King Abdullah of Jordan said this in his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday:
Safeguarding Jerusalem is a key concern . . . . the Holy City; a strategic linchpin not only for my region but for the world.In this short section:
This is a priority for me personally, and for all Muslims. We utterly reject attacks on Muslim and Christian Holy Sites and any attempts to alter the historic Muslim, Christian and Arab identity of the Holy City. As the Custodian of Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, I will continue my efforts to protect these places, and stand up against all violations of their sanctity, including attempts for temporal and spatial division of Al Aqsa Mosque/Al Haram Al Sharif.
- He accused Israeli Jews of "attacking" Jerusalem holy sites
- He said that Jews have no rights to Jerusalem
- He implied that Israel should not have control over any part of the Old City including the Jewish Quarter and the Kotel
- He said Jews have no rights to their own holy sites in Jerusalem
- He implied that Jews walking around peacefully on their holiest site are desecrating it
- He implied that Muslims playing soccer or engaging in parkour on the Temple Mount are acting respectfully
- He accused Israel of trying to divide up the Temple Mount, which would be a great idea, but there are no such plans
- He implied that banning Jews from their holy sites is to "protect" them
Abdullah is the most ideal of all Arab leaders. Urbane, Western educated, not tied to terror and in fact very much against Islamic terrorism, not sympathetic to Hamas - all Arab leaders should be more like him.
Yet even this most liberal of Arab leaders is an antisemite who denies Jews the most basic of human rights - the rights to worship and the right to self-determination, for starters. Beyond that, he denies basic Jewish history and the Jewish historic ties to Jerusalem that predate Islam by about 1600 years.
The Arab world might accept Israel's existence one day for realpolitik reasons. But Abdullah proves that no matter how liberal the Arab world becomes, they will never, ever stop being antisemites.
(h/t Irene)