Jewish settlers are notching up property gains in the heart of East Jerusalem through a series of shady deals involving frontmen or straw companies.If black families wanted to move into a community that had a large number of Ku Klux Klan sympathizers - racists who would threaten the lives of those who sell their homes to blacks - would the story be written this way? Because the analogy is pretty good. (It would be exact if the racist KKK community was in Africa.)
The process by which such properties are acquired is shrouded in mystery, with the new Jewish occupants often moving in under the cover of darkness to avoid a major confrontation with residents.
The latest controversial acquisitions took place in Silwan, a densely populated Palestinian neighborhood on a steep hillside flanking the southern walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
In the past three weeks, hardline settlers have moved into 35 apartments there, sparking anger and consternation among Palestinians who vehemently oppose such moves as a hostile attempt to Judaize Silwan.
Some were allegedly acquired fraudulently, and others legally.
One of the structures taken over in Silwan this week was a three-story building owned by the Rajabi family, which had been looking to sell the property and its adjoining land.
Because the neighborhood is very close to the Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam, the family was looking for a Palestinian buyer.
One day, a man whose family is known for its commitment to the Palestinian cause approached them.
"He said he wanted to buy it for his cousin who lives in Dubai," Zuheir al-Rajabi said, explaining how they agreed to sell it for 450,000 Jordanian dinars ($635,000).
Today he realizes it was a mistake.
"I hate myself for selling, people are accusing us of knowingly selling" to the settlers, he said.
On Tuesday, his family paid for an advertisement in the main Palestinian newspaper showing the purchase agreement with the name of the buyer and insisting they had no knowledge of the true nature of the sale.
"We should have been more careful but we cannot take it back. The settlers are like a cancer which spreads through the body until it dies," Rajabi said.
Selling land to Israeli settlers is viewed as treason by the Palestinians and carries a penalty of life imprisonment with heavy labor. There have even been cases in which the perpetrators have been killed.
If there is going to be a two-state solution, either Jews will be ethnically cleansed from "Palestine" or Jews must be allowed to continue to live in their homes without being discriminated against.
There is only one reason why the second option is never discussed: because Palestinian society is antisemitic - and everyone knows it.
Because Palestinian Arabs hate Jews - not Zionists, but Jews - the idea of Jews remaining in their homes as full citizens is not even floated. Palestinian Arabs from Mahmoud Abbas on down to the masses all agree that Jews cannot live in their hoped-for nation.
This bigotry is so entrenched and so well known that Western diplomats have accepted their bigotry as normal. And Western antipathy to insulting "moderate" Palestinians means that this obvious Jew-hatred must never be mentioned out loud. Therefore, the only option that is ever considered by the enlightened, liberal West is to enforce Palestinian Arab hate - to denounce Jews buying or building homes in their historic homeland, and to normalize the idea that in any "peace" agreement, hundreds of thousands of Jews will be forcibly removed from their homes.
Which is a war crime in any other context.
Ethnic cleansing is now a liberal goal. Palestinian Arab bigotry becomes normalized Western policy - all in the name of "peace."
It should not be considered controversial to say this simple statement: "Jews should be allowed to buy houses anywhere in the world." Any progressive would agree with that statement regarding any national, ethnic or religious group in any country on the planet - except for Jews in the historic Jewish homeland. And this bigotry is so institutionalized that articles like this can be written where Jews trying to assert their rights are demeaned, and Western leaders can openly denounce basic human rights for Jews.
It is truly remarkable that such ugly bias is mainstream. And it is all because of the combination of Palestinian hate and Western acquiescence to that hate.