the feelings” of some (excluding white Christians who are free game), and if anything, the West should go out of its way to make up for its supposedly historic “sins” by appeasing Muslims until they “like us”—and you have a sure recipe for disaster, that is, the current state of affairs. [Emphasis added.]
Western people are bombarded with these aforementioned “truths” from the cradle to the grave—from kindergarten to university, from Hollywood to the news rooms, and now even in churches—so that they are unable to accept and act on a simple truism that their ancestors well knew: Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant creed that cannot coexist with non-Islam (except insincerely, in times of weakness). [Emphasis added.]
The essence of all this came out clearly when Obama, in order to rationalize away the inhuman atrocities of the Islamic State, counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that their Christian ancestors have been guilty of similar if not worse atrocities. That he had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the crusades and inquisition—both of which have been completely distorted by the warped postmodern worldview, including by portraying imperialist Muslims as victims—did not matter to America’s leader.
Worse, it did not matter to most Americans. The greater lesson was not that Obama whitewashed modern Islamic atrocities by misrepresenting and demonizing Christian history, but that he was merely reaffirming the mainstream narrative that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing. And thus, aside from the usual ephemeral and meaningless grumblings, his words—as with many of his pro-Islamic, anti-Christian comments and policies—passed along without consequence. [Emphasis added.]
Conclusions
Too many of “We the people” demand “safe spaces” (offense-free zones) where rote acceptance of politically correct pablum is cherished rather than contested or even questioned. I doubt that another massively successful effort on the scale of the September 11, 2001 attack by Islamic fundamentalists would awaken many of them. Rather than begin to awaken and see what Islam is, how many would angrily demand to know what America did this time to offend our brothers and sisters of the Religion of Peace, Truth and love?
We once had a great culture and a great nation.
It is now fading and is in danger of being displaced by something far different and evil. What will WE do?
Getting rid of Obama will not be nearly enough, regardless of whether He is a Muslim.
Listen again to Ayan Hirsi Ali’s hopes for the reformation of Islam and think about what we can do to help. Read about Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, who wants to make Muslims believe that much of fundamentalist Islam is not Islamic.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser – a Navy vet and founder of the American Islamic Forum of Democracy – is one of those individuals taking the stand against Islamic organizations that support terrorism and claim to speak for the entire community. From Fox News:
“CAIR is a primary obstacle in the effort of many honest American Muslims who recognize our need to own up and lead long-overdue reforms against the root causes of radicalization: Islamism and its separatism,” said Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an ex-U.S. Navy officer who founded and heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
and
“CAIR’s information is marketed and packaged so it seems that they speak for all of us, but they don’t speak for me and my group,” said Raheel Raza, president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. “CAIR does not and has never represented the majority Muslim voices which are as diverse as Muslims in America.”
‘They don’t speak for me’: New Muslim groups reject CAIR representation http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/18/dont-speak-for-me-new-muslim-groups-reject-cair-representation.html
Dr. Jasser has assembled an alliance known as the “Muslim Reform Movement” consisting of about a dozen moderate Islamic groups in the US, Canada and Europe. This movement rebukes jihad and advocates the separation of “Mosque and state,” among other things. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that they reject the idea of an “Islamic State” and Sharia Law.
Although political correctness prevents Democrats and many Republicans from admitting it, it is already well established that CAIR has ties to terrorism.
CAIR, which masquerades as America’s largest Muslim civil rights group, is an outpost of international jihadism. It is an enemy propaganda organization whose longstanding ties to the terrorist underworld have been exhaustively documented at DiscoverTheNetworks and elsewhere. CAIR aims to influence America’s domestic and foreign policies. CAIR wants to make America safe for Sharia law by bullying Americans into not questioning Islam, a religion-centered ideology that has been generating a body count for 1,400 years. [Emphasis added.]
Accusing critics of so-called Islamophobia, a term invented by Islamists, is CAIR’s favorite method of silencing critics and opponents. It is part of a dangerous effort to discourage Americans from thinking freely and arriving at their own conclusions about Islam and mainstream the tenets of Islam in our society. The idea is to eventually make it as difficult and uncomfortable as possible to criticize the faith founded by Muhammad in the seventh century after the birth of Christ. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
CAIR was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, Omar Ahmad, and Rafeeq Jaber. The three men, reports DiscoverTheNetworks, “had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook and founded as Hamas’ public relations and recruitment arm in the United States.” CAIR opened an office in the nation’s capital with a $5,000 grant from the Marzook-founded Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a charity that the Bush administration shuttered in 2001 for collecting money “to support the Hamas terror organization.” CAIR called the action “unjust” and “disturbing.” In 2004 Marzook was indicted on racketeering charges related to his pro-Hamas activities. Ahmad was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Ghassan Elashi, a co-founder of the Texas branch of CAIR, was convicted in 2005 of terrorism-related offenses and sentenced to 80 months in prison. CAIR civil rights director Randall Todd Royer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on federal weapons and explosives charges in 2004. Bassem Khafagi, a community affairs director at CAIR, was convicted in 2003 on bank and visa fraud charges and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Rabih Haddad, a fundraiser for CAIR’s chapter in Ann Arbor, Mich., was detained in 2001 after overstaying his tourist visa. Authorities found a firearm and boxes of ammunition in his home. He served 19 months in prison and was deported to Lebanon in 2003. CAIR board member Abdurahman Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment for funneling at least $1 million to al-Qaeda. CAIR was founded in 1994 by Nihad Awad, Omar Ahmad, and Rafeeq Jaber. The three men, reports DiscoverTheNetworks, “had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook and founded as Hamas’ public relations and recruitment arm in the United States.”
CAIR and related Islamist organizations have often participated in White House meetings; Dr. Jasser and his group have been excluded.
[F]or the past seven years, the Obama White House has opened its doors to the entire spectrum of radical Islamist groups, just like CAIR. These groups have rationalized the actions of Islamic terrorist groups that have killed Americans, warned American Muslims against cooperating with law enforcement, smeared genuine Muslim moderates like Zuhdi Jasser and Asra Nomani as traitors and accused anyone who dared to utter the term “radical Islam” as “Islamophobic.” These are the groups that the White House should have marginalized. The fact that Obama legitimized radical Islamist groups will be his real legacy.
Is Dr. Jasser’s version of Islam “fantasy Islam?” Historically and presently, it unfortunately is. It rejects aspects of Islamism with which very many Muslims agree.
But need that remain the case? Christianity has changed since the time of the Inquisition and perhaps Islam — which except technologically remains stuck in the middle ages — can eventually change as well — if and when Islamic nations encourage, rather than prohibit, free speech. I have seen few significant signs of that happening. Egyptian President Sisi — despised by Obama for opposing the Muslim Brotherhood — has tried and is trying. He may not be around much longer because of it.
Jasser’s hopes for the future generally parallel those of Ayan Hirsi Ali, who wants Islam to revert to relatively tolerant and peaceful Mecca Islam and to reject subsequent Medina Islam, the fruit of Mohamed’s greatly changed status in Medina to become a powerful warlord. I see little reason to expect that it will change in that direction even in the distant future, and less that it will do so soon. I hope that I am wrong.
In any event, Muslims will need to do most of the work themselves, and that will require that there be enough of them to do it. If and when that happens, perhaps we can help a little. The most important things that we can do will be to
1. Recognize that fundamentalist Islam is evil and shun rather than accept those who espouse it, such as CAIR and its affiliates and
2. Prevent the further invasion of the United States (it may well be too late for Obama’s America) by Muslims who adhere to fundamentalist Islam. Unfortunately, most of our current crop of Republicans seem quite unlikely even to try.
The US State Department pandered once again to the Palestinian Authority (PA), backtracking on remarks noting the PA’s incitement campaign against Israel and blasting Israel’s “illegitimate” presence in Judea and Samaria.
During Monday’s press briefing, State Department spokesman John Kirby denied that US Secretary of State John Kerry had accused the PA of incitement.
During Sunday’s Saban Forum address, Kerry had said that “the Palestinian leadership should stop the incitement and condemn terror attacks.”
He also specifically noted PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s role in the incitement. “He made some very incendiary comments, which I called him on,” he said. “I was very direct with him about the al-Aqsa Mosque [Temple Mount – ed.]. And there was some very inciteful comments made.”
But Kirby denied this ever happened Monday.
“The Secretary did not say that the Palestinian leadership is engaged in incitement,” Kirby stated. “He stressed the importance of doing everything possible to combat it.”
“He also called on [PA] President [Mahmoud] Abbas to condemn Palestinian attacks against Israelis, which we’ve done repeatedly […] and he also made clear that President Abbas himself has long been committed to nonviolence.”
Kirby also addressed controversy over Kerry’s remarks vis-a-vis the PA, in which the latter said that “there are levels of some corruption and challenges within the PA that have to be taken on” before peace can be achieved.
“The Secretary did not intend to suggest that President Abbas or the PA was engaged in corruption or to make any new statement on that issue,” Kirby iterated. “He was reiterating a basic point that we have long made about the importance of transparency and accountability, which is a principle that President Abbas himself has embraced.”
“The United States remains committed to continuing to help the Palestinian Authority develop its institutions and continue to work closely with the Palestinian Authority to improve rule of law, enhance transparency, combat corruption, and strengthen protections for human rights, and acknowledge the progress that has been made to date on these and other institution-building efforts,” he added.
Kirby then attacked Israel, responding to questions about a Haaretz report earlier this week that private American donors had donated $220 million into Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
“This Administration, like every administration before it since 1967, views settlement activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace,” Kirby fired. “The United States Government does not support any activity that would indicate otherwise.”
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