Monday, June 18, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
Yesterday, a delegation from the largest Muslim organization in the world ended its tour of Israel.
Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Secretary of the world's largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Supreme Council, led a team of people to Israel to discuss common issues and peace.
This included meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the President Reuven Rivlin, and visits to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
During the visit, the Indonesian delegation also participated in meetings in Jerusalem with Jewish and Muslim religious leaders and activists in order to "bring the views of the three heavenly religions closer together."
Who could be against such a thing?
Well, Hamas and Fatah and the PA denounced the visit in unmistakable terms.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "the participation of the delegation contradicts the positions of the Indonesian government and the Indonesian people, who has always expressed its position rejecting the occupation and its policies."
Hamas said, "We appreciate Indonesia, its people, its religious leaders and its historical stands in support of our people's rights and struggles for freedom and independence. We condemn this disgraceful act. "
Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi said in a statement that the delegation's actions were "a crime against Jerusalem, the Palestinian people and Muslims in the world...The participation of Yahya Taqouf in this conference in occupied Jerusalem is a betrayal of religion, the Aqsa Mosque, the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic nations." He called on the Indonesian government and people to "hold accountable those who sold themselves to the devil and wanted to be a tool in the hands of the Zionists and Israel."
The question is: what do supposedly "pro-peace" organizations have to say? Will they support a leader of 50 million Muslims meeting Jewish and Israeli leaders as a way to bring peace and understanding, or will they accept that the PLO and Fatah and Hamas have veto power over anything any Muslim does, even when those Muslims represent tens of millions of people?
The answer is that J-Street will remain silent, because their positions are exactly those of the Palestinian Authority and they will never admit that a meeting with the supposedly evil Netanyahu government can ever be good thing. SJP and other BDS organizations will be against the visit because it violates their prime directive of no dealing with the Zionist entity.
Ironically, Arab nations' silence means their tacit support for the meeting, given their knee-jerk support for anything Palestinians demanded in the past.
