Showing posts with label 2016. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2016. Show all posts

Friday, June 30, 2023

On Wednesday, an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden tore up and burned a Quran after receiving permission to do so as an act of protest, A Swedish court ruled that burning the Quran was a legal expression of free speech and the police gave a permit for the action.

In response, the Muslim world is seething. Many Muslim-majority countries lodged protests against Sweden, and there were riots in Iraq as protesters attempted to break into the Swedish embassy.

In 1976, on Yom Kippur eve, a group of Arab youths - fueled by a false rumor that Jews had torn Qurans - stormed through the synagogue at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and tore up numerous Hebrew holy books as well as several handwritten Torahs which were ripped to shreds.




The desecration of the Torah is much, much worse than tearing or ripping a printed Quran. The best analogy to a ripped Quran would be to a torn up Chumash, a mass printed version of the Torah; tearing up a Torah is more like tearing up a handwritten Quran manuscript.

And Jewish prayer books, chumashim and other holy books are desecrated by Palestinian Arabs much more often than you know. 

In 2007, I visited Samuel's Tomb in Israel, unaware that Arabs had rampaged through there the previous Friday night, tearing prayer books, heavily damaging the Torah ark and stealing a Torah. 

Nearly all Israeli media ignored this incident. Because Arabs desecrating Jewish holy books and sites is simply not worth mentioning. 

It was hardly a unique occurrence. 

Also in 2007, Arabs burned down a synagogue near Doled, destroying Torah scrolls. 

In 2009, Arabs raided a yeshiva in Homesh and destroyed many volumes of Chumash and Talmud. 

In 2012, Arab youths were caught trying to burn books of Psalms at the Mount of Olives. 

Holy books at the Tomb of Joseph have been destroyed by Arabs more than once. 

Prayer books were burned in an attack at a Gush Etzion synagogue in 2016.


In 2022, Arabs burned a Jewish center in Harasha and destroyed many holy books. 

When has the Muslim world condemned these incidents against holy Jewish books - equivalent or far worse than the desecration of one of hundreds of millions of printed Qurans?

They haven't, and this weakens their pretense of outrage. If you demand that people respect your holy objects, then at a minimum you should do the same. 

The Muslim outrage over Sweden is not about their disgust at a holy book being desecrated. It is an expression of Islamic supremacy. 

They want the entire world to adhere to Muslim laws against blasphemy and that everyone should enshrine Islamic laws against destroying the Quran. These protests are just as much political as they are expressions of popular anger: they send a message that unless the West acts as Muslims demand, they can expect violence. 

Any attempts to impose Muslim mores or beliefs on the world must be opposed wholeheartedly. It is an attack on everyone's freedom.

_____________________________________

That being said, Sweden's legal ruling allowing the burning was wrong. 

From the narrow perspective of freedom of expression, yes, burning a Quran - just like burning a flag - is valid and should not be illegal. But there is another, far more important issue here.

The deliberate burning of the Quran is a hate crime. It was meant not as a message of freedom but as a direct attack on the sensibilities of Muslims worldwide. It was not an expression of criticism of Islam but an expression of hate against Islam and Muslims, by an apparent ex-Muslim. 

And Sweden does have hate crime laws.

The Swedish Penal Code, chapter 16, section 8, says:
A person who, in a disseminated statement or communication, threatens or expresses contempt for a national, ethnic or other such group of persons with allusion to race, colour, national or ethnic origin or religious belief shall, be sentenced for agitation against a national or ethnic group to imprisonment for at most two years or, if the crime is petty, to a fine. (Law 1988:835)   
The deliberate burning of a Quran is an expression of contempt for believing Muslims. As such, it should be illegal - and so should the deliberate burning of Jewish holy books.

The protester could make the same point by burning a photo of a Quran. Destroying symbols of a religion or other protected group is criticism; destroying actual objects of importance to those groups is hate. 

That is where the line should be drawn between freedom of expression and purposeful hate.




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Sunday, December 25, 2022


By Daled Amos


This week, America First Legal sued President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for violating the Taylor Force Act. The group represents Stuart and Robbi Force, the parents of Taylor Force who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists, Sarri Singer, a survivor of a 2003 terrorist attack, and US Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX).

Taylor Force was murdered on March 8, 2016, and despite the fact that he was neither Jewish nor Israeli, the Palestinian Authority repeatedly praised the terrorist who killed Taylor as a martyr:

Biden was Vice President at the time and was in Israel, in Tel Aviv where the attack took place.

“I don’t know exactly whether it was a hundred meters or a thousand meters,” Biden, on a visit to Israel, told reporters about Tuesday’s assault.

“It brings home that it can happen, it can happen anywhere, at any time,” he said, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Abbas offered condolences at the same time that the official PA News was praising the murderer.

The Taylor Force Act was signed into law in 2018 to stop Abbas and the PA from incentivizing terrorism. According to the summary of the bill:

(Sec. 4) This bill prohibits certain FY2018-FY2023 economic support assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being made available for the West Bank and Gaza unless the Department of State certifies that the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations:
o  are taking steps to end acts of violence against U.S. and Israeli citizens perpetrated by individuals under their jurisdictional control, such as the March 2016 attack that killed former Army officer Taylor Force;

have revoked any law, decree, or document authorizing or implementing a system of compensation for imprisoned individuals that uses the sentence or incarceration period to determine compensation;

o  
have terminated payments for acts of terrorism against U.S. and Israeli citizens to any individual who has been fairly tried and imprisoned for such acts, to any individual who died committing such acts, and to family members of such an individual; and

o  
are publicly condemning such acts of violence and are investigating such acts.

During the Trump administration, payments to the PA were frozen. When he first started resuming aid to the Palestinian Authority, Biden did more than simply undo Trump's policy -- he attempted to bypass the law passed by Congress. When it was announced in March 2021 that the Biden administration would renew funding of the PA despite their refusal to stop "pay for slay" payments to the families of terrorists, it was unclear how the administration intended to avoid the restrictions of the Taylor Force Act:

The State Department has yet to explain how it will resume U.S. aid without violating that law, known as the Taylor Force Act.

A State Department official familiar with the matter told the Washington Free Beacon that "any decisions related to resuming assistance to the West Bank and Gaza will be consistent with requirements under relevant U.S. law."

The question is how the Biden administration will attempt to explain away its violation of the Taylor Force Act.

Concerns were already raised back in 2020 on how they would do this. Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior intelligence and security expert, expected the PA to continue its claim that the payments were based merely on financial considerations. He expected that the Biden administration would pull the same trick as the Obama administration in 2014, when it asked the PA to move the agency in charge of the payments from the PA to the PLO. On that basis alone, the State Department then claimed that the PA was making efforts and that things were moving in the right direction. 

But nothing really changed and no action to prevent the payments was taken.

Instead, in April 2021, a package was put together for the Palestinian Arabs that was supposed to avoid circumventing the Taylor Force Act:

$150 million went to UNRWA
o  $75 went to economic development programs in the West Bank and Gaza
o  $10 million went to "peace building" initiatives.
According to Blinken at the time, the money would not violate the Taylor Force Act because it would not go directly to the PA. Instead, the money would go to agencies that are independent of both the Abbas government and Hamas.

Jonathan Tobin notes that according to a Government Accounting Office report that preceded Trump's cutoff of funds, money given to the Palestinian government by US officials was not closely monitored and wound up in the hands of terrorists. While the report indicated that better oversight could solve the problem, it remains unclear how the Biden White House and the usual bureaucracy are going to succeed what they have previously failed to do.

Another issue is that Palestinian NGOs receiving the funding are not really independent of the Palestinian governments, whether these groups deal with Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank or Hamas in Gaza.

An additional point Tobin makes is that the money itself is fungible. The money received by the NGOs is money that the Abbas government might otherwise have had to spend for those non-government purposes. The money from the US thus allows Abbas to divert the money it saves due to US largesse on other purposes, including those that are terror-related.

The State Department itself acknowledged that there is a problem of Abbas funneling money to terrorists. In a March 18 non-public report in 2021, 

The State Department admitted it was "unable to certify" to Congress that the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization are complying with the Taylor Force Act, primarily because they have "not terminated payments for acts of terrorism to any individual, after being fairly tried, who has been imprisoned for such acts of terrorism and to any individual who died committing such acts of terrorism, including to a family member of such individuals," according to the report. [emphasis added]

In a separate memo, the State Department also admitted that the PA had "not taken proactive steps to counter incitement to violence against Israel." In other words, they could not certify for Congress that the PA had fulfilled repeated promises to end incitement and recommit itself to peace negotiations.

There is a problem of Abbas encouraging terrorist attacks.
The State Department admits there is a problem.
The Biden Administration has failed to present a clear plan on how provide funding for Palestinian Arabs without it being used for encouraging the murder of Israelis.

Maybe its time to let the Taylor Force Act do the job it was intended for.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, July 27, 2022


On Monday, hundreds of Palestinian lawyers protested Mahmoud Abbas' sweeping powers:

Hundreds of Palestinian lawyers held a rare street protest Monday against what they described as the Palestinian Authority's "rule by decree", condemning president Mahmud Abbas for governing without a parliament.

The Palestinian Legislative Council -- created under the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel -- has been inactive since 2007, meaning Abbas has led without a functioning parliament for nearly all of his tenure as president.

But a new leadership at the Palestinian Bar Association has sought to pressure the PA.

The draft Palestinian constitution allows for presidential decrees "if necessary", in cases where the PLC cannot act, but lawyers said Abbas has gone too far.

According to estimates by Palestinian legal experts, Abbas has issued some 400 presidential decrees while in office.

He officially dissolved the PLC in 2018.
The article doesn't come close to describing Abbas' control of all the branches of the Palestinian government. 

In order to "legally" dissolve the PLC, he needed the Palestinian Constitutional Court to make that decision. And guess who appointed every member of that group in 2016?


So Mahmoud Abbas controls, either directly or by proxy, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Palestinian Authority. 

But his powers don't end there, because the PA is not independent - it reports to the PLO, which is still legally considered the "“Sole Legitimate Representative of the Palestinian People” - and whose chairman is also Mahmoud Abbas. 

This is all documented. It is no secret that Abbas controls everything.

Yet Western media almost completely ignores this basic fact. Abbas is never referred to as a dictator - except by Hamas media.

The reason, as always, is that pointing out the corruption of the Palestinians seems to weaken the overarching narrative of an evil Israeli oppressive presence that controls every aspect of Palestinian life, and that narrative must be protected as much as possible.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, July 15, 2022

Not too long ago, whenever Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Fatah wanted to fire up their people, they would put together a massive rally where tens of thousands could be summoned at seemingly the snap of a finger. 

Here's a Hamas rally from 2017:


An Islamic Jihad rally from 2016:


But on Thursday, The Palestinian Authority and Islamic Jihad held a rally to protest President Biden's visit to Israel.

And the turnout was pathetic.

Here was Islamic Jihad's rally:


And here is another demonstration in Ramallah:


In Gaza, with a captive audience, a couple hundred people came to a rally organized by several socialist groups.



It looks like it is not only other Arab nations who are sick of Palestinian leadership. 

Palestinians are, too.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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