Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Mufti of Jerusalem

Showing posts with label Mufti of Jerusalem. Show all posts

Sunday, January 09, 2022

Official Moroccan government site praises "Protocols:" "Global Judaism is a demonic force"

The Moroccan Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has a lengthy article on its official government website praising an Arabic version of the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The article, which has been on the site since at least 2017, describes an edition of the book that was written by Ajaj Nuwaihid, a Lebanese historian who moved to Jerusalem in the 1920s. There, he became a close colleague of the infamous Jew-hating Mufti of Jerusalem and helped him start a political party in 1932.

The Waqf site summarizes the book:

Global Judaism is a demonic force with a secret organization, which likens itself to a snake, and this snake has a 9-stage scheme.

This plan started from the time of the Babylonian captivity 24-25 centuries ago, and the end of the last phase was at the end of this twentieth century, and in Palestine.

“Strength” in global Judaism is its ability to conceal its attributes from the world, and spread the mist around itself so that the world remains confused about the Jewish truth.

The most skilled thieves in the world, and if they mastered the technical trick of stealing, piercing walls, manipulating iron locks, acrobatic climbing in the dark, speed of movement, surprising with the barrel of a pistol, using drugs and covering their palms with gloves and paint.

Nuwaihid's book is not merely a translation of the Russian forgery, but it is an expansion of it, where he warns the Arab world about the plots of the Jews that can be seen in the Talmud and even back to how they destroyed the Amalekite "hero," Haman.

Nuwaihid ties the Jewish plot to modern Zionism, as most Arab writings about the Protocols do. According to him, they were disseminated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland:

In that conference, which included the most notorious demons and heads of demons, its members and sects competed, individually or in collaborators, in devising the most dangerous plan to destroy and exclude the world. The conferees studied a criminal plan to enable the Jews to control the world.

The article goes on to say the Russian secret police got hold of the Protocols by starting a fire that forced the Jews out of the meeting hall and allowed the Russians to grab the secret papers.

This Arabicized version of the Protocols says that the "satanic Jewish thinking reaches the domination of the world by a Jewish government after the sabotage of Christian Orthodox Russia, Catholic Europe, the Pope and then Islam."

(The theme that the Protocols were connected to Zionism is quite popular in the Arab world. This Egyptian writer claims that the Protocols were written by early Zionist pioneer Ahad Ha'am.)

This article is pure antisemitism and pure anti-Zionism, and it does not even pretend to distinguish between the two. It says "the undoubted truth is that one of the Jewish fingers lies behind every call that disparages moral values and aims to destroy the rules upon which human society has been based for all time." It gives examples of Communism (Marx) and existentialism (Sartre, whom it claims was half-Jewish.)

Morocco may have signed a peace treaty with Israel and it may be the most philosemitic Arab country, but that is not saying much when these sorts of slanders and lies can be published on an official Moroccan government website.

The Yellow Spot: Detailed, contemporaneous accounts of Nazi persecution of Jews 1933-1935 sound a lot like today's antisemitism (PDF)

I just found this 1936 book, The Yellow Spot, which documents in detail the beginnings of Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany, with lots of photos and facsimiles from Nazi media.

The terror in reading this book is in the knowledge that the horrific facts recounted here in mind-numbing detail - the pogroms, the arrests, the anti-Jewish laws, the ordinary Germans enthusiastically joining the hate - were only the opening act to what was to come. All of the events in this book occurred from 1933-35, more than three years prior to Kristallnacht.

The echoes to today's modern antisemitism are striking.

Just like BDS, the Nazi media had their own "cancel culture," taking photos of Germans - especially women - shopping in Jewish-owned stores and publishing them to shame them.

The German call to boycott Jewish businesses sounds a lot like the "BDS call" to boycott Israel:

We ask you, German men and women, to fall in with this boycott. Do not buy in Jewish shops and department stores ! Do not go to Jewish lawyers ! Avoid Jewish physicians ! Show the Jews that they cannot drag Germany’s honour into the mire without being punished for it ! Whoever does not comply with this demand proves himself thereby on the side of Germany’s enemies !

There are hundreds of examples of official and semi-official antisemitism. Just like the UN today says that everything Israel does is a war crime, the trade journal of the National Socialist hairdressers wrote: “A German hairdresser who enjoys ridding Jews of their bristles commits a crime against the community.”

Like the Arabs who find Jews acting like normal people are being "provocative" and saying that their attacks on Jews are the Jews' fault, we see Goebbels in 1934 saying that Jews who aren't "provocative" won't be hurt but those who insist on acting like German citizens will be justifiably attacked:

We have been very lenient with the Jews. But if they think that therefore they can still be allowed on German stages, offering art to the German people; if they think that they can still sneak into editorial offices, writing for German newspapers ; if they still strut across the Kurfiirstendamm as though nothing had happened, they might take these words as a final warning. Jewry can rest assured that we will leave them alone as long as they retire quietly and modestly behind their four walls, as long as they are not provocative, and do not affront the German people with the claim to be treated as equals. If the Jews do not listen to this warning, they will have themselves to blame for anything that happens to them.

The Nazis' propaganda wasn't only against Jews, but against "Judah"as a nation. Again, the parallels between them and the anti-Israel propaganda in Arab media are obvious.

Judah has striven to harm the German people but has given it a blessing. On Saturday, 1st April, at 10 a.m., there begins the German people’s defence against the universal criminal, the Jew. There starts a fight such as has never been dared before throughout all the centuries. Judah has asked for the fight, it shall have it ! It shall have it until it recognises that the Germany of the Brown battalions is no Germany of cowardice and surrender. Judah shall have the fight until the victory is ours! (Volkischer Beobachter, March 31, 1933)

Iranian media sounds exactly like this today.

The parallels to today's antisemitism continue. Compare this photo from Der Sturmer in 1934 to Roger Waters' inflatable pig in concert:

Compare the Nazi mistranslations of the Talmud with that of celebrated poet Alice Walker:

Der Sturmer:

This Jew (his name and address follow) belongs to the alien race that believes itself able to carry on its race defilement with impunity just as before. He is acting according to the Talmudic principles of his race. Jewesses are too good for his vileness. Accordingly he runs after non-Jewesses. Non-Jewesses are, according to the Talmud, to be regarded as cattle ; the Jew can, therefore, defile and ruin them with an easy conscience...“ A non-Jewish girl may be defiled as soon as she is three years and one day old.”

Alice Walker, in her poem, "It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud:"

Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not only

That, but to enjoy it?

Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?

Are young boys fair game for rape?

Must even the best of the Goyim (us, again) be killed?

Pause a moment and think what this could mean

Or already has meant

In our own lifetime.

You may find that as the cattle

We have begun to feel we are

We have an ancient history of oppression

Of which most of us have not been even vaguely

Aware. You will find that we, Goyim, sub-humans, animals

-The Palestinians of Gaza

The most obvious representatives of us

At the present time – are a cruel example of what may be done

With impunity, and without conscience,

By a Chosen people,

To the vast majority of the people

On the planet

Who were not Chosen.

Antisemitic poems in Der Sturmer sound a lot like the hypnotizing anti-Israel "from the river to the sea" rhymes we hear at anti-Israel rallies:

Jewish hands are red with Christian gore,

We demand Jewish blood and more !

The people hope one day to see a time

When shooting the last Jew will be no crime !

The Nazis carefully prepared things so that Jews literally cannot defend themselves. And that is exactly what the modern antisemites are doing with Israel, accusing it of false war crimes and false apartheid, changing international law itself to put the Jewish state in a corner, twisting anything Israeli Jews to be immoral or to be covering up for immorality, setting up UN commissions whose only purpose is to justify the eventual ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East and to call it a moral imperative. They know Jews can defend themselves militarily now, so they are using other means to try to destroy it, but the goal is the same.

Both the Nazis in this book and the modern antisemites are preparing the world to celebrate a future genocide.

Here is the entire book. It is the most frightening thing you will read this year.

Abbas advisor also says that the Temples never existed. He's following the Palestinian tradition from the Mufti.

Yesterday I reported that the Waqf said that Israel intended to brainwash its young students into believing that the Temples in Jerusalem ever existed.

Mahmoud al-Habbash, a senior advisor to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas who is also the top sharia judge for the Palestinian Authority, went even further.

Al-Habbash issued a press statement where he said that "the occupying state practices all tricks and fabrications and uses lies and falsification of facts to try to prove any connection between the Jews in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque [meaning the Temple Mount], in preparation for imposing Israeli control over the mosque within the circles of Judaizing the holy city. "

Denying the Temple is antisemitism, just as is denying any part of Jewish history, denying that Jerusalem is holy to Jews, or denying that today's Jews are descended from the Jews of the Torah.

As far as I can tell, the first person to even imply that there was no Jewish connection to the Temple Mount was the antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem. Giving his statement of the Committee for the Defense of Al-Buraq Al-Sharif at the Islamic Conference held in Jerusalem in 1928, he talked about Jews as "these greedy people" and said, "Jews have long been aiming for a terrible goal, which is to extract the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the hands of the Muslims, even though they did not claim it is the “Temple” before [under Ottoman rule] because the Holy Land was guarded by the Muslims themselves."

Anti-Zionism has always been antisemitism.

Palestinian newspaper defends the Mufti's collaboration with Nazis

Mark Regev wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post on November 11, marking the anniversary of the British victory at El Alamein, Egypt in 1942. He says that had the British lost that battle, the Nazis would have overrun Palestine and all the Jews there would have been murdered - because the Palestinian Arabs would have become willing collaborators with the Nazis.

Regev brings proof by noting the well-documented antisemitism and Nazi collaboration of the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Husseini, whom Palestinians still revere, as well as the adamant Palestinian Arab opposition to allowing Jews in mortal danger to immigrate to Palestine.

Palestinian writer Amani Qurum is very upset at Regev, saying that his article is filled with lies.

Writing in Al Quds, Qurum is angry at Regev for his "fierce and repeated attack on Hajj Amin al-Husseini, may God have mercy on him, accusing him of anti-Semitism and cooperating with the Germans and support for what is known as the final solution to the Jews and genocide and help in the killing of a million and a half Jews and pressure on Britain to close the gates of Palestine in front of Jewish immigration."

Regev didn't say Husseini directly contributed to the murder of 1.5 million children, but that Husseini preferred to see them die rather than go to Palestine. This is documented in an incident, recounted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

In the spring of 1943, al-Husayni learned of negotiations between Germany's Axis partners with the British, the Swiss, and the International Red Cross to transport thousands of Jewish children to safety in Palestine. He sought to prevent the rescue operations with protests directed at the Germans and Italians, as well as at the governments of Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Demanding that the operations be scuttled, al-Husayni suggested that the children be sent to Poland where they would be subject to "stricter control." Although his preference that the children be killed in Poland rather than transported to Palestine appears to have been explicit, the impact of the letters was nil.

Qurum denies or ignores nearly all of the crimes of Amin Husseini. But she admits one - and justifies it:

Of course, Husseini’s relations with the Germans cannot be denied at all, but they must be placed in their proper circumstances and context. Germany did not occupy Palestine and did not give it to the Jews falsely. On the contrary, Britain and France shared the region as a whole between them as the two largest colonial powers at that time. Within the framework of the game of alliances, isn't it natural for al-Husayni to bet politically on Germany, only in order to defend Palestine, which colonial Britain unjustly gave to the Jews?

Qurum proves Regev's main point: Palestinians need to acknowledge their support for a Nazi collaborator, not treat him as a hero. Because of his stature, it is unthinkable for a Palestinian writer to criticize the Mufti, whose hatred for Jews cannot be papered over - he was quite proud of it.

Another Palestinian leader spouting antisemitism that the West will ignore

Earlier today I quoted an article by a former PFLP leader who later became a senior advisor to Yasir Arafat who claimed that rich Jews controlled US defense contractors and gave their technology to Israel for free, where somehow Israel took credit for them after threatening them....it made no sense but it is unquestionably antisemitic.

Here's another antisemitic article published this past weekend from a former Palestinian political leader, Dr. Ghazi Husain, currently legal advisor and head of administration in the Political Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Damascus.

You don't have to go far into the article to see Husain fall down the rabbit hole of Nazi-style antisemitism:

Is it possible to normalize and coexist with the biblical and Talmudic teachings, with the Zionist ideology and with the economic Greater Israel as the leader and center of the new Middle East? Is it possible to coexist between the Arabs and "Israel"?... Is it possible to coexist with the racist and terrorist Jewish settler colonialism and the hegemony of Israel and America?

The facts and events since the crystallization of Zionism as an ideology and a global political movement whose backbone is Jewish settler colonialism from the Nile to the Euphrates, and the secret decisions of the First Zionist Congress known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion clearly prove the impossibility of coexisting with the Zionist entity, which is the practical embodiment of lies and ambitions, Biblical, Talmudic, Zionism, colonialism and Israel.

He covers a lot of Jew-hating territory in only two paragraphs! And Husain is another elder statesman of Palestinian nationalism.

From the Mufti through Arafat through Abbas, antisemitism has been the backbone of Palestinian nationalism. Most of the world refuses to believe it, but the original thinkers of the movement continue to publish explicitly antisemitic articles in Arabic for Arab audiences - today.

Even after the Abraham Accords, the Arab League still spouts antisemitic conspiracy theories

I have been mentioning how Arab media and Palestinian schools still promote the idea that Israel was behind the Al Aqsa fire in 1969 set by a deranged Australian Christian. in order to replace it with a new Jewish Temple.

On the anniversary of the attack on Saturday, the Arab League itself issued a statement that cemented this antisemitic conspiracy theory as official Arab policy.

The statement from the Secretary General of the Arab League said that the arson was a "deliberate and orchestrated crime from the highest level of the Israeli Occupation authorities." It "comes In the context of a systematic and ongoing occupation policy and plans targeting the Holy Mosque and Christian and Islamic sacred places." It goes on to list various imagined Israeli crimes in Jerusalem, including "desecration of Al-Aqsa and attempts to destroy its structure" even today.

Interestingly, Arab attackers who store weapons and rocks in the Al Aqsa mosque are never said to desecrate the holy site. Furthermore, if Israel wanted to build the Third Temple, Al Aqsa wouldn't be the target - the Dome of the Rock would be.

I could not find any similar statements from the Arab League on the anniversary for the past two years. It seems likely that the Palestinian delegation drafted this absurd statement to remain relevant and top-of-mind for the Arab world when interest in the Palestinian issue is waning - and pretending Al Aqsa is in danger is the biggest stick the Palestinians have, a direct continuation of the methods of the Nazi-collaborating Mufti of Jerusalem.

It is a disappointing, however, that the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco continue to allow these lies to be spouted by the Arab League in their name.

For 100 years, Arabs have lied that Jews are about to demolish Al Aqsa

The Guardian, August 28, 1924

In the 1920s, the notoriously antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem - appointed by the British - built his power base by raising money in the Arab world for restoration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, which had fallen into disrepair under 400 years of Ottoman Muslim rule.

Part of his sales pitch was that the Jews intended to destroy the mosque to build a third Temple. He would take statements by rabbinic leaders in Palestine about the Messianic era and pretend that Jews were planning to demolish the structures on the Temple Mount.

This was a powerful message that the antisemitic Arab world eagerly accepted. It was the lie that was at the root of the deadly 1929 massacres of Jews.

The 1931 Muslim Congress in Jerusalem, led by the Mufti, neatly tied together his lie about the "Jewish designs" on Al Aqsa and his antisemitism, as he banned any Jewish reporters from covering the conference.

In 1967, the lie resumed, even though Israel could have (and should have) taken over complete control of the Temple Mount.

Arab political cartoons continue to push the lie that Israel plans to demolish Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, even though it has had the ability to do that for 54 years.

Every August 21, the lie reaches a fever pitch on the anniversary of the attack on Al Aqsa by mentally ill Australian Christian named Denis Michael Rohan.

Palestinian Arab media usually flatly lies and says that Rohan was Jewish and that this arson was part of a Zionist plot to destroy Al Aqsa.

This lie is a reliable means to inflame Arab passions, fueled by Arab antisemitism. It is especially useful when Palestinian leaders want to divert attention from their own failures and their own people's problems, by using their Jew-hatred as a political tool - just as the Mufti did a century ago.

Hamas will hold a mass rally at the Gaza fence tomorrow, using this anniversary as an excuse to fire up Gazans with hate. The Hamas Youth Department issued a statement:

The fires that have been ignited on the walls and sides of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque since 1969 have not yet been extinguished. The smell of black Zionist hatred is still wafting, and their intrigues are still waiting in Al-Aqsa Mosque to implement criminal plans against it, starting with the intention of the occupation to divide the mosque in time and space. up to the idea of demolishing it and erecting their alleged temple in its place.

The fire that was ignited was not, as the occupation claims, actually an anomaly from a crazy person. Rather, it is a systematic policy, and a firm vision adopted by the occupation since the first day that its unclean feet set foot on the pure land of our Jerusalem, so it set its sights on the project of the Judaization of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem.

The narrative is that Palestinian "steadfastness" is what has kept the Jews from destroying the buildings so far, so the antisemitism must be stoked to "defend" Al Aqsa from an imaginary threat.

The entire history of the lie is tied to Jew-hatred.

Original sources of the Arab threat to "drive the Jews into the sea"

Back in 2014, I looked at the origins of the phrase "drive the Jews into the sea," because some have claimed that the expression was a hoax by Jews and Arabs never used that phrase in reference to Jews in Israel.

I found solid evidence that it was used after 1948, and then saw that the phrase was documented in the book "O Jerusalem" as having been used first by a Jerusalem police chief Kamal Irekat, adopted by the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem and then used by Fawzi el Kaukji, an Arab League field commander.

Yisrael Medad looked at the issue and found a British memo from August 1948 from Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin:

It is quite untrue to suggest that we have let the Arabs down or failed in any obligations towards them. We did not urge them to intervene by force in Palestine, nor did we promise them support if they did so. They went in of their own accord, in most cases without telling us beforehand. Very small measure of military successes which they achieved shows that their forces, while capable perhaps of occupying friendly territory, were not prepared for and incapable of undertaking major military operations, which would have been necessary to achieve the announced object of the Arab states, namely to drive the Jews into the sea.

I wanted to see if I could find an earlier version in contemporary newspapers.

An AP dispatch from June 10, 1948, said that Jews were amused at Arab claims that they already had thrown Jews into the sea:

This article from the News York Daily News in April 1948 quotes Fawzi al Kaukji directly:

An AP analysis from February 8, 1948, uses quotation marks for the phrase referring to Arab leaders in 1947:

The earliest quote I can find is from AP from a December 19, 1947 dispatch, quoting "Arab informants:"

That is a lot of different sources for an identical expression. It sounds like this was a common Arab response to the 1947 partition plan.

Medad also found this cover of an Egyptian pamphlet literally titled "Throw the Jews into the sea" before the 1967 war:

Leftist Jews say Palestinians aren't antisemitic - but Jews are racist

It is a predictable pattern: any time anything happens in the news, a group of anti-Israel Jews issue a "letter" from "Jewish leaders" that try to gaslight the world and pretend to represent Jews as a whole.

The Israel-hating Left is very frightened by the wave of antisemitic attacks that have gotten publicity worldwide - attacks that clearly aren't initiated by the far Right that they blame for all antisemitism. So, they wrote a letter to fool people into thinking that the attacks are an anomaly, and roundly condemned by pro-Palestinian activists.

As usual, they are lying.

This one has the absurd title "Jewish Leaders Say: We Won't Be Distracted, We Won't Be Divided." The gaslighting begins in the title: they represent only a tiny fringe of Jews (only some 3% of Jews are actively anti-Zionist.) The writers of this letter are the ones who are actively trying to divide the Jewish community, not the mainstream Zionists.

We are Jewish leaders who have a range of opinions, perspectives, and approaches to Israel-Palestine.

Yes, some of them (IfNotNow, JVP) want the Jewish state destroyed today, and some (J-Street) are willing to wait until tomorrow.

We are deeply concerned by recent reports and outcries from certain corners of our community which suggest a direct confluence between the growing movement for Palestinian freedom and violent incidents against Jews in our cities.

Their "concern" is that the attacks delegitimize their movement as being based on liberal principles. The letter is an attempt to deflect from that.

We unequivocally condemn attacks on members of our Jewish community. Jewish people deserve to walk safely in the streets of our cities without fear of attack or harassment — just like anyone else. Blaming all Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitic. We are shocked and disgusted by individuals who would use this moment of heightened support for Palestinian rights to advance antisemitic hatred and violence.

It does not take political courage to condemn random attacks on Jews. But after they do, then they go on to minimize and justify them.

We reject efforts to stoke fear and division. Supporters of the Israeli government — including some in the American Jewish establishment — are misrepresenting fringe and widely-condemned acts of individual antisemitism as characteristic of the broader Palestinian human rights movement.

The only people stoking division are these fringe Jews. The entire purpose of this letter is to give the impression that a significant number of Jews consider Israel to be beneath contempt.

Palestinian liberation and dismantling antisemitism are intertwined. For decades, the organizations and activists leading the Palestinian freedom movement have been resoundingly clear that antisemitism has no place in the movement, which is guided by principles of human rights and antiracism. When fringe antisemitic events occur, they are swiftly and roundly condemned by movement leadership.

Ooooh, look at all those hyperlinks! Most of them point to tweets, in English, from people no one heard of, that deny Palestinian antisemitism.

But if you spend time looking at Palestinian Arabic media, the story is very different.

MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch expose blatant antisemitism in Arabic media all the time, as do I, but that's not the entire story. I have not once seen Palestinian backlash against explicit antisemitism in their media. If one is going to represent antisemitism as a fringe opinion in Palestinian circles, then one would expect that Palestinians would condemn other Palestinians who spout Jew-hatred - and that never happens.

I have never seen a single Palestinian media outlet criticize their first political leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem who collaborated with the Nazis in the Final Solution, as antisemitic. I have never seen a Palestinian respond to the mainstream Palestinian belief, popularized by Yasir Arafat, that Jerusalem is not really holy to Jews and there was never a Temple there. The antisemitic theory that most Israeli Jews are really Khazars and not Jews at all is never even debated. When Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah organization published the blood libel in Arabic, after defending it, it issued an apology, but only in English. Mahmoud Abbas claimed that rabbis want to poison the water of Palestinians. He has blamed Jews for the Holocaust which he claims was vastly exaggerated. The official PLO position is that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

This is not "fringe antisemitism." This is as mainstream as it gets.

I think that these examples outweigh a few tweets from nobodies. But that's how one does propaganda - highlight the few counterexamples and ignore the overwhelming evidence disproving the thesis. But the "leaders" deny the reality:

Linking the movement at large to antisemitism is baseless and harmful. Especially in this moment, we must condemn this thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize Palestinian leadership and distract from Palestinians experiencing state violence by Israel.

The Leftist Jews don't only deny the undeniable antisemitism that is at the very core of Palestinianism. They then say that it is the Jews who are really the racists!

We commit to standing up against anti-Palestinian racism, so often unreported and unacknowledged in our communities.

First they bend over backwards to deny the existence of Palestinian antisemitism, no matter how explicit and blatant. But you know who the real bigots are? Jews!

....We support our Palestinian siblings’ right to describe their lived experiences without being accused of antisemitism. {W]e refuse to be more outraged by the words Palestinians use than the actual violence they endure.

4300 rockets, decades of terror attacks, Palestinian leaders inciting violence against Jews - they all go unmentioned. No, these As-A-Jews pretend that the only problem with Palestinians is that they sometimes say some bad stuff - which are all completely justified, by the way, because of Israel - and Jews are racists for calling those out. And when Palestinians say that Jews are Nazis, well, that is their "lived experience" and cannot be considered antisemitic.

Similarly, we refuse to allow progressive leaders of color who speak out in support of Palestinian rights to be smeared for their principled stand.

Claiming that Jews are racist is antisemitic itself. Mainstream Jews refute the antisemitism and terror-support from Roger Waters and Betty McCollum as energetically as they refute the lies from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. To claim that somehow Marc Lamont Hill should not be called out for his antisemitic conspiracy theories because he is Black is the actual racism.

Beyond that, was Kareem Abdul Jabbar being racist when he called out the antisemitism from among Black Lives Matter supporters last year? There is a serious problem with Black antisemitism, whether it is from celebrities or from people attacking random religious Jews in Brooklyn. These "Jewish leaders" deny it, meaning that they condone it.

We know safety comes through solidarity. Antisemitism — like anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic attacks and rhetoric — exists in every community, but it is fostered and exploited by rightwing movements in the US and around the world, which gain power by keeping us divided.

Yes, a letter that is supposedly against antisemitism ends up blaming only the Right, and dismisses all other Jew-hatred as "fringe." Which means that this letter ends up tacitly defending all antisemitism that is not rightwing - antisemitism from Arabs, from the Left, from people of color, from Louis Farrakhan - as justified or anomalous, and not something that needs to be specifically called out or fought.

Even the antisemitic Mufti accepted that the Temples were on the Temple Mount

Nowadays, when Palestinian media talks about the Temple Mount, they mention the "alleged" Temple that Jews "claim" to have existed there.

But their founding father, the Nazi-supporting Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Husseini, even admitted that the Jewish Temple was there.

In his testimony before the British commission of inquiry on the 1929 pogroms, the Mufti reiterated his claim that the Jews were planning to rebuild the Temple on top of Al Aqsa. From the New York Times, December 4, 1929:

That answer is revealing. Unlike later Palestinian leaders who denied that the Temple was ever in Jerusalem, the Mufti based his entire libel that Jews planned to destroy Al Aqsa on the fact that the Temple was there and the Jews would want to rebuild it!

Temple denial only started in Jordan after 1948 when guidebooks to the Temple Mount were re0written to take out any references to a Jewish presence in Jerusalem. But the modern version of Temple denial started with Yasir Arafat, who famously insisted to the American negotiators at Camp David that the Jewish Temple was in Nablus. Since then, other Arab officials and media picked up on this revisionist history to the point that it is now accepted much of the Arab world.

But even the Jew-hating Mufti knew the truth.

In that same testimony, the Mufti also fully accepted the truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and attempted to have it included as evidence. The British decided that they would allow it - as evidence of Arab Jew-hatred.

The Mufti's speech to Arab Americans, March, 1943: "If Allies win, Jews will control the world"

The ex-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem appealed to Arab Americans during World War II to support Nazi Germany - and he appealed to antisemitism to help convince them.

Here are excerpts from his shortwave radio address broadcast from Rome on March 19, 1943:

The Arabs and Moslems will not be deceived by Britain once again because not only have they known its true intentions but they have also known those of Britain’s allies—America—and I want to draw the attention of the Arab emigrants in America to this fact, reminding them of their glorious past when they supported the National movement. I would also like to remind them that their efforts will be wasted if, God forbid, America and her Allies may be victorious in this War because at such a time the Arabs will never rise again. I therefore know that those Arab emigrants in America will refrain from helping Roosevelt or taking part in a war which he brought on to his country.

If those Allies win this war the Jewish influence will be the arbiter in the world resources and one can thus imagine the future of the Arabs and Moslems, and the dangers which they are exposed to in their fatherlands and beliefs if the Jews and their Allies dominate them and spread the latent hatred on to them.

Then the world will become Hell—God forbid:

But Allah is too just and merciful to grant such murderous violators any victory. We are sure that victory will be ours and that of our friends. We have not the slightest doubt about that, we shall not slacken our struggle nor will we be deterred or quietened. Do not be deceived by the allegations of your enemies, because you know full well about their intrigues, and be sure that the nation which fights, sacrifices and awaits will be the victorious one in the end.

The Mufti took it for granted that all Arabs are antisemitic so appealing to their hate of Jews was the central part of the speech.

Palestinian leaders want to ban some Muslims from praying at Al Aqsa

When the UAE announced it would normalize relations with Israel:

The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, announced today that it is forbidden for Emiratis to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, according to a fatwa he issued in 2012 against anyone who prints with and reconciles with Israel.

He told the German news agency (DPA) that he had issued a fatwa in 2012 “permitting visits to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa within certain criteria, not including normalization.”

He added, “Since this (Emirati-Israeli) agreement bears the signs of normalization so visiting Jerusalem is not allowed and forbidden.

A major Islamic scholar st Al Azhar rejected the ban:

A grand scholar at Al Azhar Al Sharif, Egypt's renowned Islamic institution, has rejected a fatwa by Al Quds Mufti where he forbids the Emirati people from praying in Al-Aqsa Mosque following the UAE-Israeli peace accord.

"As a specialist in Islamic Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) I can't find any religious justification for declaring as haram (forbidden) the worship of any Muslim people in any mosque all over the world based on a political stance taken by these people's leadership. I reject any religious fatwa that is not based on Shari'a - compliant rules," Dr Abbas Shuman, a member of Al Azhar's Committee of Senior Scholars.

"To the best of my knowledge, our Islamic history has not witnessed any fatwa by the righteous forefathers and their descendants banning any Muslim from praying in any mosque around the world," he concluded.

The Mufti is appointed by the PA president Mahmoud Abbas, meaning that the PLO/PA are the ones banning Muslims from worshiping at Al Aqsa.

In fact, this isn't the first time, according to reports from 2017:

Al-Aqsa guards expelled yesterday a Bahraini delegation from the mosque’s holy site, local sources reported.

The sources added that the move came as the Bahraini delegation was reported to have visited the Jewish state to “normalise and strengthen ties with Israel” and to deliver “message of peace and brotherhood to Israel.”

Israel sometimes bans some Muslims from the site if they are a danger to public safety and security. The Palestinian leadership bans some Muslims from the site if they don't like the politics of the country they are from.

This is one reason why the Arab world is sick and tired of the Palestinians - they claim ownership over a holy site and politicize it. They claim that they want Muslim and Arab unity but they are willing to ostracize any Muslims they disagree with.

The Palestinians are burning their bridges very quickly.

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The Mufti’s seminal antisemitic pamphlet

From “Islamic Antisemitism: Characteristics, Origins, and Current Effects” by

Matthias Küntzel in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs:

A thirty-one-page booklet in Arabic entitled Islam and Jewry, published in Cairo on August 18, 1937, served as an effective propaganda tool. ¹¹ As far as we know, this publication is the first written evidence of Islamic antisemitism. In 1938, the Berlin-based publishing house Junker und Dünnhaupt released it under the title Islam–Judaism: Call of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic World in 1937, explicitly attributing that screed to al-Husseini for the first time. ¹² In subsequent editions released by the Nazis during World War II, the Mufti continued to be named as the author. Whether al-Husseini was in fact the sole initiator and author of this pamphlet remains an open question.

While classical Islamic literature treats Muhammad’s struggle with the Jews as a minor episode in the life of the Prophet, now “Muhammad’s conflict with the Jews [was being] portrayed as a central theme in his career and their enmity to him given a cosmic significance.” ¹³ The anti-Jewish verses of the Qur’an were generalized and considered valid for the twentieth century. Finally, for the first time, religious tropes were combined with elements of conspiracy theory. Since Muhammad’s days, according to Islam and Jewry, the Jews have constantly been trying to “destroy Muslims.” The brochure concludes:

[T]he verses from the Qur’an and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them, they only know hypocrisy and cunning. Hold together, fight for the Islamic thought, fight for your religion and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews. ¹⁴

Here, the Muslims are presented as eternal victims in order to legitimize new forms of aggression more reminiscent of the policies of the Nazis than the attitudes of the Prophet. In September 1937, days after its publication, the booklet reached a wide audience through its distribution at the National Arab Congress in Bludan, a health resort in Syria, fifty kilometers northwest of Damascus.

The Spread of Islamic Antisemitism

This first pan-Arab congress, held from September 8–10, 1937, was organized by al-Husseini. He also “provided the funds to rent the two largest hotels in Damascus and Bludan and grant a large number of penniless participants rooms without charge.” ¹⁵ No wonder, then, that the congress attracted 411 attendees, although only 250 were allowed into the hall of the Grand Hotel of Bludan, where the congress took place. The Mufti could not attend because he was in hiding in Jerusalem after a failed July 1937 attempt by the British authorities in Palestine to arrest him. ¹⁶ In October 1937, he fled to French-controlled Beirut. Nevertheless, the delegates named him honorary president of the assembly.

The congress was not a public event; even newspaper reporters were not allowed inside. However, Colonel Gilbert MacKereth, the British consul in Damascus at the time, arranged for a person in his confidence to attend. Based on the reports of the spy, MacKereth described the event as “a manifestation of Judeophobia.” He referred to “a startlingly inflammatory pamphlet entitled ‘The Jews and Islam,’ which was handed to each member of the congress on his arrival. It had been printed in Egypt.” Annex V of MacKereth’s memorandum, written by his confidante, bears the title “Description of a violently anti-Jewish Pamphlet printed in Cairo for the Palestine Defense Committee there, which was given to each of the persons attending the Bludan congress.” The summary of the pamphlet’s contents presented in an annex to the report leaves us with no doubt that he was referring to the Cairo publication of August 1937. ¹⁷

The Nazis viewed Islam and Jewry as an especially valuable tool. During the war, Berlin printed and disseminated this text nearly unchanged in several languages and editions. For example, there is proof that in 1942, the Spanish authorities confiscated some 1,500 copies of “a German propaganda pamphlet in the Arabic language called ‘Islam and the Jews’” that had been sent to the German consulate in Tangiers. According to the German Foreign Ministry, these brochures were to have been distributed “unobtrusively” in Spanish Morocco. “Unobtrusive” is the key word here. The Muslims would have laughed at an SS officer openly distributing an Arabic text pretending to speak in the name of Islam. But this was indeed what was happening. The Nazis disguised themselves as Muslims and falsified Islamic scripture so as to lend credibility to their murderous hatred of Jews.

The Spanish authorities responsible for Tangiers, however, frustrated this plan. They were of the opinion that “the distribution of such propaganda directed against the Jewish elements in Spanish Morocco could not be permitted” and had all copies confiscated and destroyed. ¹⁸ In 1943, another 10,000 copies of the same pamphlet were printed in Zagreb, capital of Germany’s Croatian satellite, this time in Serbo-Croatian (Islam I Zidovstvo), and distributed in Bosnia and Croatia. ¹⁹

Though the precise details of the pamphlet’s dissemination are unknown, Islam and Jewry might well be regarded as the forerunner to Sayyid Qutb’s notorious text Our Struggle with the Jews of the 1950s. David Motadel regards Islam and Jewry as “one of the most significant examples of this kind of religiously charged anti-Jewish propaganda dispersed among Muslims,” ²⁰ while historian Jeffrey Herf deems it “one of the founding texts of the Islamist tradition, one that defined the religion of Islam as a source of hatred of the Jews.” ²¹

The timing of the publication of Islam and Jewry, in August 1937, is also revealing. It proves that Islamic antisemitism took hold when the flight and expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs (1948) and Israeli rule over Gaza and the West Bank (1967) were still in the distant future. This fact alone contradicts the widespread assumption that Islamic antisemitism developed as a response to alleged Israeli misdeeds. It was not the behavior of the Zionists that prompted the publication of this hostile text, but rather the fact that a first attempt had been made in the summer of 1937 to agree on a two-state plan. Islam and Jewry accordingly culminates in the following call: “Do not tolerate the Partition Plan, for Palestine has been an Arab country for centuries and shall remain Arabic forever.” This pamphlet was intended to theologize the territorial conflict between Jews and Arabs in order to destroy the first important attempt at a compromise—which had initially been met with a degree of approval from some moderate Arabs.

The antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem is, of course, an icon for Palestinians today. His influence remains.

Muslim clerics have always used Jerusalem as a political fatwa football

Yesterday I reported that the Mufti of Jerusalem issued a fatwa saying that UAE residents are “forbidden by law” to visit Al Aqsa.

Now a major Islamic scholar, former deputy at Al Azhar University, says that the Palestinian Mufti doesn’t know anything about Islamic law.

Dr. Abbas Shoman, a member of the Supreme Council of Senior Scholars of Al Azhar Al Sharif, expressed his astonishment over a fatwa forbidding Emiratis’ prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque, issued by the Mufti of Jerusalem after the announcement of the UAE-Israel peace treaty.

Dr. Shoman said: “I refuse to issue Sharia fatwas that are not based on sharia rules, and I do not know as a specialist in Islamic jurisprudence that there is a justification that annuls the prayers of an entire people of a Muslim country in a mosque on the grounds of a political position taken by their state.”

He added: “Indeed, the fatwa is selective and not based on Sharia….As far as I know, there has never been a fatwa in our Islamic history that prevents a person or a group from praying in a mosque for Muslims.”

This actually is similar to another dispute from 2012 when a former Mufti of Jerusalem Ekrima Sabri criticized Egypt’s Grand Mufti visiting Jerusalem. He used bizarre logic:

Sheikh Sabri said from a political perspective Gomaa’s visit implied the recognition of Israeli’s occupation.
“Recognition is a form of normalization because no one can enter Jerusalem without an Israeli visa or without proper coordination with the Israeli security forces.”
But if Muslim citizens of Europe or America visit Israel, their visit would not be considered as an act of “recognizing the occupation,” Sabri said.
“If German or French Muslims visit Jerusalem, this is not normalization since their countries already recognize Israel.
“Some Arab governments might not boycott Israel, but their people do and they reject normalization.”

Another dispute over whether Muslims can visit Jerusalem erupted in 2010 when an Egyptian soccer team planned to play a friendly match against the Palestinian team in the West Bank, and Egyptian extremist clerics issued a fatwa against it.

Similarly, major Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf Qaradawi once issued a fatwa against non-Palestinian Muslims visiting Jerusalem:

He stressed in remarks published yesterday in Doha, "We should feel that we are deprived of Jerusalem and fight for it so that Jerusalem is ours, and that the responsibility to defeat the Zionist aggression is the responsibility of the Islamic nation as a whole and not the responsibility of the Palestinian people alone," he said, adding: "It is not reasonable to leave the Palestinians alone in the face of the Zionist state with a large military capabilities."
He said that "Jerusalem will not return except through resistance and jihad, and the combined efforts of the Arab and Islamic nation."

Muslim clerics like to use Jerusalem as a political football, just like Muslim politicians do. Indeed, there seems to be little distinction between Islamic jurisprudence and politics based on how Muslim clerics have issued contradictory (and sometimes self-contradictory) fatwas on Jerusalem in ways that happen to align with their political positions.

Palestinians keep shooting themselves in the foot

Palestinians continue to respond to the Israel/UAE agreement in the worst possible way for them.

The Mufti of Jerusalem issued a fatwa saying that UAE residents are “forbidden by law” to visit Al Aqsa. UAE residents will of course ignore it – they aren’t bound by his fatwas. If he thinks that this will make them want to support Palestinians, he’s not too bright.

Similarly, the Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said that Palestinians will boycott the Dubai Expo scheduled for October 2021.

The main weapon Palestinians have is propaganda, and in these two instances they are giving the chance to tell their story to a captive Arab audience away. And in both cases, nothing is accomplished by their supposedly principled positions.

It’s a wonderful way to ensure they never get a state.