Posted tagged ‘Palestinians and Jews’

Crazy like a fox

October 23, 2015

Crazy like a fox, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, October 23, 2015

benjamin-netanyahu

 

Due to his “gaffe,” every Western media outlet reported on Husseini’s actions. Some even mentioned that in his PhD dissertation, current Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the Holocaust was both a myth and a joint Zionist-Nazi project. For most Westerners, this is the first they’ve heard of the fact that the Palestinian’s George Washington was a Nazi war criminal.

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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is crazy like a fox.

Netanyahu’s assertion on Tuesday before the World Zionist Congress that the founder of the Palestinian people, Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced Adolf Hitler to eradicate rather than expel the Jews of Europe was an overstatement of Husseini’s role.

No, the Holocaust was not Husseini’s idea.

But he was a partner in perpetrating and promoting it. He also made it inevitable.

As I detailed in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, during the course of Husseini’s meeting with Hitler in Berlin in November 1941, Hitler told the Arab leader of his plan to eradicate European Jewry.

Husseini told Hitler that he would support the Nazis, and rally the Arab world to their side, if Hitler agreed to two conditions: that Hitler support his bid to rule over a postwar Arab state comprised of present-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel; and that Hitler support the genocide of Middle Eastern Jewry.

As both the official Nazi record and Husseini’s summary of the meeting in his diary report, Hitler accepted Husseini’s demands.

And it makes sense that he did.

Husseini proved his loyalty to the Nazis long before he arrived in Berlin. His romance with them began with Hitler’s election victory in 1933. From then on, Husseini’s followers in Mandatory Palestine greeted one another with the Nazi salute. Swastikas festooned their towns. The Nazis began directly funding Husseini’s terror war against the Jews of Israel and British Mandatory officials in 1937.

In 1937, the British forced Husseini to flee the country. In 1941, he organized and incited a pro-Nazi military coup in Iraq. The British were forced to invade Iraq in response to the coup.

Husseini then fled to Rome where he met with Mussolini and went on the Berlin, where he remained for the duration of the war.

As the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini invented and shaped the Palestinian national ethos in a manner that aligned with his pathological hatred of the Jews. Rather than providing the Palestinian Arabs with a positive vision of a future state that would safeguard and cultivate them as a distinct Arab nation, he shaped Palestinian society as a wholly negative phenomenon. It was seeded in a hybrid hatred of Jews that fused Koranic hostility to Jews with racism-based annihilationist European anti-Semitism rooted in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Husseini translated and published in Arabic.

The goal of Husseini’s nationalist drive was not to form a Palestinian Arab state, but to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state and to annihilate all aspects of the Jewish national liberation movement through a campaign a terror and political warfare.

Husseini’s goal of leading an Arab state that encompassed Iraq and the entire Levant shows that the founding father of the Palestinian national project did not view “Palestine” as a distinct territorial entity.

After Hitler agreed to both of Husseini’s conditions, Husseini began his active collaboration in the Nazi war effort. He participated in the Holocaust directly. In 1943, he formed the SS Handschar Division comprised of Bosnian Muslims. His troops exterminated 90 percent of Bosnia’s 14,000-member Jewish community.

Husseini used his position as well to scuttle British attempts to trade German prisoners of war for Jews. In one such documented episode, in 1943 Husseini appealed to SS commander Heinrich Himmler to cancel a deal to exchange 4,500 Jewish children and 500 Jewish adults from Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria to cancel the deal and send the Jews to Auschwitz.

Himmler bowed to his appeal. The Jews were sent to the gas chambers.

Husseini contributed to the Holocaust indirectly.

Beginning shortly after his meeting with Hitler and extending through the end of the war, Husseini broadcast regular programs to the Arab world on Nazi short wave radio in Arabic. In those broadcasts he engendered support for the Nazis and the extermination of world Jewry. Using the mix of Islamic Jew-hatred and European annihilationist anti-Semitism he had developed in Jerusalem, Husseini cultivated a culture of support for the annihilation of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish (then nascent) state in the Land of Israel. That culture, bred through those broadcasts heard regularly by millions throughout the entire Arab world, still holds today.

Husseini was indicted as a war criminal in Nuremberg. Rather than try him, the allies allowed him to flee to Egypt in 1946. There he was greeted as a war hero by King Farouk.

It is true that Hitler didn’t need Husseini to convince him to annihilate European Jewry. By the time Husseini arrived in Germany, the Nazis had already murdered a million Jews.

But Netanyahu’s claim that Husseini made it impossible for Hitler to suffice with expelling the Jews from Europe is true. The only place that wanted the Jews of Europe was the nascent Jewish state in the Land of Israel.

Through his terror war against the Jews and the British Mandatory authorities, and through his incitement of pro-Nazi sentiment in Egypt, Iraq and the Levant, Husseini convinced the British to betray their legal obligation to allow free Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel and so closed off the Jews’ last avenue of escape from Nazi-dominated Europe.

As Netanyahu said, Husseini is revered and glorified by the Palestinians. Yasser Arafat claimed that he was Husseini’s political heir and blood relative as a means of legitimizing his claim to leadership over the Palestinians.

Hamas as well has invoked Husseini as its ideological founding father.

History in hand, it is time to return to Netanyahu, and his overstatement of Husseini’s role in the Holocaust.

From the time of Husseini till today, propaganda and terror have been the Palestinians’ weapons of choice in their war against the Jews. Internally lies are spread of nonexistent Jewish plots and imaginary acts of aggression, to incite and solicit the murder of Jews. Propaganda and lies are then used to glorify the murderers as heroes and martyrs.

Externally, the Palestinians spread lies about Palestinian victimhood at the hands of bloodthirsty Jewish settlers and security forces who seek to drive the Arabs from their homes. By casting themselves as victims to the outside world, the Palestinians ensure that Israeli responses to their acts of aggression are perceived as acts of aggression, which they are fully justified in attempting to defy through murderous rampages against Jews.

The Palestinians recognize that for their terror to be acceptable to the West, they must portray themselves as guileless victims. Hence, they repeatedly insist the absurd claim that terrorists who deliberately kill Jews by running them over, are really merely victims involved in traffic accidents. The Palestinian teenage girl who this week sought to infiltrate the community of Yitzhar with a carving knife, suffers from “sleepwalking.”

These ridiculous lies are only credible in a world devoid of any historical knowledge of the Palestinians’ 95-year history of aggression against the Jews. And so the Palestinians have invented a false history of their war against Israel in which thousands of years of Jewish history is blotted out, and thousands of years of Palestinian history have been invented out of whole cloth.

In this revised version of events, Husseini has been erased from history. His role in the Holocaust has been deleted. The fact that the goal of the Palestinian national movement from its inception has been to annihilate the Jewish state and that the annihilation of Israel remains its goal still today has similarly been washed out of the history books and the news pages.

To maintain this fictional account of current and historical events, the Palestinians depend on the collaboration of the Western media.

And with each passing year, that collaboration has grown more open, expansive and shameless.

Western reporting on the events of the day now are almost entirely devoid of any relationship to reality.

Consider just a few recent examples. CNN’s report of the Palestinian arson assault on Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus on October 16 contained no mention of the fact that the fire at the holy Jewish site was set by Palestinians. In the same report, the network stated, “In the past month, eight Israelis died in 30 attacks involving knives and other weapons.”

As if fires set themselves and angry knives wander the streets.

MSNBC’s reporter Ayman Mohyeldin was caught lying two weeks ago as he claimed that the knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist in the Old City of Jerusalem who was lunging toward security personnel as they killed him, was an unarmed, innocent bystander. As Mohyeldin spewed his lies, the video of the assault that clearly showed the terrorist wielding a knife was being broadcast to his viewers.

That embarrassment didn’t stop MSNBC from maintaining the myth of Israeli aggression, however.

The next week, the network posted a graphic of British Mandatory Palestine from 1946 which it claimed was the State of Palestine in 1946. The graphic them purported to show how the Jews stole ever more Palestinian land in the years that followed. Although the network was forced to broadcast a retraction, the lie that Palestine once existed had already been told.

Then of course there was The New York Times with its stunning “background” piece purporting to provide its readers with historical context regarding the competing Israeli and Palestinian claims regarding the Temple Mount. The Times reported as fact the false claim that there is a debate among respected academics regarding whether the Jewish temples were actually located on the Temple Mount.

In other words, the Times unabashedly participated in the Palestinian project of rewriting history in a manner that erases Jewish history from the Jewish homeland.

Netanyahu recognizes that the media have sided with the Palestinians in their war to destroy Israel through a mix of terror and propaganda.

He knows that the only stories they will report on are stories with an anti-Israel angle. It is reasonable then to assume that he decided to use their embrace of every possible angle of attack as a means to get the truth out about the nature of the war.

By exaggerating Husseini’s importance in the Holocaust, Netanyahu gave the media a means of attacking him. But by doing so, he forced the Times to report on the Palestinians’ founding father’s role in destroying European Jewry and his desire to carry out the Final Solution in the Middle East. They would have ignored the issue if Netanyahu had not exaggerated his actual role.

Due to his “gaffe,” every Western media outlet reported on Husseini’s actions. Some even mentioned that in his PhD dissertation, current Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the Holocaust was both a myth and a joint Zionist-Nazi project. For most Westerners, this is the first they’ve heard of the fact that the Palestinian’s George Washington was a Nazi war criminal.

Like I said, crazy as a fox.

Palestinian terrorism is not random

October 23, 2015

Palestinian terrorism is not random, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, October 23, 2015

Unlike national liberation movements, Palestinian terrorism has deliberately, institutionally, and systematically targeted Arab and Israeli noncombatants, sometimes hitting combatants.

Palestinian terrorism has haunted Arab societies in Jordan (especially during the 1968-1970 era of PLO terrorism), Lebanon (particularly during the 1971-1982 civil wars), Kuwait (during the 1990 invasion by Saddam Hussein), Iraq (until 2002, as an arm of Saddam Hussein’s ruthless domestic oppression), Syria (until 2012, bolstering Bashar Assad’s regime) and currently in Egypt (collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood terror organization). Pro-U.S. Arab regimes consider Palestinian terrorism a clear and present danger, never fighting on behalf of Palestinians. Sometimes these regimes launch severe military blows (1970 Black September in Jordan) and expulsions (300,000 expelled from Kuwait), showering them with rhetoric, but not resources.

Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1993, Palestinian terrorism has afflicted the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, denying the Palestinians civil liberties and instituting a corrupt, oppressive reign of horror. It prompted most Christians to flee from Ramallah (home of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters), Bethlehem and Beit Jallah. In addition, Muslim emigration from the Palestinian Authority has increased since 2000. While Egypt prevents emigration from Gaza through Sinai, Gaza’s Arabs have emigrated, in increasing numbers, via the Mediterranean. Moreover, Palestinians flow across Jerusalem’s municipal lines, escaping Abbas’ tyranny to receive Israeli residency, social benefits and human rights.

Palestinian terrorists have targeted pro-U.S. Arab regimes and “the arrogant, infidel, Great Satan,” the U.S., joining the ayatollahs in Iran (since the toppling of the shah in 1979), Taliban, al-Qaida, Islamic State and other Islamic terror organizations. Osama bin Laden’s role model and spiritual mentor, Abdullah Azam, was from a village in Samaria.

Palestinian terrorism is a modern-day branch of Islamic terrorism, which has plagued the Middle East — and beyond — since the appearance of Islam in the seventh century. The current intensification of Islamic terrorism throughout the Middle East provides a tailwind to Palestinian terrorism.

Palestinian terrorism has inspired terror cells in Europe, Africa, Asia and the American continent, including sleeper cells in the U.S.

Anti-Jewish Palestinian terrorism has been a Middle East fixture since at least the 1920s, well before the 1948 establishment of Israel and the 1967 return of Jewish communities to Judea and Samaria. It’s well-documented collaboration with Nazi Germany sought to prevent the existence — not reduce the size — of the Jewish state. The political guideline of contemporary Palestinian terrorism, the Palestinian Covenant, was published in 1964, three years before the reunification of Jerusalem.

Palestinian terrorism is nurtured by 23 years of Palestinian hate education in kindergartens, schools, mosques and media — the most effective means of producing terrorists. It was established by Abbas (then Yasser Arafat’s chief deputy) in 1993, highlighting the fundamentals of Islam that serve to intensify Palestinian terrorism: the supremacy of Islam over all other religions; the permanent state of war between the abode of Islam and the abode of the “infidel”; the inadmissibility of “infidel” sovereignty over Waqf lands, which are divinely ordained to Islam; the sublime honor of sacrificing one’s life on behalf of Islam’s war against the “infidel”; and the provisional nature of agreements concluded with “infidels.”

Palestinian terrorism has been encouraged by Abbas’ systematic policy of naming streets, squares, monuments and sport tournaments in honor of terrorists, and extending generous financial assistance to their families.

Palestinian terrorism, an endemic feature in the Middle East, represents writing on the wall, warning us all of the destabilizing, anti-Western, terroristic nature of the proposed Palestinian state. An Israeli withdrawal from the mountain ridge of the Golan Heights would provide a platform for Islamic terrorists to traumatize northern Israel. But an Israeli withdrawal from the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria would provide Muslim terrorists a platform to topple the Hashemite regime in Jordan and target Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion Airport and 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructure.

Palestinian terrorism is fueled by the inherently immoral “moral equivalence” between Israeli counterterrorism and Palestinian terrorism, which grossly misrepresents Middle East reality. It is fueled by foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, which funds hate education. It is rewarded by calls to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, while Abbas promotes hate education. It is emboldened by Western pressure for further Israeli concessions and Western denial of Israel’s moral high ground in the physical high ground of Judea and Samaria.

In order to defeat Palestinian terrorism, it is necessary to defy political correctness and shift gears, instead of chasing individual terroristic mosquitoes, the terroristic swamp needs to be drained. A large-scale, disproportionate, pre-emptive military operation needs to be launched throughout Judea and Samaria and Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Any (U.S. and Israeli) direct or indirect contact with and assistance to the Palestinian Authority needs to be conditioned upon an end to hate education. Families and communities of terrorists need to be severely punished for failing to exercise communal responsibility.

To frustrate Palestinian terrorism, which aims to set Israel on a path of retreat, Israel should proclaim a constructive response, expanding Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. While it would trigger short-term international pressure, it would yield long-term strategic respect, as documented by the legacy of Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who defied much more severe international pressure with slimmer military and commercial resources at their disposal.

CAIR’s 2015 Orlando intifada

October 22, 2015

CAIR’s 2015 Orlando intifada, Front Page MagazineJoe Kaufman, October 22, 2015

(Sheik Kerry and Imam Obama were busy denouncing climate change and hence unavailable to speak. — DM)

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CAIR’s foundation was built upon anti-Israel activists seeking to tear apart Western society. Today’s CAIR is no different. A current hotspot for CAIR extremism is in Orlando, Florida, where CAIR-Florida just held an annual fundraising banquet and just hired a coordinator to take the place of a recently arrested sexual predator. The days of Orlando only being about theme parks and tourism are over. Now, residents and tourists have something else to look forward to – the threat of radical Islam.

CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations was established in June 1994 as being part of the American Palestine Committee, a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. The people who founded CAIR, including present National Executive Director Nihad Awad, were previously leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a now defunct organization that was at the time the American propaganda wing of Hamas and also one of the groups that made up the Palestine Committee.

CAIR-Florida, like those who established its parent organization, is made up of anti-Israel radicals.

CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly has referred to Hezbollah as “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization” and, in August 2014, tweeted, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of G-d…” In December 2010, CAIR-Florida CEO and Statewide Regional Operations Director Nezar Hamze, repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas, when given numerous chances to do so, stating “I’m not denouncing anybody. I’m not getting involved in the politics.”

In November 2012, when Israel went to war with Hamas in Gaza, CAIR-Florida Legislative and Government Affairs Director Laila Abdelaziz tweeted, “Don’t worry ya Gaza, we’re working hard for you in Florida.” In July 2014, CAIR-Florida Communications Coordinator Ali Akin Kurnaz attacked U.S. Representative Ted Deutch, when Deutch wrote a tweet against Hamas and in support of Israel’s right to defend herself, stating to Deutch, “[T]hink before you tweet. Your lopsided message conveys your lack of understanding of this conflict.”

In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally, in Downtown Miami. At the event, rally goers repeatedly shouted, “We are Hamas,” “Hamas kicked your ass,” and “Let’s go Hamas.” After the rally, the organizer of the rally, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, wrote the following on Facebook: “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

Earlier this month, CAIR-Florida held an annual fundraising dinner, in Orlando, Florida. The event was titled ‘Champions for Justice,’ and it featured as a guest speaker Chicago-area imam Kifah Mustapha.

Mustapha’s relationship to CAIR goes far beyond his speakership at CAIR events. Both Mustapha and CAIR were named as co-conspirators by the United States government for the 2007 and 2008 federal trials against the Hamas charity, Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Like CAIR and the IAP, HLF was part of Mousa Abu Marzook’s Palestine Committee. Indeed, Mustapha is still listed as the Registered Agent of HLF’s Illinois corporation, which was revoked in 2001.

Mustapha was also involved with the IAP; he served as a board member for the group.

As well, Mustapha is a lecturer for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) states “has its organizational roots in the IAP.” The Registered Agent for AMP is former IAP Secretary General Abdelbaset Hamayel. AMP’s office is merely blocks away from what used to be the IAP’s address, on the same street – Roberts Road in Palos Hills, Illinois. Mustapha and former IAP President Rafeeq Jaber (who was a CAIR founder) will be speaking at AMP’s 8th Annual Conference, next month.

In December 2014, Mustapha left his job as imam and Associate Director of the Mosque Foundation (MF), the Islamic center he had been affiliated with for 13 years. MF also has heavy ties to the IAP. Two former leaders of the IAP, Rafeeq Jaber and ex-IAP Chairman Sabri Samirah, were Presidents of MF.

Today, Mustapha is the imam and Director of the Prayer Center of Orland Park. And while he may have transferred his affiliation – albeit less than nine miles away – Mustapha’s fanatical views are still intact.

The morning of CAIR-Florida’s Orlando banquet, Mustapha posted the following message on his Facebook site. He wrote, “An uprising in the Blessed Land will reflect blessings on all Arab uprisings insha Allah.”

The uprising that he speaks of is the recent wave of stabbing and shooting attacks against Jews in Israel, which many are calling a Third Intifada – intifada meaning uprising. For Mustapha this violence, that includes many deaths on both sides, reflects blessings.

Shown in photos from CAIR-Florida’s banquet is CAIR-Florida’s new Orlando Regional Coordinator Rasha Mubarak. Mubarak replaced CAIR-Florida’s previous Orlando Coordinator, Ahmad Saleem, who is currently awaiting trial after having been arrested for traveling to have illegal sexual intercourse with someone who he believed to be a twelve-year-old girl.

Apart from her job with CAIR, Mubarak is an organizer for anti-Israel demonstrations. These events have included virulently anti-Semitic signs and flags of terrorist organizations.

In November 2014, Mubarak was a featured speaker at the Al-Awda 12th Annual International Convention, held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is an activist group based in the US, which opposes Israel’s right to exist. Participating at the Al-Awda event, along with Mubarak, were then-Chair and Vice Chair of Al-Awda, Coral Springs, Florida-based Anas Amireh and Cleveland, Ohio-based Abbas Hamideh, who are now respectively Al-Awda Treasurer and Vice Chair.

Amireh is a big fan of deceased Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat and uses social media to memorialize former PLO leaders. He advocates Palestinians using their cars as weapons (‘Run-Over Intifada’) and refers to Israel as the “Zionist enemy.” Next to one photo Amireh posted on his Facebook site in August 2014, taken in Fort Lauderdale and showing him looking back at a group of Israel supporters, he writes, “Do you realize how hard it is not to turn around and beat the living hell out of one of those Zionists??”

Hamideh wants all of Israel, which he has been barred from entering, destroyed. This month, he told Jews, “Rest assured Zionism will be eradicated and if you’re lucky you’ll be sent back to Europe where you belong…” He says peace with Israel only means “surrender.” Hamideh loves Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who he calls “the most honorable Arab-Muslim leader of our time.” Hamideh, who claims to have fought in the First Intifada, is excited at the idea of a third one. He tweeted a photo of two masked Palestinian terrorists holding Molotov cocktails, stating, “Let’s do this! Intifada.” He also tweeted a photo of himself firing an AK47 rifle.

CAIR calls itself a civil rights group, but the truth is that any initiatives undertaken by CAIR in the name of civil rights is a cover for an extreme anti-Israel agenda that has been an integral part of CAIR since its founding. CAIR’s subsidiary CAIR-Florida, its leaders and those they associate with are representative of this bigotry.

CAIR is a radical Islamic enterprise that exists to cause harm to the Jewish state and fracture Western civilization.

Orlando, beware!

Coverage of Palestinian “Stabbing Intifada” Sets New Lows

October 22, 2015

Coverage of Palestinian “Stabbing Intifada” Sets New Lows, Investigative Project on Terrorism, October 22, 2015

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Imagine if social media lit up with Israeli memes justifying or endorsing the vigilante violence; “When in doubt, take them out.” Imagine public rallies featuring Israeli children brandishing symbols of this violence.

Would reporters write stories explaining the roots of this attitude? Would they try to balance their reports by explaining the Israeli anger and frustration? Would news outlets issue misleading headlines, minimizing the attackers’ responsibility for the violence? Would the State Department advise “both sides” to tone down their rhetoric?

More likely, a chorus of global condemnation would rain down on Israel, with demands that such reckless incitement halt immediately. And that would be justified.

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Israelis have a new cause for horror.

In addition to the fear and anger stemming from a wave of wanton stabbing and vehicle attacks on Israelis during the past month – and there were at least two more Thursday, including two Palestinians armed with knives who tried to board a bus full of children – they now are dealing with the horror and shame of realizing an innocent Eritrean migrant fell victim Monday to panic and rage.

When an Arab killed a soldier at a Be’er Sheva bus station, grabbed his victim’s gun and opened fire, a security guard mistook 29-year-old Haftum Zarhom for a second attacker and shot him. Some bystanders, believing he was a terrorist, then beat the wounded Zarhom, who later died from the gunshot.

Israeli leaders reacted swiftly, announcing Monday twin IDF and national police investigations to identify the perpetrators and indict them.

In an attack, people “should evacuate the area and let the emergency services do their job,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “No one will take the law into his own hands. That’s the first rule.”

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon called for the perpetrators to be arrested.

“We must bring the attackers to justice,” Yaalon said. “No one should behave this way, even when there is great anger and sadness.”

By late Wednesday, four suspects were in custody.

This does not reduce the tragedy of Zarhom’s death, but it does reinforce a message to Israeli society that mob violence is wrong and will not be tolerated. But is a message with which most Israelis already wholeheartedly agree, and they have expressed their deep revulsion and anger at previous acts of lawless violence and terrorist acts by Jewish terrorists against Arabs in years past—from Baruch Goldstein’s massacre in a Hebron mosque to the horrific killing of the 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and subsequent death of his mother in a firebombing of their home in the West bank three months ago. Newspaper editorials and politicians from left to right uniformly expressed outrage at such despicable actions. Watching the Israeli news one can see the deep sense of shame that the Israeli public feels.

Just for a moment, imagine if Israeli leaders had reacted differently. What if they tried to rationalize the death, saying the people who set on Zarhom were striking a blow for their people and merely acting out of understandable anger and frustration? They’ve been living under siege for a long time, subjected to the prospect that they could be attacked at any time, on virtually any street in their homeland.

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Imagine if social media lit up with Israeli memes justifying or endorsing the vigilante violence; “When in doubt, take them out.” Imagine public rallies featuring Israeli children brandishing symbols of this violence.

Would reporters write stories explaining the roots of this attitude? Would they try to balance their reports by explaining the Israeli anger and frustration? Would news outlets issue misleading headlines, minimizing the attackers’ responsibility for the violence? Would the State Department advise “both sides” to tone down their rhetoric?

More likely, a chorus of global condemnation would rain down on Israel, with demands that such reckless incitement halt immediately. And that would be justified.

Yet journalists and government officials are engaging in all these exercises in reacting to the wanton acts of slaughter Palestinians are carrying out daily. Palestinian society – from the PA leadership to U.S.-subsidized education ministries to nearly the entire Palestinian media have engaged for decades in horrific incitement to terrorism and the demonization of Jews similar to the way Nazis demonized Jews. But yet, a review of Washington Post stories since 2013 finds none which focused primarily or explored the depth of this incitement that drives this latest outbreak of violence.

The State Department continues to walk back comments by Secretary of State John Kerry and his chief spokesman, John Kirby, in which they falsely connected the violence to Israeli settlements and also gave life to the lie that really sparked the attacks. Palestinians, led by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, have stoked passions for weeks by claiming Israel was changing the “status quo” at Muslim holy sites above Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and diminishing Muslim access.

In fact, the Israelis have not changed the status quo one iota on the Temple Mount since they captured the Eastern part of Jerusalem in the defensive Six Day War. From 1948-67, Jews and Christians were denied any access to the Christians sites in Old Jerusalem and the Jews were denied access to the most holy site in their religion, the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple built by King Herod and destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. When General Moshe Dayan captured the Old City in June 1967, he handed over administration of the Temple Mount with the two great mosques, revered by Muslims around the world, to the Waqf, a religious trust that included Jordanian officials and Palestinians. Jews were not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount but could visit as tourists. To this day, successive Israeli administrations have scrupulously upheld this status quo.

But many Palestinian leaders began to fabricate incendiary allegations that Israel was changing the status quo, even alleging plots to raze the two mosques in order to build the Third Temple. While a crazy handful of Jewish fanatics promote this idea, they are a fringe of a fringe enjoying no credibility. Figures just released by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that nearly 4 million Muslims visited Haram Al Sharif in the past year, compared to about 200,000 Christians and 12,000 Jews.

But the rhetoric from Abbas makes it sound like the area is under assault, and that violence against Israelis is justified to protect holy sites.

“The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet,” Abbas said in a speech last month on PA TV, and translated by Palestinian Media Watch. “We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem… We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah.”

He reinforced that message during his speech at the United Nations, accusing Israel of trying to seize control of the area from an Islamic trust that has been in place since before Israel controlled Jerusalem in 1967. “The Palestinian people will not allow the implementation of this illegal scheme,” Abbas said. Israel’s actions are aggravating “the sensitivities of Palestinians and Muslims everywhere.”

Last week, Abbas falsely claimed that Israel was executing “our children in cold blood” after video emerged of a young Palestinian lying wounded in the street. The boy isn’t dead, he was released from an Israeli hospital Sunday, and Abbas failed to mention that his injuries came after he stabbed a 13-year-old boy moments earlier, critically wounding him.

Abbas’ Fatah party, meanwhile, extols its “martyrs” on social media. We are a nation that dies a Martyrdom-death with a smile on its face,” an Oct. 14 on the Rafah Fatah party Facebook page said.

A children’s program on Palestinian television last week hailed those attacking people on Israel’s streets as “the young heroes who have sacrificed their lives for Jerusalem, and who carried out all those great heroic acts. We love them and kiss their hands, because they are true heroes,” a Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) report shows.

Any restrictions on Muslim access to the holy sites have come in response to violence by Palestinians, or out of concern violence might erupt. The issue, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg recently explained, is rooted in a Palestinian rejection of Jews’ rights to be at their most sacred site, or even to be in the land at all.

The New York Times fed into this incitement bypublishing a story which erroneously called into question the very foundation of Judaism’s claim on Jerusalem. A correction followed after the article triggered immediate criticism on social media and elsewhere.

On Monday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner finally gave a clear statement that this “status quo” has not been altered. “Israel has made it clear that they do not intend to and have not changed the status quo” at the Temple Mount, Toner said. “And I think perhaps what we’re talking about is just clarity on all sides, and that includes the Palestinian side, that there is no change in the status quo, that all sides need to recognize that, make every effort possible to reduce tensions…”

Despite this statement, Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, repeated the canard. “We know that Israel is changing the status quo in Haram al-Sharif,” she said. “They say no, they’re not.”

During the peak of the bloodshed, Ashrawi chose to stoke anger.

Some news stories may refer to isolated examples of the inflammatory rhetoric coming from Palestinian leaders and media, but major U.S. news outlets thus far have failed to devote a story to the depth and consistency of Palestinian incitement.

Meanwhile, headlines and stories about Palestinian attacks repeatedly are phrased in ways that minimize the fact that Palestinians are attacking Israelis, often elderly Israelis, at will. When Palestinian casualty figures are cited, often there is no distinction to show how many were killed or injured carrying out an attack, said Gilead Ini, a senior research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

He blames an entrenched media narrative that holds Israel responsible, no matter what is taking place on the ground. “It’s worse than ever, or as bad as ever,” he said.

New examples seem to emerge almost every day. Among them:

MSNBC reporter Ayman Mohyeldin was corrected on air after witnessing security forces shoot a Palestinian as he raced toward the Damascus Gate intent on attacking. Mohyeldin told viewers the man was unarmed, when even the anchor could see the man’s knife. MSNBC then had to apologize for airing maps purportedly showing the loss of Palestinian land to Israel since 1946. The network acknowledged that the maps were “completely wrong.”

When a Palestinian mob torched Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, CNN’s original headline merely reported that the site “Catches Fire” with no one responsible.

An example Ini believes epitomizes the news media’s consistent minimizing of Palestinian culpability in violence is this Sept. 14 New York Times story by Diaa Hadid. Israeli citizen Alexander Levlovich, 64, was killed when his car was struck by a hail of stones thrown by young Palestinians and crashed. The Times story, however, says the youth were throwing stones at “the road he was driving on,” as if the road was the target and Levlovich’s death an unfortunate accident.

There’s a tendency among some journalists to avoid directly ascribing blame to Palestinians, even in clear acts of violence like this, Ini said. “Journalists are supposed to scrutinize. In this case, I believe they are doing the exact opposite of their jobs: they are protecting Palestinians from scrutiny.”

Commensurate acts of violence by Israelis against Palestinians are relatively few and far between, Ini said. But when they do occur, such as the recent arson attack against a Palestinian home that killed a woman and her baby, they trigger a series of stories about Israeli society and whether it is growing more intolerant.

“We are not seeing the same” stories about racist statements and incitement by Palestinian leaders, he said, and that “warps the world’s view of the conflict.” In addition, journalists go out of their way to “understand roots of anger that drives violence against Israelis.” But in the few instances in which Israelis attack Palestinians, a double standard applies and that same attempts at perspective never materialize.

Besides journalists failing to hold Palestinians accountable for their actions via a deliberate refusal to report on their incitement, there is another byproduct of this one-sided affair. Palestinians end up being rewarded for incitement, terrorism and rampant bloodshed.

France proposed sending an international force to quell tensions on the Temple Mount. UNESCO proposed a resolution making the Western Wall, among Judaism’s most significant sites, to be part of the Al Aqsa mosque. The Palestinian Authority is demanding full control over Jews who visit the Temple Mount.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian narrative receives massive media coverage despite this uprising’s roots in a manifestly fabricated conspiracy. There is no international penalty, no moral condemnation. This all but guarantees that the current wave of stabbings, terrorism and vicious anti-Semitic incitement against Israelis will continue.

Israel must leave the UN

October 22, 2015

Israel must leave the UN, Israel Hayom, Judith Bergman, October 22, 2015

The U.N. is abusive. Just like an abused spouse who is unable to ‎fight back because the abuser is so much bigger, stronger, or simply vicious and uninterested in ‎fostering anything positive in the relationship, Israel needs to face that facts and leave the U.N.‎

***********************

UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization — stated in a ‎resolution on Tuesday that it condemned Israel for what it called the “aggression and illegal ‎measures taken against the freedom of worship and access of Muslims to Al-Aqsa mosque and ‎Israel’s attempts to break the status quo since 1967.” It also “deeply deplores the recent ‎repression in East Jerusalem, and the failure of Israel, the Occupying Power, to cease the ‎persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City.” It ‎also called for “prompt reconstruction of schools, universities, cultural heritage sites, cultural ‎institutions, media centers and places of worship that have been destroyed or damaged by the ‎consecutive Israeli wars on Gaza.” Finally, UNESCO now considers the Cave of the Patriarchs in ‎Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to be Muslim sites.‎

Initially, the resolution had been drafted to include the Western Wall as an Islamic ‎site also, or rather as an extension of Al-Aqsa mosque, but this was dropped after ‎widespread condemnation. Only six countries voted against the resolution — the United States, ‎Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Estonia.‎

One can hardly exaggerate the extent to which UNESCO has lost its way. The organization and most of its member states have been ravaged by utter derangement. For the ‎U.N. to so unequivocally and unabashedly aid the ongoing Arab effort to delegitimize the Jewish ‎connections to Judaism’s holiest sites in Israel is an act of supreme perfidy. ‎

Although it is far from the first time that UNESCO commits this kind of blatant Israel-bashing, ‎the timing of this particular resolution, its duplicitous and smearing content, at a time when ‎Arabs in Israel are stabbing, shooting and car-ramming Jews for sport and celebrating with ‎candies afterward, is beyond anything that civil discourse can properly convey. The resolution ‎amounts to a match being thrown on an already raging fire, further augmenting the incitement ‎and the lies of the Palestinians regarding the Temple Mount.

However, who is truly surprised by this? UNESCO has worked consistently against Israel for over ‎‎40 years and even the current decision to designate Rachel’s Tomb a Muslim site has a very ‎recent precursor. Five years ago, in 2010, UNESCO categorized Rachel’s Tomb as a “Muslim ‎mosque” and criticized Israel’s decision to include both it and the Cave of the Patriarchs in ‎Hebron on its list of national heritage sites. UNESCO furthermore made it clear that it views ‎both sites as Palestinian. Rachel’s Tomb is the third holiest place in Judaism and a Jewish ‎pilgrimage site. It meant nothing to UNESCO that Rachel’s Tomb had never been a mosque. At ‎the time, only the U.S. voted against this absurd decision.‎

What the above means is that the decision to designate the Western Wall as a Muslim site may have ‎been put on ice for now, but that efforts to have it designated as such will certainly be resumed at a more opportune time. ‎

At universities across the world, students are taught that the U.N. is an instrument of world ‎order, a respectable international body of member states who have it as their ultimate goal to ‎follow the precepts of international law. The U.N. Charter is studied diligently by law students ‎everywhere, as if what it says has any meaning at this point in time. Member states prolong the ‎life of this disgrace of an institution by continuing to support it with their citizens’ tax money ‎and diplomats — the more-than-willing executioners of all these shameful policies — give it ‎credibility by treating it as an honorable institution. ‎

The U.N. is an instrument of world disorder and it lost credibility decades ago when it voted to ‎equate Zionism with racism. That vote was instrumental in legitimizing and stoking the anti-‎Semitic hatred that is now sweeping away sanity and decency everywhere, where the latter ‎should rather be the governing norm. ‎

The denigration and dehumanization of Israel and the Jewish people is ongoing and met with ‎general silence or worse — with tacit or explicit approval. The pernicious, perfidious mainstream ‎media reporting of the current terror onslaught and the demonstrations of “solidarity” with the ‎murders of Jews in Israel in Sweden and Denmark recently, as well as on select U.S. university ‎campuses, are ugly and openly skewed and derisive of Israel at a time when anti-Semitic ‎hatred has finally become socially acceptable, even trendy in certain circles.‎

Israel has no need for the U.N. It is the U.N. that needs Israel. If there were no Jewish people, ‎no Israel, the U.N. would have to invent it. Israel needs to turn its back on the U.N. and simply ‎walk away. There can be no “dialogue” with an organization that so openly allies itself with ‎our enemies. ‎

The U.N. is abusive. Just like an abused spouse who is unable to ‎fight back because the abuser is so much bigger, stronger, or simply vicious and uninterested in ‎fostering anything positive in the relationship, Israel needs to face that facts and leave the U.N.‎

Netanyahu accurately describes the Mufti’s role in the Holocaust

October 22, 2015

Netanyahu accurately describes the Mufti’s role in the Holocaustelderofziyon2 via You Tube, October 22, 2015

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olZK97f2U9k

There is Nothing to Negotiate

October 22, 2015

There is Nothing to Negotiate, American ThinkerDan Calic, October 21, 2015

(But shouldn’t Israel commit suicide to satisfy Abbas, the US, the EU, the UN and others? It would be the warm and fuzzy thing to do. — DM)

Some hard realities need to be faced about the Middle East “peace process.” The US, EU, UN and others have said the “settlements” are an obstacle to peace. The Arabs point to the “occupation.”

However, neither of these are the core issue…. and frankly, they never have been. Why? Keep in mind there was no “occupation” or “settlements” in 1948 when the surrounding Arab nations attacked the fledgling Jewish nation one day after declaring independence.

Moreover, where were settlements or occupation in 1967?

So if it isn’t the “occupation,” or “settlements,” what is the real issue? While many consider these to be legitimate issues, the Arabs are using them as a deliberate smokescreen.

The core issue is the Muslim’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist. It’s as simple as that. This is the main reason why the first attempt at a two-state solution (the 1947 UN partition plan) was not successful. The Muslims would not allow a Jewish state on land which they consider theirs. Its size or borders didn’t matter. It was, and remains, its mere existence.

Case in point: in 2000 when Yasser Arafat met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak under the auspicious of President Bill Clinton at Camp David ll, the real Muslim goal became evident.

During those discussions Barak made an unprecedented offer to Arafat. He was willing to turn over 95% of Judea/Samaria, commonly called the “West Bank.” He okayed the return of many of the so-called “refugees” and offered compensation for others. He was willing to split Israel in two by virtue of a contiguous road between Judea/Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

Plus, he offered to divide Jerusalem, which included handing most of the Old City over to the Muslims.

President Clinton felt Barak went above and beyond his expectations in an effort to achieve a breakthrough in the decades old conflict. Yet in the end, Arafat rejected it, without even making a counter offer. Why? An agreement would require compromise, which Muslims viewed as giving in to American demands. From their point of view this was (and remains) unacceptable, thus his rejection of the offer.

President Clinton was furious with Arafat, telling him “I am a failure and you have made me one.”

These days, with Arafat long gone, Mahmoud Abbas is in charge of the PA and considered by the U.S., EU, and others to be “sincere” and a “moderate.” However, very little has changed since the days of Arafat.

In some respect things have worsened. For example Abbas has repeatedly said he will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This in spite of Israel’s repeated willingness to recognize ‘Palestine’ as a state, side by side with Israel.

Abbas’s refusal to accept the Jewish state of Israel is reflective of some longstanding Muslim views.

For example-

  • Muslim thinking has always been once they have controlled someplace, it’s considered theirs forever. It doesn’t matter if they get defeated in war. They view anyone in control of “their” land as “occupiers,” who need to be driven out or destroyed. To back away from this position is seen as compromise, which is unacceptable in Muslim thinking for at least two reasons.
  • Compromise is seen as weakness. Weakness is intolerable in their culture. Keep in mind the Saudi flag contains the official credo of Islam (“there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger”) which includes the image of a sword. The clear inference being they prefer to die upholding their beliefs than live by compromise.
  • Plus, compromise, from a fundamentalist perspective is also viewed as breaking a foundational tenet of the faith. Breaking a tenet of the faith is considered blasphemy, which is punishable by death in Islam.

Mahmoud Abbas has acted in accordance with these views. When one understands how Muslim’s view anyone in control of land they consider theirs, you understand his actions. It also becomes clear the conflict is not about borders. The Jews are seen as “occupiers” of Muslim land. A Jewish state has no right to exist on “Muslim” land.

If there is any doubt of this take a look at the charters of the PLO, Hamas, or Fatah, which is the party Mahmoud Abbas is president of. Moreover, all three, the PLO, Hamas, and Fatah by virtue of their emblems leave no doubt their goal is not a two-state solution. Each emblem shows only one state — Palestine, covering all of Israel. The goal of each group is the complete elimination of Israel. Every inch of land which makes up Israel today is considered “occupied Palestine.”

Why aren’t the voices criticizing Israel for “settlement” activity also demanding the charter of Abbas’s party reflect peaceful co-existence with Israel, instead of its destruction?

In order for a two-state solution to be achieved negotiations are required. Negotiations by their very nature require compromise. How is Israel supposed to negotiate when its very existence is considered unacceptable?

There is nothing to negotiate.

 

An Open Letter to The Guardian About Netanyahu’s Comments on the Mufti and Hitler

October 22, 2015

An Open Letter to The Guardian About Netanyahu’s Comments on the Mufti and Hitler, Algemeiner, Maurice Ostroff, October 21, 2015

I believe you owe your readers an explanation for referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement about the Mufti as “incendiary,” while barely noticing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ truly incendiary statements praising the murderers of Jewish civilians, including children, and his use of hateful rhetoric, including calling for Jews “with their filthy feet” to be banned from entering the Temple Mount.

While Netanyahu’s statement may have been unnecessary and undiplomatic, it was not as absurd as the Guardian and other mainstream media make out. Editors are supposed to check their facts before rushing to publish.

There is no excuse for the Guardian to be ignorant of the Madagascar Plan, which confirms the PM’s assertion that Hitler initially wanted to expel, not exterminate, the Jews.

In 1938, the notorious Adolf Eichmann prepared a report advocating an evacuation plan for 4 million Jews to be shipped to Madagascar. In his paper, “Madagascar Plan,” Christopher Browning quotes Heinrich Himmler in May 1940 stating: “However cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best, if one rejects the Bolshevik method of physical extermination of a people out of inner conviction as un-German and impossible.”

The plan was endorsed by the Third Reich in August 1940.

Damming evidence of the Mufti’s exhortations to exterminate the Jews was presented at the Nurenberg trials by none other than senior Nazi official Dieter Wisliczeny. On September 15, 1947, Drew Pearson, one of the best-known American columnists of his day, quoted Wisliczeny’s evidence in his column, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” as follows:

In my opinion, the grand mufti, who has been in Berlin since 1941 played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution to the Palestinian problem. In is messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he has visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.