Monday, August 07, 2017
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
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Maybe I’m late, but I recently discovered “American Muslims
for Palestine.” It’s not a particularly prominent organization: it was founded
in 2006; its Twitter account has
some 6,600 followers, while the Facebook
page – which describes the outfit as a “Public & Government Service in
Falls Church, Virginia” – has some 15K followers. I’d love to know which
government is behind this “service”…
In any case, the main “service” offered at the time of this
writing on Twitter is a frantic effort to promote the hashtag #HonorRasmea in
support of convicted supermarket bomber and US immigration fraudster Rasmea
Odeh. I have to confess that it strikes me as not terribly prudent when groups
that surely oppose restrictions on Muslim immigration to the US cheer a
convicted terrorist like Odeh – though I guess the Trump administration will
only be too happy to have this kind of opponents.
Consider this tweet: “If
more people were like her, we would live in a more just world #HonorRasmea and
come to her farewell.” Yeah, if more people bombed supermarkets full of Jewish
shoppers and then sneaked into the US by lying about their terrorist past, it
would be really great, wouldn’t it.
Another “service” provided recently by American Muslims for
Palestine was a demonstration
with “Friday prayers outside Israeli embassy;” the demonstrators were mobilized
with the blatant lie “AQSA UNDER ATTACK” – with “Aqsa” referring to the entire
Temple Mount.
Just how low American Muslims for Palestine will go is
nicely illustrated in a slideshow that is featured
on the group’s website under the title “Jerusalem in the crosshairs.”
We learn that it all started in December 1917, when the
British marched into Jerusalem, “ending hundreds of years of Ottoman rule of
Jerusalem, ushering in an era of colonization and dispossession. Despite
Palestinians’ best efforts, the Judaization of Jerusalem has been ongoing since
this period and exacerbated after the June 1967 war.”
Right – who wouldn’t be sentimental about the good old days
of “Ottoman rule of Jerusalem,” when the city became the ‘backwater of a dying
empire’ – but at least non-Muslims “lived under numerous restrictions” and
were “subject to special taxes” that had to be paid “both to the Turks and the
local Moslem authorities.” Glorious!!!
And naturally, when such glorious times end and non-Muslims,
especially Jews, are no longer treated as second- or third-class citizens,
rampant “Judaization” sets in. Horrific!!!
The slides are full of distortions and outright lies, which
are all too obviously meant to incite and justify Muslim rage and terrorism.
The slide for June 7, 1967 is entitled: “Israeli forces occupy
Al Aqsa;” the text mentions the raising of the Israeli flag on the Dome of the
Rock – but not that the flag was quickly taken down; it also claims that
Israeli soldiers “burned the Quran,” prevented worshippers from praying and
confiscated the keys. Needless to say, there is no slide explaining that, in a concession
that may have no precedent in history, Israel quickly handed control of
Judaism’s holiest site back to the Muslim Wakf.
The intentionally misleading use of “Al Aqsa” for all of the
Temple Mount in many of the slides clearly serves to add fuel to the fires of
religious passions; one example is the slide for January 28, 1976, which
asserts: “Israeli Supreme Court rules that Jews have the right to pray in Al
Aqsa.” The next slide claims that “Members of the extremist Temple Mount
movement storm Al Aqsa and raise the Israeli flag with the Torah.” The
accompanying image is taken from a 2015 Daily Mail article
about renovations at the Dome of the Rock and shows the shrine with two regular
Israeli flags (without Torah!!!) in the foreground, i.e. clearly not on the
Temple Mount, let alone the Al Aqsa mosque.
No less vile than the incitement propagated by American
Muslims for Palestine are the justifications offered for the murderous Al Aqsa
intifada and the more recent “stabbing
intifada.”
Since American Muslims for Palestine prominently emphasize
that they want “to educate the American public and media about issues related
to Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage,” it’s a pity that
the historic Palestinian leader who clearly inspires their efforts gets no
mention in the slideshow. But at least Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas knows how to honor this important Palestinian hero: he has repeatedly paid homage to Haj Amin al-Husseini (a.k.a. “Hitler’s Mufti”),
praising him for having “sponsored the struggle from the beginning.”