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Daled Amos
What I write only has to go so far...Daled Amoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17646808702899584547noreply@blogger.comBlogger12743125
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Let Abbas Know: The Eternal Capital of "Palestine" Isn't Jerusalem, It's Damascus
According to Mahmoud Abbas, Jerusalem is the “eternal capital of the State of Palestine.” Then again, Abbas is the Palestinian Arab dictator whose term in office ended in 2009. Not only do Abbas and the Palestinian Arabs know that Jerusalem is the capital of "Palestine" -- they also think they have a pretty good idea of just what "Palestine" looks like.
Here is the logo of the Fateh Youth Movement. The boundaries of what they call "Palestine" are basically the borders of Israel, except that they also include Gaza and the West Bank.
Not surprisingly, that map bears little resemblance to reality -- not because they are trying to co-opt the State of Israel, but because there was no country called Palestine that corresponds to that map.
For example, in his article "Palestine: On The History and Geography of a Name," Bernard Lewis writes about the borders of the area that bears that name. And those borders were forever changing:
During the later Roman and Byzantine periods a number of changes were made, in the course of which Roman Palestine was extended by the annexation to it of neighbouring territories and then subdivided. Under Diocletian, the province of Arabia, founded by the Emperor Trajan in the year 105, was attached to Palestine, but in 358 this area, consisting of the Negev and southern Transjordan, was constituted a separate province and named Palestina Salutaris. In about 400 ad, Palestine proper was split into two provinces known respectively as Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda, while Palestina Salutaris was renamed Palestina TertiaHow convenient: three Palestines!
Source: Wikipedia. Uploaded by Haldrik
In this setup you had:
o Palestina Prima - included Judaea and Samaria, including Edom and extending east into Transjordan. Its capital was was Caesarea.
o Palestina Secunda - included the valley of Esdraelon, Galilee, northern Transjordan, and the Golan area, Its capital was in Scythopolis (Beth Shean)
o Palestina Tertia - included the Negev, southern Transjordan, and part of Sinai. Its capital was at PetraThree Palestines - but no capital in Jerusalem.
After the Muslim invasion and conquest of the area, there were some changes made.
Lewis explains:
After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the new masters of the country seem substantially to have retained the existing administrative subdivisions; Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda remained but with new names and new capitals. The first became Filastin, an obvious Arabic adaptation of the Roman name, and was administered first from Lydda and later from Ramla. Palestina Secunda was called Urdunn, that is, Jordan, after the river, and had its capital at Tiberias. Jerusalem, which in the earliest Arabic texts is referred to by its Roman name of Aelia, was not a provincial or even a district seat of government [emphasis added].Bottom line, during this period of Muslim rule, there was still no capital in Jerusalem, and no independent country called Palestine either:
In early medieval Arabic usage, Filastin and Urdunn were subdistricts forming part of the greater geographical entity known as Syria or, to use the Arabic term, the land of Sham. [emphasis added]
This subservient status of Palestine existed not only under the Romans but also under the Byzantine Empire and Muslim rule as well - until the Crusaders conquered the land. Then that changed:
During the period of the Crusades, the name Palestine or Filastin fell into disuse. The Muslims no longer administered it, and the Crusaders preferred to call the country which they had conquered the Holy Land and the state which they had established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.Finally, Jerusalem got some recognition -- but it was not by the Muslims.
Later, after the Muslims recaptured the land back from the Crusaders, there were still more re-divisions of the land.
After the Muslim reconquest, the names Filastin and Urdunn disappear from administrative usage. Under the successors of Saladin and still more under the Mamluks who ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, the country was redistributed in new territorial units, usually known by the names of towns which were district administrative centres. [emphasis added]That last point is important: From this point going forward, there was no Filastin or Palestine.
The name Filastin or Palestine...had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative sub-district and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.So who did use the word 'Palestine'?
The word became widely adopted in the Christian world. During The Renaissance, there was a revival of interest in classical antiquity and as a result, the Roman name Palestine became the common word used to describe the country in most European languages. And under the British, the word was again used to refer to that area bordering on both sides of the Jordan River - for the first time since the early Middle Ages.
Under Arab rule, the area kept being divided and re-divided. Just to give you an idea of the state of flux in the area:
o At one point the areas on the two banks of the Jordan were divided into six districts with their capitals in Gaza, Lydda, Qaqun, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, all six districts forming part of the province of Sham, with its capital in Damascus. (Jerusalem was finally a capital - a district capital - with the actual capital in Damascus.)
o At certain times Gaza and Lydda became separate provinces.
o During the late Mamluk period, most of Palestine seems to have been divided into the Niyabas (lieutenancies) of Gaza and Safed. The Niyaba of Safed included much of what today is south Lebanon, with the districts of Tyre and Tibnin. All these were still under the rule of Damascus.
o After the Ottoman conquest in 1516-17, the country was divided into the Ottoman administrative districts (Sanjak) of Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Safed west of the Jordan and Ajlun in Transjordan. An additional district, Lajjun on the west bank, was later added. All these again were subject to the authority of Damascus.
o These districts were from time to time subdivided and rearranged during the four centuries of Ottoman rule.
o In the last phase, before the British took over, the center and north of the country were part of the vilayet of Beirut, while the Transjordan was made part of the vilayet of Damascus and the rest of "Palestine" became the indepedent district of Jerusalem -- independent in this case meaning it was directly dependent on the capital in Damascas, but not subject to any of the Pashas of the surrounding provinces.By 1887-1888, the map of the area looked like this:
Source: Wikipedia. Map by Tallicfan20 based off of Efraim Karsh's Palestine Betrayed
There was never a sovereign country called "Palestine" matching the maps that Abbas and Fatah like to parade around. In the end, there was a district called Jerusalem, taking up a portion of what the Palestinian Arabs claim as their state.
As far as capitals go, there were so many -- usually subject to the authority in Damascus -- that if anything, instead of being the eternal capital of "Palestine," Jerusalem was the ephemeral capital of a very truncated district in an area in part of Palestine.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Here is the logo of the Fateh Youth Movement. The boundaries of what they call "Palestine" are basically the borders of Israel, except that they also include Gaza and the West Bank.
Not surprisingly, that map bears little resemblance to reality -- not because they are trying to co-opt the State of Israel, but because there was no country called Palestine that corresponds to that map.
For example, in his article "Palestine: On The History and Geography of a Name," Bernard Lewis writes about the borders of the area that bears that name. And those borders were forever changing:
During the later Roman and Byzantine periods a number of changes were made, in the course of which Roman Palestine was extended by the annexation to it of neighbouring territories and then subdivided. Under Diocletian, the province of Arabia, founded by the Emperor Trajan in the year 105, was attached to Palestine, but in 358 this area, consisting of the Negev and southern Transjordan, was constituted a separate province and named Palestina Salutaris. In about 400 ad, Palestine proper was split into two provinces known respectively as Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda, while Palestina Salutaris was renamed Palestina TertiaHow convenient: three Palestines!
Source: Wikipedia. Uploaded by Haldrik
In this setup you had:
o Palestina Prima - included Judaea and Samaria, including Edom and extending east into Transjordan. Its capital was was Caesarea.
o Palestina Secunda - included the valley of Esdraelon, Galilee, northern Transjordan, and the Golan area, Its capital was in Scythopolis (Beth Shean)
o Palestina Tertia - included the Negev, southern Transjordan, and part of Sinai. Its capital was at PetraThree Palestines - but no capital in Jerusalem.
After the Muslim invasion and conquest of the area, there were some changes made.
Lewis explains:
After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the new masters of the country seem substantially to have retained the existing administrative subdivisions; Palestina Prima and Palestina Secunda remained but with new names and new capitals. The first became Filastin, an obvious Arabic adaptation of the Roman name, and was administered first from Lydda and later from Ramla. Palestina Secunda was called Urdunn, that is, Jordan, after the river, and had its capital at Tiberias. Jerusalem, which in the earliest Arabic texts is referred to by its Roman name of Aelia, was not a provincial or even a district seat of government [emphasis added].Bottom line, during this period of Muslim rule, there was still no capital in Jerusalem, and no independent country called Palestine either:
In early medieval Arabic usage, Filastin and Urdunn were subdistricts forming part of the greater geographical entity known as Syria or, to use the Arabic term, the land of Sham. [emphasis added]
This subservient status of Palestine existed not only under the Romans but also under the Byzantine Empire and Muslim rule as well - until the Crusaders conquered the land. Then that changed:
During the period of the Crusades, the name Palestine or Filastin fell into disuse. The Muslims no longer administered it, and the Crusaders preferred to call the country which they had conquered the Holy Land and the state which they had established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.Finally, Jerusalem got some recognition -- but it was not by the Muslims.
Later, after the Muslims recaptured the land back from the Crusaders, there were still more re-divisions of the land.
After the Muslim reconquest, the names Filastin and Urdunn disappear from administrative usage. Under the successors of Saladin and still more under the Mamluks who ruled from the mid-thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, the country was redistributed in new territorial units, usually known by the names of towns which were district administrative centres. [emphasis added]That last point is important: From this point going forward, there was no Filastin or Palestine.
The name Filastin or Palestine...had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative sub-district and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.So who did use the word 'Palestine'?
The word became widely adopted in the Christian world. During The Renaissance, there was a revival of interest in classical antiquity and as a result, the Roman name Palestine became the common word used to describe the country in most European languages. And under the British, the word was again used to refer to that area bordering on both sides of the Jordan River - for the first time since the early Middle Ages.
Under Arab rule, the area kept being divided and re-divided. Just to give you an idea of the state of flux in the area:
o At one point the areas on the two banks of the Jordan were divided into six districts with their capitals in Gaza, Lydda, Qaqun, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, all six districts forming part of the province of Sham, with its capital in Damascus. (Jerusalem was finally a capital - a district capital - with the actual capital in Damascus.)
o At certain times Gaza and Lydda became separate provinces.
o During the late Mamluk period, most of Palestine seems to have been divided into the Niyabas (lieutenancies) of Gaza and Safed. The Niyaba of Safed included much of what today is south Lebanon, with the districts of Tyre and Tibnin. All these were still under the rule of Damascus.
o After the Ottoman conquest in 1516-17, the country was divided into the Ottoman administrative districts (Sanjak) of Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Safed west of the Jordan and Ajlun in Transjordan. An additional district, Lajjun on the west bank, was later added. All these again were subject to the authority of Damascus.
o These districts were from time to time subdivided and rearranged during the four centuries of Ottoman rule.
o In the last phase, before the British took over, the center and north of the country were part of the vilayet of Beirut, while the Transjordan was made part of the vilayet of Damascus and the rest of "Palestine" became the indepedent district of Jerusalem -- independent in this case meaning it was directly dependent on the capital in Damascas, but not subject to any of the Pashas of the surrounding provinces.By 1887-1888, the map of the area looked like this:
Source: Wikipedia. Map by Tallicfan20 based off of Efraim Karsh's Palestine Betrayed
There was never a sovereign country called "Palestine" matching the maps that Abbas and Fatah like to parade around. In the end, there was a district called Jerusalem, taking up a portion of what the Palestinian Arabs claim as their state.
As far as capitals go, there were so many -- usually subject to the authority in Damascus -- that if anything, instead of being the eternal capital of "Palestine," Jerusalem was the ephemeral capital of a very truncated district in an area in part of Palestine.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
Do You Really Want To Argue That Israel Stole The Hora From The Palestinians?
Last week, The New York Times entered the world of dance.
In an interview, Israeli-American choreographer Hadar Ahuvia talked about her latest work - Everything you have is yours? To Ahuvia, that is no idle question. She is the granddaughter of Eastern European Jews who came to Israel -- and then years later, her parents moved with her to Florida and then Hawaii. Ahuvia has developed an interest in what she sees as the Israeli mimicking of Palestinian Arab culture.
Ahuvia touched on this in her interview:
One issue you explore is cultural appropriation, how the pioneers of Israeli folk dance, mostly Eastern European women, drew from social dance forms like Palestinian dabke.
It’s well-documented that these women went to Palestinian villages and watched them dancing and felt they held the steps for what new Israeli dances could be. And so they borrowed steps and wrote new music and created dances that were directly synchronous to the new music, and in this way it becomes a new Israeli dance.
This was their way of participating in the nation-building and what for them was this revolutionary moment. I don’t think that cultural exchange is bad, but I think it’s about the context of whose narratives get told and seen.In a guest post she wrote for a blog, four days after the interview, Ahuvia goes further:
Increasingly our home [in Florida and Hawaii] began to mimic the Arab essence that is claimed as fundamentally Israeli. Hummus, tahini, olive oil zaatar, pita, baklava. And beside the Palestinian shepherd salad, the syncopated dabke and Yemenite steps, Turkish and Druz inspired melodies of early Hebrew songs and their synchronous dances. These kept us marinating in a Mediterranean Israeli identity, our distinction from the American Ashkenazi diaspora encroaching on us-- ameripoop-- treacherously symbolized by applesauce on latkes.Ira Stoll, who writes a column for Algemeiner dedicated to exposing examples of New York Times bias, addresses how New York Times Accuses Jews of Stealing Folkdances From Palestinian Arabs.
Stoll addresses the one-sided view presented by the interview and supplies context with the opposing view ignored by the New York Times:
o Former New York Times correspondent David K. Shipler, in his 1986 book Arab and Jew, also wrote about the accusation of cultural theft. He quotes a Ibrahim Kareen of East Jerusalem who claims, “The Israelis have stolen a lot of Palestinian culture...For instance, many dances. The Hora. This is Palestinian. Many dishes.” But Shipler goes a step further and writes, "The roots of folk dance are old and tangled, and while the Hora does bear resemblance to Arab dances, the origins are too deeply buried for any side to make clear proprietary claims.” o According to the Jewish Women’s Archive article on the history of Israeli Folk Dance, "During the Second and Third Aliyah periods, between 1904 and 1923, the halutzim danced only dances that they had brought with them from the Diaspora — the Horah, Polka, Krakowiak, Czerkassiya and Rondo, with the Horah becoming the national dance." o According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Israeli folk dance is “an amalgam of Jewish and non-Jewish folk dance forms from many parts of the world,” describing the Hora as Romanian, and then continues that “Widespread enthusiasm for dance followed, bringing with it the creation of a multifaceted folk dance genre set to popular Israeli songs, incorporating motifs such as the Arab debka, as well as dance elements ranging from North American jazz and Latin American rhythms to the cadences typical of Mediterranean countries.”We can even go a little further.
The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance has a list of dances and their countries of origin. It includes the dabke. Not surprisingly, the dance is not a Palestinian dance -- it is an Arab dance.
And that fact does not negate the Jewish cultural history of the Jewish dance, The Hora:
(pages 138-139)
According to this, if the Palestinian Arabs are going to accuse Jews of stealing their dance, they will just have to stand in line -- behind Rome, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Georgia and Russia.
The Hora, as featured on stamp of Moldova
Interestingly, according to this encyclopedia, the similarities of the Hora to the dabke are attributed to external flourishes to a dance that was already adopted.
All this raises the question of whether the Palestinian Arabs have ever copied anything from the Jews.
Daniel Pipes answers yes.
In Mirror Image: How the PLO Mimics Zionism, Pipes writes that "Palestinian nationalists have time and again modeled their institutions, ideas, and practices on the Zionist movement. This ironic tribute means that the peculiar nature of the PLO can be understood only with reference to its Zionist inspiration."
The similarities go beyond copying the purpose of the organization, such as the National Association of Arab-Americans emulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Some Palestinian organizations mimic the original Zionist organization as well:
Palestinian OrganizationZionist OrganizationAnti-Discrimination CommitteeAnti-Defamation Leaguethe Holy Land Fundthe Jewish National Fundthe United Palestinian Appealthe United Jewish Appeal
Pipes writes that the emulation goes beyond organizations and agencies:
o Palestinian Arabs sometimes refer to themselves as the "Jews of the Middle East"
o They claim that like Jews, they suffer prejudice, dispossession and expulsion despite being more educated than the majority population
o Just as Jews were thrown out of multiple countries, they were forced out of Jordon, Lebanon and Kuwait in only 20 years
o Palestinian Arabs claim their treatment by Israel is analogous to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust
o The Palestinian claim to a "Right of Return" mimics the Israeli "Law of Return"And then, of course, there is Jerusalem:
Jerusalem is the only capital of a Jewish state, as well as a unique city in Jewish history, religion, and emotions. In contrast, the city is so minor in Islam, it is not even once mentioned in the Qur'an. Nor did it ever serve as a political capital or cultural center...But based on what Israel has been able to accomplish, it is not surprising how far the Palestinian Arabs have gone in order to copy the very Zionists they condemn. The Jews wanted a state, the re-establishment of the Jewish state, so they were not content just to live off of the land.
The Jewish accomplishment during the Mandatory period was indeed impressive: by developing the Jewish Agency into a proto-state institution, Zionists created the bases for the full-fledged government that emerged in 1948. They already had a political authority, a military wing, an educational system, a mechanism to distribute welfare, and so forth. In contrast, Palestinians failed to match these institutions, and so found themselves disorganized when the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948...In effect, the Palestinians are trying half a century later to make up for their mistakes of the Mandatory period.But we can go a step further. More than what Zionism inspired in Palestinian Arabs in the 20th century, what have Jews contributed to Arabs in general, and to Islamic culture overall, over the generations?
Could be quite a bit.
In Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, Shmuel Katz quotes Philip K. Hitti, a Lebanese American professor and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history. Hitti writes in his History of the Arabs
But when we speak of 'Arab medicine' or 'Arab philosophy' or 'Arab mathematics', we do not mean the medical science, philosophy or mathematics that are necessarily the product of the Arabian mind or developed by people living in the Arabian peninsula, but that body of knowledge enshrined in books written in the Arabic language by men who flourished chiefly during the caliphate and were themselves Persians, Egyptians or Arabians, Christian, Jewish or Moslem.
Indeed, even what we call 'Arabic literature' was no more Arabian than the Latin literature of the Middle Age was Italian...Even such disciplines as philosophy linguistics, lexicography and grammar, which were primarily Arabian in origin and spirit and in which the Arabs made their chief original contribution, recruited some of their most distinguished scholars from the non-Arab stock (Battleground, p. 111)Bernard Lewis writes similarly in his book, The Arabs in History:
The use of the adjective Arab to describe the various facets of this civilisation has often been challenged on the grounds that the contribution to "Arab medicine", "Arab philosophy", etc, of those who were of Arab descent was relatively small. Even the use of the word Muslim is criticised, since so many of the architects of this culture were Christians and Jews.
During the period of greatness of the Arab and Islamic Empires in the Near and Middle East a flourishing civilisation grew up that is usually known as Arabic. It was not brought ready-made by the Arab invaders from the desert, but was created after the conquests by the collaboration of many peoples, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians and others. Nor was it even purely Muslim, for many Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were among its creators. (p.14, 131)With all that shared history and shared culture over 1,400 years, maybe the Arabs can share a dance or a falafel for old times sake.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
In an interview, Israeli-American choreographer Hadar Ahuvia talked about her latest work - Everything you have is yours? To Ahuvia, that is no idle question. She is the granddaughter of Eastern European Jews who came to Israel -- and then years later, her parents moved with her to Florida and then Hawaii. Ahuvia has developed an interest in what she sees as the Israeli mimicking of Palestinian Arab culture.
Ahuvia touched on this in her interview:
One issue you explore is cultural appropriation, how the pioneers of Israeli folk dance, mostly Eastern European women, drew from social dance forms like Palestinian dabke.
It’s well-documented that these women went to Palestinian villages and watched them dancing and felt they held the steps for what new Israeli dances could be. And so they borrowed steps and wrote new music and created dances that were directly synchronous to the new music, and in this way it becomes a new Israeli dance.
This was their way of participating in the nation-building and what for them was this revolutionary moment. I don’t think that cultural exchange is bad, but I think it’s about the context of whose narratives get told and seen.In a guest post she wrote for a blog, four days after the interview, Ahuvia goes further:
Increasingly our home [in Florida and Hawaii] began to mimic the Arab essence that is claimed as fundamentally Israeli. Hummus, tahini, olive oil zaatar, pita, baklava. And beside the Palestinian shepherd salad, the syncopated dabke and Yemenite steps, Turkish and Druz inspired melodies of early Hebrew songs and their synchronous dances. These kept us marinating in a Mediterranean Israeli identity, our distinction from the American Ashkenazi diaspora encroaching on us-- ameripoop-- treacherously symbolized by applesauce on latkes.Ira Stoll, who writes a column for Algemeiner dedicated to exposing examples of New York Times bias, addresses how New York Times Accuses Jews of Stealing Folkdances From Palestinian Arabs.
Stoll addresses the one-sided view presented by the interview and supplies context with the opposing view ignored by the New York Times:
o Former New York Times correspondent David K. Shipler, in his 1986 book Arab and Jew, also wrote about the accusation of cultural theft. He quotes a Ibrahim Kareen of East Jerusalem who claims, “The Israelis have stolen a lot of Palestinian culture...For instance, many dances. The Hora. This is Palestinian. Many dishes.” But Shipler goes a step further and writes, "The roots of folk dance are old and tangled, and while the Hora does bear resemblance to Arab dances, the origins are too deeply buried for any side to make clear proprietary claims.” o According to the Jewish Women’s Archive article on the history of Israeli Folk Dance, "During the Second and Third Aliyah periods, between 1904 and 1923, the halutzim danced only dances that they had brought with them from the Diaspora — the Horah, Polka, Krakowiak, Czerkassiya and Rondo, with the Horah becoming the national dance." o According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Israeli folk dance is “an amalgam of Jewish and non-Jewish folk dance forms from many parts of the world,” describing the Hora as Romanian, and then continues that “Widespread enthusiasm for dance followed, bringing with it the creation of a multifaceted folk dance genre set to popular Israeli songs, incorporating motifs such as the Arab debka, as well as dance elements ranging from North American jazz and Latin American rhythms to the cadences typical of Mediterranean countries.”We can even go a little further.
The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance has a list of dances and their countries of origin. It includes the dabke. Not surprisingly, the dance is not a Palestinian dance -- it is an Arab dance.
And that fact does not negate the Jewish cultural history of the Jewish dance, The Hora:
(pages 138-139)
According to this, if the Palestinian Arabs are going to accuse Jews of stealing their dance, they will just have to stand in line -- behind Rome, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Georgia and Russia.
The Hora, as featured on stamp of Moldova
Interestingly, according to this encyclopedia, the similarities of the Hora to the dabke are attributed to external flourishes to a dance that was already adopted.
All this raises the question of whether the Palestinian Arabs have ever copied anything from the Jews.
Daniel Pipes answers yes.
In Mirror Image: How the PLO Mimics Zionism, Pipes writes that "Palestinian nationalists have time and again modeled their institutions, ideas, and practices on the Zionist movement. This ironic tribute means that the peculiar nature of the PLO can be understood only with reference to its Zionist inspiration."
The similarities go beyond copying the purpose of the organization, such as the National Association of Arab-Americans emulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Some Palestinian organizations mimic the original Zionist organization as well:
Palestinian OrganizationZionist OrganizationAnti-Discrimination CommitteeAnti-Defamation Leaguethe Holy Land Fundthe Jewish National Fundthe United Palestinian Appealthe United Jewish Appeal
Pipes writes that the emulation goes beyond organizations and agencies:
o Palestinian Arabs sometimes refer to themselves as the "Jews of the Middle East"
o They claim that like Jews, they suffer prejudice, dispossession and expulsion despite being more educated than the majority population
o Just as Jews were thrown out of multiple countries, they were forced out of Jordon, Lebanon and Kuwait in only 20 years
o Palestinian Arabs claim their treatment by Israel is analogous to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust
o The Palestinian claim to a "Right of Return" mimics the Israeli "Law of Return"And then, of course, there is Jerusalem:
Jerusalem is the only capital of a Jewish state, as well as a unique city in Jewish history, religion, and emotions. In contrast, the city is so minor in Islam, it is not even once mentioned in the Qur'an. Nor did it ever serve as a political capital or cultural center...But based on what Israel has been able to accomplish, it is not surprising how far the Palestinian Arabs have gone in order to copy the very Zionists they condemn. The Jews wanted a state, the re-establishment of the Jewish state, so they were not content just to live off of the land.
The Jewish accomplishment during the Mandatory period was indeed impressive: by developing the Jewish Agency into a proto-state institution, Zionists created the bases for the full-fledged government that emerged in 1948. They already had a political authority, a military wing, an educational system, a mechanism to distribute welfare, and so forth. In contrast, Palestinians failed to match these institutions, and so found themselves disorganized when the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948...In effect, the Palestinians are trying half a century later to make up for their mistakes of the Mandatory period.But we can go a step further. More than what Zionism inspired in Palestinian Arabs in the 20th century, what have Jews contributed to Arabs in general, and to Islamic culture overall, over the generations?
Could be quite a bit.
In Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, Shmuel Katz quotes Philip K. Hitti, a Lebanese American professor and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history. Hitti writes in his History of the Arabs
But when we speak of 'Arab medicine' or 'Arab philosophy' or 'Arab mathematics', we do not mean the medical science, philosophy or mathematics that are necessarily the product of the Arabian mind or developed by people living in the Arabian peninsula, but that body of knowledge enshrined in books written in the Arabic language by men who flourished chiefly during the caliphate and were themselves Persians, Egyptians or Arabians, Christian, Jewish or Moslem.
Indeed, even what we call 'Arabic literature' was no more Arabian than the Latin literature of the Middle Age was Italian...Even such disciplines as philosophy linguistics, lexicography and grammar, which were primarily Arabian in origin and spirit and in which the Arabs made their chief original contribution, recruited some of their most distinguished scholars from the non-Arab stock (Battleground, p. 111)Bernard Lewis writes similarly in his book, The Arabs in History:
The use of the adjective Arab to describe the various facets of this civilisation has often been challenged on the grounds that the contribution to "Arab medicine", "Arab philosophy", etc, of those who were of Arab descent was relatively small. Even the use of the word Muslim is criticised, since so many of the architects of this culture were Christians and Jews.
During the period of greatness of the Arab and Islamic Empires in the Near and Middle East a flourishing civilisation grew up that is usually known as Arabic. It was not brought ready-made by the Arab invaders from the desert, but was created after the conquests by the collaboration of many peoples, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians and others. Nor was it even purely Muslim, for many Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians were among its creators. (p.14, 131)With all that shared history and shared culture over 1,400 years, maybe the Arabs can share a dance or a falafel for old times sake.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
Is 2017 The Year That European-Style Antisemitism Arrived In The US?
The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews."
From Hamas Charter, as recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim
It is no secret that there are Palestinian Arab imams preaching hate against Israel and against Jews.
It is not even surprising that this preaching of hatred has expanded to outside the Middle East, and has found a home in Europe, where the favorite Hadith of Hamas can be heard, promising the death of Jews.
What is surprising is that last year Muslim Antisemitism, with all its vitriolic hatred, has found its way into the US. It is not as if Antisemitism did not already exist. It's just that generally it has not been as out in the open nor expressed as violently as we have seen it elsewhere.
After all, year after year we read the polls in the US showing much stronger support for Israel than for the Palestinian Arabs who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. We have gotten used to the idea that life for Jews in the US is different than what it is like in Europe.
Or maybe we have just gotten complacent.
Looking back, 2017 brought with it something that we are not used to. At the same time, the media, which started off 2017 acting as if it was on the lookout for any case of antisemitism, soon proved that it was only interested in cases of antisemitism that could be traced to Trump.
By the end of the year, we didn't realize what hit us around the country.
For example, on July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:
The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: ...Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind meShahin quoted from the Hadith, leaving out that the trees will call out to the Muslims to come kill the Jew hiding behind it -- but his audience knew what he meant.
On that same day, Imam Mahmoud Harmoush was also nciting hatred - in Riverside, California:
The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims.
On July 24, the Islamic Center of Tennessee, in Antioch, Tennessee, posted a video on their YouTube channel. It is a Friday sermon delivered by Somali-American Imam AhmedulHadi Sharif. He told his congregants that "the Zionists" are the "number one terrorists in the world," who had "kidnapped" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharif went so far as to say that "if we lose Jerusalem - know that it is not going to stop there... The enemies of Allah will come and try to destroy the Kaaba."
On Friday, December 8, 2017 Imam Abdullah Khadra delivered an antisemitic sermon in a mosque in the Raleigh, NC area. Khadra recites the entire Hadith at 2:37, making clear that Muslims will kill Jews.
Here is Imam Raed Saleh Al Rousan on December 8, also quoting what apparently is an imam's favorite Hadith:
If Al Rousan makes you feel ill at ease -- don't worry. He later apologized for making you feel uncomfortable with his quoting the Hadith about how Muslims will kill the Jews:
Feel better now?
On December 8, during a sermon in Jersey City, NJ, among other things, Imam Aymen Elkasaby told his congreganats that the Al Aqsa mosque was "under the feet of the apes and the pigs, in reference to Israel.
The good news about Elkasaby is that he is going into "rehab":
Ahmed Shedeed said that Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, would be meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him,” following sermons in which Elkasaby called for the murder of Jews and attacked the west for having made Muslims the “tail-end of all nations.”
“This is like sending someone to rehab,” Shedeed, the Islamic Center’s president, told The Algemeiner when asked whether Elkasaby would be dismissed from the imam’s position...“There are extremists in the Jewish, Christian and Buddhist religions and everything can be taken in the wrong way,” Shedeed said.Even with popular backlash, these imams were able to escape serious consequences for their actions.
We can expect more of these kinds of sermons in 2018.
-----
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From Hamas Charter, as recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim
It is no secret that there are Palestinian Arab imams preaching hate against Israel and against Jews.
It is not even surprising that this preaching of hatred has expanded to outside the Middle East, and has found a home in Europe, where the favorite Hadith of Hamas can be heard, promising the death of Jews.
What is surprising is that last year Muslim Antisemitism, with all its vitriolic hatred, has found its way into the US. It is not as if Antisemitism did not already exist. It's just that generally it has not been as out in the open nor expressed as violently as we have seen it elsewhere.
After all, year after year we read the polls in the US showing much stronger support for Israel than for the Palestinian Arabs who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. We have gotten used to the idea that life for Jews in the US is different than what it is like in Europe.
Or maybe we have just gotten complacent.
Looking back, 2017 brought with it something that we are not used to. At the same time, the media, which started off 2017 acting as if it was on the lookout for any case of antisemitism, soon proved that it was only interested in cases of antisemitism that could be traced to Trump.
By the end of the year, we didn't realize what hit us around the country.
For example, on July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:
The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: ...Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind meShahin quoted from the Hadith, leaving out that the trees will call out to the Muslims to come kill the Jew hiding behind it -- but his audience knew what he meant.
On that same day, Imam Mahmoud Harmoush was also nciting hatred - in Riverside, California:
The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims.
On July 24, the Islamic Center of Tennessee, in Antioch, Tennessee, posted a video on their YouTube channel. It is a Friday sermon delivered by Somali-American Imam AhmedulHadi Sharif. He told his congregants that "the Zionists" are the "number one terrorists in the world," who had "kidnapped" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharif went so far as to say that "if we lose Jerusalem - know that it is not going to stop there... The enemies of Allah will come and try to destroy the Kaaba."
On Friday, December 8, 2017 Imam Abdullah Khadra delivered an antisemitic sermon in a mosque in the Raleigh, NC area. Khadra recites the entire Hadith at 2:37, making clear that Muslims will kill Jews.
Here is Imam Raed Saleh Al Rousan on December 8, also quoting what apparently is an imam's favorite Hadith:
If Al Rousan makes you feel ill at ease -- don't worry. He later apologized for making you feel uncomfortable with his quoting the Hadith about how Muslims will kill the Jews:
Feel better now?
On December 8, during a sermon in Jersey City, NJ, among other things, Imam Aymen Elkasaby told his congreganats that the Al Aqsa mosque was "under the feet of the apes and the pigs, in reference to Israel.
The good news about Elkasaby is that he is going into "rehab":
Ahmed Shedeed said that Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, would be meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him,” following sermons in which Elkasaby called for the murder of Jews and attacked the west for having made Muslims the “tail-end of all nations.”
“This is like sending someone to rehab,” Shedeed, the Islamic Center’s president, told The Algemeiner when asked whether Elkasaby would be dismissed from the imam’s position...“There are extremists in the Jewish, Christian and Buddhist religions and everything can be taken in the wrong way,” Shedeed said.Even with popular backlash, these imams were able to escape serious consequences for their actions.
We can expect more of these kinds of sermons in 2018.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Iranian Protests Show Iran Needn't Be More Palestinian Than The Palestinians Themselves
As the Iranian protests continue, one of the signs of just how serious the protesters are is what they are chanting in public about their government:
“Death to Dictator” “Death to Rouhani” "Death to Khamenei" and “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul”.
Clearly, the extent of the anger of the protesters goes beyond removing an individual leader -- some want a complete change in government that would return Iran to the way things were before Khomeini and the Islamic revolution.
Here is another anti-government chant opposing Iranian machinations outside of the country:
#BreakingNews
Dec 30 - #Kermanshah, #Iran
People chanting "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran"#IranProtests #تظاهرات_سراسرى pic.twitter.com/UBRKWnt0Ds— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) December 30, 2017
This was tweeted by Heshmat Alavi, a political and human rights activist who has written for Forbes, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Gatestone Institute.
While "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Israel, it does illustrate less than enthusiastic support for the Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas terror attacks in particular.
But that in itself is not really anything new.
In 2009, Iranian-born conservative author Amir Taheri wrote in his book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution:
Since [the crushing of the protest in] 1999, Iran has witnessed countless student demonstrations and protests. In hundreds of resolutions passed during mass gatherings, students have challenged virtually every aspect of the Khomeinist ideology and the regime's domestic and foreign policies. One typical resolution passed repeatedly states that the people of Iran do not desire the destruction of Israel and do seek close and friendly relations with the United States. Every year in July, students mark the anniversary of the 1999 events. On October 8, 2007, students in Tehran greeted Ahmadinejad with cries of "Down with the Dictator" and "Forget about Palestine! Think about Us," forcing him to run away briefly with the help of his bodyguards. [emphasis added]Four years earlier, in 2005, The New York Times reported that Iran's hard line on Israel was not unaminmous:
Beset by practical concerns such as double-digit inflation and unemployment, Iran's youthful population is well aware of the fact that the ideological hubris of their parents' generation - often a half-baked hodgepodge of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, Islamism, and Marxism - has borne the country little fruit apart from a soiled international reputation and political and economic isolation. During the 2003 summer student protests, one popular slogan, delivered in lilting Persian, was "forget about Palestine, think about us!" [emphasis added]The article was written by Karim Sadjadpour, currently an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sadjadpour and Takeyh go on to write:
There exists no inherent reason why the Israeli-Palestinian struggle should be an overriding concern to the average Iranian. Iran has no territorial disputes with Israel, no Palestinian refugee problem, a long history of contentious relations with the Arab world, and an even longer history of tolerance vis-à-vis the Jewish people. To this day, the Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.Ironically, in 2005 this article was claiming that based on the troubled relationship between Iran and the Arab world, it was Iran -- not the Saudis -- that should have been drawn into an alliance with Israel.
They summarized the position that Iran need not be so supportive of the Palestinian Arabs in the words of one reformist leader that:
"We shouldn't be chanting 'death to Israel'; we should be saying 'long live Palestine.' We needn't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."Clearly, things have not worked out that way so far -- this despite the fact that 2 years earlier, in 2003, an article in The New Republic and republished in The Jewish World Review was saying the same thing and was asking Is Iran rethinking its position on Israel? It suggested that
though the West still thinks of Iran as a cauldron of anti-Israel passion, a new generation of pro-democracy Iranians increasingly speaks out against the government's seeming obsession with the Palestinians.From the way the article describes it, even "conservatives" in the Iranian government were apparently seeing the light. You would expect a very different situation from the one currently going on during the past few days.
The article examines why things were potentially so promising:
several senior conservatives have quietly joined the chorus, hinting that Iran's support for terrorist groups opposed to Israel is negotiable. According to one senior conservative official, "Iran's policy in the Middle East and the peace process is not beyond the realm of possibilities that can be discussed, given a dialogue with the United States." Translation from Islamic Republic-speak: We can talk turkey on Israel/Palestine. Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University professor with close ties to conservative officials, underscored this view earlier this year, when he told the U.S.-funded Radio Farda Persian service that Iran understands Washington's concerns about Tehran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. President Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who has long argued that Iran should not interfere in any agreements made between Israel and the Palestinians, is unlikely to quibble with the conservatives.So what happened?
While Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, was president in 2003, by 2005 a new president was elected: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and the rest is history.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credit: Farzad Khorasani
Source: Wikimedia Commons
While he did not single-handedly stem the supposedly growing tide of reform, Ahmadinejad did represent the interests of the hard-liners.
For now, it is impossible to say whether the current protests will be put down and crushed as were the student protests in 1999 and the election protests in 2009. Even if successful, they are not about to change Iran overnight into a friend of Israel reminiscent of the reign of the Shah of Iran. Instead, it has been suggested that the current unrest will keep the government occupied and reduce the possibility of conflict between the two countries, especially along the Syrian border, at least for a while.
But beyond that, the idea that Iranian animosity towards Israel is not hardwired, may perhaps hold promise for some point in the forseeable future.
-----
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“Death to Dictator” “Death to Rouhani” "Death to Khamenei" and “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul”.
Clearly, the extent of the anger of the protesters goes beyond removing an individual leader -- some want a complete change in government that would return Iran to the way things were before Khomeini and the Islamic revolution.
Here is another anti-government chant opposing Iranian machinations outside of the country:
#BreakingNews
Dec 30 - #Kermanshah, #Iran
People chanting "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran"#IranProtests #تظاهرات_سراسرى pic.twitter.com/UBRKWnt0Ds— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) December 30, 2017
This was tweeted by Heshmat Alavi, a political and human rights activist who has written for Forbes, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Gatestone Institute.
While "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Israel, it does illustrate less than enthusiastic support for the Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas terror attacks in particular.
But that in itself is not really anything new.
In 2009, Iranian-born conservative author Amir Taheri wrote in his book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution:
Since [the crushing of the protest in] 1999, Iran has witnessed countless student demonstrations and protests. In hundreds of resolutions passed during mass gatherings, students have challenged virtually every aspect of the Khomeinist ideology and the regime's domestic and foreign policies. One typical resolution passed repeatedly states that the people of Iran do not desire the destruction of Israel and do seek close and friendly relations with the United States. Every year in July, students mark the anniversary of the 1999 events. On October 8, 2007, students in Tehran greeted Ahmadinejad with cries of "Down with the Dictator" and "Forget about Palestine! Think about Us," forcing him to run away briefly with the help of his bodyguards. [emphasis added]Four years earlier, in 2005, The New York Times reported that Iran's hard line on Israel was not unaminmous:
Beset by practical concerns such as double-digit inflation and unemployment, Iran's youthful population is well aware of the fact that the ideological hubris of their parents' generation - often a half-baked hodgepodge of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, Islamism, and Marxism - has borne the country little fruit apart from a soiled international reputation and political and economic isolation. During the 2003 summer student protests, one popular slogan, delivered in lilting Persian, was "forget about Palestine, think about us!" [emphasis added]The article was written by Karim Sadjadpour, currently an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sadjadpour and Takeyh go on to write:
There exists no inherent reason why the Israeli-Palestinian struggle should be an overriding concern to the average Iranian. Iran has no territorial disputes with Israel, no Palestinian refugee problem, a long history of contentious relations with the Arab world, and an even longer history of tolerance vis-à-vis the Jewish people. To this day, the Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.Ironically, in 2005 this article was claiming that based on the troubled relationship between Iran and the Arab world, it was Iran -- not the Saudis -- that should have been drawn into an alliance with Israel.
They summarized the position that Iran need not be so supportive of the Palestinian Arabs in the words of one reformist leader that:
"We shouldn't be chanting 'death to Israel'; we should be saying 'long live Palestine.' We needn't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."Clearly, things have not worked out that way so far -- this despite the fact that 2 years earlier, in 2003, an article in The New Republic and republished in The Jewish World Review was saying the same thing and was asking Is Iran rethinking its position on Israel? It suggested that
though the West still thinks of Iran as a cauldron of anti-Israel passion, a new generation of pro-democracy Iranians increasingly speaks out against the government's seeming obsession with the Palestinians.From the way the article describes it, even "conservatives" in the Iranian government were apparently seeing the light. You would expect a very different situation from the one currently going on during the past few days.
The article examines why things were potentially so promising:
several senior conservatives have quietly joined the chorus, hinting that Iran's support for terrorist groups opposed to Israel is negotiable. According to one senior conservative official, "Iran's policy in the Middle East and the peace process is not beyond the realm of possibilities that can be discussed, given a dialogue with the United States." Translation from Islamic Republic-speak: We can talk turkey on Israel/Palestine. Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University professor with close ties to conservative officials, underscored this view earlier this year, when he told the U.S.-funded Radio Farda Persian service that Iran understands Washington's concerns about Tehran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. President Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who has long argued that Iran should not interfere in any agreements made between Israel and the Palestinians, is unlikely to quibble with the conservatives.So what happened?
While Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, was president in 2003, by 2005 a new president was elected: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and the rest is history.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credit: Farzad Khorasani
Source: Wikimedia Commons
While he did not single-handedly stem the supposedly growing tide of reform, Ahmadinejad did represent the interests of the hard-liners.
For now, it is impossible to say whether the current protests will be put down and crushed as were the student protests in 1999 and the election protests in 2009. Even if successful, they are not about to change Iran overnight into a friend of Israel reminiscent of the reign of the Shah of Iran. Instead, it has been suggested that the current unrest will keep the government occupied and reduce the possibility of conflict between the two countries, especially along the Syrian border, at least for a while.
But beyond that, the idea that Iranian animosity towards Israel is not hardwired, may perhaps hold promise for some point in the forseeable future.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
The Israel Victory Project: Time To Let Palestinian Arabs Know They Lost The War
Anyone not knowing the history of the Israeli/Arab conflict might conclude that the Arabs won all of the wars in which they fought, and could therefore dictate the terms of the peace.
Dr. Alex Grobman, Alice in Wonderland
Back in 2006, Amir Taheri, the Iranian-born conservative author, explained why Israel must claim victory over Palestine:
...For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat.
This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor.
In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.
...In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.Now, this is no longer a claim that is being made in the abstract.
Last December, Daniel Pipes described A New Strategy for Israeli Victory, based on the continued failure of the peace process in its many manifestations and iterations. On the one hand, deterrence could not be maintained indefinitely because of its unpopularity internationally and the way it wore Israelis down. On the other hand, diplomacy became the new way to go -- and seems to be prepared to keep going, indefinitely, with no success.
The solution, according to Pipes, is victory -- The Israel Victory Project:
the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.Despite the fact that he Arabs lost every war with Israel, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, they never saw their defeat as the end. Instead, they looked ahead for another opportunity to make war against Israel.
This is how Pipes described his solution to this problem back in July:
While he makes a point in the video of refraining from suggesting how to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost the war, in his 2016 article, Pipes does make some suggestions how to discourage rejectionism and promote a change of heart:
With that in mind, the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus was announced in April:
Reps. Ron DeSantis and Bill Johnson. From the Press ReleaseReps. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) will launch the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC) on April 27 at 9 a.m. The caucus' goal: to introduce a new U.S. approach to Israel-Palestinian relations.
Cong. Johnson notes that "Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East, and the community of nations must accept that Israel has a right to exist – period. This is not negotiable now, nor ever. The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus aims to focus on this precept, and to better inform our colleagues in Congress about daily life in Israel and the present-day conflict. I look forward to co-chairing this very important caucus with Cong. DeSantis."At the time, no Democrats had joined the group.
In order to be successful, Pipes sees the project as being heavily dependent on US support being provided in a sustained way along with select Arab states and others in order to convince the Palestinian Arabs that rejectionism will not work:
That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.Pipes does not sugar-coat the strategy he is proposing:
this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.Similarly, the criticism is no less direct.
J Street has attacked the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, referring to it as the “defeat Palestinians caucus,” claiming that the project is “devoted to pushing the truly terrifying myth that Israel can end the conflict by using brute force and repression to make Palestinians accept their eternal statelessness.” They urged congressmen to “stay as far away from such savage and dangerous ideas as possible. The creation of a caucus devoted to promoting them should be condemned, not celebrated.”
Among supporters there is some disagreement too.
Martin Sherman, the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, has supported Pipes' proposal, but there is a key item Sherman and Pipes disagree on. According to Sherman:
Pipes concisely sums up the principal point of disagreement between us: “Sherman and I directly disagree on only one point — Israel accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state.” He goes on to speculate that “the allure of a state after the conflict ends offers benefits to both sides. Israelis will be free of ruling unwanted subjects. Palestinians have a reason to behave.”Sherman is vehemently opposed to the idea, noting that historically there is little to support the idea that the demand for Palestinian statehood is a genuine grievance.
Six months after the formal announcement of the Israel Victory Project, the strategy is still taking shape and support is still being drummed up.
Considering the need for US support to make this work and the political uncertainty facing both the Trump Administration and the Republican majority in Congress, the Israel Victory Project may not have much time to establish itself.
-----
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Dr. Alex Grobman, Alice in Wonderland
Back in 2006, Amir Taheri, the Iranian-born conservative author, explained why Israel must claim victory over Palestine:
...For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat.
This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor.
In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.
...In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.Now, this is no longer a claim that is being made in the abstract.
Last December, Daniel Pipes described A New Strategy for Israeli Victory, based on the continued failure of the peace process in its many manifestations and iterations. On the one hand, deterrence could not be maintained indefinitely because of its unpopularity internationally and the way it wore Israelis down. On the other hand, diplomacy became the new way to go -- and seems to be prepared to keep going, indefinitely, with no success.
The solution, according to Pipes, is victory -- The Israel Victory Project:
the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.Despite the fact that he Arabs lost every war with Israel, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, they never saw their defeat as the end. Instead, they looked ahead for another opportunity to make war against Israel.
This is how Pipes described his solution to this problem back in July:
While he makes a point in the video of refraining from suggesting how to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost the war, in his 2016 article, Pipes does make some suggestions how to discourage rejectionism and promote a change of heart:
- When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year.
- Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank.
- When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field.
- When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad.
- Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank.
- When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure.
- Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies.
- In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.
With that in mind, the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus was announced in April:
Reps. Ron DeSantis and Bill Johnson. From the Press ReleaseReps. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) will launch the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC) on April 27 at 9 a.m. The caucus' goal: to introduce a new U.S. approach to Israel-Palestinian relations.
Cong. Johnson notes that "Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East, and the community of nations must accept that Israel has a right to exist – period. This is not negotiable now, nor ever. The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus aims to focus on this precept, and to better inform our colleagues in Congress about daily life in Israel and the present-day conflict. I look forward to co-chairing this very important caucus with Cong. DeSantis."At the time, no Democrats had joined the group.
In order to be successful, Pipes sees the project as being heavily dependent on US support being provided in a sustained way along with select Arab states and others in order to convince the Palestinian Arabs that rejectionism will not work:
That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.Pipes does not sugar-coat the strategy he is proposing:
this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.Similarly, the criticism is no less direct.
J Street has attacked the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, referring to it as the “defeat Palestinians caucus,” claiming that the project is “devoted to pushing the truly terrifying myth that Israel can end the conflict by using brute force and repression to make Palestinians accept their eternal statelessness.” They urged congressmen to “stay as far away from such savage and dangerous ideas as possible. The creation of a caucus devoted to promoting them should be condemned, not celebrated.”
Among supporters there is some disagreement too.
Martin Sherman, the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, has supported Pipes' proposal, but there is a key item Sherman and Pipes disagree on. According to Sherman:
Pipes concisely sums up the principal point of disagreement between us: “Sherman and I directly disagree on only one point — Israel accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state.” He goes on to speculate that “the allure of a state after the conflict ends offers benefits to both sides. Israelis will be free of ruling unwanted subjects. Palestinians have a reason to behave.”Sherman is vehemently opposed to the idea, noting that historically there is little to support the idea that the demand for Palestinian statehood is a genuine grievance.
Six months after the formal announcement of the Israel Victory Project, the strategy is still taking shape and support is still being drummed up.
Considering the need for US support to make this work and the political uncertainty facing both the Trump Administration and the Republican majority in Congress, the Israel Victory Project may not have much time to establish itself.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Hamas: One Man's Global Jihadist is Another Man's Anti-Israel Freedom Fighter
Last month, following the ISIS terrorist attack on a mosque in the Sinai, the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was closed. This was the crossing that Hamas controlled -- until it turned control over to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority as part of the "reconciliation" between them. A PA official announced that Egypt closed the crossing because it suspected that some of the terrorists fled the Sinai and used Hamas tunnels to enter Gaza "with the knowledge of senior Hamas officials.”
Evelyn Gordon asserts that the incident and Egypt's reaction prove that Hamas is more than an anti-Israel terrorist group -- it is a Global Jihadist group:
Incidentally, this track record conclusively disproves the widespread fallacy that Hamas is primarily concerned with the Palestinian cause rather than the cause of global jihad. An organization concerned with Palestinian well-being would strive to preserve good relations with Egypt in order to ensure that Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world remained open. Only an organization that prioritized global jihad way above Palestinian wellbeing would offer extensive aid to Islamic State, even at the price of having Rafah almost permanently closed.
Hamas logo
Hamas is certainly not shy about using the word "jihad." The Hamas Covenant uses the word "jihad" 38 times.
More than that, Martin Kramer, in an article he contributed to in "Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Global Jihad" notes that the covenant makes the Hamas connection to the Muslim Brotherhood very clear. According to Article 2:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern timesThen in Article 7:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one link in the chain of jihad in confronting the Zionist invasion. It is connected and linked to the [courageous] uprising of the martyr 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam and his brethren the jihad fighters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the year 1936. It is further related and connected to another link, [namely] the jihad of the Palestinians, the efforts and jihad of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1948 war, and the jihad operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1968 and afterwards. [emphasis added]Later, the Hamas Covenant directly addresses facilitating the contribution of Jihad fighters:
"We demand that the Arab countries around Israel open their borders to jihad fighters from among the Arab and Islamic peoples, so they may fulfill their role and join their efforts to the efforts of their brothers - the Muslim brethren in Palestine. As for the rest of the Arab and Muslim countries, we demand that they facilitate the passage of the jihad fighters into them and out of them - that is the very least [they can do].Kramer points out that the Hamas parent organiztion, the Muslim Brotherhood, has also been the source of several key members and leading commanders of al Qaeda, such as Abdullah Azzam and Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11.
Jonathan Halevi, who also contributed an article to "Global Jihad," writes that in March 2006, Hamas Interior Minister Said Sayyam, who is responsible for the security forces, announced that he would not arrest jihadists who carry out terror attacks -- this at a time that al Qaeda was developing a presence in both the West Bank and Gaza.
Halevy writes that connections between Hamas and Al Qaeda go back to the early 1990's, when in April 1991 the Sudanese leader Hasan Turabi hosted a “Popular Arab and Islamic Conference” bringing together Islamists from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Both Hamas and Osama bin Laden attended and Hamas training camps existed alongside those of al Qaeda. bin Laden went so far as to refer to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin as one of the five ulema upon whom bin Laden based his August 1996 Declaration of Jihad Against the U.S
Osama bin Laden; credit: Hamid Mir; Source: Wikipedia
Other incidents illustrating a connection between Hamas and Al Qaeda:
In 2004, Haaretz reported (Hamas Reveals Its Global Islamic Aspirations) that Hamas took credit for a 2003 suicide bombing at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv, where 3 people were killed and dozens were wounded. The attacks were carried out by a Pakistani-born British Muslim accompanied by another Pakistan-born Briton, from Derby. Hamas claimed:
"We have decided that the response to the crime of the assassination of Dr. Ibrahim Almakadeh should take place at the global level of the Islamic world, because of the views represented by the doctor, a supreme Islamic thinker and commander," There were similarities in the attack with terrorist bombings carried out by the global jihadists of Al Qaeda:
This game that Hamas has been playing, associating with global jihadist groups, is why in 2014 Egypt designated the Hamas group Izzadin Kassam to be a terrorist group -- the first time any Arab regime had ever declared a Palestinian terrorist organization to be a terrorist group.
According to Carolyn Glick, Egypt had no choice but to define the Hamas group as terrorists:
Despite its insistent protestations that the Jews are its only enemies, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been a major player, indeed, arguably the key player in the jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that threatens to destroy the political, economic and military viability of the Egyptian state. The declared purpose of the insurgency is to overthrow the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and integrate Egypt into Islamic State’s “caliphate.”Near the beginning of 2015, thirty-two people, mainly soldiers, were killed in the Sinai by a group identified as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a jihadist group pledging its allegiance to ISIS and declaring Sinai to be a province of its “caliphate.” Glick notes that a report by Yoram Schweitzer of the Institute for National Security Studies identifies Hamas members as among the original founders of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, in cooperation with local Salafist Beduins and with al-Qaida terrorists.
According to Glick, Hamas terrorists increasingly declare their allegiance to Islamic State. For example, following the massacre of the French journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, several hundred protesters in Gaza waved Islamic State flags in support of the massacre.
Glick sees Hamas not as merely a terrorist threat to Israel but as a lynchpin in the threat of global jihad. This creates the irony that while Israel allies itself with Egypt in facing this threat, the West attempts to coerce Israel into helping Hamas rebuild its infrastructure. Ideally, post-Obama there will a beginning of a realization of the Hamas connection to global jihadist threats.
-----
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Evelyn Gordon asserts that the incident and Egypt's reaction prove that Hamas is more than an anti-Israel terrorist group -- it is a Global Jihadist group:
Incidentally, this track record conclusively disproves the widespread fallacy that Hamas is primarily concerned with the Palestinian cause rather than the cause of global jihad. An organization concerned with Palestinian well-being would strive to preserve good relations with Egypt in order to ensure that Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world remained open. Only an organization that prioritized global jihad way above Palestinian wellbeing would offer extensive aid to Islamic State, even at the price of having Rafah almost permanently closed.
Hamas logo
Hamas is certainly not shy about using the word "jihad." The Hamas Covenant uses the word "jihad" 38 times.
More than that, Martin Kramer, in an article he contributed to in "Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Global Jihad" notes that the covenant makes the Hamas connection to the Muslim Brotherhood very clear. According to Article 2:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern timesThen in Article 7:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one link in the chain of jihad in confronting the Zionist invasion. It is connected and linked to the [courageous] uprising of the martyr 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam and his brethren the jihad fighters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the year 1936. It is further related and connected to another link, [namely] the jihad of the Palestinians, the efforts and jihad of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1948 war, and the jihad operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1968 and afterwards. [emphasis added]Later, the Hamas Covenant directly addresses facilitating the contribution of Jihad fighters:
"We demand that the Arab countries around Israel open their borders to jihad fighters from among the Arab and Islamic peoples, so they may fulfill their role and join their efforts to the efforts of their brothers - the Muslim brethren in Palestine. As for the rest of the Arab and Muslim countries, we demand that they facilitate the passage of the jihad fighters into them and out of them - that is the very least [they can do].Kramer points out that the Hamas parent organiztion, the Muslim Brotherhood, has also been the source of several key members and leading commanders of al Qaeda, such as Abdullah Azzam and Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11.
Jonathan Halevi, who also contributed an article to "Global Jihad," writes that in March 2006, Hamas Interior Minister Said Sayyam, who is responsible for the security forces, announced that he would not arrest jihadists who carry out terror attacks -- this at a time that al Qaeda was developing a presence in both the West Bank and Gaza.
Halevy writes that connections between Hamas and Al Qaeda go back to the early 1990's, when in April 1991 the Sudanese leader Hasan Turabi hosted a “Popular Arab and Islamic Conference” bringing together Islamists from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Both Hamas and Osama bin Laden attended and Hamas training camps existed alongside those of al Qaeda. bin Laden went so far as to refer to Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin as one of the five ulema upon whom bin Laden based his August 1996 Declaration of Jihad Against the U.S
Osama bin Laden; credit: Hamid Mir; Source: Wikipedia
Other incidents illustrating a connection between Hamas and Al Qaeda:
- In August 2000, Israel uncovered a terror network linked to al-Qaeda that was headed by Nabil Okal, a Hamas operative from Gaza who underwent military training in bin Laden camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1997-1998.
- In July 2005, al-Qaeda fired Kassam rockets from Gaza at the Israeli town of Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif, and disseminated a video documenting their activities.
- October 7, 2005, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an published a declaration circulated in Khan Yunis in which al-Qaeda announced the establishment of a branch in Gaza.
- On March 26, 2006, senior Hamas figure Muhammad Sayyam met in Pakistan with Sayyid Salah al-Din, leader of the Kashmiri terror orga-nization Hezb ul-Mujahidin, which functioned as an al-Qaeda affiliate
In 2004, Haaretz reported (Hamas Reveals Its Global Islamic Aspirations) that Hamas took credit for a 2003 suicide bombing at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv, where 3 people were killed and dozens were wounded. The attacks were carried out by a Pakistani-born British Muslim accompanied by another Pakistan-born Briton, from Derby. Hamas claimed:
"We have decided that the response to the crime of the assassination of Dr. Ibrahim Almakadeh should take place at the global level of the Islamic world, because of the views represented by the doctor, a supreme Islamic thinker and commander," There were similarities in the attack with terrorist bombings carried out by the global jihadists of Al Qaeda:
- It was the first time Hamas presented one of terrorist attacks as part of a global Islamic struggle
- It was also the first time Hamas had used non-Palestinian suicide bombers.
- At the time of the bombing, no terrorist group took responsibility, so after the identity of the bomber and accomplice was discovered, it was originally assumed that al-Qaida was behind the bombing.
This game that Hamas has been playing, associating with global jihadist groups, is why in 2014 Egypt designated the Hamas group Izzadin Kassam to be a terrorist group -- the first time any Arab regime had ever declared a Palestinian terrorist organization to be a terrorist group.
According to Carolyn Glick, Egypt had no choice but to define the Hamas group as terrorists:
Despite its insistent protestations that the Jews are its only enemies, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been a major player, indeed, arguably the key player in the jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that threatens to destroy the political, economic and military viability of the Egyptian state. The declared purpose of the insurgency is to overthrow the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and integrate Egypt into Islamic State’s “caliphate.”Near the beginning of 2015, thirty-two people, mainly soldiers, were killed in the Sinai by a group identified as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a jihadist group pledging its allegiance to ISIS and declaring Sinai to be a province of its “caliphate.” Glick notes that a report by Yoram Schweitzer of the Institute for National Security Studies identifies Hamas members as among the original founders of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, in cooperation with local Salafist Beduins and with al-Qaida terrorists.
According to Glick, Hamas terrorists increasingly declare their allegiance to Islamic State. For example, following the massacre of the French journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, several hundred protesters in Gaza waved Islamic State flags in support of the massacre.
Glick sees Hamas not as merely a terrorist threat to Israel but as a lynchpin in the threat of global jihad. This creates the irony that while Israel allies itself with Egypt in facing this threat, the West attempts to coerce Israel into helping Hamas rebuild its infrastructure. Ideally, post-Obama there will a beginning of a realization of the Hamas connection to global jihadist threats.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Linda Sarsour Claims Palestinian Terrorists Have Absolute Moral Authority
On December 9th, taking to her Facebook account, Linda Sarsour justified Palestinian terrorism:
In context of what's happening in Palestine in response to the announcement about Jerusalem and in general living under the longest and most brutal military occupation - we have to get a few things straight.
Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression and the continued stripping of their humanity, agency and land whether they are Palestinians or not. Nobody. Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist. They set the parameters. You don't have to agree. Unless you have lived in their condition under the boot of a racist, supremacist, violent regime that sees them as less than human - you have no say in this conversation... [emphasis added]Let's put aside how Linda Sarsour, who lives in the US, has a say in this "conversation" -- but not anyone critical of Palestinian Arabs who attack and kill Israeli civilians.
First of all, the Muslim attacks and persecution of indigenous Jews in that land is nothing new.
It has continued for over a millennium -- how could it be otherwise for non-Muslims under Sharia law which originated the requirement for Jews to wear a yellow star to distinguish them from Muslims and shame them, disallows non-Muslims to testify against Muslims outside of commercial cases and obligates non-Muslims to pay a special, onerous, jizya tax.
Arab attacks and mistreatment of Jews has nothing to do with Arabs being oppressed, but rather the continuation of their being the oppressors. For example, Muslims have a history of stoning Jews that predates the re-establishment of the state of Israel, going back to when the Arabs played host to Jews.
1660: The Jewish community in Safed is massacred. [p. 178]
1742: A rabbi is allowed to settle in Tiberias and his arrival "brought back the Jewish community of Tiberias, which had been virtually purged of Jews for seventy years" [p. 179]
1775: Blood libel is spread against Jews in Hebron, resulting in mob violence. [p. 179]
1799: Safed's Jewish Quarter "was completely sacked by the Turks" [p. 179]
1801: Djezzar sends troops to destroy crops in Nazareth while in Ramleh "during the three days of pillage, the local Latin Christians were either murdered, or lost all their property and fled" [p. 180]
1830's "One book reported the game 'Burn the Jew,' a Christian-Arab children's pastime at Lent in Jaffa. [p. 1888]
1834: Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha levies conscription and when those in Eastern Palestine cross the Jordan to join in a revolt, "forty thousand fellahin rushed on Jerusalem...the mob entered, and looted the city for five or six days. The Jews were the worst sufferers, their homes were sacked and their women violated." [p. 183]
1834: In Safed, the Jewish community is "brutally attacked by Muslim and Druzes" [p. 183]
1834: In Safed, Muhammed Damoor 'prophesies' that on the 15th of June "the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels"--this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. [p. 185-6]
1837: Safed is hit by an earthquake which results in another attack by the Muslims on the Jews. [p. 183]
1840: Blood libel in Damascus has repercussions in Palestine. [p. 183]
1847: Charge of ritual murder is brought against the Jewish community in Jerusalem. [p. 190]
1847: Jewish visitor to Palestine writes about the Jewish community "They do not have any protection and are at the mercy of policemen and the pashas who treat them as they wish...they pay various taxes every now and then...their property is not at their disposal and they dare not complain about an injury for fear of the Arabs' revenge. Their lives are precarious and subject to daily danger of death" [p. 190-1]
1848 Hebron plundered. [p. 191]
1848-1878: Reports from the British Consulate in Jerusalem document scores of anti-Jewish violence. Example--"July, 1851: It is my duty to report to Your Excellency that the Jews in Hebron have been greatly alarmed by threats of the Moslems there at the commencement of Ramadan..."
1858: Muslim in Hebron is confronted with his theft and vandalism of Jews and responds that "his right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions at any time without giving account" [p. 173]In contrast, in Israel today, under what Sarsour glibly refers to as a "racist, supremacist, violent regime that sees them as less than human," Israeli Arabs participate in all aspects of Israeli life: social, judicial and political. Among the high-profile political, military, and judiciary roles Israeli Arabs have:
Meanwhile, Palestinian Arabs in the "West Bank" now have the closest thing they have ever had to their own sovereign state, something they have never had -- least of all under the rule of the Ottoman empire.
The crux of the problem with Sarsour's convenient claim to Palestinian right to murder Jews is that second paragraph:
Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression and the continued stripping of their humanity, agency and land whether they are Palestinians or not. Nobody. Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist. They set the parameters. This actually sounds familiar -- it is reminiscent of the claim Maureen Dowd's made about Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq War. Dowd wrote that "moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute" This arbitrary assignment of superior judgment, or in this case, giving Palestinians a pass on murder, just does not cut it.
Her words may resonate rhetorically, but they fall apart when examing the facts.
In his book, The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz examines this issue in the chapter, "Is There Moral Equivalence between Palestinian Terrorists and Israeli Responses?"
It is perhaps a sign of how far Sarsour is willing to go, that instead of talking about moral equivalence, Sarsour is claiming moral superiority.
Dershowitz recalls some examples of Palestinian terrorist attacks that perhaps Sarsour has forgotten:
A better question might be what is Sarsour's source for claiming terrorists have a moral right to choose their victims? Is it based on the Koran or does she have some other source?
In The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis quotes from the standard collections of the traditions of the prophet on the rules of warfare and the conduct of Jihad:
Be advised to treat prisoners well.
Looting is no more lawful than carrion.
Allah has forbidden the killing of women and children
Muslims are bound by their agreements, provided that these are lawful. [p. 33]Lewis later spells it out:
Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a struce and to honor agreements. [p. 39]Is Sarsour actually claiming that Islam sanctions the murder of innocent children? If so, let her give a source. If her source is from outside of Islam, why is she elevating that authority above that of Islam?
Contrary to Sarsour, Palestinian terrorists do not have an absolute moral authority that frees them from judgment and allows them to murder unarmed Jews at will.
Palestinian terrorists need to be held accountable for their actions.
Linda Sarsour should be held accountable for her absurd claims.
-----
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In context of what's happening in Palestine in response to the announcement about Jerusalem and in general living under the longest and most brutal military occupation - we have to get a few things straight.
Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression and the continued stripping of their humanity, agency and land whether they are Palestinians or not. Nobody. Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist. They set the parameters. You don't have to agree. Unless you have lived in their condition under the boot of a racist, supremacist, violent regime that sees them as less than human - you have no say in this conversation... [emphasis added]Let's put aside how Linda Sarsour, who lives in the US, has a say in this "conversation" -- but not anyone critical of Palestinian Arabs who attack and kill Israeli civilians.
First of all, the Muslim attacks and persecution of indigenous Jews in that land is nothing new.
It has continued for over a millennium -- how could it be otherwise for non-Muslims under Sharia law which originated the requirement for Jews to wear a yellow star to distinguish them from Muslims and shame them, disallows non-Muslims to testify against Muslims outside of commercial cases and obligates non-Muslims to pay a special, onerous, jizya tax.
Arab attacks and mistreatment of Jews has nothing to do with Arabs being oppressed, but rather the continuation of their being the oppressors. For example, Muslims have a history of stoning Jews that predates the re-establishment of the state of Israel, going back to when the Arabs played host to Jews.
- In 1955, S. D. Goitein, in his book Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages, wrote:
In former times--and in remote places even today--it was common for Muslim schoolboys to stone Jews. When the Turks conquered Yemen in 1872, an envoy was sent from the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul to inquire what grievance the Yemenite Jews had against their neighbors. It is indicative that the first thing of which they complained was this molestation by the schoolboys. But when the Turkish Governor asked an assembly of notables to stop this nuisance, there arose an old doctor of Muslim law and explained that this stone-throwing at Jews was an age-old custom (in Arabic 'Ada) and therefore it was unlawful to forbid it. [p. 76, emphasis added] - In Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846-1855, Israel Joseph Benjamin includes among the multiple indignities regularly suffered by Jews at the hands of the Muslims of Persia:
Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity, and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mob with stones and dirt.[p 212] - Andrew Bostom gives examples in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.He quotes from Robert Satloff's book, Among the Righteous -- Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, where Satloff tells the story of Yehuda Chachmon, who lived under Italian rule in Benghazi, Libya, during WWII and wrote about Arab street gangs:
“Arabs would throw oranges, tomatoes, stones at us,” he said. “Every Jew would hide in his house after five in the evening. The houses were closed [i.e., locked up] with bars and you could not leave until the morning.’” [p 153]
1660: The Jewish community in Safed is massacred. [p. 178]
1742: A rabbi is allowed to settle in Tiberias and his arrival "brought back the Jewish community of Tiberias, which had been virtually purged of Jews for seventy years" [p. 179]
1775: Blood libel is spread against Jews in Hebron, resulting in mob violence. [p. 179]
1799: Safed's Jewish Quarter "was completely sacked by the Turks" [p. 179]
1801: Djezzar sends troops to destroy crops in Nazareth while in Ramleh "during the three days of pillage, the local Latin Christians were either murdered, or lost all their property and fled" [p. 180]
1830's "One book reported the game 'Burn the Jew,' a Christian-Arab children's pastime at Lent in Jaffa. [p. 1888]
1834: Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha levies conscription and when those in Eastern Palestine cross the Jordan to join in a revolt, "forty thousand fellahin rushed on Jerusalem...the mob entered, and looted the city for five or six days. The Jews were the worst sufferers, their homes were sacked and their women violated." [p. 183]
1834: In Safed, the Jewish community is "brutally attacked by Muslim and Druzes" [p. 183]
1834: In Safed, Muhammed Damoor 'prophesies' that on the 15th of June "the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels"--this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. [p. 185-6]
1837: Safed is hit by an earthquake which results in another attack by the Muslims on the Jews. [p. 183]
1840: Blood libel in Damascus has repercussions in Palestine. [p. 183]
1847: Charge of ritual murder is brought against the Jewish community in Jerusalem. [p. 190]
1847: Jewish visitor to Palestine writes about the Jewish community "They do not have any protection and are at the mercy of policemen and the pashas who treat them as they wish...they pay various taxes every now and then...their property is not at their disposal and they dare not complain about an injury for fear of the Arabs' revenge. Their lives are precarious and subject to daily danger of death" [p. 190-1]
1848 Hebron plundered. [p. 191]
1848-1878: Reports from the British Consulate in Jerusalem document scores of anti-Jewish violence. Example--"July, 1851: It is my duty to report to Your Excellency that the Jews in Hebron have been greatly alarmed by threats of the Moslems there at the commencement of Ramadan..."
1858: Muslim in Hebron is confronted with his theft and vandalism of Jews and responds that "his right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions at any time without giving account" [p. 173]In contrast, in Israel today, under what Sarsour glibly refers to as a "racist, supremacist, violent regime that sees them as less than human," Israeli Arabs participate in all aspects of Israeli life: social, judicial and political. Among the high-profile political, military, and judiciary roles Israeli Arabs have:
- Jamal Hakrush, Israeli police deputy commissioner.
- Mariam Kabha, Attorney. Unanimously approved by Israel's cabinet to be national commissioner for equal employment opportunities
- George Deek, Israel's Deputy Ambassador to Norway
- Colonel Ghassan Alian, Commander of IDF Golani Brigade
- Naim Aradi, Israel's Ambassador to Norway
- Yusef Mishleb - IDF Major General
- George Kara, led 3-judge panel that convicted Israeli ex-President.
- Jamal Zahalka, received BA, MA and Ph.D. Member of Israeli Parliament and leader of Balad political party -- while describing himself a victim of "Israeli racist apartheid"
- Omar Barghouti, Doctoral student at Tel Aviv -- while a leading Arab advocate for the academic boycott of Israel.
- Majalli Wahabi, Former Deputy Speaker of the Israel Parliament -- and acting President of Israel during February, 2007
- Reda Mansour, historian, poet and former Israeli ambassador to Ecuador
- Salim Joubran, Israeli Supreme Court Justice
Meanwhile, Palestinian Arabs in the "West Bank" now have the closest thing they have ever had to their own sovereign state, something they have never had -- least of all under the rule of the Ottoman empire.
The crux of the problem with Sarsour's convenient claim to Palestinian right to murder Jews is that second paragraph:
Nobody gets to tell an occupied people how to respond to their own oppression and the continued stripping of their humanity, agency and land whether they are Palestinians or not. Nobody. Oppressed people determine how, when and where to resist. They set the parameters. This actually sounds familiar -- it is reminiscent of the claim Maureen Dowd's made about Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq War. Dowd wrote that "moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute" This arbitrary assignment of superior judgment, or in this case, giving Palestinians a pass on murder, just does not cut it.
Her words may resonate rhetorically, but they fall apart when examing the facts.
In his book, The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz examines this issue in the chapter, "Is There Moral Equivalence between Palestinian Terrorists and Israeli Responses?"
It is perhaps a sign of how far Sarsour is willing to go, that instead of talking about moral equivalence, Sarsour is claiming moral superiority.
Dershowitz recalls some examples of Palestinian terrorist attacks that perhaps Sarsour has forgotten:
- The Maalot massacre where 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.
- A Swiss airliner headed to Israel in which all forty-seven civilian passengers were killed
- The Lod Airport Massacre, in which twenty-seven civilians, mostly Christian pilgrims, were killed
- The Passover Massacre, where twenty-nine Jews were killed during a Passover seder
- The Dolphinarium Massacre, where twenty-one mostly Russian Jews were killed in a discotheque for teenagers
- The Hebrew University bombing, where nine people were killed in the Hebrew University cafeteria
A better question might be what is Sarsour's source for claiming terrorists have a moral right to choose their victims? Is it based on the Koran or does she have some other source?
In The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis quotes from the standard collections of the traditions of the prophet on the rules of warfare and the conduct of Jihad:
Be advised to treat prisoners well.
Looting is no more lawful than carrion.
Allah has forbidden the killing of women and children
Muslims are bound by their agreements, provided that these are lawful. [p. 33]Lewis later spells it out:
Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a struce and to honor agreements. [p. 39]Is Sarsour actually claiming that Islam sanctions the murder of innocent children? If so, let her give a source. If her source is from outside of Islam, why is she elevating that authority above that of Islam?
Contrary to Sarsour, Palestinian terrorists do not have an absolute moral authority that frees them from judgment and allows them to murder unarmed Jews at will.
Palestinian terrorists need to be held accountable for their actions.
Linda Sarsour should be held accountable for her absurd claims.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
Mosques: A Place of Prayer -- and Jihad
The shedding of blood, the violation of the sacred houses of God and the terrorizing of worshippers are acts of corruption on the earth.
Ahmed El-Tayyeb, current Grand Imam of al-Azhar and former president of al-Azhar University
In the last week of November, over 300 Sufi Arabs were murdered in a terrorist attack on their mosque:
The death toll in a bomb and gun attack on a Sufi mosque in northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt's state prosecutor said Saturday.
Another 128 people were wounded, according to a statement from the public prosecutor read out on Egyptian state-run news channel Nile TV.
Between 25 and 30 armed men carried out the assault on the al Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, the statement said.Along with the horror at the senseless massacre is the sense that of all places, a mosque -- as a holy place of worship -- should be immune from bloodshed. Even if the Islamists behind the attack considered Sufis to be heretics, the blind gunfire would result in the destruction of copies of the Koran in addition to the carnage.
There was a similar Western sense of revulsion and confusion in response to other news reports of Muslim attacks on mosques over the years.
In the course of one year, from August 2010 to August 2011:
Why was there no sense of sacrilege to inhibit the attackers in each case?
Back in 2010, in response to the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center dedicated a chapter of it's own report, Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip, to the Hamas exploitation of mosques. An article in The Jerusalem Post summarized the report findings: Hamas used almost 100 mosques for military purposes:
The Malam report asserts that the extensive use of mosques to store weapons and as launch pads for rocket attacks on Israel was part of a Hamas strategy based on the knowledge that the IDF would not target civilian infrastructure including mosques, which were therefore ideal for weapons storehouses and rocket attacks.
The Malam analysis is based on Hamas sketches of neighborhoods that show that mosques were used as sniper positions, Israel Air Force videos showing massive secondary explosions after mosques were hit as well as reports from IDF troops.
One mosque in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City was raided by IDF troops who discovered a warehouse full of rockets and mortar shells. During the operation, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Israel troops from the mosque.
On January 13, IDF troops raided a mosque in Jabalya in northern Gaza that was full of weaponry including an anti-aircraft cannon. In a mosque in the Atatra neighborhood in northern Gaza City, troops uncovered a secret warehouse built under the podium, from where the imam leads prayers, which was full of weaponry and improvised explosive devices.According to the report, the use of mosques for military purposes is as old as Islam itself:
The massive military use Hamas and the other terrorist organizations made of mosques has historical-religious roots. By the 7th century the prophet Muhammad had turned the mosque he built in Medina into a center for preaching, a place where political matters were dealt with, consultations held and appointments made, and where the Muslim army was prepared before it was dispatched to war and to attack the enemies of Islam. Muslim sages are of the opinion that the mosque is not only a house of prayer but that other uses, including military and political, are acceptable. Contemporary examples of the military and political uses made of mosques by radical Islamic terrorist organizations can be found in the Gaza Strip and many other places in the Arab-Muslim world. [p145. Emphasis in the original]One example of such a Muslim religious leader is the Salafist Sheikh Saeed Abdul Azim:
The mosque is the place of worship and retreat, the place of education and guidance, the place of consultation and advice of Muslims, the safe driving center, the headquarters of the military command, the holding of the armies of the Mujahedeen in the cause of Allah and the place of reception of the coming delegations of the Messenger of Allah. The mosque, and say to them - peace be upon him -: (without you sons of Arvada) Agreed upon.[translated with Google Translate; emphasis added]Then there is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who until 2015 permitted suicide bombings:
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi asserted at the time that mosques may be used for political, social, cultural and religious purposes, including on issues related to jihad. He noted that in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, the mosque was the center of activities for the entire Muslim society. The mosque was not only a place to worship Allah, but also a place of study, a gathering place for consultation, a place for people to get to know one another and the like. According to him, in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, delegations would travel from the Arabian Peninsula to meet with the Prophet at the mosque. In those days, Friday sermons were delivered at mosques, and instructions from the Prophet were given to his followers on various topics, including religious, social and political matters. In AlQaradawi’s opinion, since the inception of Islam, the mosque has played an important role in encouraging Muslims to embark on jihad and in the management of the "resistance against the enemies of the [Muslim] community, from among invaders who seek to govern it [i.e., the Muslim community]." Al-Qaradawi noted that mosques play an important role in any jihad. Moreover, in his opinion, it is permissible to preach in a mosque against a government that does not comply with Sharia. [p. 2, emphasis in original]
Al-Qaradawi. Source: Wikipedia. Credit: Nmkuttiady
Using mosques as a base of operations to fire rockets of course disregards the danger it causes to civilians. We have seen in the past that civilian casualties are not a concern for a terrorist group like Hamas. However, the further danger of this approach towards mosques is that they do not appear to have the kind of sanctity that protects worshippers from attacks by other Muslims.
This is a Pandora's Box that was faced by Jews, when in protest against the writings of the Rambam, they burned his books. When non-Jews saw how Jews treated their own writings, they picked up on the idea and burned Jewish holy books too.
This domino effect explains how the Taliban had no problem defacing a Koran in order to sell Heroin.
We learned our lesson.
The Muslim attitude towards mosques, however, is hardwired into Islam -- and considering the tinderbox that is the Middle East, that Sufi mosque is unlikely to be the last to be targeted by Islamist terrorists.
-----
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Ahmed El-Tayyeb, current Grand Imam of al-Azhar and former president of al-Azhar University
In the last week of November, over 300 Sufi Arabs were murdered in a terrorist attack on their mosque:
The death toll in a bomb and gun attack on a Sufi mosque in northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt's state prosecutor said Saturday.
Another 128 people were wounded, according to a statement from the public prosecutor read out on Egyptian state-run news channel Nile TV.
Between 25 and 30 armed men carried out the assault on the al Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, the statement said.Along with the horror at the senseless massacre is the sense that of all places, a mosque -- as a holy place of worship -- should be immune from bloodshed. Even if the Islamists behind the attack considered Sufis to be heretics, the blind gunfire would result in the destruction of copies of the Koran in addition to the carnage.
There was a similar Western sense of revulsion and confusion in response to other news reports of Muslim attacks on mosques over the years.
In the course of one year, from August 2010 to August 2011:
- In August 2011, the New York Times reported: 28 Are Killed in a Bombing at a Mosque in Baghdad.
- In October 2010 in Afghanistan, The Taliban murdered the head of Kunduz province, along with 14 other people, in a mosque bombing in Tahkar after the governor had been spoken out against the Taliban and other terror groups.
- In September 2010, a mosque was burned during the arson attack on the Crazy Water Park in Gaza according to a report by The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
- August 2010, a mosque was destroyed in Lebanon in a fight between Hezbollah and a rival group.
- In addition, a Turkish general admitted he deliberately destroyed a mosque in 1974 to intimidate an enemy:
In remarks published in the Haber Türk daily yesterday as part of an interview with Gen. Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, who led the Special War Department in 1971 and also worked to mobilize civilian resistance during Turkey's military intervention on Cyprus in 1974, said: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example,” in an attempt to clear things up. [emphasis added]
Why was there no sense of sacrilege to inhibit the attackers in each case?
Back in 2010, in response to the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center dedicated a chapter of it's own report, Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip, to the Hamas exploitation of mosques. An article in The Jerusalem Post summarized the report findings: Hamas used almost 100 mosques for military purposes:
The Malam report asserts that the extensive use of mosques to store weapons and as launch pads for rocket attacks on Israel was part of a Hamas strategy based on the knowledge that the IDF would not target civilian infrastructure including mosques, which were therefore ideal for weapons storehouses and rocket attacks.
The Malam analysis is based on Hamas sketches of neighborhoods that show that mosques were used as sniper positions, Israel Air Force videos showing massive secondary explosions after mosques were hit as well as reports from IDF troops.
One mosque in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City was raided by IDF troops who discovered a warehouse full of rockets and mortar shells. During the operation, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Israel troops from the mosque.
On January 13, IDF troops raided a mosque in Jabalya in northern Gaza that was full of weaponry including an anti-aircraft cannon. In a mosque in the Atatra neighborhood in northern Gaza City, troops uncovered a secret warehouse built under the podium, from where the imam leads prayers, which was full of weaponry and improvised explosive devices.According to the report, the use of mosques for military purposes is as old as Islam itself:
The massive military use Hamas and the other terrorist organizations made of mosques has historical-religious roots. By the 7th century the prophet Muhammad had turned the mosque he built in Medina into a center for preaching, a place where political matters were dealt with, consultations held and appointments made, and where the Muslim army was prepared before it was dispatched to war and to attack the enemies of Islam. Muslim sages are of the opinion that the mosque is not only a house of prayer but that other uses, including military and political, are acceptable. Contemporary examples of the military and political uses made of mosques by radical Islamic terrorist organizations can be found in the Gaza Strip and many other places in the Arab-Muslim world. [p145. Emphasis in the original]One example of such a Muslim religious leader is the Salafist Sheikh Saeed Abdul Azim:
The mosque is the place of worship and retreat, the place of education and guidance, the place of consultation and advice of Muslims, the safe driving center, the headquarters of the military command, the holding of the armies of the Mujahedeen in the cause of Allah and the place of reception of the coming delegations of the Messenger of Allah. The mosque, and say to them - peace be upon him -: (without you sons of Arvada) Agreed upon.[translated with Google Translate; emphasis added]Then there is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who until 2015 permitted suicide bombings:
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi asserted at the time that mosques may be used for political, social, cultural and religious purposes, including on issues related to jihad. He noted that in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, the mosque was the center of activities for the entire Muslim society. The mosque was not only a place to worship Allah, but also a place of study, a gathering place for consultation, a place for people to get to know one another and the like. According to him, in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, delegations would travel from the Arabian Peninsula to meet with the Prophet at the mosque. In those days, Friday sermons were delivered at mosques, and instructions from the Prophet were given to his followers on various topics, including religious, social and political matters. In AlQaradawi’s opinion, since the inception of Islam, the mosque has played an important role in encouraging Muslims to embark on jihad and in the management of the "resistance against the enemies of the [Muslim] community, from among invaders who seek to govern it [i.e., the Muslim community]." Al-Qaradawi noted that mosques play an important role in any jihad. Moreover, in his opinion, it is permissible to preach in a mosque against a government that does not comply with Sharia. [p. 2, emphasis in original]
Al-Qaradawi. Source: Wikipedia. Credit: Nmkuttiady
Using mosques as a base of operations to fire rockets of course disregards the danger it causes to civilians. We have seen in the past that civilian casualties are not a concern for a terrorist group like Hamas. However, the further danger of this approach towards mosques is that they do not appear to have the kind of sanctity that protects worshippers from attacks by other Muslims.
This is a Pandora's Box that was faced by Jews, when in protest against the writings of the Rambam, they burned his books. When non-Jews saw how Jews treated their own writings, they picked up on the idea and burned Jewish holy books too.
This domino effect explains how the Taliban had no problem defacing a Koran in order to sell Heroin.
We learned our lesson.
The Muslim attitude towards mosques, however, is hardwired into Islam -- and considering the tinderbox that is the Middle East, that Sufi mosque is unlikely to be the last to be targeted by Islamist terrorists.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
The Line Between Criticism and Demonization of Israel
A couple of weeks ago, my daughter asked me to help her with her homework. She needed help with a project on Antisemitism. The assignment was to take 4 cartoons -- 2 antisemitic cartoons from the Nazi era and 2 current anti-Israel/antisemitic cartoons -- and compare them..
She wanted my help to find them.
The first two cartoons were easy to find online. Der Stürmer cartoons are easy enough to find.
Title: Brood of Serpents
Caption (not shown): “The Jew’s symbol is a worm, not without reason.
He seeks to creep up on what he wants.”
Title: Don't Let Go.
Text: Do not grow weary, do not loosen the grip,
This poisonous serpent may not slip away.
Better that one strangles it to death
Than that our misery begin anew.
Title: Insatiable
The lead article is on the Moscow show trials.
The cartoon caption: “Far be it from the Jews to enslave a single people.
Their goal is to devour the entire world.”There is no problem or argument in seeing these cartoons for what they are. They portray Jews as ugly, threatening and outright dangerous.
According to Wikipedia, the Nazis themselves found Streicher's cartoons downright embarrassing:
Since the late 1920s, Streicher's vulgar and inconsiderate style was increasingly a cause of embarrassment for the Nazi party. In 1936 the sale of the Der Stürmer in Berlin was restricted during the Olympic Games. Joseph Goebbels tried to ban the newspaper in 1938. Hermann Göring forbade Der Stürmer in all of his departments, and Baldur von Schirach banned it as a means of education in the Hitler Youth hostels and other education facilities by a "Reichsbefehl" ("Reich command").Though Hitler supported him, Streicher's luck finally ran out after the war when he was tried at Nuremberg. According to the prosecutors, Streicher's paper incited Germans to kill the Jews, thus making him an accessory to murder. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged.
Fast forward to today.
If the Nazis themselves realized that Streicher was going too far, can we assume that today's antisemites are equally aware of lines that cannot be crossed?
Not if you are Rutgers Professor Michael Chikindas
Michael Chikindas' tweet
Over three weeks later and Rutgers is still trying to figure what to do about this.
Let's face it: we will always have people who get deranged over Der Sturmer.
Those older cartoons demonized Jews, and did it in a way that was so obvious and so over-the-top that a time came that the Nazis themselves had a sense they had gone to far.
Are people more sensitive to antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda today?
How about the cartoon below from a Berkeley editorial. I gave it to my daughter as a current example of an anti-Israel/antisemitic cartoon.
Raphael Magarik at the Forward justified the cartoon and claimed it wasn't antisemitic at all, but to do so he had to resort to proving his point by avoiding it.
He picked up on the accusation that this was a "blood libel" -- and defended the cartoon because the whole issue was that blood is being spilled. He then goes on to defend the cartoon by claiming that the various implied attacks in the cartoon on Dershowitz and his politics are justified, which is actually besides the point.
Overlooked was the fact that the image was not of Alan Dershowitz, but of Dershowitz with the body of a spider, an image used in Nazi cartoons, with all that image implies.
I pointed out to my daughter the demonization in the cartoon and I think she understood the point.
A few years ago, the Economist printed a cartoon that it then retracted as being antisemitic:
In the cartoon, the US and Iran, symbolized by Obama and Khamenei are being prevented from completing the Iran deal. Iranian hardliners are holding Khamenei back. Congress is holding Obama back. But one of those stars on that emblem of Congress is a Jewish star.
The issue is not the implication that Jews in the US were trying to prevent the Iran deal. As citizens they had the right to oppose it. The implication was that Jews (or Israel) controlled Congress. It may be more subtle than the Dershowitz cartoon, but that implication was an element of demonization of Jews -- and it was a point that was brought home when even the New York Times attempted to make opposition to the Iran deal into a "Jewish" issue.
The creepiest infographic you'll see today, courtesy of the NYT. Categories include "Jewish?" http://t.co/NenSllbqk8 pic.twitter.com/PxDgZY3bTE— Oren Kessler (@OrenKessler) September 10, 2015Even Linda Sarsour gets in on the action:
Israel should give free citizenship to US politicians. They are more loyal to Israel than they are to the American people.— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) July 29, 2014
In another cartoon, at the beginning of the year, The New York State Education Department apologized for including a political cartoon on its global studies Regents exam that critics claimed was anti-Israel propaganda.
Here is the exam question:
Considering the correct answer is (3) Negotiations have failed, the cartoon -- which criticizes Israel and only Israel -- is a poor illustration of the point. Using Natan Sharansky's 3 D's for determining antisemitism -- demonization, double standard and delegitimization -- none of those 3 factors seem to exist in the cartoon in a blatant hyperbolic way.
The AJC condemned the cartoon as being
“blatantly anti-Israel, disparaging of Israeli soldiers … and is entirely inappropriate to include on a test administered to young minds.”Granted the cartoon is "blatantly anti-Israel" and "disparaging of Israeli soldiers," does that make it "inappropriate"?
The exam was in New York.
What would have happened if this appeared on a test in Iowa?
Antisemitic and anti-Israel cartoons may not be as blatant as this one attack Ariel Sharon and Israel:
But this Ariel Sharon cartoon was "cleared" of being antisemitic by a UK press watchdog. More than that, the cartoon went on to win the UK's "Political Cartoon of the Year Award for 2003" of the Political Cartoon Society.
But what about the resemblance to the Nazi cartoon above of a Jew eating people? Someone decided the cartoon was criticism, not demonization. Does over-the-top criticism automatically become demonization, antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda?
Fourteen years later, how do we distinguish antisemitic cartoons from criticism -- valid or not -- of Jews or Israel, especially when those cartoons can sometimes be more nuanced?
Dershowitz opens what may be a Pandora's Box when he quotes approvingly from a letter to the editor from students from a pro-Israel organization at Berkeley printed in the Daily Cal:
To a Jewish student on this campus, seeing this cartoon [of Dershowitz] in the Daily Cal is a reminder that we are not always welcome in the spaces we call home…
Telling Jews that we can or cannot define what is offensive to us, because of our status as privileged minority in the United States, is antisemitic.Considering that this strategy is being used by other groups on campuses across the US, Jewish students should be able to use it too -- especially when the antisemitism on campus is such a threat.
Not to mention antisemitic crime incidents over the years as tracked by the FBI:
But do we really want to have to resort to the "safe spaces" argument?
If we demand the right to define what is offensive to us as Jews, as opposed to seeing it as mere criticism, are we validating the claim that Jews deliberately define criticism of Israel as antisemitism?
Safe spaces are not the answer.
The line between criticism and demonization of Israel may not always be so clear.
We have little choice but to stand our ground.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
She wanted my help to find them.
The first two cartoons were easy to find online. Der Stürmer cartoons are easy enough to find.
Title: Brood of Serpents
Caption (not shown): “The Jew’s symbol is a worm, not without reason.
He seeks to creep up on what he wants.”
Title: Don't Let Go.
Text: Do not grow weary, do not loosen the grip,
This poisonous serpent may not slip away.
Better that one strangles it to death
Than that our misery begin anew.
Title: Insatiable
The lead article is on the Moscow show trials.
The cartoon caption: “Far be it from the Jews to enslave a single people.
Their goal is to devour the entire world.”There is no problem or argument in seeing these cartoons for what they are. They portray Jews as ugly, threatening and outright dangerous.
According to Wikipedia, the Nazis themselves found Streicher's cartoons downright embarrassing:
Since the late 1920s, Streicher's vulgar and inconsiderate style was increasingly a cause of embarrassment for the Nazi party. In 1936 the sale of the Der Stürmer in Berlin was restricted during the Olympic Games. Joseph Goebbels tried to ban the newspaper in 1938. Hermann Göring forbade Der Stürmer in all of his departments, and Baldur von Schirach banned it as a means of education in the Hitler Youth hostels and other education facilities by a "Reichsbefehl" ("Reich command").Though Hitler supported him, Streicher's luck finally ran out after the war when he was tried at Nuremberg. According to the prosecutors, Streicher's paper incited Germans to kill the Jews, thus making him an accessory to murder. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged.
Fast forward to today.
If the Nazis themselves realized that Streicher was going too far, can we assume that today's antisemites are equally aware of lines that cannot be crossed?
Not if you are Rutgers Professor Michael Chikindas
Michael Chikindas' tweet
Over three weeks later and Rutgers is still trying to figure what to do about this.
Let's face it: we will always have people who get deranged over Der Sturmer.
Those older cartoons demonized Jews, and did it in a way that was so obvious and so over-the-top that a time came that the Nazis themselves had a sense they had gone to far.
Are people more sensitive to antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda today?
How about the cartoon below from a Berkeley editorial. I gave it to my daughter as a current example of an anti-Israel/antisemitic cartoon.
Raphael Magarik at the Forward justified the cartoon and claimed it wasn't antisemitic at all, but to do so he had to resort to proving his point by avoiding it.
He picked up on the accusation that this was a "blood libel" -- and defended the cartoon because the whole issue was that blood is being spilled. He then goes on to defend the cartoon by claiming that the various implied attacks in the cartoon on Dershowitz and his politics are justified, which is actually besides the point.
Overlooked was the fact that the image was not of Alan Dershowitz, but of Dershowitz with the body of a spider, an image used in Nazi cartoons, with all that image implies.
I pointed out to my daughter the demonization in the cartoon and I think she understood the point.
A few years ago, the Economist printed a cartoon that it then retracted as being antisemitic:
In the cartoon, the US and Iran, symbolized by Obama and Khamenei are being prevented from completing the Iran deal. Iranian hardliners are holding Khamenei back. Congress is holding Obama back. But one of those stars on that emblem of Congress is a Jewish star.
The issue is not the implication that Jews in the US were trying to prevent the Iran deal. As citizens they had the right to oppose it. The implication was that Jews (or Israel) controlled Congress. It may be more subtle than the Dershowitz cartoon, but that implication was an element of demonization of Jews -- and it was a point that was brought home when even the New York Times attempted to make opposition to the Iran deal into a "Jewish" issue.
The creepiest infographic you'll see today, courtesy of the NYT. Categories include "Jewish?" http://t.co/NenSllbqk8 pic.twitter.com/PxDgZY3bTE— Oren Kessler (@OrenKessler) September 10, 2015Even Linda Sarsour gets in on the action:
Israel should give free citizenship to US politicians. They are more loyal to Israel than they are to the American people.— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) July 29, 2014
In another cartoon, at the beginning of the year, The New York State Education Department apologized for including a political cartoon on its global studies Regents exam that critics claimed was anti-Israel propaganda.
Here is the exam question:
Considering the correct answer is (3) Negotiations have failed, the cartoon -- which criticizes Israel and only Israel -- is a poor illustration of the point. Using Natan Sharansky's 3 D's for determining antisemitism -- demonization, double standard and delegitimization -- none of those 3 factors seem to exist in the cartoon in a blatant hyperbolic way.
The AJC condemned the cartoon as being
“blatantly anti-Israel, disparaging of Israeli soldiers … and is entirely inappropriate to include on a test administered to young minds.”Granted the cartoon is "blatantly anti-Israel" and "disparaging of Israeli soldiers," does that make it "inappropriate"?
The exam was in New York.
What would have happened if this appeared on a test in Iowa?
Antisemitic and anti-Israel cartoons may not be as blatant as this one attack Ariel Sharon and Israel:
But this Ariel Sharon cartoon was "cleared" of being antisemitic by a UK press watchdog. More than that, the cartoon went on to win the UK's "Political Cartoon of the Year Award for 2003" of the Political Cartoon Society.
But what about the resemblance to the Nazi cartoon above of a Jew eating people? Someone decided the cartoon was criticism, not demonization. Does over-the-top criticism automatically become demonization, antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda?
Fourteen years later, how do we distinguish antisemitic cartoons from criticism -- valid or not -- of Jews or Israel, especially when those cartoons can sometimes be more nuanced?
Dershowitz opens what may be a Pandora's Box when he quotes approvingly from a letter to the editor from students from a pro-Israel organization at Berkeley printed in the Daily Cal:
To a Jewish student on this campus, seeing this cartoon [of Dershowitz] in the Daily Cal is a reminder that we are not always welcome in the spaces we call home…
Telling Jews that we can or cannot define what is offensive to us, because of our status as privileged minority in the United States, is antisemitic.Considering that this strategy is being used by other groups on campuses across the US, Jewish students should be able to use it too -- especially when the antisemitism on campus is such a threat.
Not to mention antisemitic crime incidents over the years as tracked by the FBI:
But do we really want to have to resort to the "safe spaces" argument?
If we demand the right to define what is offensive to us as Jews, as opposed to seeing it as mere criticism, are we validating the claim that Jews deliberately define criticism of Israel as antisemitism?
Safe spaces are not the answer.
The line between criticism and demonization of Israel may not always be so clear.
We have little choice but to stand our ground.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
Nixon Faced His Own 9/11: Palestinian Airplane Hijackings
Back in July, when Palestinian Arabs protested against the use of metal detectors to secure and protect visitors to the Temple Mount from terrorist attacks, Walter Russel Meade made an interesting point. He noted on his website, The American Interest, the key role Palestinian terrorism has played -- not only in the innovation and development of terrorist strategies, but also in the effort to protect against them:
With the possible exception of al-Qaeda, Palestinian terrorism—which pioneered the use of plane hijackings, airport attacks, and suicide bombings—has perhaps done more to force the introduction of metal detectors into our daily lives than just about any other cause.While plane hijackings in the 1970's were just as easily associated with Cuba as with the Palestinian Arabs, it was the latter that pushed the US to increase security on airplanes.
In September 6th and 9th in 1970, 5 planes were were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Of the 5 airliners, 3 of them were forced to land at Dawson's Field, located near Zarka, Jordan.
This became then-President Nixon's own "9/11":
The crisis opened Nixon's eyes.
His chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, recorded in his diary on September 7, 1970, that Nixon was "very anxious to develop some dramatic administration action about hijackings, need tough shocking steps, especially guards on planes."
Nixon responded to the trio of hijackings in a written statement listing seven steps to combat "air piracy." Beyond the air marshals, he called on foreign governments to join the United States in combatting hijackings and ordered electronic surveillance at airports to spot potential terrorists.
Nixon also envisaged that the 100 initial air marshals would eventually grow to a force of thousands. But over the ensuing years, as the threat from hijackings receded, the force never reached full capacity.President Richard Nixon, who faced his own 9/11 in the form of
Palestinian terrorism. Credit: Wikipedia
On September 11, Nixon responded to the Palestinian hijackings with a program on dealing with the problem.
I have directed the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Science and Technology, and other agencies to accelerate their present efforts to develop security measures, including new methods for detecting weapons and explosive devices. At the same time, the Departments of Defense and Transportation will work with all U.S. airlines in determining whether certain metal detectors and x-ray devices now available to the military could provide immediate improvement in airport surveillance efforts. To facilitate passenger surveillance, appropriate agencies of the Federal Government will intensify their efforts to assemble and evaluate all useful intelligence concerning this matter and to disseminate such information to airlines and law enforcement personnel. (emphasis added)Metal detectors, which decades later Palestinian Arabs would protest as an impediment, were first deemed necessary as a result of Palestinian terrorism.
Nixon reiterated this point later that month, while speaking to some of the released Americans who had been held hostage
Again, in speaking to the released hostages, Nixon emphasized that in addition to the newly instituted air marshals, "new electronic devices" would be put in place as well.
Times have changed since then, in ways that Nixon could never have imagined.
The years during which Palestinian Arabs terrorized the airways have been forgotten. Who today remembers that the tools used now to secure travelers against terrorist attacks were originally developed to protect them against Palestinian terrorists.
Instead, the only irony greater than the attempt to used those security devices on Palestinian Arabs is their protest that such tools impinge on their rights.
Meanwhile, the world endures the legacy of Palestinian terrorist innovations used by other terrorist groups: hijackings, airport attacks, suicide bombings -- and now car-rammings.
Nixon may not have foreseen these developments, but he did try to prevent them.
-----
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With the possible exception of al-Qaeda, Palestinian terrorism—which pioneered the use of plane hijackings, airport attacks, and suicide bombings—has perhaps done more to force the introduction of metal detectors into our daily lives than just about any other cause.While plane hijackings in the 1970's were just as easily associated with Cuba as with the Palestinian Arabs, it was the latter that pushed the US to increase security on airplanes.
In September 6th and 9th in 1970, 5 planes were were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Of the 5 airliners, 3 of them were forced to land at Dawson's Field, located near Zarka, Jordan.
This became then-President Nixon's own "9/11":
The crisis opened Nixon's eyes.
His chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, recorded in his diary on September 7, 1970, that Nixon was "very anxious to develop some dramatic administration action about hijackings, need tough shocking steps, especially guards on planes."
Nixon responded to the trio of hijackings in a written statement listing seven steps to combat "air piracy." Beyond the air marshals, he called on foreign governments to join the United States in combatting hijackings and ordered electronic surveillance at airports to spot potential terrorists.
Nixon also envisaged that the 100 initial air marshals would eventually grow to a force of thousands. But over the ensuing years, as the threat from hijackings receded, the force never reached full capacity.President Richard Nixon, who faced his own 9/11 in the form of
Palestinian terrorism. Credit: Wikipedia
On September 11, Nixon responded to the Palestinian hijackings with a program on dealing with the problem.
I have directed the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, and Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Science and Technology, and other agencies to accelerate their present efforts to develop security measures, including new methods for detecting weapons and explosive devices. At the same time, the Departments of Defense and Transportation will work with all U.S. airlines in determining whether certain metal detectors and x-ray devices now available to the military could provide immediate improvement in airport surveillance efforts. To facilitate passenger surveillance, appropriate agencies of the Federal Government will intensify their efforts to assemble and evaluate all useful intelligence concerning this matter and to disseminate such information to airlines and law enforcement personnel. (emphasis added)Metal detectors, which decades later Palestinian Arabs would protest as an impediment, were first deemed necessary as a result of Palestinian terrorism.
Nixon reiterated this point later that month, while speaking to some of the released Americans who had been held hostage
Again, in speaking to the released hostages, Nixon emphasized that in addition to the newly instituted air marshals, "new electronic devices" would be put in place as well.
Times have changed since then, in ways that Nixon could never have imagined.
The years during which Palestinian Arabs terrorized the airways have been forgotten. Who today remembers that the tools used now to secure travelers against terrorist attacks were originally developed to protect them against Palestinian terrorists.
Instead, the only irony greater than the attempt to used those security devices on Palestinian Arabs is their protest that such tools impinge on their rights.
Meanwhile, the world endures the legacy of Palestinian terrorist innovations used by other terrorist groups: hijackings, airport attacks, suicide bombings -- and now car-rammings.
Nixon may not have foreseen these developments, but he did try to prevent them.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
Before Netanyahu vs. Obama There Was Netanyahu vs FDR
US bipartisan support for Israel -- when and how did that start?
Apparently, the birth of that bipartisan support for Israel came about during the term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, despite FDR's antagonism towards Zionism.
FDR. Photo by Leon A. Perski, 1944.
Source: Wikipedia
And a lot of the credit seems to be due to Netanyahu.
In FDR’s Retreat on Zionism–and What it Means Today, Rafael Medoff writes about Roosevelt's attitude towards then-Palestine and Zionism.
Roosevelt opposed both, vigorously:
On January 17, 1943, on the question of restoring the pre-war equal rights of North Africa’s 330,000 Jews following the liberation of Casablanca, Roosevelt suggested that “the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population,” so that local Arabs would not be angered.
Roosevelt also opposed settling Jewish refugees in North Africa: “I know, in fact, that there is plenty of room for them in North Africa but I raise the question of sending large numbers of Jews there...That would be extremely unwise.”
In April 1943, Roosevelt approved of a suggested Allied ban on all public discussion of Palestine until the end of the war. He backed down after Secretary of War Stimson called such a measure "alarmist"
On March 9, 1944, Roosevelt rejected the request of Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver to open Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler. He claimed that the move would enrage Arabs and responded to them, “Do you want to start a Holy Jihad?”
Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise; Library of Congress portrait.
Wikipedia
Abba Hillel Silver; excerpt from YouTube video
Also in 1944, Republican Senator Robert Taft introduced a resolution affirming US support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In response, Roosevelt claimed that the resolution would be “responsible for the death of a hundred thousand men.” As a result, the resolution was table for a year, and when Congress passed it – there was no Arab rioting.
Yet despite all this, the same Roosevelt who rejected a request by the Palestine (Jewish) Symphony Orchestra to name one of its theaters the “Roosevelt Amphitheatre” for fear it would link him too closely the Zionists -- did in fact turn around and support Zionism.
To a degree.
In the fall of 1943, it appeared that the Republican contender in the 1944 presidential election would go after the Jewish vote.
A major factor in adapting a strong pro-Zionist plank at the Republican National Convention was Netanyahu -- Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel's current prime minister.
Benzion Netanyahu in 2007. Source: Wikipedia
Medoff writes:
Benzion Netanyahu, scholar and activist (and father of the current prime minister) arrived in the United States in 1940 as an emissary of Revisionist Zionism, the militant wing of the Zionist movement, headed by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Netanyahu organized rallies and authored full-page newspaper advertisements challenging the Roosevelt administration for abandoning European Jewry and the Zionist cause.
Netanyahu also spent part of his time on Capitol Hill. In an interview with this author, Netanyahu recalled the political landscape he encountered in the nation’s capital: “Most of the Jewish and Zionist leaders, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, were devoted Democrats and supporters of President Roosevelt. The idea of having friendly relationships with Republicans was inconceivable to them.” In the months prior to the June 1944 Republican National Convention, Netanyahu did the inconceivable–he took his case to GOP leaders, including former president Herbert Hoover; Senator Robert Taft, who was chairing the convention’s resolutions committee; and the influential Connecticut congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, who was slated to deliver the keynote address at the convention and would also serve on the resolutions committee. Netanyahu’s goal was to have the GOP platform include a plank supporting Jewish statehood in Palestine. Neither party had ever before taken such a stand.The efforts of Netanyahu -- and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver -- resulted in the inclusion of the following in the Republican platform :
In order to give refuge to millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny, we call for the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership, so that in accordance with the full intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the resolution of a Republican Congress in 1922, Palestine may be reconstituted as a free and democratic commonwealth. We condemn the failure of the President to insist that the Palestine Mandatory carry out the provisions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate while he pretends to support them.In response, Rabbi Wise felt forced to try to get the Democrats, with Roosevelt's approval, to include a pro-Zionist statement in its platform as well.
To a large degree he was successful. The Democratic platform supported the “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization” of Palestine as well as the establishment of “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”
One could argue that this was the beginning of the bi-partisan support for Israel that despite its ups and downs continues to this day.
Medoff writes:
Wise summed up what was achieved: “With the plank in both platforms the thing is lifted above partisanship.” The adoption of the two party planks ensured that support for Zionism, and later Israel, would become a permanent part of American political culture. No subsequent Republican or Democratic convention could go back on it without significant electoral ramifications.Despite the questions that are raised today about the extent and degree of Democratic support for Israel, that bi-partisan support does in fact continue.
As does the tendency of Netanyahu's not to quietly acquiesce to US policy towards Israel.
-----
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Apparently, the birth of that bipartisan support for Israel came about during the term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, despite FDR's antagonism towards Zionism.
FDR. Photo by Leon A. Perski, 1944.
Source: Wikipedia
And a lot of the credit seems to be due to Netanyahu.
In FDR’s Retreat on Zionism–and What it Means Today, Rafael Medoff writes about Roosevelt's attitude towards then-Palestine and Zionism.
Roosevelt opposed both, vigorously:
On January 17, 1943, on the question of restoring the pre-war equal rights of North Africa’s 330,000 Jews following the liberation of Casablanca, Roosevelt suggested that “the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population,” so that local Arabs would not be angered.
Roosevelt also opposed settling Jewish refugees in North Africa: “I know, in fact, that there is plenty of room for them in North Africa but I raise the question of sending large numbers of Jews there...That would be extremely unwise.”
In April 1943, Roosevelt approved of a suggested Allied ban on all public discussion of Palestine until the end of the war. He backed down after Secretary of War Stimson called such a measure "alarmist"
On March 9, 1944, Roosevelt rejected the request of Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver to open Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler. He claimed that the move would enrage Arabs and responded to them, “Do you want to start a Holy Jihad?”
Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise; Library of Congress portrait.
Wikipedia
Abba Hillel Silver; excerpt from YouTube video
Also in 1944, Republican Senator Robert Taft introduced a resolution affirming US support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In response, Roosevelt claimed that the resolution would be “responsible for the death of a hundred thousand men.” As a result, the resolution was table for a year, and when Congress passed it – there was no Arab rioting.
Yet despite all this, the same Roosevelt who rejected a request by the Palestine (Jewish) Symphony Orchestra to name one of its theaters the “Roosevelt Amphitheatre” for fear it would link him too closely the Zionists -- did in fact turn around and support Zionism.
To a degree.
In the fall of 1943, it appeared that the Republican contender in the 1944 presidential election would go after the Jewish vote.
A major factor in adapting a strong pro-Zionist plank at the Republican National Convention was Netanyahu -- Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel's current prime minister.
Benzion Netanyahu in 2007. Source: Wikipedia
Medoff writes:
Benzion Netanyahu, scholar and activist (and father of the current prime minister) arrived in the United States in 1940 as an emissary of Revisionist Zionism, the militant wing of the Zionist movement, headed by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Netanyahu organized rallies and authored full-page newspaper advertisements challenging the Roosevelt administration for abandoning European Jewry and the Zionist cause.
Netanyahu also spent part of his time on Capitol Hill. In an interview with this author, Netanyahu recalled the political landscape he encountered in the nation’s capital: “Most of the Jewish and Zionist leaders, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, were devoted Democrats and supporters of President Roosevelt. The idea of having friendly relationships with Republicans was inconceivable to them.” In the months prior to the June 1944 Republican National Convention, Netanyahu did the inconceivable–he took his case to GOP leaders, including former president Herbert Hoover; Senator Robert Taft, who was chairing the convention’s resolutions committee; and the influential Connecticut congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, who was slated to deliver the keynote address at the convention and would also serve on the resolutions committee. Netanyahu’s goal was to have the GOP platform include a plank supporting Jewish statehood in Palestine. Neither party had ever before taken such a stand.The efforts of Netanyahu -- and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver -- resulted in the inclusion of the following in the Republican platform :
In order to give refuge to millions of distressed Jewish men, women and children driven from their homes by tyranny, we call for the opening of Palestine to their unrestricted immigration and land ownership, so that in accordance with the full intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the resolution of a Republican Congress in 1922, Palestine may be reconstituted as a free and democratic commonwealth. We condemn the failure of the President to insist that the Palestine Mandatory carry out the provisions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate while he pretends to support them.In response, Rabbi Wise felt forced to try to get the Democrats, with Roosevelt's approval, to include a pro-Zionist statement in its platform as well.
To a large degree he was successful. The Democratic platform supported the “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization” of Palestine as well as the establishment of “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”
One could argue that this was the beginning of the bi-partisan support for Israel that despite its ups and downs continues to this day.
Medoff writes:
Wise summed up what was achieved: “With the plank in both platforms the thing is lifted above partisanship.” The adoption of the two party planks ensured that support for Zionism, and later Israel, would become a permanent part of American political culture. No subsequent Republican or Democratic convention could go back on it without significant electoral ramifications.Despite the questions that are raised today about the extent and degree of Democratic support for Israel, that bi-partisan support does in fact continue.
As does the tendency of Netanyahu's not to quietly acquiesce to US policy towards Israel.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Just What Were The Jews Doing in Then-Palestine Before The Balfour Declaration?
Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, yet after 100 years people still argue over it and Abbas is still asking Great Britain for an apology.
What did the Balfour Declaration actually do?
And what did the Balfour Declaration recognize?
The second question is no more settled than the first, but gives a surprising answer.
Arthur Balfour. Credit: Wikipedia
We all are familiar with the language of the declaration:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.But while the declaration seems to be talking about the future, in The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz writes that by the time the Balfour Declaration was published in 1917, that national home already existed:
Even before the Balfour Declaration of 1917, there was a de facto Jewish national home in Palestine consisting of several dozens of Jewish moshavim and kibbutzim in western and northeastern Palestine, as well as in Jewish cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Safad. The Jewish refugees in Palestine had established this homeland on the ground without the assistance of any colonial or imperialist powers. They had relied on their own hard work in building an infrastructure and cultivating land they had legally purchased.This was an area under Ottoman control until the end of WWI. Even before WWI, there was no sovereign state, just a collection of districts under the control of foreign Ottoman control.
Dershowitz's interpretation is not his own. He quotes Winston Churchill, who in the British White Paper of 1922 wrote:
During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one fourth are farmers or workers upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its needs. It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity. This community, then, with its town and country population, its political, religious, and social organizations, its own language, its own customs, its own life, has in fact "national" characteristics. When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection. [emphasis added]Sir Winston Churchill, by Yousuf Karsh. Source: Wikipedia
The Balfour Declaration was not addressed to a foreign group, giving them permission to enter the land. On the contrary, it was recognition of what Jews -- who have an indigenous connection to the land -- had already accomplished and would continue to develop.
As Dershowitz puts it:
The political and legal seeds were were thus sown for a two- (or three- ) state solution to the "Palestinian problem." This was a perfect example of self-determination at work.This is more than an abstract theory.
Take a look at the 1925 Larousse French dictionary entry for "Palestine":
Here is a closeup view of the beginning of the entry:
This translates as:
PALESTINE, the land of Syria, between Phenicia in the North, the Dead Sea in the South, the Mediterranean in the West, and the Syrian Desert in the East, watered by the Jordan. It is a narrow strip of land, narrowed between the sea, Lebanon, and traversed by the Jordan, which throws itself into the Dead Sea. It is also called, in Scripture, Land of Chanaan, Promised Land and Judea . It is today [in 1925] a Jewish state under the mandate of England; 770,000 inhabitants. Jerusalem capital.Already in 1925, before WWII and before the Israeli War of Independence, there was a recognition of a Jewish state called Palestine, a state of 770,000 inhabitants that included both Jews and Muslims. It's capital was Jerusalem, which did not have that designation under Ottoman rule.
Not everyone may have recognized Palestine as such, certainly the Arabs did not, but the ideas expressed by Churchill were more than abstract and had gained a certain acceptance.
Dershowitz notes that even US President Woodrow Wilson, who was a champion of self-determination and opposed British-French plans on dividing the Ottoman Empire after WWI, saw a Jewish state in Palestine as self-determination:
I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish commonwealth.Woodrow Wilson. Library of Congress.
Source: Wikipedia
The culmination of that self-determination -- with a state for the Arabs -- was prevented by war and a refusal to accept even the presence of Jews on the land.
So, what were the Jews doing in Palestine before the Lord Balfour came out with his famous declaration? They were not waiting around to enter as invited guests. Instead, they worked on a land to which they have a 3,000 year history. Jews with indigenous roots to the land worked to re-establish it as a sovereign state, something it had never been since the time of the Romans.
Jews made a choice.
The Arabs made their own choice too.
Hat tip: EG
-----
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What did the Balfour Declaration actually do?
And what did the Balfour Declaration recognize?
The second question is no more settled than the first, but gives a surprising answer.
Arthur Balfour. Credit: Wikipedia
We all are familiar with the language of the declaration:
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.But while the declaration seems to be talking about the future, in The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz writes that by the time the Balfour Declaration was published in 1917, that national home already existed:
Even before the Balfour Declaration of 1917, there was a de facto Jewish national home in Palestine consisting of several dozens of Jewish moshavim and kibbutzim in western and northeastern Palestine, as well as in Jewish cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Safad. The Jewish refugees in Palestine had established this homeland on the ground without the assistance of any colonial or imperialist powers. They had relied on their own hard work in building an infrastructure and cultivating land they had legally purchased.This was an area under Ottoman control until the end of WWI. Even before WWI, there was no sovereign state, just a collection of districts under the control of foreign Ottoman control.
Dershowitz's interpretation is not his own. He quotes Winston Churchill, who in the British White Paper of 1922 wrote:
During the last two or three generations the Jews have recreated in Palestine a community, now numbering 80,000, of whom about one fourth are farmers or workers upon the land. This community has its own political organs; an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns; elected councils in the towns; and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Council for the direction of its religious affairs. Its business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its needs. It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays considerable economic activity. This community, then, with its town and country population, its political, religious, and social organizations, its own language, its own customs, its own life, has in fact "national" characteristics. When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, in order that it may become a centre in which the Jewish people as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a pride. But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection. [emphasis added]Sir Winston Churchill, by Yousuf Karsh. Source: Wikipedia
The Balfour Declaration was not addressed to a foreign group, giving them permission to enter the land. On the contrary, it was recognition of what Jews -- who have an indigenous connection to the land -- had already accomplished and would continue to develop.
As Dershowitz puts it:
The political and legal seeds were were thus sown for a two- (or three- ) state solution to the "Palestinian problem." This was a perfect example of self-determination at work.This is more than an abstract theory.
Take a look at the 1925 Larousse French dictionary entry for "Palestine":
Here is a closeup view of the beginning of the entry:
This translates as:
PALESTINE, the land of Syria, between Phenicia in the North, the Dead Sea in the South, the Mediterranean in the West, and the Syrian Desert in the East, watered by the Jordan. It is a narrow strip of land, narrowed between the sea, Lebanon, and traversed by the Jordan, which throws itself into the Dead Sea. It is also called, in Scripture, Land of Chanaan, Promised Land and Judea . It is today [in 1925] a Jewish state under the mandate of England; 770,000 inhabitants. Jerusalem capital.Already in 1925, before WWII and before the Israeli War of Independence, there was a recognition of a Jewish state called Palestine, a state of 770,000 inhabitants that included both Jews and Muslims. It's capital was Jerusalem, which did not have that designation under Ottoman rule.
Not everyone may have recognized Palestine as such, certainly the Arabs did not, but the ideas expressed by Churchill were more than abstract and had gained a certain acceptance.
Dershowitz notes that even US President Woodrow Wilson, who was a champion of self-determination and opposed British-French plans on dividing the Ottoman Empire after WWI, saw a Jewish state in Palestine as self-determination:
I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish commonwealth.Woodrow Wilson. Library of Congress.
Source: Wikipedia
The culmination of that self-determination -- with a state for the Arabs -- was prevented by war and a refusal to accept even the presence of Jews on the land.
So, what were the Jews doing in Palestine before the Lord Balfour came out with his famous declaration? They were not waiting around to enter as invited guests. Instead, they worked on a land to which they have a 3,000 year history. Jews with indigenous roots to the land worked to re-establish it as a sovereign state, something it had never been since the time of the Romans.
Jews made a choice.
The Arabs made their own choice too.
Hat tip: EG
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Palestinian Terrorists: 64; Koby Mandell Act: 0
On May 8, 2001, Koby Mandell, a 13 year old Israeli with American citizenship and 14 year old Yosef Ishran, were killed on the outskirts of Tekoa where their families lived. Though the actual identities of the murderers was never determined, the Israeli government determined that Palestinian terrorists were responsible.
Their murders led to Congressional legislation strengthening the US response to the killing of Americans overseas.
Koby Mandell. Source: YouTube video
But it was not easy.
The original version of the Koby Mandell Act applied pressure on the US government to deal with Palestinian terrorists who murdered American citizens in attacks on Israel.
The Koby Mandell Act criticized the US government for its failure to dedicate the necessary resources to apprehending Palestinian terrorists:
Other aspects of the bill, seemed to be very relevant:
(7) The Office shall endeavor to monitor public actions by governments and regimes overseas pertaining to terrorists who have harmed American citizens, such as naming of schools, streets, or other public institutions or sites after such terrorists. In such instances, the Office shall encourage other United States Government agencies to halt their provision of assistance, directly or indirectly, to those institutions.But one of the most important elements of the bill provided for rewards:
(1) The Office shall assume responsibility for administration of the Rewards for Justice program and its web site, www.rewardsforjustice.com, and in so doing will ensure that--
(A) rewards are offered to capture all terrorists involved in harming American citizens overseas, regardless of the terrorists’ country of origin or residence;
(B) such rewards are prominently advertised in the mass media and public sites in all countries or regions where such terrorists reside;
(C) the names and photographs and suspects in all such cases are included on the web site; and
(D) the names of the specific organizations claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks mentioned on the site are included in the descriptions of those attacks.The key element of the bill is that US victims of Palestinian terrorism receive justice:
To create an office within the Department of Justice to undertake certain specific steps to ensure that all American citizens harmed by terrorism overseas receive equal treatment by the United States government regardless of the terrorists' country of origin or residence, and to ensure that all terrorists involved in such attacks are pursued, prosecuted, and punished with equal vigor, regardless of the terrorists' country of origin or residence.The result was the creation of the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT)
Where do things stand now?
On February 2, 2016, Representative Ron DeSantis chaired a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security addressing the job the OVT was doing in general and in prosecuting Palestinian terrorists in particular.
Representative Ron DeSantis. Credit: Wikipedia
A key exchange between Congressman DeSantis and Brad Wiegmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, in the Department of Justice went like this:
Mr. Wiegmann, the committee has counted that since ’93, at least 64 Americans have been killed, as well as two unborn children, and 91 have been wounded by terrorists in Israel in disputed territories.
Mr. DESANTIS. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans in Israel or disputed territories has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted during this time period?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I think the answer is—is none.
Mr. DESANTIS. Okay. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans anywhere else overseas has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I don’t have an exact figure for you.
Mr. DESANTIS. But it would be a decent size number, though, correct?
Mr. WIEGMANN. It would be a significant number, yes.
Mr. DESANTIS. Okay. Does the DOJ plan to prosecute any of the terrorism cases committed by Palestinian terrorism and Israel in the disputed territories?
Mr. WIEGMANN. So we have a number of open investigations. I can’t comment further on the status of the investigations.
Mr. DESANTIS. Do you know how many, though?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I can’t give you that number.
Mr. DESANTIS. Why not?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I don’t have the number, and I don’t think we want to comment exactly, because the more we say about the number of investigations we have, the more we tell the bad guys who we are trying to get.
Mr. DESANTIS. ...In your opening statement, you said that these prosecutions, when Americans are killed by terrorists overseas, including in Israel, that that was the highest priority, and that there should be no stone left unturned. And I understand when you’re talking about foreign jurisdictions, and you alluded to some of the issues that arise, and I think that point is well taken. But when it’s zero for 64, I think you see some people, who have been affected negatively, wonder, you know, what exactly is the Department doing within this particular aspect of terrorism that occurs in Israel?Another exchange between Wiegmann and Representative DeSantis concerned whether US foreign might influence the the Department of Justice pursued terrorists:
Mr. DESANTIS. ...Now, it’s been alleged that the reason that DOJ does not prosecute the Palestinian terrorists who harm Americans in Israel, the disputed territories, is that the Department of Justice is concerned that such prosecutions will harm efforts to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or that it will actually harm the Palestinian Authority.
So let me ask you straight up, is that a consideration the Department of Justice?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I can assure that is absolutely not the case.
Mr. DESANTIS. And has the State Department ever made arguments to the Department of Justice to handle some of the Palestinian terrorism cases differently than you may normally handle, say, a terrorism case in Asia?
Mr. WIEGMANN. Absolutely not. The State Department has nothing to say about cases that we bring, whether in Palestinian territories related to these cases or not. So it absolutely makes zero difference to us whether the terrorist attack occurred in Israel, whether it’s a Palestinian terrorist group, whether it’s ISIL, Al Qaeda, they are all the same to us. We want to protect Americans regardless of who they are victimized by.An important issue in the US pursuing and extraditing terrorists in general and Palestinian terrorists in particular is the question of double-jeopardy. Does the US consider pursuit of Palestinian terrorists released from prison, for example in the Gilad Shalit exchange, to be off-limits:
Mr. DESANTIS. ...Now, some have said that if you have a situation where a terrorist who kills Americans in Israel is prosecuted by the Israelis, then they are later released in a prisoner exchange or release, that somehow if we were to prosecute them here, that would trigger double jeopardy. Is that the Department’s position?
Mr. WIEGMANN. Absolutely not. We have prosecuted people who have been released from prison before. Sometimes it takes us a while. One prominent case is an older case, actually a case involving a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked an airliner in Pakistan. He spent, I think, 8 to 10 years in a Pakistani prison. Then he was released, made his way to another country, and was, I think, more, 10, 12, 15 years later that we were able finally to apprehend the person, prosecuted him in 2004, and he’s got a 60-year sentence today.
So we have prosecuted people who have been released from prison before, and certainly, nothing in the Israeli prison release would be any different. We fully intend to pursue charges in any of those cases if we can.Some of Wiegmann's testimony is positive -- that the prosecution of Palestinian terrorists is not influenced or hampered by foreign policy and that double-jeopardy is not an issue.
But the fact remains that the record of the OVT is horrendous. Some of the parents and relatives of victims made clear they thought the Department of Justice and the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism were not doing their job, undercutting the intent of the Koby Mandell Act. Apart from the clear failure to apprehend even one Palestinian terrorist, other complaints during the hearing were that the OVT was not in contact with them..
Sherri Mandell herself indicated in 2012 that the OVT was not doing its job
We are approaching the end of 2017 and still the OVT has been a failure.
Most recently, efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice have been thwarted by Jordan's refusal to honor its extradition treaty with the US. It is unclear what the US is going to do to prevent this from being one more failure in the record of the the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism.
And in the record of the Koby Mandell Act.
-----
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Their murders led to Congressional legislation strengthening the US response to the killing of Americans overseas.
Koby Mandell. Source: YouTube video
But it was not easy.
The original version of the Koby Mandell Act applied pressure on the US government to deal with Palestinian terrorists who murdered American citizens in attacks on Israel.
The Koby Mandell Act criticized the US government for its failure to dedicate the necessary resources to apprehending Palestinian terrorists:
- Numerous American citizens have been murdered or maimed by terrorists around the world, including more than one hundred murdered since 1968 in terrorist attacks occurring in Israel or in territories administered by Israel or in territories administered by the Palestinian Authority.
- Some American citizens who have been victims of terrorism overseas, especially those harmed by terrorists operating from areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, have not received from the United States Government services equal to those received by other such victims of overseas terrorism.
- The United States Government has not devoted adequate efforts or resources to the apprehension of terrorists who have harmed American citizens overseas, particularly in cases involving terrorists operating from areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. Monetary rewards for information leading to the capture of terrorists overseas, which the government advertises in regions where the terrorists are believed to be hiding, have not been advertised in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority.
Other aspects of the bill, seemed to be very relevant:
(7) The Office shall endeavor to monitor public actions by governments and regimes overseas pertaining to terrorists who have harmed American citizens, such as naming of schools, streets, or other public institutions or sites after such terrorists. In such instances, the Office shall encourage other United States Government agencies to halt their provision of assistance, directly or indirectly, to those institutions.But one of the most important elements of the bill provided for rewards:
(1) The Office shall assume responsibility for administration of the Rewards for Justice program and its web site, www.rewardsforjustice.com, and in so doing will ensure that--
(A) rewards are offered to capture all terrorists involved in harming American citizens overseas, regardless of the terrorists’ country of origin or residence;
(B) such rewards are prominently advertised in the mass media and public sites in all countries or regions where such terrorists reside;
(C) the names and photographs and suspects in all such cases are included on the web site; and
(D) the names of the specific organizations claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks mentioned on the site are included in the descriptions of those attacks.The key element of the bill is that US victims of Palestinian terrorism receive justice:
To create an office within the Department of Justice to undertake certain specific steps to ensure that all American citizens harmed by terrorism overseas receive equal treatment by the United States government regardless of the terrorists' country of origin or residence, and to ensure that all terrorists involved in such attacks are pursued, prosecuted, and punished with equal vigor, regardless of the terrorists' country of origin or residence.The result was the creation of the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT)
Where do things stand now?
On February 2, 2016, Representative Ron DeSantis chaired a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security addressing the job the OVT was doing in general and in prosecuting Palestinian terrorists in particular.
Representative Ron DeSantis. Credit: Wikipedia
A key exchange between Congressman DeSantis and Brad Wiegmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, in the Department of Justice went like this:
Mr. Wiegmann, the committee has counted that since ’93, at least 64 Americans have been killed, as well as two unborn children, and 91 have been wounded by terrorists in Israel in disputed territories.
Mr. DESANTIS. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans in Israel or disputed territories has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted during this time period?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I think the answer is—is none.
Mr. DESANTIS. Okay. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans anywhere else overseas has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I don’t have an exact figure for you.
Mr. DESANTIS. But it would be a decent size number, though, correct?
Mr. WIEGMANN. It would be a significant number, yes.
Mr. DESANTIS. Okay. Does the DOJ plan to prosecute any of the terrorism cases committed by Palestinian terrorism and Israel in the disputed territories?
Mr. WIEGMANN. So we have a number of open investigations. I can’t comment further on the status of the investigations.
Mr. DESANTIS. Do you know how many, though?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I can’t give you that number.
Mr. DESANTIS. Why not?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I don’t have the number, and I don’t think we want to comment exactly, because the more we say about the number of investigations we have, the more we tell the bad guys who we are trying to get.
Mr. DESANTIS. ...In your opening statement, you said that these prosecutions, when Americans are killed by terrorists overseas, including in Israel, that that was the highest priority, and that there should be no stone left unturned. And I understand when you’re talking about foreign jurisdictions, and you alluded to some of the issues that arise, and I think that point is well taken. But when it’s zero for 64, I think you see some people, who have been affected negatively, wonder, you know, what exactly is the Department doing within this particular aspect of terrorism that occurs in Israel?Another exchange between Wiegmann and Representative DeSantis concerned whether US foreign might influence the the Department of Justice pursued terrorists:
Mr. DESANTIS. ...Now, it’s been alleged that the reason that DOJ does not prosecute the Palestinian terrorists who harm Americans in Israel, the disputed territories, is that the Department of Justice is concerned that such prosecutions will harm efforts to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or that it will actually harm the Palestinian Authority.
So let me ask you straight up, is that a consideration the Department of Justice?
Mr. WIEGMANN. I can assure that is absolutely not the case.
Mr. DESANTIS. And has the State Department ever made arguments to the Department of Justice to handle some of the Palestinian terrorism cases differently than you may normally handle, say, a terrorism case in Asia?
Mr. WIEGMANN. Absolutely not. The State Department has nothing to say about cases that we bring, whether in Palestinian territories related to these cases or not. So it absolutely makes zero difference to us whether the terrorist attack occurred in Israel, whether it’s a Palestinian terrorist group, whether it’s ISIL, Al Qaeda, they are all the same to us. We want to protect Americans regardless of who they are victimized by.An important issue in the US pursuing and extraditing terrorists in general and Palestinian terrorists in particular is the question of double-jeopardy. Does the US consider pursuit of Palestinian terrorists released from prison, for example in the Gilad Shalit exchange, to be off-limits:
Mr. DESANTIS. ...Now, some have said that if you have a situation where a terrorist who kills Americans in Israel is prosecuted by the Israelis, then they are later released in a prisoner exchange or release, that somehow if we were to prosecute them here, that would trigger double jeopardy. Is that the Department’s position?
Mr. WIEGMANN. Absolutely not. We have prosecuted people who have been released from prison before. Sometimes it takes us a while. One prominent case is an older case, actually a case involving a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked an airliner in Pakistan. He spent, I think, 8 to 10 years in a Pakistani prison. Then he was released, made his way to another country, and was, I think, more, 10, 12, 15 years later that we were able finally to apprehend the person, prosecuted him in 2004, and he’s got a 60-year sentence today.
So we have prosecuted people who have been released from prison before, and certainly, nothing in the Israeli prison release would be any different. We fully intend to pursue charges in any of those cases if we can.Some of Wiegmann's testimony is positive -- that the prosecution of Palestinian terrorists is not influenced or hampered by foreign policy and that double-jeopardy is not an issue.
But the fact remains that the record of the OVT is horrendous. Some of the parents and relatives of victims made clear they thought the Department of Justice and the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism were not doing their job, undercutting the intent of the Koby Mandell Act. Apart from the clear failure to apprehend even one Palestinian terrorist, other complaints during the hearing were that the OVT was not in contact with them..
Sherri Mandell herself indicated in 2012 that the OVT was not doing its job
- When she the head of the American Consulate in Israel to find out about the recent activities of The Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism , she never heard back.
- Her family was not informed of key personnel changes in the OVT.
- Although Rewards for Justice distributed 100 million dollars to 70 people who have given information leading to the apprehension of terrorists -- the program had not been activated in Israel.
We are approaching the end of 2017 and still the OVT has been a failure.
Most recently, efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice have been thwarted by Jordan's refusal to honor its extradition treaty with the US. It is unclear what the US is going to do to prevent this from being one more failure in the record of the the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism.
And in the record of the Koby Mandell Act.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Long Before Hamas, Roosevelt Was Calling For Jihad Using Stones And Knives
Over the years, we've seen a number of different presidents, each with his own approach to the Middle East. For example:
Praise be unto the only God. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. O ye Moslems. O ye beloved sons of the Maghreb. May the blessing of God be upon you.
This is a great day for you and us, for all the sons of Adam who love freedom. Our numbers are as the leaves on the forest tress and as the grains of sand in the sea.
Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived. We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.
We have come to set you free. We have sailed across the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and into the city streets, and into the wide country sides, and along the highways.
Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops, and from the high places, and say the sound of the drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the women, and the voices even of small children.
Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.
We have come to set you free.
Speak with our fighting men and you will find them pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart. We are not as some other Christians whom ye have known, and who trample you under foot. Our soldiers consider you as their brothers, for we have been reared in the way of free men. Our soldiers have been told about your country and about their Moslem brothers and they will treat you with respect and with a friendly spirit in the eyes of God.
Look in their eyes and smiling faces, for they are Holy Warriors happy in their holy work. Greet us therefore as brothers as we will greet you, and help us.
If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.
Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be the reward unto us all who love justice and righteousness and freedom.
Pray for our success in battle, and help us, and God will help us both.
Lo, the day of freedom hath come.
May God grant his blessing upon you and upon us.
--Roosevelt [emphasis added]
This is from October 1942, when the British were able to stop Hitler's Afrika Korps at El Alamein during WWII. The Allies were finally confident they could keep the Nazis out of the Middle East. Leaflets containing Arabic translations of the appeal were distributed as part of the effort to exploit the situation by winning over the Muslims to their side.
The text was actually written by 2 US agents with help from one of their Muslim spies. Still, one would imagine that Roosevelt would have had to give his approval since his name appeared at the end of the text.
The text goes pretty far in order to win over his audience:
Meanwhile, the Germans made their own attempt to win over the Arabs.
In the spring of 1943, in an attempt to win over the Arabs to the Nazi side, Himmler wanted to "find out which passages of the Qur'an provide Muslims with the basis for the opinion that the Fuhrer has already been forecast in the Qur'an and that he has been authorized to complete the work of the Prophet."
Himmler was disappointed - there were no verses to support that claim, so something a bit more modest was suggested. Hitler could be advertised as “the returned ‘Isa (Jesus), who is forecast in the Qur’an and who, similar to the figure of the Knight George, defeats the giant and Jew-King Dajjal at the end of the world."
That led to printing one million pamphlets in Arabic to convince the Arabs to side with Germany. A sample:
O Arabs, do you see that the time of the Dajjal has come? Do you recognize him, the fat, curly-haired Jew who deceives and rules the whole world and who steals the land of the Arabs?… O Arabs, do you know the servant of God? He [Hitler] has already appeared in the world and already turned his lance against the Dajjal and his allies…. He will kill the Dajjal, as it is written, destroy his places and cast his allies into hell.The effort was a failure. The Arabs ended up preferring to fight on the side of the British in North Africa and the Middle East.
The efforts of the Nazis to enlist the help of the Arabs were based purely on pragmatic reasons, and not out of admiration for the Muslims themselves.
There are Nazi writing that refer to Islam as "the great retarder, which prevented all progress."
However, Hitler himself preferred Islam over Christianity, and felt that the actual problem was that Arabs didn't make the best Muslims:
...He reportedly described Islam as a more muscular belief system than Christianity and thus better suited for the Germany he wished to build.
According to Albert Speer, Hitler once offered a remarkable counterfactual history of Europe. He speculated about what might have been if the Muslim forces that invaded France during the eighth century had prevailed against their Frankish enemies at the Battle of Tours. “Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate” of Northern Europe. Therefore, “ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.Whether adopting The Muslim terminology, like the US or adapting and remaking Islam as the Nazis attempted, a lot of effort was put into winning over the Muslims as part of the war effort.
In the end, the Nazis failed miserably and the US pursuit of a 'Jihad of Freedom' is as distant as ever, and even their own "Arab Spring" did not last.
And no president since Roosevelt appears to have any better grasp of the Middle East.
-----
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- Carter favored the Arabs, and even today shows a clear bias against Israel.
- George W. Bush tried to be more even-handed, and during his 8-year term never invited Arafat to the White House -- unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
- Obama showed a clear bias towards the Arabs. His first trip was to address the Arab world from Cairo.
Praise be unto the only God. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. O ye Moslems. O ye beloved sons of the Maghreb. May the blessing of God be upon you.
This is a great day for you and us, for all the sons of Adam who love freedom. Our numbers are as the leaves on the forest tress and as the grains of sand in the sea.
Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived. We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.
We have come to set you free. We have sailed across the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and into the city streets, and into the wide country sides, and along the highways.
Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops, and from the high places, and say the sound of the drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the women, and the voices even of small children.
Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.
We have come to set you free.
Speak with our fighting men and you will find them pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart. We are not as some other Christians whom ye have known, and who trample you under foot. Our soldiers consider you as their brothers, for we have been reared in the way of free men. Our soldiers have been told about your country and about their Moslem brothers and they will treat you with respect and with a friendly spirit in the eyes of God.
Look in their eyes and smiling faces, for they are Holy Warriors happy in their holy work. Greet us therefore as brothers as we will greet you, and help us.
If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.
Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be the reward unto us all who love justice and righteousness and freedom.
Pray for our success in battle, and help us, and God will help us both.
Lo, the day of freedom hath come.
May God grant his blessing upon you and upon us.
--Roosevelt [emphasis added]
This is from October 1942, when the British were able to stop Hitler's Afrika Korps at El Alamein during WWII. The Allies were finally confident they could keep the Nazis out of the Middle East. Leaflets containing Arabic translations of the appeal were distributed as part of the effort to exploit the situation by winning over the Muslims to their side.
The text was actually written by 2 US agents with help from one of their Muslim spies. Still, one would imagine that Roosevelt would have had to give his approval since his name appeared at the end of the text.
The text goes pretty far in order to win over his audience:
- The text uses the phrase "Holy Warriors," likely translated as Mujahideen, a term for those engaged in Jihad.
- The term Jihad implies more than a war. It was a religious obligation, so calling it a Jihad of Freedom might have sounded a bit strange to the Arab ear. Apparently, unlike today, there was no doubt as to the meaning of the word.
- Referring to the enemy as "other Christians" seems odd and unnecessary. Later, FDR identifies them as "Germans or Italians." But why identify them by religion? What is to be gained by establishing them as kuffar when the Allied forces themselves were Christian?
- The phrase "kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon" is one that could easily have been written by Hamas, or ISIS, today. That was a simpler time, when it was acknowledged that a stone was a weapon. Basically, the US itself was encouraging terrorism -- even lone wolf terrorism -- against its enemies.
Meanwhile, the Germans made their own attempt to win over the Arabs.
In the spring of 1943, in an attempt to win over the Arabs to the Nazi side, Himmler wanted to "find out which passages of the Qur'an provide Muslims with the basis for the opinion that the Fuhrer has already been forecast in the Qur'an and that he has been authorized to complete the work of the Prophet."
Himmler was disappointed - there were no verses to support that claim, so something a bit more modest was suggested. Hitler could be advertised as “the returned ‘Isa (Jesus), who is forecast in the Qur’an and who, similar to the figure of the Knight George, defeats the giant and Jew-King Dajjal at the end of the world."
That led to printing one million pamphlets in Arabic to convince the Arabs to side with Germany. A sample:
O Arabs, do you see that the time of the Dajjal has come? Do you recognize him, the fat, curly-haired Jew who deceives and rules the whole world and who steals the land of the Arabs?… O Arabs, do you know the servant of God? He [Hitler] has already appeared in the world and already turned his lance against the Dajjal and his allies…. He will kill the Dajjal, as it is written, destroy his places and cast his allies into hell.The effort was a failure. The Arabs ended up preferring to fight on the side of the British in North Africa and the Middle East.
The efforts of the Nazis to enlist the help of the Arabs were based purely on pragmatic reasons, and not out of admiration for the Muslims themselves.
There are Nazi writing that refer to Islam as "the great retarder, which prevented all progress."
However, Hitler himself preferred Islam over Christianity, and felt that the actual problem was that Arabs didn't make the best Muslims:
...He reportedly described Islam as a more muscular belief system than Christianity and thus better suited for the Germany he wished to build.
According to Albert Speer, Hitler once offered a remarkable counterfactual history of Europe. He speculated about what might have been if the Muslim forces that invaded France during the eighth century had prevailed against their Frankish enemies at the Battle of Tours. “Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate” of Northern Europe. Therefore, “ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.Whether adopting The Muslim terminology, like the US or adapting and remaking Islam as the Nazis attempted, a lot of effort was put into winning over the Muslims as part of the war effort.
In the end, the Nazis failed miserably and the US pursuit of a 'Jihad of Freedom' is as distant as ever, and even their own "Arab Spring" did not last.
And no president since Roosevelt appears to have any better grasp of the Middle East.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Hate and incitement, Palestinian and American
The other day, the following tweet got me thinking:
My favorite part of 2017 has been all the woke children. pic.twitter.com/r75SgiNkvn— Danielle Butcher (@DaniSButcher) August 18, 2017
Here is one of those favorites
Here is another:
It got me to thinking about how adults pass on their opinions, and sometimes their hate, on to their children.
But while it got me to thinking about how Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas in particular, do this, it also got me thinking closer to home.
I recall when I was teaching, I passed by a class learning Sefer Bamidbar (Numbers). They were learning about the quail mentioned in Chapter 11 and I could see one girl was confused. I went over and asked her what was puzzling her and she said she did not know what the Hebrew word "slav" meant. Rather than just tell her, I asked her "well, what is the name of the Vice-President?" With eyes wide, she turned to me and asked "it means idiot?"
Weeks later, at parent-teacher conferences, the parents assured me they had no idea where their daughter got the idea to say that, and insisted they did not talk that way at home. I had every reason to believe them. I was not concerned.
But I am concerned about something else I remember.
I remember a post on Michelle Malkin's blog years ago in 2005. She wrote about products that were then on sale online on CafePress.
Products such as this:
Anti-Tom Delay T-Shirt, suggesting he kill himself.
Credit: Mike's America
But also this:
“Kill Bush” magnet depicting the president holding a gun to his head
with the caption “End Terrorism Now” Credit: Michelle MalkinAnd this:
Bright yellow “Kill Bush” t-shirt splattered with blood.
Credit: Michelle MalkinAnd this:
“Kill Bush” messenger bag with a macho pic of John Kerry.
Credit: Michelle Malkin
And this:
Cartoon based on Hadith encouraging murder of JewsActually, the cartoon encourages the killing of Jews, not Bush -- but is the incitement really that much different?
Malkin links to an article about a columnist at The Guardian who wanted Bush assassinated:On Saturday, columnist Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?Brooker did "apologize" later to those who misunderstood his ironic humor :
The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.
"Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."
The article has now been removed from the Guardian Unlimited website.Malkin goes on to note that in April 2005, Pat Buchanan suffered multiple assaults on campus. He was not the only one. The Washington Times reported back then about William Kristol and Patrick Buchanan at two separate campus events having pies and salad dressing tossed at them, while the media played it as a joke. The editorial concluded:
Violence, of course, should be intolerable no matter who is on the receiving end, and must be rejected by people of goodwill, whatever their political ideology. It is ironic that college campuses — which typically style themselves as bastions of free speech and tolerance — are increasingly the scene of intolerant, thuggish behavior. These days it is being directed at folks who don’t subscribe to the prevailing liberal orthodoxies.This was over a decade ago. What we see happening now on college campuses around the country is nothing new. The cynic in me wonders if the media taking this seriously now might be because of whom this can be blamed on.
No, I am not claiming that this is a purely left wing phenomenon. I am not interested in pointing a finger in that regard.
My concern is that the kind of hate exhibited against President Bush may be likely to emerge against President Trump, especially considering how the media, both the old media and especially the newer social media, have early on indicated the lack of any line which they will not cross, or at least test.
And I wonder again how different this is from what we regularly read about Abbas and Hamas doing to demonize Israel and incite hatred -- and much worse -- against Israel. The government, laws and cultural are very different, but we are still only into the first year of Trump's term, and the media onslaught shows no sign of abating. It continues to demonize, delegitimize and apply a double standard to Trump. If the worst that people say is that want to impeach Trump, I can live with that.
And no, I am not a fan of Donald Trump.
As a side note, in some cases, the cure being offered on those campuses is worse than the disease -- and in fact is nothing more than the disease claiming to be the cure in order to pursue its agenda.
Purdue University's Bill Mullen and Stanford University's David Palumbo-Liu have created what they are calling the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN), which they claim is dedicated to combating "fascists" who use "‘free speech' as a façade for attacking faculty who have stood in solidarity with [targeted] students."
But neither Palumbo-Liu nor Mullen are very particular about the kind of free speech they are willing to protect:
Meanwhile, both Palumbo-Liu and Mullen have been leading figures in the academic campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. In 2014, Mullen issued a call on anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada to "de-Zionize our campuses." Palumbo-Liu, in a 2016 piece titled, "9 things you need to know about the Israeli occupation of Palestine," recommended readers look to alternative news sources for their information on the region, including several sites accused of publishing anti-Semitic content. He later updated the article to remove If Americans Knew from the list, after receiving backlash for recommending an outlet that has repeatedly published conspiracy theories about Jews. IAK has been marginalized even by virulently anti-Israel groups, such as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace. So yes, while threats against Israel in the Middle East grow stronger, so too the threats against both Israel and Jews in the US and on college campuses grow stronger as well. But the heated language on campuses is spreading into society in general and into the media in particular.
The hate being exploited by Abbas and Hamas is one of the reasons for the dysfunctional leadership of the Palestinian Arabs.
We cannot afford for a similar language of hate to be exploited to undercut the US.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
My favorite part of 2017 has been all the woke children. pic.twitter.com/r75SgiNkvn— Danielle Butcher (@DaniSButcher) August 18, 2017
Here is one of those favorites
Here is another:
It got me to thinking about how adults pass on their opinions, and sometimes their hate, on to their children.
But while it got me to thinking about how Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas in particular, do this, it also got me thinking closer to home.
I recall when I was teaching, I passed by a class learning Sefer Bamidbar (Numbers). They were learning about the quail mentioned in Chapter 11 and I could see one girl was confused. I went over and asked her what was puzzling her and she said she did not know what the Hebrew word "slav" meant. Rather than just tell her, I asked her "well, what is the name of the Vice-President?" With eyes wide, she turned to me and asked "it means idiot?"
Weeks later, at parent-teacher conferences, the parents assured me they had no idea where their daughter got the idea to say that, and insisted they did not talk that way at home. I had every reason to believe them. I was not concerned.
But I am concerned about something else I remember.
I remember a post on Michelle Malkin's blog years ago in 2005. She wrote about products that were then on sale online on CafePress.
Products such as this:
Anti-Tom Delay T-Shirt, suggesting he kill himself.
Credit: Mike's America
But also this:
“Kill Bush” magnet depicting the president holding a gun to his head
with the caption “End Terrorism Now” Credit: Michelle MalkinAnd this:
Bright yellow “Kill Bush” t-shirt splattered with blood.
Credit: Michelle MalkinAnd this:
“Kill Bush” messenger bag with a macho pic of John Kerry.
Credit: Michelle Malkin
And this:
Cartoon based on Hadith encouraging murder of JewsActually, the cartoon encourages the killing of Jews, not Bush -- but is the incitement really that much different?
Malkin links to an article about a columnist at The Guardian who wanted Bush assassinated:On Saturday, columnist Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?Brooker did "apologize" later to those who misunderstood his ironic humor :
The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.
"Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."
The article has now been removed from the Guardian Unlimited website.Malkin goes on to note that in April 2005, Pat Buchanan suffered multiple assaults on campus. He was not the only one. The Washington Times reported back then about William Kristol and Patrick Buchanan at two separate campus events having pies and salad dressing tossed at them, while the media played it as a joke. The editorial concluded:
Violence, of course, should be intolerable no matter who is on the receiving end, and must be rejected by people of goodwill, whatever their political ideology. It is ironic that college campuses — which typically style themselves as bastions of free speech and tolerance — are increasingly the scene of intolerant, thuggish behavior. These days it is being directed at folks who don’t subscribe to the prevailing liberal orthodoxies.This was over a decade ago. What we see happening now on college campuses around the country is nothing new. The cynic in me wonders if the media taking this seriously now might be because of whom this can be blamed on.
No, I am not claiming that this is a purely left wing phenomenon. I am not interested in pointing a finger in that regard.
My concern is that the kind of hate exhibited against President Bush may be likely to emerge against President Trump, especially considering how the media, both the old media and especially the newer social media, have early on indicated the lack of any line which they will not cross, or at least test.
And I wonder again how different this is from what we regularly read about Abbas and Hamas doing to demonize Israel and incite hatred -- and much worse -- against Israel. The government, laws and cultural are very different, but we are still only into the first year of Trump's term, and the media onslaught shows no sign of abating. It continues to demonize, delegitimize and apply a double standard to Trump. If the worst that people say is that want to impeach Trump, I can live with that.
And no, I am not a fan of Donald Trump.
As a side note, in some cases, the cure being offered on those campuses is worse than the disease -- and in fact is nothing more than the disease claiming to be the cure in order to pursue its agenda.
Purdue University's Bill Mullen and Stanford University's David Palumbo-Liu have created what they are calling the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN), which they claim is dedicated to combating "fascists" who use "‘free speech' as a façade for attacking faculty who have stood in solidarity with [targeted] students."
But neither Palumbo-Liu nor Mullen are very particular about the kind of free speech they are willing to protect:
Meanwhile, both Palumbo-Liu and Mullen have been leading figures in the academic campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. In 2014, Mullen issued a call on anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada to "de-Zionize our campuses." Palumbo-Liu, in a 2016 piece titled, "9 things you need to know about the Israeli occupation of Palestine," recommended readers look to alternative news sources for their information on the region, including several sites accused of publishing anti-Semitic content. He later updated the article to remove If Americans Knew from the list, after receiving backlash for recommending an outlet that has repeatedly published conspiracy theories about Jews. IAK has been marginalized even by virulently anti-Israel groups, such as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace. So yes, while threats against Israel in the Middle East grow stronger, so too the threats against both Israel and Jews in the US and on college campuses grow stronger as well. But the heated language on campuses is spreading into society in general and into the media in particular.
The hate being exploited by Abbas and Hamas is one of the reasons for the dysfunctional leadership of the Palestinian Arabs.
We cannot afford for a similar language of hate to be exploited to undercut the US.
-----
If you found this post interesting or informative, please it below. Thanks!
Catégories: Middle East
No One Would Call Anyone "Palestinian" Today Without Balfour
We know that historically, there has never been a sovereign, Palestinian state.
But if there has never been a state, a country, called Palestine -- then what did the Arabs call themselves when that territory was under Muslim rule?
In his book, From Babel to Dragomans, Bernard Lewis includes a talk he gave in 2001, under the title "The British Mandate for Palestine in Historical Perspective." In just a few understated paragraphs, Lewis hints at the importance of The British Mandate for the Palestinian Arabs:
The name [Palestine] survived briefly in the early Arab Empire, and then disappeared. The Crusaders called the country the Holy Land and their state the Kingdom of Jerusalem After the end of the ancient Jewish states, the capital of the administrative districts called Palestine were not in Jerusalem but elsewhere, in Caesarea, in Ramleh, in Lydda, in various other places The only time between the ancient and modern Jewish states when Jerusalem was the capital was the Crusader Kingdom, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as it was called. And that was a comparatively brief interlude. [emphasis added]When Arabs today call themselves Palestinians, that is a new phenomenon. For centuries, the name "Palestine" had fallen into disuse and had actually disappeared altogether.
A secondary point Lewis raises is that outside of the crusaders, the city of Jerusalem was considered a capital only 2 times in history: as the capital of ancient Israel and of the modern reestablished state of Israel.
Jerusalem has never been the capital of an Arab territory, despite being the "3rd most holy" place in Islam, directly contradicting the current claims to East Jerusalem made by Abbas and by UNESCO.
Lewis continues:
Even the adjective Palestinian is comparatively new. This, I need hardly remind you, is a region of ancient civilization and of deep-rooted and often complex identities. But Palestine was not one of them. People might identify themselves for various purposed, by religion, by descent, or by allegiance to a particular state or ruler, or sometimes locality, But when they did it locally it was general either the city and immediate district or the larger province, so they would have been Jerusalemites or Jaffaites or the like, or Syrians, identifying either the larger province of Syria, in classical Arabic usage, ShamWhile the name "Palestine" is the one that Rome assigned in order to erase the Jewish connection to the land, that name "Palestine" was itself forgotten as well. Using the name Palestine today is itself a modern anomaly in a land of ancient and deep-rooted history. Those who lived in the land during the Ottoman occupation of the land did not call themselves Palestinians -- that is something that would come later, in the 20th century.
If not as Palestinians, then how did the Arabs in the identify themselves?
In The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz explains:
Under Ottoman rule, which prevailed between 1516 and 1918, Palestine was divided into several districts, called sanjaks. These sanjaks were part of administrative units called vilayets. The Largest portion of Palestine was part of the vilayet of Syria and was governed from Damascus by a pasha, thus explaining why Palestine was commonly referred to as southern Syria. Following a ten-year occupation by Egypt in the 1830s, Palestine was divided into the vilayet of Beirut, which covered Lebanon and the northern part of Palestine (down to what is now Tel Aviv); and the independent sanjak of Jerusalem, was covered roughly from Jaffa to Jerusalem and south to Gaza and Be'er Sheva. It is thus unclear what it would mean to say the the Palestinians were the people who originally populated the "nation" of Palestine [italicizes in original]. The map below, published by Carta, illustrates the division of the land in the 1830s as described by Dershowitz:
Map from "Israel's Right to Live in Peace Within Defensible Frontiers:
Secure and Recognized Boundaries," by Carta, Jerusalem 1971, p.19. Posted with permission
There were no set boundaries to Palestine, which is what you would expect when there was no political, sovereign state -- just another Ottoman territory.
So if the name "Palestine" was forgotten for centuries, who revived the name -- thus making it possible for the Arabs to take the name Palestine and Palestinian for their own?
Lewis continues:
The constitution or the formation of a political entity called Palestine which eventually gave rise to a nationality called Palestinian and the reconstitution of Jerusalem as the capital were, it seems to me, very important, and as it turns out, lasting innovations of the British Mandate... (p. 154)Instead of Abbas demanding an apology from Great Britain for the Balfour Declaration, he and all of those who want to call themselves "Palestinians" owe a debt of gratitude to the British. After the Arabs had long forgotten the name "Palestine" it was the British, whose Mandate was based on the Balfour Declaration, who themselves re-established the name of Palestine.
Just as the British re-established the name Palestine as the name for land, it was naturally used for coins and stamps:
This was during the time of the British Mandate.
But what about during the 400 years of the Ottoman Empire preceding it?
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica
Both Turkish and European coins circulated in Erez Israel during Ottoman rule. Tokens issued by various communities, such as the Jews and the German Templers, and by some business firms, were also in circulation...granted special rights to some European powers and resulted in French gold napoleons and Egyptian coins being brought into circulation alongside Turkish coins (5:723)Contrast this multiplicity of currencies and the lack of an official local currenciy with the situation that developed under the British:
On the British occupation of Palestine, the Egyptian pound was made legal tender in the territory. It was replaced in 1927 by the Palestine pound...the designs, prepared by the Mandatory government, were intended to be as politically innocuous as possible, the only feature besides the inscriptions being an olive branch or wreath of olive leaves. The inscriptions were trilingual, giving the name of the country, Palestine, and the value in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. As a concession to the Jewish community, the initials "Alef Yud" ("Erez Israel") appeared in brackets following the name Palestine. (5:723-4)The only coins ever minted with the name "Palestine" on them were the ones issued during the British Mandate while it governed that territory under the authority granted it by League of Nations. No coins with the name Palestine were ever minted before then. There was no reason to, since there was no country called Palestine and no Palestinian identity.
In his book, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East And the Jews has a chapter on "Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name" Lewis notes that the name Palestine has a very different meaning for Arabs and Jews:
It [the name Palestine] had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative su-district, and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.The British use of the name Palestine was a convenience, renewing a word that held no special meaning for Arabs and had fallen into disuse. The Arabs went along with the British usage. The Jews on the other had not only historical but indigenous roots to the land, spanning 3 millennia. They preserved that connection wherever they could by incorporating the ancient name, whenever the official name Palestine was used.
Without the Balfour Declaration, and the British Mandate that was based on it, the name Palestine -- which had been forgotten in the region -- would have continued to be forgotten.
But Jews will always have Eretz Yisrael.
-----
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But if there has never been a state, a country, called Palestine -- then what did the Arabs call themselves when that territory was under Muslim rule?
In his book, From Babel to Dragomans, Bernard Lewis includes a talk he gave in 2001, under the title "The British Mandate for Palestine in Historical Perspective." In just a few understated paragraphs, Lewis hints at the importance of The British Mandate for the Palestinian Arabs:
The name [Palestine] survived briefly in the early Arab Empire, and then disappeared. The Crusaders called the country the Holy Land and their state the Kingdom of Jerusalem After the end of the ancient Jewish states, the capital of the administrative districts called Palestine were not in Jerusalem but elsewhere, in Caesarea, in Ramleh, in Lydda, in various other places The only time between the ancient and modern Jewish states when Jerusalem was the capital was the Crusader Kingdom, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as it was called. And that was a comparatively brief interlude. [emphasis added]When Arabs today call themselves Palestinians, that is a new phenomenon. For centuries, the name "Palestine" had fallen into disuse and had actually disappeared altogether.
A secondary point Lewis raises is that outside of the crusaders, the city of Jerusalem was considered a capital only 2 times in history: as the capital of ancient Israel and of the modern reestablished state of Israel.
Jerusalem has never been the capital of an Arab territory, despite being the "3rd most holy" place in Islam, directly contradicting the current claims to East Jerusalem made by Abbas and by UNESCO.
Lewis continues:
Even the adjective Palestinian is comparatively new. This, I need hardly remind you, is a region of ancient civilization and of deep-rooted and often complex identities. But Palestine was not one of them. People might identify themselves for various purposed, by religion, by descent, or by allegiance to a particular state or ruler, or sometimes locality, But when they did it locally it was general either the city and immediate district or the larger province, so they would have been Jerusalemites or Jaffaites or the like, or Syrians, identifying either the larger province of Syria, in classical Arabic usage, ShamWhile the name "Palestine" is the one that Rome assigned in order to erase the Jewish connection to the land, that name "Palestine" was itself forgotten as well. Using the name Palestine today is itself a modern anomaly in a land of ancient and deep-rooted history. Those who lived in the land during the Ottoman occupation of the land did not call themselves Palestinians -- that is something that would come later, in the 20th century.
If not as Palestinians, then how did the Arabs in the identify themselves?
In The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz explains:
Under Ottoman rule, which prevailed between 1516 and 1918, Palestine was divided into several districts, called sanjaks. These sanjaks were part of administrative units called vilayets. The Largest portion of Palestine was part of the vilayet of Syria and was governed from Damascus by a pasha, thus explaining why Palestine was commonly referred to as southern Syria. Following a ten-year occupation by Egypt in the 1830s, Palestine was divided into the vilayet of Beirut, which covered Lebanon and the northern part of Palestine (down to what is now Tel Aviv); and the independent sanjak of Jerusalem, was covered roughly from Jaffa to Jerusalem and south to Gaza and Be'er Sheva. It is thus unclear what it would mean to say the the Palestinians were the people who originally populated the "nation" of Palestine [italicizes in original]. The map below, published by Carta, illustrates the division of the land in the 1830s as described by Dershowitz:
Map from "Israel's Right to Live in Peace Within Defensible Frontiers:
Secure and Recognized Boundaries," by Carta, Jerusalem 1971, p.19. Posted with permission
There were no set boundaries to Palestine, which is what you would expect when there was no political, sovereign state -- just another Ottoman territory.
So if the name "Palestine" was forgotten for centuries, who revived the name -- thus making it possible for the Arabs to take the name Palestine and Palestinian for their own?
Lewis continues:
The constitution or the formation of a political entity called Palestine which eventually gave rise to a nationality called Palestinian and the reconstitution of Jerusalem as the capital were, it seems to me, very important, and as it turns out, lasting innovations of the British Mandate... (p. 154)Instead of Abbas demanding an apology from Great Britain for the Balfour Declaration, he and all of those who want to call themselves "Palestinians" owe a debt of gratitude to the British. After the Arabs had long forgotten the name "Palestine" it was the British, whose Mandate was based on the Balfour Declaration, who themselves re-established the name of Palestine.
Just as the British re-established the name Palestine as the name for land, it was naturally used for coins and stamps:
This was during the time of the British Mandate.
But what about during the 400 years of the Ottoman Empire preceding it?
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica
Both Turkish and European coins circulated in Erez Israel during Ottoman rule. Tokens issued by various communities, such as the Jews and the German Templers, and by some business firms, were also in circulation...granted special rights to some European powers and resulted in French gold napoleons and Egyptian coins being brought into circulation alongside Turkish coins (5:723)Contrast this multiplicity of currencies and the lack of an official local currenciy with the situation that developed under the British:
On the British occupation of Palestine, the Egyptian pound was made legal tender in the territory. It was replaced in 1927 by the Palestine pound...the designs, prepared by the Mandatory government, were intended to be as politically innocuous as possible, the only feature besides the inscriptions being an olive branch or wreath of olive leaves. The inscriptions were trilingual, giving the name of the country, Palestine, and the value in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. As a concession to the Jewish community, the initials "Alef Yud" ("Erez Israel") appeared in brackets following the name Palestine. (5:723-4)The only coins ever minted with the name "Palestine" on them were the ones issued during the British Mandate while it governed that territory under the authority granted it by League of Nations. No coins with the name Palestine were ever minted before then. There was no reason to, since there was no country called Palestine and no Palestinian identity.
In his book, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East And the Jews has a chapter on "Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name" Lewis notes that the name Palestine has a very different meaning for Arabs and Jews:
It [the name Palestine] had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative su-district, and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.The British use of the name Palestine was a convenience, renewing a word that held no special meaning for Arabs and had fallen into disuse. The Arabs went along with the British usage. The Jews on the other had not only historical but indigenous roots to the land, spanning 3 millennia. They preserved that connection wherever they could by incorporating the ancient name, whenever the official name Palestine was used.
Without the Balfour Declaration, and the British Mandate that was based on it, the name Palestine -- which had been forgotten in the region -- would have continued to be forgotten.
But Jews will always have Eretz Yisrael.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Hypocrisy: Media Goes From Blaming Trump for Antisemtism to Whitewashing Antisemtism of 2 US Imams
Remember after Trump won the election, how the media suddenly became so concerned about antisemitism? We were bombarded with editorials and op-eds about a sharp rise in Jew-hatred, insisting that Trump bore the brunt of responsibility.
You might have forgotten.
After it saw the potential in attacking Trump for alleged ties to Russia, the media apparently dropped the "Trump encourages antisemitism!" meme and decided to pursue a more promising line of attack.
But over the course of one week, from February 15 through 21, the media claimed antisemitism was on the rise because of Trump, and The Washington Post featured pieces such as these:
...I’ve been rather taken aback by the panic in the Jewish community over American anti-Semitism since Donald Trump won the election. The recent spate of hoax bombing threats to Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions around the country has been a precipitating factor, but the fear is drastically out of proportion to the threat; no bombs have been found, and there are no indications that there is any real physical threat to Jews.Meanwhile, from February 21 to 23, The New York Times chimed in with:
Well -- good news!
Judging by the media's change in focus over the last few months, antisemitism is apparently no longer a problem.
Or is it just that the media has gone back to ignoring antisemitism again?
That would explain the media's reaction to 2 actual cases of antisemitism, cases that cannot be blamed on Donald Trump.
Imam Ammar Shahin. Source: YouTube screenshot
On July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:
Allah does not change the situation of people 'until they change their own situation.' The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' They will not say: Oh Egyptian, oh Palestinian, oh Jordanian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani. The Prophet Muhammad says that they time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. We don't say if it is in Palestine or another place. Until they fight... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: Oh Muslim... It will not say: Oh Palestinian, oh Egyptian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani, oh Indian... No, it will say: Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind me – except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. Except for a certain tree that they are growing today in Palestine, in that area, except this form of tree, which they are growing today... That's the tree that will not speak to the Muslims. [emphasis added]In that sermon, Shahin quotes a Hadith known for its inclusion by Hamas terrorists in their charter:
The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)While he does not quote the last part about the trees telling Muslims to kill the Jews, Shahin's audience that day was likely familiar with the Hadith and could guess the point he was making, based on the rest of his sermon.
Jews in the area got the Imam's point too:
“He spelled out what he wishes for every Muslim who follows the Quran and the Hadith to follow what the Hadith says which is …find the Jews hiding behind trees and stones and kill them,” said Sorele Brownstein.
“To me, it’s clear this is direct incitement,” said Shmary Brownstein.
Rabbi Shmary Brownstein and his wife Sorele are the leaders of the Chabad in Davis. They say they’ve been on guard since the video was posted online. Their family is now being harassed by drivers passing by their home, which is also a house of worship.Following the outcry over his sermon, and before his "apology" Shahin's gave an interview to CBS News -- and Shahin was not inclined to be apologetic:
The mosque where Shahin preaches was also not in an apologizing mood:
The mosque said in a statement Tuesday: “MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.
“If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended,” it said. “We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.” [emphasis added]Only after the outcry persisted, did Shahin finally apologize.
Meanwhile, on the same day Shahin preached against Jews, another California Imam, Mahmoud Harmoush, was praying for the destruction of Israel:
"Between World War I and World War II, so much of the immigration that came from Europe toward the Islamic world, whether North Africa or the Mediterranean area – Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and all of this... Muslims were opening their homes and saying: Those are our brethren, persecuted by the Christians in Europe. The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims..."Allah wants us to have jihad in our lives, no matter what and where we are and what is happening. That's until in our hearts, we accept what is true and we reject what is false..."When you happen to be in Jerusalem, for example, around the holy mosque, and people are shooting you, putting you in the hospital, or killing you, you have to resist and fight back as much as you can. Otherwise our life will be meaningless..."Dear brothers and sisters, the conflict is not only in Palestine. They are going there, and they will be demanding that next..."I promise you, it is not only Palestine. If you are going to be like that, most of the Middle East, and even, as I said, Mecca and Medina...They will say: 'Muhammad has died. He left only daughters.' Muhammad died, and he left female children, who cannot fight. Then they will call, in their fighting: 'Oh, we will take revenge for Khaybar.' Where is Khaybar? They will go back to it. They will make every Muslim pay, one way or the other. Wake up, it is time to be a Muslim. Prayer is not the only thing..."Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and all the Muslim lands from the unjust tyrants and the occupiers. Oh Allah, destroy them, they are no match for You. Oh Allah, disperse them, and rend them asunder. Turn them into booty in the hands of the Muslims. [emphasis]Like Shahin, Harmoush, does not directly mention Israel; he directs their hatred -- and Allah's destruction -- toward Jews.
So how did the media -- the same media that was so concerned about antisemitism early in the year -- react to these antisemitic sermons?
The reaction of the Washington Post was not to report on the antisemitic sermon when it was actually given. Instead, the newspaper waited until after Shahin finally apologized.
At Legal Insurrection, David Gerstman wrote that the Washington Post whitewashes California Imam’s “Annihilate the Jews” sermon:
For a full week The Washington Post was silent about this crude anti-Semitism. Only a week later did the Post cover it and a number of things are readily apparent.
The expert reinterpretation referred to was done by Nair Harb Michel, who basically substituted "desecrations of the Jews" for "filth of the Jews" and "defeat each of them" for "annihilate them".
Gerstman also notices that the reporter, Boorstein, acknowledges receiving a statement from Shahin on Wednesday -- 2 days before her article came out -- but held off until Shahin officially offered his public "apology". Again, The Washington Post appeared more interested in the damage control than in reporting about the kind of antisemitism they were apparently so keen on reporting earlier this year.
But regardless of how you translate the sermon, the fact remains that Shahin quoted a Hadith which clearly describes, if not encourages, killing Jews.
The Washington Post was not the only newspaper to play down the threatening nature of Shahin's sermon.
CAMERA noted that the Sacramento Bee Sanitizes Anti-Semitic Sermon. Among the criticisms made about the newspaper story:
CAMERA also refers to MEMRI, which notes that Shahin's sermon from the previous week was along the same antisemitic lines:
May Allah protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the harm of the Jews. Oh Allah, protect our brothers in the land of Palestine. Oh Allah, let us pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque before we die. Oh Allah, allow Jerusalem to be liberated. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.On the other hand, The New York Times settled for a bare-bones report about the sermon, provided by the Associated Press. It noted:
In a July 21 sermon, Shahin condoned the annihilation of Jews and those restricting access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.The truth of course is that Shahin did not condone the annihilation of Jews -- he was encouraging it. His apology is noted, but leaves unclear how an imam can talk about annihilating Jews yet can apologize -- and apparently have his apology accepted.
As opposed to The Washington Post (30 paragraphs) and the Sacramento Bee (23 paragraphs) which go into depth in their whitewash of Shahin's sermon, The New York Times uses the AP story, which amounts to playing down the incident in 9 short paragraphs, as if the whole thing is not worth the reader's attention.
How did Jew-hatred suddenly become so unworthy of being considered a news item?
Trump should only be so lucky.
-----
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You might have forgotten.
After it saw the potential in attacking Trump for alleged ties to Russia, the media apparently dropped the "Trump encourages antisemitism!" meme and decided to pursue a more promising line of attack.
But over the course of one week, from February 15 through 21, the media claimed antisemitism was on the rise because of Trump, and The Washington Post featured pieces such as these:
- Trump was asked a question about anti-Semitism. His answer was about the electoral college.
- A CNN panel debates the president’s anti-Semitism trump card: His daughter Ivanka
- President Trump thinks asking him to condemn anti-Semitism is ‘insulting.’ Why?
- Why was it so darned hard to get Trump to condemn anti-Semitism?
- A brief history of Donald Trump addressing questions about racism and anti-Semitism
...I’ve been rather taken aback by the panic in the Jewish community over American anti-Semitism since Donald Trump won the election. The recent spate of hoax bombing threats to Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions around the country has been a precipitating factor, but the fear is drastically out of proportion to the threat; no bombs have been found, and there are no indications that there is any real physical threat to Jews.Meanwhile, from February 21 to 23, The New York Times chimed in with:
- At Jewish Cemetery, Seeking Answers Amid Heartbreak
- The New American Anti-Semitism
- When Hate Haunts a Graveyard
Well -- good news!
Judging by the media's change in focus over the last few months, antisemitism is apparently no longer a problem.
Or is it just that the media has gone back to ignoring antisemitism again?
That would explain the media's reaction to 2 actual cases of antisemitism, cases that cannot be blamed on Donald Trump.
Imam Ammar Shahin. Source: YouTube screenshot
On July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:
Allah does not change the situation of people 'until they change their own situation.' The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' They will not say: Oh Egyptian, oh Palestinian, oh Jordanian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani. The Prophet Muhammad says that they time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. We don't say if it is in Palestine or another place. Until they fight... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: Oh Muslim... It will not say: Oh Palestinian, oh Egyptian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani, oh Indian... No, it will say: Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind me – except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. Except for a certain tree that they are growing today in Palestine, in that area, except this form of tree, which they are growing today... That's the tree that will not speak to the Muslims. [emphasis added]In that sermon, Shahin quotes a Hadith known for its inclusion by Hamas terrorists in their charter:
The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)While he does not quote the last part about the trees telling Muslims to kill the Jews, Shahin's audience that day was likely familiar with the Hadith and could guess the point he was making, based on the rest of his sermon.
Jews in the area got the Imam's point too:
“He spelled out what he wishes for every Muslim who follows the Quran and the Hadith to follow what the Hadith says which is …find the Jews hiding behind trees and stones and kill them,” said Sorele Brownstein.
“To me, it’s clear this is direct incitement,” said Shmary Brownstein.
Rabbi Shmary Brownstein and his wife Sorele are the leaders of the Chabad in Davis. They say they’ve been on guard since the video was posted online. Their family is now being harassed by drivers passing by their home, which is also a house of worship.Following the outcry over his sermon, and before his "apology" Shahin's gave an interview to CBS News -- and Shahin was not inclined to be apologetic:
The mosque where Shahin preaches was also not in an apologizing mood:
The mosque said in a statement Tuesday: “MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.
“If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended,” it said. “We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.” [emphasis added]Only after the outcry persisted, did Shahin finally apologize.
Meanwhile, on the same day Shahin preached against Jews, another California Imam, Mahmoud Harmoush, was praying for the destruction of Israel:
"Between World War I and World War II, so much of the immigration that came from Europe toward the Islamic world, whether North Africa or the Mediterranean area – Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and all of this... Muslims were opening their homes and saying: Those are our brethren, persecuted by the Christians in Europe. The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims..."Allah wants us to have jihad in our lives, no matter what and where we are and what is happening. That's until in our hearts, we accept what is true and we reject what is false..."When you happen to be in Jerusalem, for example, around the holy mosque, and people are shooting you, putting you in the hospital, or killing you, you have to resist and fight back as much as you can. Otherwise our life will be meaningless..."Dear brothers and sisters, the conflict is not only in Palestine. They are going there, and they will be demanding that next..."I promise you, it is not only Palestine. If you are going to be like that, most of the Middle East, and even, as I said, Mecca and Medina...They will say: 'Muhammad has died. He left only daughters.' Muhammad died, and he left female children, who cannot fight. Then they will call, in their fighting: 'Oh, we will take revenge for Khaybar.' Where is Khaybar? They will go back to it. They will make every Muslim pay, one way or the other. Wake up, it is time to be a Muslim. Prayer is not the only thing..."Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and all the Muslim lands from the unjust tyrants and the occupiers. Oh Allah, destroy them, they are no match for You. Oh Allah, disperse them, and rend them asunder. Turn them into booty in the hands of the Muslims. [emphasis]Like Shahin, Harmoush, does not directly mention Israel; he directs their hatred -- and Allah's destruction -- toward Jews.
So how did the media -- the same media that was so concerned about antisemitism early in the year -- react to these antisemitic sermons?
The reaction of the Washington Post was not to report on the antisemitic sermon when it was actually given. Instead, the newspaper waited until after Shahin finally apologized.
At Legal Insurrection, David Gerstman wrote that the Washington Post whitewashes California Imam’s “Annihilate the Jews” sermon:
For a full week The Washington Post was silent about this crude anti-Semitism. Only a week later did the Post cover it and a number of things are readily apparent.
- The Post only reported once Shahin offered a dubious apology.
- The Post never reported on Harmoush’s sermon. Harmoush did not apologize.
- The Post reported uncritically a false claim made by Shahin and one of his supporters.
- The Post got an expert to reinterpret part of his sermon so that it was somewhat less offensive.
The expert reinterpretation referred to was done by Nair Harb Michel, who basically substituted "desecrations of the Jews" for "filth of the Jews" and "defeat each of them" for "annihilate them".
Gerstman also notices that the reporter, Boorstein, acknowledges receiving a statement from Shahin on Wednesday -- 2 days before her article came out -- but held off until Shahin officially offered his public "apology". Again, The Washington Post appeared more interested in the damage control than in reporting about the kind of antisemitism they were apparently so keen on reporting earlier this year.
But regardless of how you translate the sermon, the fact remains that Shahin quoted a Hadith which clearly describes, if not encourages, killing Jews.
The Washington Post was not the only newspaper to play down the threatening nature of Shahin's sermon.
CAMERA noted that the Sacramento Bee Sanitizes Anti-Semitic Sermon. Among the criticisms made about the newspaper story:
- The Sacramento Bee reported the sermon's content as "Islamic texts about an end-times battle," deliberately concealing from its readers Shahin's actual language about Muslims fighting Jews.
- The Sacramento Bee reported that Mosque officials claimed the imam was mistranslated and thus taken out of context, yet in his sermon Shahin made statements about a "corrupted" Jewish Torah and the "Muslims fight the Jews," which were made in English and clearly illustrate his intent.
- The reporter, Anita Chabria, asked University of California, Berkeley, Near East professor Hatem Bazian to check the MEMRI translation, which he said "missed nuanced distinctions". However, CAMERA notes that Bazian
is the founder of the radical anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine, slurs Israel as an apartheid state, and is affiliated with, and fund-raised for, groups and individuals that have illegally financed Hamas, a designated terror organization committed to Israel's destruction.
CAMERA also refers to MEMRI, which notes that Shahin's sermon from the previous week was along the same antisemitic lines:
May Allah protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the harm of the Jews. Oh Allah, protect our brothers in the land of Palestine. Oh Allah, let us pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque before we die. Oh Allah, allow Jerusalem to be liberated. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.On the other hand, The New York Times settled for a bare-bones report about the sermon, provided by the Associated Press. It noted:
In a July 21 sermon, Shahin condoned the annihilation of Jews and those restricting access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.The truth of course is that Shahin did not condone the annihilation of Jews -- he was encouraging it. His apology is noted, but leaves unclear how an imam can talk about annihilating Jews yet can apologize -- and apparently have his apology accepted.
As opposed to The Washington Post (30 paragraphs) and the Sacramento Bee (23 paragraphs) which go into depth in their whitewash of Shahin's sermon, The New York Times uses the AP story, which amounts to playing down the incident in 9 short paragraphs, as if the whole thing is not worth the reader's attention.
How did Jew-hatred suddenly become so unworthy of being considered a news item?
Trump should only be so lucky.
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Catégories: Middle East
Why Did AP Censor Letter from Father Whose Son Was Murdered by Jordanian?
Just last week, the ordeal of the parents of 3 Green Berets who were murdered last year by a Jordanian soldier came to an end. M'aarek Abu Tayeh was convicted of murder by a Jordanian court and sentenced to life in prison.
Staff Sgt. Matthew C. Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin J. McEnroe, Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty.
Photo Credit: US Army
But the parents are not finished.
One of the fathers, James Moriarty, wrote a letter to Dina Kawar, the Jordanian ambassador to the United States:
So, while Mr. Moriarty agreed that Jordan had met the demand that Jordan successfully prosecute Abu Tayeh, he still had 5 further requests:
o That Tamimi be extradited to the US within 30 days to face trial for the murder of Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was 5 months pregnant at the time
o That charges be filed against the Jordanian soldiers who stood idly by, enabling al-Tawayha to murder the 3 American Green Berets
o That the FBI be allowed to interview al-Tawayha to see if he is ready to admit to why he murdered those men
o That the video that captured the events of the murder of the soldiers be released to the families immediately
o That following the fulfillment of all of the preceding preconditions, restitution to the families of the soldiers be discussedThat the murderer of 3 American soldiers was convicted in a Jordanian court and sentenced to life imprisonment is news.
That there were further requests the parents made of Jordan is news as well.
The media faithfully reported the former story.
The latter story?
Not so much.
CBS News reports Jordanian soldier gets life sentence for killing 3 U.S. trainers, and makes no mention of either the letter nor of the requests being made of Jordan. The same goes for The Atlantic. Also CNN.
But there are also reports that do mention the letter and mention the requests -- but do not mention all of them.
ABC News in Texas, ABC13, runs the story with the headline Green Beret's father speaks about conviction of son's killer, but does not report on everything he said.
According to that article:
He [James Moriarty] is now pushing for the Jordanian soldiers who stood by and watched the shooting to be charged. He also wants the security video showing the killings to be made public.The article leaves out any mention that these requests were part of a letter, and that Moriarty also requested an FBI interview with Abu Tayeh, restitution from the Jordanian government -- and a response from Jordan within 30 days regarding extraditing Tamimi to the US.
In addition to Eyewitness news, AP completely omitted that part of the Moriary letter as well:
Moriarty’s father, Jim, wrote in a letter Monday to the Jordanian Embassy in the U.S. that the “successful prosecution” was a “good first step, but it is only the first step.”
In the letter, a copy of which was given to the AP, Moriarty listed several demands to Jordan. These included allowing the defendant to be re-interviewed by the FBI about his motive and releasing the security video to the families. Moriarty, a lawyer, said the video had been entered into evidence at the trial.That is the version that The Chicago Tribune uses.
And The New York Times.
And The Washington Post
And obviously many more. After all, newspapers all over use the news feed from the Associated Press and pay for the privilege.
Associated Press logo
For a newspaper to report on the conviction but leave out the letter may be understandable. One can explain that the conviction is the main story and is the point that readers are primarily interested in.
However, for a news organization like AP to report on the conviction, go the extra step to report the families feel there is still more to be done, but then edit what those other requests are and provide that abridged version of the letter to other news outlets -- that is irresponsible.
There were some that reported the full story.
Military.com got the story right:
Moriarty's letter requests the extradition of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi to the United States for criminal prosecution and that "military or criminal charges against all the Jordanian military gate guards and the barrel truck operators for dereliction of duty for failing to protect the lives of our soldiers or cowardly conduct under fire."The Jewish Press wrote about Moriarty's reference to Tamimi as well:
The families, Moriarty pointed out, “requested the extradition of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi for criminal prosecution in the United States. This has not been acted on and we request that he be extradited within the next 30 days.”Even The New York Times, which came out with an article based on the AP and did not mention Tamimi, came out with a second article, Jordanian Sentenced to Life in Prison for Killing 3 U.S. Soldiers, on the very same day and reported on all of the requests made:
In an open letter on Monday to Jordan’s ambassador to the United States, Sergeant Moriarty’s father, James R. Moriarty, who is a lawyer in Houston, called the conviction “a good first step” but said that the victims’ families had made other demands, which had not been met.
The families asked that the video be released publicly; that the F.B.I. be given a fresh chance to interview Sergeant Tawayha about his motives; that other guards who were at the gate that day be held responsible; and that Jordan extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, who has been charged in the United States with involvement in a 2001 attack on a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two Americans. [emphasis added]It should not be too much to expect the media to report accurately and completely on the story of families seeking justice for the sons murdered in a foreign country, especially when they have yet to have achieved all of their goals in seeking that justice.
As for the request in the letter for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi, who is on the FBI Most Wanted List, to the US, the families of the US soldiers - Lewellen, McEnroe and Moriarty - joining with the families of the Americans killed by a Jordanian terrorist, should be a news story that the media should want to report on, rather than allow it to fall between the cracks.
FBI Mosted Wanted Poster for Ahlam Tamimi. Source: FBI
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Staff Sgt. Matthew C. Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin J. McEnroe, Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty.
Photo Credit: US Army
But the parents are not finished.
One of the fathers, James Moriarty, wrote a letter to Dina Kawar, the Jordanian ambassador to the United States:
So, while Mr. Moriarty agreed that Jordan had met the demand that Jordan successfully prosecute Abu Tayeh, he still had 5 further requests:
o That Tamimi be extradited to the US within 30 days to face trial for the murder of Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was 5 months pregnant at the time
o That charges be filed against the Jordanian soldiers who stood idly by, enabling al-Tawayha to murder the 3 American Green Berets
o That the FBI be allowed to interview al-Tawayha to see if he is ready to admit to why he murdered those men
o That the video that captured the events of the murder of the soldiers be released to the families immediately
o That following the fulfillment of all of the preceding preconditions, restitution to the families of the soldiers be discussedThat the murderer of 3 American soldiers was convicted in a Jordanian court and sentenced to life imprisonment is news.
That there were further requests the parents made of Jordan is news as well.
The media faithfully reported the former story.
The latter story?
Not so much.
CBS News reports Jordanian soldier gets life sentence for killing 3 U.S. trainers, and makes no mention of either the letter nor of the requests being made of Jordan. The same goes for The Atlantic. Also CNN.
But there are also reports that do mention the letter and mention the requests -- but do not mention all of them.
ABC News in Texas, ABC13, runs the story with the headline Green Beret's father speaks about conviction of son's killer, but does not report on everything he said.
According to that article:
He [James Moriarty] is now pushing for the Jordanian soldiers who stood by and watched the shooting to be charged. He also wants the security video showing the killings to be made public.The article leaves out any mention that these requests were part of a letter, and that Moriarty also requested an FBI interview with Abu Tayeh, restitution from the Jordanian government -- and a response from Jordan within 30 days regarding extraditing Tamimi to the US.
In addition to Eyewitness news, AP completely omitted that part of the Moriary letter as well:
Moriarty’s father, Jim, wrote in a letter Monday to the Jordanian Embassy in the U.S. that the “successful prosecution” was a “good first step, but it is only the first step.”
In the letter, a copy of which was given to the AP, Moriarty listed several demands to Jordan. These included allowing the defendant to be re-interviewed by the FBI about his motive and releasing the security video to the families. Moriarty, a lawyer, said the video had been entered into evidence at the trial.That is the version that The Chicago Tribune uses.
And The New York Times.
And The Washington Post
And obviously many more. After all, newspapers all over use the news feed from the Associated Press and pay for the privilege.
Associated Press logo
For a newspaper to report on the conviction but leave out the letter may be understandable. One can explain that the conviction is the main story and is the point that readers are primarily interested in.
However, for a news organization like AP to report on the conviction, go the extra step to report the families feel there is still more to be done, but then edit what those other requests are and provide that abridged version of the letter to other news outlets -- that is irresponsible.
There were some that reported the full story.
Military.com got the story right:
Moriarty's letter requests the extradition of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi to the United States for criminal prosecution and that "military or criminal charges against all the Jordanian military gate guards and the barrel truck operators for dereliction of duty for failing to protect the lives of our soldiers or cowardly conduct under fire."The Jewish Press wrote about Moriarty's reference to Tamimi as well:
The families, Moriarty pointed out, “requested the extradition of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi for criminal prosecution in the United States. This has not been acted on and we request that he be extradited within the next 30 days.”Even The New York Times, which came out with an article based on the AP and did not mention Tamimi, came out with a second article, Jordanian Sentenced to Life in Prison for Killing 3 U.S. Soldiers, on the very same day and reported on all of the requests made:
In an open letter on Monday to Jordan’s ambassador to the United States, Sergeant Moriarty’s father, James R. Moriarty, who is a lawyer in Houston, called the conviction “a good first step” but said that the victims’ families had made other demands, which had not been met.
The families asked that the video be released publicly; that the F.B.I. be given a fresh chance to interview Sergeant Tawayha about his motives; that other guards who were at the gate that day be held responsible; and that Jordan extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, who has been charged in the United States with involvement in a 2001 attack on a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two Americans. [emphasis added]It should not be too much to expect the media to report accurately and completely on the story of families seeking justice for the sons murdered in a foreign country, especially when they have yet to have achieved all of their goals in seeking that justice.
As for the request in the letter for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi, who is on the FBI Most Wanted List, to the US, the families of the US soldiers - Lewellen, McEnroe and Moriarty - joining with the families of the Americans killed by a Jordanian terrorist, should be a news story that the media should want to report on, rather than allow it to fall between the cracks.
FBI Mosted Wanted Poster for Ahlam Tamimi. Source: FBI
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Catégories: Middle East
When Arafat First Started Terrorist Stipends, It Wasn't About Inciting Hatred of Israel
Now that the smoke has cleared, we can see that Secretary of State Tillerson was wrong. His announcement that Abbas agreed to end stipends to imprisoned Palestinian terrorists was greeted with scepticism from the start. While on Tuesday Tillerson claimed the Palestinian Authority "changed their policy" about terrorist salaries, just a day later he had changed his tune and said instead there were "active discussions" and made reference to vague "assurances" given to Trump during his visit in Israel.
Official portrait of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson
Credit: US State Department
Similarly, on June 5 it seemed that Abbas had cut off salaries to Hamas. It could be that Abbas was referring to those cuts when he spoke to Trump, but there too, Hamas ended up getting their salaries.
In any case, the payment terrorist salaries -- and the anti-Israel incitement caused by rewarding attacks on Jews -- continues.
But just how long have Palestinian terrorists been receiving these stipends?
To answer that question, Palestinian Media Watch focuses on the PA Government Resolution of 2010, while acknowledging that the resolution merely "formalized what has long been a PA practice."
In their article The Department of Pay-for-Slay, Douglas J. Feith and Sander Gerber point to the Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19 (2004), noting:
Legalism is a trait common among authoritarians. Nondemocratic societies lack rule of law, but they generally don’t lack laws. Their laws, in fact, tell us a lot about them.Their point is that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority go beyond words to incite hatred of Israel. The stipends represent the lengths they go to encourage attacks against Israel, enacting legislation to spur violence, while at the same time maintaining that are willing to negotiate for peace.
Feith and Gerber note that the PA's success can be measured by the fact that in 2014, President Obama said that Abbas “has consistently renounced violence” and has consistently pursued a “peaceful solution” that allows Israelis “to feel secure and at peace.”
But these terrorist payments actually go much further back.
In her book, Humanitarian Rackets and their Moral Hazards: The Case of the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon, Rayyar Marron writes that these payments began long before Abbas -- and originate with Arafat back in 1964:
Yasser Arafat with Gaddafi in 1977. Credit: Rex Features; Wikipedia
The purpose of the fund at the time was to help establish the centrality of Arafat and the PLO. Marron goes on to detail other methods that Arafat used as well, all of which had the result of
providing them [Palestinian Arabs] with jobs, but it simultaneously destroyed the pre-existing civilian bureaucracy, built on utilising people's competence, rather than on nepotism as increasingly was the case under Fatah's domination.Abbas apparently learned from the master manipulator. In recent weeks, we have seen Abbas exploiting the funds at his disposal to pressure Hamas by cutting off payments for electricity as well as threatening to cut off salaries.
Mahmoud Abbas Credit: www.kremlin.ru.(Wikipedia)Maybe that explains why the terrorist stipends have been controversial for years and not for decades.
At first, originating with Arafat, the stipends were a political tool to gain and centralize power.. It was only much later, especially under Abbas, that funding the imprisoned terrorists has been recognized as a subtle form of encouragement -- along with naming buildings and events after terrorists while allowing incendiary sermons by Imams -- to incite attacks on Israelis.
Abbas has demonstrated that he is a good student that would make his teacher Arafat proud.
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Official portrait of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson
Credit: US State Department
Similarly, on June 5 it seemed that Abbas had cut off salaries to Hamas. It could be that Abbas was referring to those cuts when he spoke to Trump, but there too, Hamas ended up getting their salaries.
In any case, the payment terrorist salaries -- and the anti-Israel incitement caused by rewarding attacks on Jews -- continues.
But just how long have Palestinian terrorists been receiving these stipends?
To answer that question, Palestinian Media Watch focuses on the PA Government Resolution of 2010, while acknowledging that the resolution merely "formalized what has long been a PA practice."
In their article The Department of Pay-for-Slay, Douglas J. Feith and Sander Gerber point to the Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19 (2004), noting:
Legalism is a trait common among authoritarians. Nondemocratic societies lack rule of law, but they generally don’t lack laws. Their laws, in fact, tell us a lot about them.Their point is that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority go beyond words to incite hatred of Israel. The stipends represent the lengths they go to encourage attacks against Israel, enacting legislation to spur violence, while at the same time maintaining that are willing to negotiate for peace.
Feith and Gerber note that the PA's success can be measured by the fact that in 2014, President Obama said that Abbas “has consistently renounced violence” and has consistently pursued a “peaceful solution” that allows Israelis “to feel secure and at peace.”
But these terrorist payments actually go much further back.
In her book, Humanitarian Rackets and their Moral Hazards: The Case of the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon, Rayyar Marron writes that these payments began long before Abbas -- and originate with Arafat back in 1964:
Yasser Arafat with Gaddafi in 1977. Credit: Rex Features; Wikipedia
The purpose of the fund at the time was to help establish the centrality of Arafat and the PLO. Marron goes on to detail other methods that Arafat used as well, all of which had the result of
providing them [Palestinian Arabs] with jobs, but it simultaneously destroyed the pre-existing civilian bureaucracy, built on utilising people's competence, rather than on nepotism as increasingly was the case under Fatah's domination.Abbas apparently learned from the master manipulator. In recent weeks, we have seen Abbas exploiting the funds at his disposal to pressure Hamas by cutting off payments for electricity as well as threatening to cut off salaries.
Mahmoud Abbas Credit: www.kremlin.ru.(Wikipedia)Maybe that explains why the terrorist stipends have been controversial for years and not for decades.
At first, originating with Arafat, the stipends were a political tool to gain and centralize power.. It was only much later, especially under Abbas, that funding the imprisoned terrorists has been recognized as a subtle form of encouragement -- along with naming buildings and events after terrorists while allowing incendiary sermons by Imams -- to incite attacks on Israelis.
Abbas has demonstrated that he is a good student that would make his teacher Arafat proud.
-----
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Catégories: Middle East
Jordan Agrees to Prosecute Their Soldier For Murdering 3 Americans -- And That Is Just The Beginning Of A Long Process
On November 4, 2016, 3 US soldiers - Staff Sgt. Matthew Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe and Staff Sgt. James Moriarty died after coming under fire from a Jordanian soldier as they were entering a Jordanian military base.
On November 17, Eric Barbee, spokesman for US Embassy in Jordan, issued a short statement, reflecting the possibility of a terrorist motive on the one hand, and the rumors being spread that the soldiers themselves had accidentally brought the incident upon themselves.
A segment from the CBS morning news revealed more about what happened, and a taste of the various stories that were to come from the Jordanian government.
As early as November 19, two days later, it was already known that there was video footage of what had happened. Even then, the strong possibility was raised that this was a deliberate attack by a Jordanian soldier on US soldiers, Green Berets. The security footage showed a lone Jordanian gunman at a checkpoint shooting at the convoy of Green Berets who were there to conduct training at the King Faisal Air Base in al-Jafr.
It was reported at the time that a US official had, on condition of anonymity, confirmed the video showed the Jordanian soldier waived the first vehicle through the checkpoint and then opened fire on the second vehicle, killing two of the Americans inside. When US troops in the third vehicle returned fire, a third American was killed.
The video itself was not made public at the time
As for the Jordanian soldier, M'aarek Abu Tayeh, he was wounded and placed in a medically induced coma at a Jordanian hospital.
Both an FBI and a military investigation were begun.
By March, a summary of the key findings of the military investigation was revealed in a United States Special Operations Command Press Release. It provided the following outline of what actually happened:
o On the afternoon of Nov. 4, 2016, a Jordanian Air Force guard shot and killed three Special Forces Soldiers at the entry gate to King Faisal Air Base, Jordan.
o The three Soldiers were returning to the base in a four-vehicle convoy after conducting weapons familiarization training on a nearby military range.
o The Jordanian Air Force guard opened fire on the second vehicle of the convoy with his M-16 rifle, killing Staff Sgt. McEnroe and mortally wounding Staff Sgt.(P) Lewellen.
o Within seconds of coming under fire, Staff Sgt. Moriarty and another Soldier exited the third and fourth vehicles in the convoy in order to seek cover as the shooter closed in on their location. After unsuccessfully trying to communicate to the shooter that they posed no threat, the Soldiers returned fire. While the other Soldier maneuvered to gain a better position, Staff Sgt. Moriarty stood and fired his pistol directly at the shooter, who was wearing body armor. After closing in on their position, the shooter hit Staff Sgt. Moriarty with two rounds, mortally wounding him. Staff Sgt. Moriarty’s actions enabled the remaining Soldier to maneuver and engage the shooter, seriously wounding him.
o Staff Sgt. McEnroe died at the scene. Staff Sgt. (P) Lewellen and Staff Sgt. Moriarty were medically evacuated after receiving initial treatment at the local medical treatment facility but died en route to King Hussein Hospital in Amman. Autopsy results show that no amount of medical care could have saved the three Soldiers due to the nature of their wounds.
o All three Soldiers died in honorable service to their country. All three Soldiers were properly trained, equipped, and armed, and were acting in compliance with all procedures and accepted practices. In maintaining their position and engaging the shooter, the Soldiers acted with great valor.Along with the summary, a redacted version of the results of the military investigation, which had been concluded on February 16, was released as well. It included 2 photos illustrating the scene of the shooting.
A March 6 letter from Dina Kawar, ambassador of the Kingdom of Jordan, to Representative Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas claimed that a joint US-Jordanian investigation concluded that there was an "absence of premeditated intentions by M'aarek Abu Tayeh," the shooter. Instead, the Jordanians accused the American soldiers not only of failing to stop at the gate but also of having negligently discharged their weapons, causing the security guards to panic and open fire.
The parents of the soldiers responded that the video, which they had been shown, refuted the Jordanian version of events. The video shows that none of the Jordanians showed any reaction, as would be expected if there had been a loud noise, until the Jordanian guard himself opened fire. The video also showed that the Jordanian guard had deliberately murdered their sons at close range.
The parents turned to the Trump Administration, demanding that action be taken against Jordan and that if the Jordanians refused to take action, that US aid to the country be cut off.
One of the parents, Mr. McEnroe expressed their feelings about Jordan:
"Over four months have passed since our boys were murdered. None of our families has heard any apology, condolences or explanation from the Jordanians other than these false narratives," McEnroe said. "In my mind, Jordan is at the very least guilty of complicity in the murder of three American brave servicemen," he said. "We are told that Jordan is an important ally in the war on terror -- a war which I support -- but I encourage our president and our administration to take a hard look at our relationship with an ally who would so callously disrespect the sacrifice made by our boys," McEnroe said.Congressman Poe, who serves as the chairman House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, spoke about Jordan’s changing story about what had happened:
"I wrote the Jordanian king after I talked to Jim Moriarty about his son," the lawmaker said. "The response seem to say that this entire incident was a mistake and that the Americans were at fault for this whole incident." Last night, Poe said he received a second letter from the embassy of Jordan. "They now say 'it was not a mistake but that the shooter was following the rules of engagement," Poe said.In addition, there were indications that Abu Tayeh did not act alone.
o A second guard who manned the post with Abu Tayeh had left to use the restroom
o A third soldier left to open the gate, leaving Abu Tayeh along
o Other Jordanian soldiers in the area, as many as 11, did not nothing to help the American soldiers
o Those same Jordanian soldiers fired warning shots at a US truck entering behind the Green Berets’ vehicles, preventing the truck from assisting the US Green Berets.It was suggested that the reason for the lack of an immediate apology from the Jordanian government was the implications behind such an apology. An apology would be an admission that the elite Hashemite force that guards Jordan’s King Abdullah II had made a mistake -- or worse, that the guard had been turned by ISIS.
The FBI told the families that when Abu Tayeh came out of his coma, they had interviewed him. He admitted that he had used excessive force and was away from his assigned guard position. However, he claimed that he had heard a loud noise and that was what set him off.
The FBI also told the families that the shooter had previously been convicted of sexual on a woman with a knife. He also had anger management issues.
For their part, the military investigation was unable to find any indication for the reason behind the attack. No group ever took responsibility and there was no evidence that Abu Tayeh had actual terrorist sympathies. What they did find was that sloppiness by the Jordanian army was par for the course and it was usual for them to wave US soldiers in without coming out and personally confirm the identities as required and that gate guards “often displayed negligence for basic weapons handling and safety which could be improved.”
What was left was the series of lie after lie offered by the Jordanian government:
o First the Jordanian government claimed that the US soldiers had failed to stop at the gate
o When the video disproved that, the Jordanians claimed that there had been an “accidental discharge” by one of the soldiers.
o When that was disproven, the Jordanians claimed there had been a loud noiseThe video, though it had no audio, disproved all three claims.
Finally, in mid-April, the Jordanian government admitted that Abu Tayeh had not followed proper military protocol and said they would prosecute him over the death of the US soldiers. However, it was not immediately made clear what exactly the charges would be nor when the trial would take place.
Dana Daoud, a spokeswoman for the Jordanian Embassy indicated that an apology was finally going to be issued by the Jordanian king to the families and added that “the Jordanian government will do everything to ensure that justice is enacted fully.”
Mr. Moriarty was doubtful in his response:
“Any statement that doesn’t include an admission of total guilt and plans for prosecution for the murderer who killed my son and the Jordanians who have failed to do anything about it, will not be enough.”Finally, last week, on June 1, it was reported that the Jordanian government had formally charged Abu Tayeh with murder:
o The official charge is murder with intent to kill more than one person
o A second charge included “insulting the dignity and reputation of the military”
o Another charge is “violating orders and instructions of the military”If convicted by the military court, Abu Tayeh could face the rest of his life in prison -- but a spokeswoman at Jordan's embassy in Washington was unable to confirm whether Abu Tayeh had actually been charged with murder.
There are 3 basic things the parents of the US soldiers are looking for:
o Prosecution of Abu Tayeh
o Prosecution of the Jordanians who did nothing to help their sons
o Serious sentences for both Abu Tayeh and the other Jordanian soldiers involvedAnd that is why -- based on everything the families of these soldiers have had to put up with till now -- the road ahead may still be a long one.
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On November 17, Eric Barbee, spokesman for US Embassy in Jordan, issued a short statement, reflecting the possibility of a terrorist motive on the one hand, and the rumors being spread that the soldiers themselves had accidentally brought the incident upon themselves.
A segment from the CBS morning news revealed more about what happened, and a taste of the various stories that were to come from the Jordanian government.
As early as November 19, two days later, it was already known that there was video footage of what had happened. Even then, the strong possibility was raised that this was a deliberate attack by a Jordanian soldier on US soldiers, Green Berets. The security footage showed a lone Jordanian gunman at a checkpoint shooting at the convoy of Green Berets who were there to conduct training at the King Faisal Air Base in al-Jafr.
It was reported at the time that a US official had, on condition of anonymity, confirmed the video showed the Jordanian soldier waived the first vehicle through the checkpoint and then opened fire on the second vehicle, killing two of the Americans inside. When US troops in the third vehicle returned fire, a third American was killed.
The video itself was not made public at the time
As for the Jordanian soldier, M'aarek Abu Tayeh, he was wounded and placed in a medically induced coma at a Jordanian hospital.
Both an FBI and a military investigation were begun.
By March, a summary of the key findings of the military investigation was revealed in a United States Special Operations Command Press Release. It provided the following outline of what actually happened:
o On the afternoon of Nov. 4, 2016, a Jordanian Air Force guard shot and killed three Special Forces Soldiers at the entry gate to King Faisal Air Base, Jordan.
o The three Soldiers were returning to the base in a four-vehicle convoy after conducting weapons familiarization training on a nearby military range.
o The Jordanian Air Force guard opened fire on the second vehicle of the convoy with his M-16 rifle, killing Staff Sgt. McEnroe and mortally wounding Staff Sgt.(P) Lewellen.
o Within seconds of coming under fire, Staff Sgt. Moriarty and another Soldier exited the third and fourth vehicles in the convoy in order to seek cover as the shooter closed in on their location. After unsuccessfully trying to communicate to the shooter that they posed no threat, the Soldiers returned fire. While the other Soldier maneuvered to gain a better position, Staff Sgt. Moriarty stood and fired his pistol directly at the shooter, who was wearing body armor. After closing in on their position, the shooter hit Staff Sgt. Moriarty with two rounds, mortally wounding him. Staff Sgt. Moriarty’s actions enabled the remaining Soldier to maneuver and engage the shooter, seriously wounding him.
o Staff Sgt. McEnroe died at the scene. Staff Sgt. (P) Lewellen and Staff Sgt. Moriarty were medically evacuated after receiving initial treatment at the local medical treatment facility but died en route to King Hussein Hospital in Amman. Autopsy results show that no amount of medical care could have saved the three Soldiers due to the nature of their wounds.
o All three Soldiers died in honorable service to their country. All three Soldiers were properly trained, equipped, and armed, and were acting in compliance with all procedures and accepted practices. In maintaining their position and engaging the shooter, the Soldiers acted with great valor.Along with the summary, a redacted version of the results of the military investigation, which had been concluded on February 16, was released as well. It included 2 photos illustrating the scene of the shooting.
A March 6 letter from Dina Kawar, ambassador of the Kingdom of Jordan, to Representative Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas claimed that a joint US-Jordanian investigation concluded that there was an "absence of premeditated intentions by M'aarek Abu Tayeh," the shooter. Instead, the Jordanians accused the American soldiers not only of failing to stop at the gate but also of having negligently discharged their weapons, causing the security guards to panic and open fire.
The parents of the soldiers responded that the video, which they had been shown, refuted the Jordanian version of events. The video shows that none of the Jordanians showed any reaction, as would be expected if there had been a loud noise, until the Jordanian guard himself opened fire. The video also showed that the Jordanian guard had deliberately murdered their sons at close range.
The parents turned to the Trump Administration, demanding that action be taken against Jordan and that if the Jordanians refused to take action, that US aid to the country be cut off.
One of the parents, Mr. McEnroe expressed their feelings about Jordan:
"Over four months have passed since our boys were murdered. None of our families has heard any apology, condolences or explanation from the Jordanians other than these false narratives," McEnroe said. "In my mind, Jordan is at the very least guilty of complicity in the murder of three American brave servicemen," he said. "We are told that Jordan is an important ally in the war on terror -- a war which I support -- but I encourage our president and our administration to take a hard look at our relationship with an ally who would so callously disrespect the sacrifice made by our boys," McEnroe said.Congressman Poe, who serves as the chairman House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, spoke about Jordan’s changing story about what had happened:
"I wrote the Jordanian king after I talked to Jim Moriarty about his son," the lawmaker said. "The response seem to say that this entire incident was a mistake and that the Americans were at fault for this whole incident." Last night, Poe said he received a second letter from the embassy of Jordan. "They now say 'it was not a mistake but that the shooter was following the rules of engagement," Poe said.In addition, there were indications that Abu Tayeh did not act alone.
o A second guard who manned the post with Abu Tayeh had left to use the restroom
o A third soldier left to open the gate, leaving Abu Tayeh along
o Other Jordanian soldiers in the area, as many as 11, did not nothing to help the American soldiers
o Those same Jordanian soldiers fired warning shots at a US truck entering behind the Green Berets’ vehicles, preventing the truck from assisting the US Green Berets.It was suggested that the reason for the lack of an immediate apology from the Jordanian government was the implications behind such an apology. An apology would be an admission that the elite Hashemite force that guards Jordan’s King Abdullah II had made a mistake -- or worse, that the guard had been turned by ISIS.
The FBI told the families that when Abu Tayeh came out of his coma, they had interviewed him. He admitted that he had used excessive force and was away from his assigned guard position. However, he claimed that he had heard a loud noise and that was what set him off.
The FBI also told the families that the shooter had previously been convicted of sexual on a woman with a knife. He also had anger management issues.
For their part, the military investigation was unable to find any indication for the reason behind the attack. No group ever took responsibility and there was no evidence that Abu Tayeh had actual terrorist sympathies. What they did find was that sloppiness by the Jordanian army was par for the course and it was usual for them to wave US soldiers in without coming out and personally confirm the identities as required and that gate guards “often displayed negligence for basic weapons handling and safety which could be improved.”
What was left was the series of lie after lie offered by the Jordanian government:
o First the Jordanian government claimed that the US soldiers had failed to stop at the gate
o When the video disproved that, the Jordanians claimed that there had been an “accidental discharge” by one of the soldiers.
o When that was disproven, the Jordanians claimed there had been a loud noiseThe video, though it had no audio, disproved all three claims.
Finally, in mid-April, the Jordanian government admitted that Abu Tayeh had not followed proper military protocol and said they would prosecute him over the death of the US soldiers. However, it was not immediately made clear what exactly the charges would be nor when the trial would take place.
Dana Daoud, a spokeswoman for the Jordanian Embassy indicated that an apology was finally going to be issued by the Jordanian king to the families and added that “the Jordanian government will do everything to ensure that justice is enacted fully.”
Mr. Moriarty was doubtful in his response:
“Any statement that doesn’t include an admission of total guilt and plans for prosecution for the murderer who killed my son and the Jordanians who have failed to do anything about it, will not be enough.”Finally, last week, on June 1, it was reported that the Jordanian government had formally charged Abu Tayeh with murder:
o The official charge is murder with intent to kill more than one person
o A second charge included “insulting the dignity and reputation of the military”
o Another charge is “violating orders and instructions of the military”If convicted by the military court, Abu Tayeh could face the rest of his life in prison -- but a spokeswoman at Jordan's embassy in Washington was unable to confirm whether Abu Tayeh had actually been charged with murder.
There are 3 basic things the parents of the US soldiers are looking for:
o Prosecution of Abu Tayeh
o Prosecution of the Jordanians who did nothing to help their sons
o Serious sentences for both Abu Tayeh and the other Jordanian soldiers involvedAnd that is why -- based on everything the families of these soldiers have had to put up with till now -- the road ahead may still be a long one.
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Catégories: Middle East
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