Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 25, 2016

07/25 Links Pt2: Why Palestinians prefer to work for Israelis; Germany donating millions to BDS groups

From Ian:

Palestinians gear up to sue the UK – over 1917 Balfour Declaration

The Palestinian Authority is preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the issuing of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.
The PA’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told Arab League leaders gathered in Mauritania Monday that London is responsible for all “Israeli crimes” committed since the end of the British mandate in 1948.
Signed by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour in 1917, the declaration was seen as giving the Zionist movement official recognition and backing on the part of a major power, on the eve of the British conquest of the then-Ottoman territory of Palestine.
The decision, al-Malki said, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”
There was no immediate reaction from Britain.
A report in the official Wafa news agency did not note where the PA plans to file the lawsuit.
Last year, a group calling itself the Popular Palestinian Campaign to Sue the United Kingdom sued the UK in an Egyptian court.
In 2008, a Palestinian youth group said it would attempt to sue the UK over the Balfour Declaration in Britain or in the ICC.
It was not clear if either effort bore fruit.

‘Know That I Died a Dreamer’ — Arab-Israeli Teen ‘Fearful, Yet Undeterred’ by Threats From Fellow Muslims, Palestinians for Outspoken Zionism (INTERVIEW)

A teenage boy from an Arab village in northern Israel told The Algemeiner on Sunday about the impetus behind a message he wrote describing the sense that he is about to be killed by angry Muslims for being a Zionist.
“I receive regular threats from both Arab Israelis and Palestinians, via social media and by phone,” said Mahdi Satri, 17, a resident of Jadeidi-Makr, east of Acre. “And I’m afraid, but I won’t let those who support terrorism and oppose peace deter me.”
Satri, whose father moved to Israel from Gaza 30 years ago and whose mother is an Arab from a village near Carmiel, explained that his views were shaped by his parents. “My father worked with the IDF and the Shin Bet,” he said. “And I am going to join the Israeli army when I finish my university degree.”
He was referring to the IDF’s Atuda program that enables high school graduates to defer the draft until after college and subsequently serve in a position commensurate with the studies they undertook.
Satri – the eldest of seven children – also told The Algemeiner that he is an activist in the youth movement of the Likud Party, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he supports. This is evident in many photos on his Facebook page, in which he appears with various political figures, among them Temple Mount activist MK Yehuda Glick, who entered the Knesset recently. Glick was the victim of a Palestinian assassination attempt, which involved his being shot at point-blank range.
“The Temple Mount is a holy site for Jews, Muslims and Christians,” Satri said. “The Arab and Muslim world is wrong when it says that it belongs only to Muslims. It is certainly wrong when it says that the Jews are trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The Mottle Wolfe Show: Israel Betrayed

Alan Skorski’s new book is called, ‘Israel Betrayed: How the Democrats, J Street, and the Jewish Left have Undermined Israel and why a President Hillary Clinton would be Disastrous for Israel’. Alan Joins Mottle to discuss the upcoming DNC convention as well as his new book.

Palestine News Network "reports:"

Dozens of extremist Jewish settlers in the early Sunday morning stormed the courtyards of Al Aqsa Mosque under the protection of occupation police forces and intelligence services.

Local sources said about 45 Jewish extremist settlers stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa mosque in the morning and chanted racist slogans and demanding the head of the Israeli government fully open it for the Jews.

One of the ultra-Orthodox Jews was screaming loudly urging Netanyahu to allow the implementation of a wide-scale incursions Al-Aqsa Mosque and also called on Netanyahu to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque and perform Jewish prayers in it.

It is a shame that these people never have their phones available to document these racist chants.

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Herr Augstein sees no reason to criticize Turkey (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

It was already four years ago that the Simon Wiesenthal Center included the fairly prominent left-wing German journalist and publisher Jakob Augstein in its annual list [pdf] of people and groups responsible for the “Top 10 Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs.” The ensuing controversy was explained in an excellent Tablet article by James Kirchick.

A few days ago, it became clear that this controversy still reverberates: when Augstein reacted to news about the massive crack-down that followed the recent coup attempt in Turkey by declaring nonchalantly on Twitter that “Turkey’s democracy is none of our business; it’s up to the Turkish people,” Many people noted that his attitude to Israel (and the US) was markedly different. There was also astonishment that the staunch leftist would use the term “the Turkish people;” many noted in response that Augstein seems to feel no concern for Turkey’s minorities, particularly the Kurds. Unfazed by all this criticism, Augstein doubled down with another tweet asking: “What if the Turks have different requirements for their democracy than we for ours?” Again, this was an attitude that Augstein apparently reserves for Islamist governments mercilessly cracking down on their real or perceived opponents.

A sarcastic comment by the always brilliant Walter Russell Mead could serve as an excellent rejoinder to Augstein’s eagerness to overlook the alarming developments in Turkey: reacting to the news that the crack-down extended to universities, schools, hospitals, associations, foundations and unions, Mead mocked the argument that these measures were the prerogative of Turkey’s democratically elected government by tweeting “Thank goodness the forces of democracy broke the coup, or terrible news would be coming out of Turkey today.”

Quite obviously, Augstein’s stance doesn’t make sense, because what is going on in Turkey is very consequential for Europe, and it is arguably particularly important for Germany, where Turks form the largest ethnic minority and the largest group of non-citizens. Then there is the little matter of the endless debates and negotiations about Turkey’s accession to the European Union (EU), which has meant that Turkey’s democracy and its policies have long been seen as issues that are very much also the EU’s business. Moreover, given that Turkey is a NATO member, concerns about the current crack-down are all the more warranted.

To be sure, German media are full of critical commentaries about the developments in Turkey. One report, entitled “Alarm in Germany over Turkey” even notes that a prominent German history professor argued that the measures taken by Erdogan “amounted to a ‘total seizure of power’” as described in history textbooks “and exemplified in 1933 when democracy was eliminated in Germany by the National Socialists (Nazis) under Adolf Hitler.”

Since this history professor is known as a strong supporter of Israel, Augstein is likely to disagree with him on principle.

Augstein’s eagerness to shield Turkey’s repressive Islamist government from criticism throws his eagerness to criticize Israel into stark relief. In this context it is worthwhile to revisit and update the controversy that ensued in the wake of the Wiesenthal Center’s attempt to name and shame Augstein. In the already cited article from January 2013, James Kirchick summarized the case against Augstein as follows [emphasis added]:

“To prove its case against Augstein, the Wiesenthal Center highlighted five excerpts from his articles over the past year. In one April column, Augstein alleged that “the president [of the United States] must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups” in order to stay in office. In the same column, he wrote that “the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.” In another column from November, Augstein wrote that, “the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Haredim,” who are “cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.” In that same piece he referred to the Gaza Strip as a “lager,” a German word meaning “prison camp” which is redolent of the Nazi era. And then, in a piece endorsing Grass, he wrote that “Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world.”

Kirchick rightly notes that Augstein’s views are fairly common “in the world of anti-Israel polemicism.” However, according to him, “arguably the worst of Augstein’s columns was one from September that initially garnered the Center’s attention. The subject was the riots that erupted in response to the crude video lampooning the prophet Muhammed.” Augstein wrote there [emphasis added]:

“The fire is burning in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries that are among the poorest in the world. But the arsonists sit elsewhere. The angry young men, who burn the American—and more recently, German—flags are as much victims as the dead of Benghazi and Sana’a. Who benefits from such violence? Only the madmen and the unscrupulous. And this time also—as an aside—the U.S. Republicans and the Israeli government.”

As Kirchick went on to explain:

“Arguments resorting to “Cui bono?” usually have a conspiratorial odor, and this one was no exception. Once again, the lazy moral equivalence characteristic of Augstein’s writing was apparent in his comparing the murdered American Ambassador Chris Stephens with the rent-a-mobs, who regularly ignite American flags at an imam’s whim, as analogous “victims.” Augstein’s rant also displayed an astonishing unfamiliarity with regional politics, for if he knew the first thing about the Israeli government he so despises, he would be aware that it is hardly made up of people enthusiastic about the changes the so-called Arab Spring has wrought.”

Last December, Augstein again attracted criticism when he noted in a column about far-right groups in France and Germany that “fascism was not just a phenomenon of the past,” while asserting at the same time that it was not surprising that the German far-right “had no problem with Israel” because the Israeli government was equally far-right. And while Augstein was worried about fascist tendencies on the far-right, he saw no reason to worry about antisemitism.

Now Herr Augstein sees no reason to criticize Turkey’s repressive Islamist government. He probably regards Erdogan and his AKP as “moderate” Islamists – very different from Israel’s terrible “ultra-orthodox Haredim,” who, as Herr Augstein sees it, are “cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.” Incidentally, “Law of Revenge” was the title of the column where Augstein not only asserted that Israel’s ultra-orthodox were the equivalent of Hamas, but where he also insinuated that Israel was fighting against Hamas only because – just like Hamas – Israel was motivated by the “law of revenge.”

Let’s conclude with a few recent headlines:

“Erdogan’s revenge: Turkey’s president is destroying the democracy that Turks risked their lives to defend.” (The Economist)

“Mr. Erdogan’s Reckless Revenge” (NYT editorial)

“The Revenge of Turkey’s Erdogan” (WSJ)

“Live updates: Erdogan vows revenge after Turkey coup attempt” (itv)

Looks like someone is following “the law of revenge” – if only there was a way to blame Israel for it...

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07/25 Links Pt1: Murray: Terror is the new normal for Germany and France; The shape of things to come

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Terror is the new normal for Germany and France

At such moments one can feel the political axis of Europe wobble. Too many fixed narratives are at risk. For some people Sonboly is obviously an Islamist. For others he is obviously a white nationalist. Others will claim that he only did what he did because of failed housing systems in the Munich area, insufficient welfare payments or bullying at school. I say we wait. Especially now a 16-year old Afghan friend of the Munich shooter has been taken into custody.
But the coverage of the attack was revealing. Was it a surprise that the BBC and other broadcasters stopped broadcasting the Munich gunman’s middle name? Perhaps. It certainly seems at one with the audible sigh of relief when the name of Breivik emerged. Hurrah – went the barely-disguised speech-bubble over everyone’s heads – now we can blame racist European society. Though you won’t find many people in Europe who thinks Breivik’s actions should dictate Europe’s foreign or domestic policies. Whereas you can find many ‘moderate’ Muslims and left-wingers in our media and politics who find Islamist terrorists to be a helpful advance wing of their own political agenda.
Nevertheless, this is going to require caution. When an Iranian born in Germany can be portrayed as a white nationalist but a set of ‘Allahu Akbar’-shouting Mohammeds are symptomatic of nothing in particular, you know our continent is engaged in a piece of cognitive dissonance from which we will be wrestled only very reluctantly.

MEMRI: Following ISIS Attacks, Arab Journalists Call To Acknowledge Existence Of Muslim Extremism; Reexamine Religious Texts

The large number of terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS in Western countries over the past year – including the July 14 truck attack in Nice, France (84 dead, some 100 wounded), the June 12 shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida (49 dead, over 50 wounded), the March 22, 2016 combined attacks in Brussels, Belgium (32 dead, over 300 wounded), and the combined attacks in Paris, France in November 2015 (129 dead, 350 wounded) – has sparked a wave of harsh criticism in the Arab and Islamic world, both due to the fear of Western responses and the increase of Islamophobia, and due to the torrent of youths who flock to the extremist organization.
Alongside the many articles that stressed that terrorist attackers do not represent Islam and operate out of outside interests, there have been an increasing number of articles in the Arab media calling to acknowledge that Islam, and the obsolete interpretations of it that are still applied today, are indeed related to the wave of global terrorism. Writers called on Muslims to be honest and admit the existence of Muslim religious extremism instead of blaming others, and to uproot it. The writers argued that the source of ISIS's extremist ideology is the Muslim social and cultural structure and that Muslims must therefore declare a war on this "cultural affliction" in their midst. According to them, this war requires fundamental reforms in Islamic interpretations alongside reforms in cultural, governmental and education patterns in Arab countries, which, they say, cause many Muslims to harbor covert sympathy for ISIS.
Many writers argued that most of ISIS's religious practices are drawn from the most important Islamic law books, while stressing that these laws do not reflect explicit Koranic dictates, but rather the opinion of jurisprudents that lived in a certain reality that is no longer relevant today. Therefore, they explained that in order to rescue the universal values of Islam from the culture of ignorance, backwardness, and violence, the Islamic jurisprudents of today must critically and rationally review the history of Islam and its religious texts, and adapt Islamic interpretations and laws to the spirit of the times, while taking into account the current circumstances and the greater good. In their opinion, some Islamic dictates should even be cancelled altogether to conform with universal progressive values such as liberties and human rights.

On Friday, Mrs. Elder and I visited the Kotel HaKatan for the first time since 2007.

The famous Kotel, the Western Wall, only comprises a small section of the entire western wall of the foundations of the second Temple. Most of the wall is used for various Arab buildings in the area.

The most northern yet accessible part of the actual western wall is the Kotel Hakatan, a small area that is in fact even closer to the site of the Holy of Holies in the first and second Temples. It is the holiest site in the world that is freely accessible to Jews.

Yet it is almost always deserted.

Occasionally, some Jews organize a prayer session there, and Muslims complain about the "Talmudic rituals."

It is certainly more difficult to get to than the Kotel plaza. It is outside the security perimeter of the Kotel, and one has to walk through a section of the Muslim quarter to get there.

However, there is a police presence there that was not there when we visited nine years ago. There is a small police station as well as guards both at the entrance to the alleyway to get there and next to the adjacent Temple Mount gate (to ensure that no Jews walk into the Temple Mount itself. Really.)

There has been controversy there. A Jew who blew a shofar there was arrested by Israeli police in 2006, presumably to placate the Arabs who live nearby. But the incident was too similar to the days in the 1930s when the British would arrest Jews who blew the shofar at the Kotel.

The Kotel HaKatan is a hugely important part of Jewish heritage. Everyone should make a point of visiting it when they come to Israel.

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Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades announces their latest "martyr."

Bassem Fawzi Al -Lihama, 38, suffered a "mistaken" fatal gunshot wound "during the performance of a task of jihad," according to the Islamic Jihad military website.

"We call on Allah Almighty to grant the soul of the martyr Mujahid al-Lihama His mercy and eternal peace, accompanied by the prophets and the saints and martyrs and the Companions, and that he inspires his family and his comrades in his path of beautiful patience and fortitude." the statement read.

"The Al-Quds Brigades confirmed that the blood of the martyrs will remain the fuel for the lamp illuminating the Mujahideen on the trail of pride and dignity to press ahead with the resistance until the liberation of the entire beloved Palestine," the statement added.

Hamas' "martyr notices" are essentially the same flowery language extolling jihad in the name of Allah and the destruction of Israel.

Someone much smarter than I needs to explain once again how the philosophy of groups that write these words are significantly different from that of ISIS. They both employ terrorists, they both target civilians, they both use Islam to justify their attacks, they are both murdering in the name of jihad, they both say they want to create an Islamic state they both glorify death.

I mean, they must be different, because the West considers only ISIS to be terrorist while Islamic Jihad and Hamas are "terrorist" Europeans are victims of terror attacks while Israeli Jews are victims of "what Israel considers 'terror attacks'."

I know there must be some reason why the supremacist Islamic jihadist ideology of a group literally called Islamic Jihad is considered somehow by the world to be more legitimate than the supremacist Islamic jihadist ideology of Al Qaeda or Boku Haram or ISIS.

It couldn't have anything to do with the victims, could it?

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Looking a little closer at the B'Tselem website that claims to catalogue the civilian status of all people killed in Gaza two years ago, we see this:

'Issam Muhammad 'Ata a-Najar. 23 years old, resident of Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district. Killed on 29 Jul 2014, in Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed in his home together with 15 other members of his family in a strike on the homes of the a-Najar extended family. The strike destroyed two of the family's homes, in each of which eight people were killed. Other houses were damaged.

Ata Muhammad 'Ata a-Najar. 28 years old, resident of Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district. Killed on 29 Jul 2014, in Qizan a-Najar, Khan Yunis district, by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities.

The IDF, in a report released last year, disagrees in a couple of aspects of this categorization:

According to the factual findings collated by the FFA Mechanism and presented to the MAG, at the time in question the IDF had attacked a Hamas military command and control center located in a building in Khan Younis, as well as senior Hamas operatives who were manning the center at that time. During the attack planning process, it was assessed that there might be a number of civilians present in the building, but that the potential harm to them would not be excessive in relation to the significant military advantage anticipated to result from the attack. The attack on the building was planned for execution by means of a precise munition, and in a manner that would allow the operational purpose of the attack to be achieved, whilst minimizing the potential harm to the surrounding buildings. As a result of the attack, eight individuals were killed, among them two Hamas operatives, Asam Mohammad Ata Al Najjar and Ata Mohammad Ata Al Najjar.

After reviewing the factual findings and the material collated by the FFA Mechanism, the MAG found that the targeting process in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements. The decision to attack was taken by the competent authorities, and was aimed at lawful targets. The attack complied with the principle of proportionality, as at the time the decision to attack was made, it was considered that the collateral damage expected from the attack would not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from it, and this estimation was not unreasonable under the circumstances. Moreover, the attack was carried out after a number of precautionary measures had been undertaken, which aimed to minimize the potential for civilian harm, particularly with regard to any civilians present in adjoining buildings. It was also found that the provision of a specific warning prior to the attack, to the persons present in the structure, was not required by law and would have been expected to result in the frustration of the attack's objective.

In light of these findings, the MAG did not find that the actions of IDF forces gave rise to reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal misconduct. As a result, the MAG ordered the case to be closed, without opening a criminal investigation or ordering further action against those involved in the incident. Nonetheless, the MAG found it appropriate to recommend to the command authorities that a number of aspects relating to the implementation of the relevant operational instructions be clarified, with an emphasis on improving the documentation of planning procedures for attacks on targets of this type.

Interestingly, the Meir Amit center identified both Issam and Ata as members of Hamas, but could not identify them as militants.

(UPDATE): However, amazing researcher Bob Knot could. Here is Issam:

Here is Ata:

Were they legitimate targets?

The IDF says it was not only targeting the two Hamas members, but also their command and control center that they were running in their house, effectively making their civilian family members human shields. There is no way B'Tselem (or any other NGO) could know whether the house was a command center. Nevertheless, the IDF clearly was targeting Ata and Issam, or else they could not say that a warning "would have been expected to result in the frustration of the attack's objective."

It sure seems like the IDF is correct and B'Tselem is wrong in identifying whether this was a legitimate target.

This is one of the cases where NGOs who confidently publish what seem to be exact figures could easily be wrong, since they cannot possibly know all the details. The media reports the NGO figures without question. Of course any survivors would claim that the victims were all innocent, but interviews seem to be B'Tselem's main method of determining whether a target was legitimate or not.

What is clear is that B'Tselem had read the IDF account of the incident from a full year ago and chose not to even mention it as a possibility when they were writing up their data claiming that Ata and Issam were certainly civilians. B'Tselem simply decided that the IDF account is wrong and their investigation, almost certainly based on interviews, is more accurate.

It is unethical to not even mention the results of the IDF investigation into the incident. If this is B'Tselem's methodology, then the methodology is proven to be flawed from just this case. It should at the very least put these two Hamas members in their "Unknown" category for those that they were unsure about.

There is another major discrepancy between the IDF and B'Tselem accounts: the number of victims. It is possible that both are telling the truth; the IDF only referring to the specific family home that the two Najjar Hamas operatives were in, and B'Tselem including the neighboring home that was also destroyed. Yet there is a third possibility - that B'Tselem is wrong about the number of victims, since it seems to be at the mercy of Palestinian records, and we have seen exaggerations (even with names) of the number of victims of previous attacks.

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EoZTV: Harold Rhode on Jerusalem, Shiites and Sunnis

Here is part 2 of my interview with Islam expert Harold Rhode.

I asked him something I had always wondered: Does Jerusalem have any sanctity to Shiites?

He answered that it doesn't; Shiites consider Jerusalem to be a Sunni innovation to Islam and therefore forbidden.

However, Ayatollah Khomeini, a smart politician, chose to use Jerusalem as a rallying cry to attract Sunnis to Shiism. Hence, the annual Al Quds Day.

Rhode goes on to describe the incredible animosity between Arab Shiites, Persian Shiites and Sunnis.

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Quds News has a triumphant article, quoting Israel's Channel 10, that says that the number of French immigrants to Israel has not reached expectations this year because of the recent wave of stabbing, car ramming and shooting attacks against Jews.

Arabs consider every Jew who doesn't immigrate to Israel a victory, because they want to make Israel free of Jews.

But one sentence is interesting:

Some Jewish immigrants now prefer to emigrate to London or Montreal instead of "Israel", which did not assimilate them well and they have suffered bad economic conditions during the period of their stay in the occupied territories.

The French immigrants moved to the "occupied territories"? I thought that they mostly concentrated in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netanya, Tel Aviv and Raanana.

A similar article last week at Erem News is entitled "Israel encourages Jews to emigrate to the occupied territories, taking advantage of the deteriorating security and economic situation around the world." Yet the article says nothing about immigrant Jews being encouraged to move across the Green Line.

The answer is obvious: to the Arab world, the entire state of Israel is "occupied Palestinian territory."

Once that basic fact is understood, then the entire idea of peace in the Middle East being dependent on Israel ceding more land to Arabs for a Palestinian state is shown to be absurd. On the contrary, ceding more land would result in greater demands for yet more land. See Hezbollah in Lebanon and Gaza as exhibits A and B.

Unfortunately, the "experts" who make such confident claims that a Palestinian state would bring peace don't seem to have the ability to look at what Arab newspapers say every day.

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07/24 Links: Economist Al Durah Cartoon Self-Destructs; The Terrifying Power of Muslim Interpreters

From Ian:

German University's course claims Israel harvests Palestinian organs

An academic seminar at a German university claims Israel’s military harvests organs from Palestinians and the Jewish state is responsible for a genocide.
“Our sons were robbed of their organs,” was the title of a part of the seminar’s course material, Rebecca Seidler, an academic who blew the whistle on the anti-Israel material, told the weekly German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung in a Thursday article.
The paper reported that the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HAWK) offers a course on “The Social Situation of Youths in Palestine,” which contains the allegedly anti-Semitic material.
After reviewing the content of the course, Seidler, who was slated to conduct the seminar, complained to the university’s management. The Dean of the faculty of Social Work and Health, Christa Paulini, dismissed Seidler’s criticism in a telephone conversation as being overly-sensitive.
Seidler told the JAZ that material showed “a picture of a genocide on the Palestinians, an ethnic cleansing as well as a complete disenfranchisement of Palestinians by Israel.”
The seminar syllabus also covered the “victims of torture in Israeli prisons,” said Seidler. The JAZ wrote the seminar conveyed “anti-Semitic stereotypes.”

Syrian refugee arrested for killing woman in Germany machete attack

One woman was killed and two people were injured on Sunday by a man wielding a machete in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart.
Police said a 21-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker was arrested for the attack, according to German news service dpa.
According to Presse Portal, the suspect was known to authorities.
Bild reported that he attacked his victims outside a kebab shop in the city.
The attack comes as Germany is on edge, following a rampage at a Munich mall on Friday night in which nine people were killed, and an ax attack on a train earlier in the week that left five wounded.

Germany: The Terrifying Power of Muslim Interpreters

Interpreters Decide on Asylum
Non-Muslim refugees, in particular, complain of the pressure exerted on them by Muslim interpreters. As Gatestone Institute has already reported, Christians and other non-Muslims are beaten, threatened, and harassed in German refugee homes. One of the reasons that German authorities do not intervene has to do with the Muslim interpreters, says Paulus Kurt, head of the work groups for the Central Committee of Eastern Christians in Germany (ZOCD):
"Interpreters belonging to the Islamic religion often stick with the defendants. I am aware of statements in which interpreters have pressured and supposedly said to Christians, on the way to the police or beforehand: 'If you complain, you can forget your application for asylum.' I often noticed that statements were retracted because Christians were threatened."
The effects of these abuses of power are devastating: interpreters in Germany have great influence on who is granted asylum. In a November 2015 open letter to Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of their agency, employees of the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), pointed out the potential problems of this system within their agency:
"A Syrian is someone who identifies himself as a Syrian in writing (checks the proper box on the questionnaire), and the interpreter (usually not sworn in, or from Syria) confirms it. The interpreters are neither employed by the Federal Agency, nor are they in any way sworn in to the legal system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ultimately, examination of the asylum application is left solely to these interpreters -- insofar as it involves the verification of nationality and, therefore, the country of persecution. In our view, a decision-making process such as this, which is practiced on a massive scale, is not in keeping with due process."

Most Westerners - left, right, and center - think of the never-ending conflict between Israel and the "Palestinians" as one between a country with one of the most prestigious and effective armed forces in the world versus a small and hapless, but plucky, indigenous population.

What we need to do is change the parameters of the discussion.

So long as people put the discussion within the context of a large military power versus a small indigenous population, we can never possibly win the argument. So long as the Arabs within the Land of Israel are seen as "Davids" with slingshots and the Jews of the Middle East are perceived as a "Goliath" than western sympathies will always go to feisty little David.

Thankfully, unlike the Palestinian Narrative of Perpetual Victim-hood, we actually have history and demographic reality on our side in terms of the discussion from an ethical standpoint.

History: the Jew as Dhimmi

The first thing that pro-Israel / pro-Jewish advocates need to do is put the conflict within historical context. An old pro-Israel acquaintance of mine used to say "history did not begin in 1967."

That is, in order to understand the Long Arab War Against the Jews, we need to place it within the long history of Jewish people living under Arab and Muslim imperial rule from the seventh-century until the demise of the Ottoman Empire with the conclusion of World War I.

From the time of Muhammad, until Islam ran head-first into modernity and the twentieth-century, the Jews of the Middle East were second and third-class non-citizens under the boot of Arab and Muslim imperial rule. However bad African-Americans had it in the United States under the vile rules of Jim Crow, it was never worse than Jewish people had it as dhimmis and what we call "dhimmitude" lasted one heck of a lot longer.

As dhimmis in Arab and Muslim lands, Jews (and Christians) could ride donkeys but horses were forbidden.

As dhimmis in Arab and Muslim lands, Jews (and Christians) were forbidden from building housing for themselves taller than Muslim housing.

As dhimmis in Arab and Muslim lands, Jews (and Christians) had no rights of self-defense.

As dhimmis in Arab and Muslim lands, Jews (and Christians) had no recourse to courts of law.

As dhimmis in Arab and Muslim lands, Jews (and Christians) had to pay protection money to keep their families safe from violence.

And this is one of my favorites, in certain times and places under Arab-Muslim imperial rule Jews were not even allowed to go outside during rainstorms lest their Jewish filth run into the street and infect their pure Muslim neighbors.

The point, however, is that just as we would never discuss African-American history without reference to both Jim Crow and slavery, so we must not discuss the Long Arab War against the Jews without reference to thirteen-centuries of Arab and Muslim oppression against all non-Muslims in the Middle East, including Christians and Jews.

This is not merely a political tactic. It is a matter of framing the conversation within something that resembles an historical context. The historical context is vital because without it the conflict is incomprehensible outside of the prominent western notion of mindless Jewish malice toward Arabs, presumably as unjust payback for the Shoah.

Demographic Reality: the Scope of the Conflict

Westerners think that this is a fight between big, strong, mean Israel against the innocent, thumb-sucking "indigenous Palestinians" over land.

It isn't.

What the struggle actually is is an ongoing attempt by the Arab peoples to force Jews back into dhimmitude out of a Koranic religious imperative.

This is a struggle not between Jews and "Palestinians" but between Jews and Arabs because of Arab-Muslim religious reasons. It is due to al-Sharia. If Israel were a 23rd Arab-Muslim country it would, indeed, be hailed the world over as a "light unto the nations."

The reason that the Arab peoples generally despise Israel has nothing to do with Jewish treatment of Arabs and Muslims within Israel. Arabs and Muslims within Israel are treated better than are Arabs and Muslims throughout the entire Middle East. The reason that Arabs and Muslims despise Israel is not due to Israeli behavior. They hate Israel because it is Jewish, a nation of infidels, who dare to hold land that was once part of the Umma.

And not just any infidels, but the very worst of the infidels, we children of orangutans and swine.

But the fact of the matter is that there are somewhere around 300 to 400 million Arabs within the Middle East. They outnumber the Jews by a factor of 60 to 70 to 1 and, for the most part, want those Jews either dead or gone.

This is not a war between a Jewish Goliath and a Palestinian David, as left-wing anti-Semitic anti-Zionists would have you believe.

This is a war against the Jews of the Middle East by the much larger and highly aggressive Arab and Muslim population in that part of the world. As far as Hamas and Hezbollah are concerned this is explicitly an Arab war of Jewish extermination.

But the demographics in the region are not with the Jews, not by a long-shot.

The Jews of the Middle East have been forced to create Fortress Israel, because the Arabs would not have it any other way. It is easy for the Arabs. Given the fact that they so outnumber the Jews it only takes a small percentage of their resources to put terrible pressure on the small Jewish population in the Middle East so that those Jews are forced to militarize.

And, needless to say, the local Arabs, the Palestinian-Arabs, are nothing but cannon fodder as far as their brothers and sisters throughout the rest of the region are concerned.

The Jews of Israel want peace more than anyone, because they are under constant threat and harassment in every single venue imaginable, from international sports to academia to the UN, the EU, and a continuing wave of little Arab kids with hand-axes.

Those of us who wish to stand up for the Jews of the Middle East, the Jews of Israel, need to frame the conversation in a manner that comports with history and the actual demographics of the fight.

We need to place our end of the conversation within an expanded context that includes centuries of Jewish history under Arab and Muslim imperial rule and that appreciates the actual geographic scope of the war against the Jews in the Middle East.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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There is another Quartet.

The Arab Quartet consists of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. It met on the eve of the Arab Summit to be held this week in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

The Ministerial Committee issued a statement after their third meeting, which was chaired by UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Anwar Gargash, saying that they "noted an escalation of dangerous Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries recently, including the intensification of hostilities and inflammatory and provocative statements issued by Iranian officials towards the Arab countries. "

They called for Iran to stop incitement to violence and support for terror groups. Which is what the other Quartet did recently, to much criticism by Palestinians.

Their statement o Iran sounds a great deal like Israel's statements towards the Palestinian Authority.

Apparently, Arabs are against incitement and support for terrorism - sometimes.

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