Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: jihad

Showing posts with label jihad. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2023

The most moral army in the world needs to fulfill the promise of Never Again (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

Ours is the most moral army in the world. The people of Israel like that. We want to be moral and good. We don’t like the idea of fighting or killing.

The IDF is the Israel Defense Force (not the Israel Attack Force) for good reason. We have no desire to attack anyone. The mission of our military is to defend the Nation of Israel – our State and our People. To protect our homeland so that Jewish people everywhere know that, in a world that is dangerous for Jews, there is one place on earth where Jews can defend themselves and are not left to the mercy of others.

The IDF is supposed to fulfill the promise of “Never Again”.

The problem is that the world, including many Jews, have not learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Lessons, sharp and clear (though different for Jews and non-Jews) have been diluted and universalized to the point of being meaningless.

The Hamas massacre of October 7^th, 2023 is a harsh reminder.

This isn’t a general issue. It’s a particular issue.
This is about me. My family. My friends. My home. And Never Again is NOW.

For Jews, the promise “Never Again” means that never again we put our safety in the hands of others, no matter how civilized they seem. Never Again will we wait for other people to rescue us. It is up to us to be powerful enough to defend ourselves.

For non-Jews, “Never Again” was supposed to be a promise to never again remain silent while Jews are being abused, tortured, and slaughtered. To not remain silent when they see evil occurring. To never again, turn away and pretend they don’t see what is happening – no matter how frightened they are of the people committing the atrocities.

Because there will always be someone eager to commit horrendous acts against Jews.

And what happened?

Jews built the State of Israel, powerful enough to defend herself from invading armies, prevent enemy states from building nuclear bombs, and even fly across the globe to rescue Jews, targeted for being Jewish. And then we allowed ourselves to be convinced to hand our security over to other people and let monsters live on our doorstep.

Over and over, we were attacked, innocent people brutally murdered, our country bombarded with missiles and the “civilized” nations of the world told us to stand down, that the “stronger side” can swallow abuse for peace. That the monsters on our doorstep were our chance to live in peace.

And we, because we want peace and hate war, because we want to live in a kind world, decided to believe them.

The problem is that this decision was immoral.

It is one thing to be proud of succeeding in eliminating murderous terrorists without hurting bystanders because that is more moral than carpet bombing. It is another thing to know that the people on your border want to wipe you off the face of the earth and allow them to have hope that one day they will succeed.

We knew the problem existed. We watched it grow. We suffered the results of it when it was still small. Worst of all, we listened when we were told “The world is condemning you. Don’t retaliate. Lick your wounds and pretend it never happened.” We wanted to be loved.

The Hamas Charter states that it will eliminate the Jewish State through jihad. On October 7^th, Hamas showed the world what that jihad looks like – they came with Go-Pro cameras and proudly filmed their actions for posterity.

Well-trained Hamas commando units broke through our borders under the cover of a missile bombardment. That opened the way for swarms of regular Gazans, eager to join in.

"Crimes against humanity" is too mild and technical a term to describe the atrocities they committed.

They slaughtered men, women, and children and chopped their heads off.
They entered homes, tortured the parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, gouging out eyes and chopping off fingers – all while eating the family’s food and laughing.
They gang-raped girls and then ripped their limbs off.
They ripped open a pregnant woman’s stomach and stabbed the baby.
They tied children together and burned them alive.
They did more and worse. It is not possible to detail all the horrors.

And then they stole money from the wallets of the people they murdered, looted their homes, taking everything from TVs to tractors, identity cards, and passports.

And then they took as many hostages as they could get their hands on - including babies and elderly people, entire families, and dead bodies.

They came with maps and details about homes, how many people in each family, whether there was a dog or not - all spelled out by individual Gazans who Israelis had employed for years, doing construction work and odd jobs in their communities.

They didn’t come as an army trying to conquer an enemy state, soldiers fighting against soldiers. They came as a tidal wave of death, to exterminate everything living in its path and before doing so - humiliate and create as much suffering as possible.

They know that we love life and hold it sacred. They know that we honor the dead, putting supreme importance on respectful burial. This is why they hurt us where it would be most painful.

They violated the sanctity of our homes, showing that Jews are not safe anywhere.

They violated our past, terrorizing Holocaust survivors and bringing the Holocaust into the present with fire and sending Jews into hiding where they had to hold their hands over the mouths of babies, praying that they wouldn’t make a sound so the monsters wouldn’t find them.

They committed mass rapes of women, grandmothers, and children as more than a by-product of vicious bloodlust – in the context of people who come from an “honor culture”, this is the deepest violation, the theft of our honor, a display of utter disgust and domination, “dirtying” our beloved, grinding them into the earth – and mocking our men who were not able to save them.

Dismembering bodies, scattering them, and burning people is not just a matter of gruesome cruelty. The terrorists were given deliberate instructions to commit these acts by people who understand how serious Jews are about respecting our dead and bringing them to a proper burial.

They know us well and they deliberately used everything we care about most to hurt us.

And after all this, around the world, we are seeing people marching in the streets, chanting their support for the Hamas Massacre. Jews are being marked in “civilized” countries. Homes marked with Stars of David, businesses smashed, and students humiliated and abused because they are Jews.

Never Again is NOW.

For years we have said that had Israel existed, the Holocaust would never have happened. Now it is time to make sure that is true. That is what the IDF is for.

The IDF must fulfill the promise of Never Again. This is not about revenge (though well warranted). This is about the survival of Jews everywhere.

It is necessary to crush Hamas so thoroughly and completely that all enemies of Israel will learn that there is no impunity and no safe haven for those who dream of our extermination.

And that, unfortunately, is just the beginning because they are just one of the monsters on our doorstep. We are surrounded (and some are within our borders) and they are watching us. Without utterly crushing them, Israel will not survive.

Without Israel, no Jew, anywhere on earth, will ever be safe again.

Fulfilling the promise of “Never Again” doesn’t look nice on TV. Already the “civilized” nations are telling us to wait, delay, and consider the humanitarian needs of Gazans. It is crucial to retain our morality and fulfill our obligations.

Being merciful to the cruel ultimately makes you cruel to the merciful.

Allowing our enemies to have hope that they can succeed in wiping us off the face of the earth is immoral. We allowed this evil to grow too large. It must be stopped now, no matter how bad the process looks, no matter what our “friends” say.

“Never Again” is the moral obligation of the IDF.

The obligation of decent individuals everywhere is to make sure everyone else knows this.

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!

Palestinian high school students must learn to hate Israel in order to graduate

During May and June, Palestinian high school students were studying hard to pass their matriculation exams. When families receive positive results, as they did last week, there are huge celebrations throughout the territories.

The study material for the matriculation exams comes from the Palestinian Authority. And according to the IMAPCT-SE NGO, they were filled with anti-Israel propaganda.

From i24News:

Study materials and questions on the matriculation exams administered by the Palestinian Authority incite to violence, glorify murderous terrorism and promote anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, a report found.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) released a review of Palestinian matriculation exams for June 2023 in Arabic, Islamic Education, geography, and history.

The report's findings offer an ominous insight into an education system where school books are filled with dubious claims, outright falsifications and incitement to violence, both in the name of Palestinian nationalism and Islamist jihadism.

In one example included in the report, a geography exam includes a “map of Palestine” that ignores the existence of Israel and charts the entire territory as being Palestine.

Throughout the books, Jewish people's historic links to Jerusalem are dismissed as “baseless claims,” “fairy tales,” “myths,” “illusions,” and “distorted narratives.”

Further troubling examples include an Islamic Education exam describing violent jihad as “the apex of Islam.” The chapter of the textbook on which students are tested also teaches that jihad is “one of the gates to achieving martyrdom,” describing the martyrs as "knights," while a poem in an Arabic language exam describes a Palestinian returning to his homeland with a “weapon in [his] hand.”

There is no new report on the IMPACT-SE website, so it sounds like the exam materials are pretty much the same as they were in 2019 when they looked at them.

I just did a quick look at a Palestinian Authority website that publishes these educational materials, and came across this worksheet on Zionism for the current year.

It teaches Palestinian students that:

The basic rule of the Jewish state is settlement.
Settlement means replacing one people with another people.
The Zionist settlements are distinguished from other settlements because it is based on the destruction of Palestinian society.
The Zionist philosophy is based on racism and the negation of the other.
The relationship of the Jews with other peoples is based on hostility and conflict.

This is official, state-sanctioned antisemitism.

Islamic Jihad published a new picture of one of the students who passed the exam, but unfortunately was not alive to enjoy it.

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!

Amnesty and HRW won't say a word about this Jenin war crime

Times of Israel reported on Monday:

The Israel Defense Forces says troops located hidden underground storage sites with weapons and explosives inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Jenin.

After lengthy gun battles with armed Palestinians who were holed up inside the mosque, Israeli forces managed to break in, the IDF says.

The IDF says that on the ground floor, troops found two underground storage sites containing explosives, weapons, and other military equipment.

Using a mosque as a military site is a war crime.

Article 53 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I says:

Without prejudice to the provisions of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 14 May 1954, and of other relevant international instruments, it is prohibited:
…
(b) to use such objects [historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples] in support of the military effort

Additional Protocol II has identical language.

It was Hamas and Islamic Jihad that turned a mosque into a military target by firing from it and storing weapons within.

The fact that most Muslims are not upset at Palestinian terror groups for treating their mosques that way indicates that hate for Israel is more important to most Muslims than the sanctity of the mosque.

I don't see any fatwas on the topic, but my guess is that the Islamists pretend that this is a case of "defensive jihad" - defending Islam as a whole from destruction - which gives them wide latitude to even violate normative Islamic principles of war. It appears to be the justification for suicide bombings, and female suicide bombers, for example. Under that mindset, using mosques for war transforms from something reprehensible into an obligation.

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!

Only Palestinians are allowed to invoke religion for nationalistic purposes

Arab leaders and pundits habitually warn, in English, that Israel is threatening to threatening to turn the conflict into a religious war.

A recent example comes from Ramzy Baroud in Arab News, saying,

What is currently taking place in Palestine is not a religious war, but some Israeli officials and political parties are keen on turning it into one.

Though warnings against “religious wars” in Palestine — in fact, the entire region — have been mostly linked to Israel’s current “most rightwing government in history,” religious discourses have been the most dominant since the establishment of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism, in the late-19th century.

This is absurd to the extreme.

This has been a religious war for decades, and it has been Palestinians making it one.

From their first leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, their claims have been based primarily on religious themes and arguments. Religion suffuses everything they do - their words, their actions, their thinking - all the way back to the Mufti's claim that "Al Aqsa is in danger!" from Jews.

The Palestinian Arab armed forces in both the 1936 riots and the 1948 war were called the "Army of the Holy War."

The Palestinian constitution says, "Islam is the official religion in Palestine. ... The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation."

The Palestinian Authority has a Ministry of Religious Endowments.

Members of the PLO executive Committee marked Eid yesterday by laying a wreath on the grave of Yasir Arafat.

Mahmoud Abbas' speeches - even to the UN - all begin with "In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful."

Abbas referred to rebuilding Gaza in 2016 as a "jihad."

Every Palestinian media outlet refers to those killed by Israeli forces as "martyrs," not "victims."

The religious aspect is so ingrained that a supposedly secular UNRWA is asking for Muslims to give it "zakat" (religious charity) funds, quoting the Quran. Do any other UN agencies ever quote any other religious texts? (I found an exception that proves the rule.)

And, of course, Gaza groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are Islamic extremist groups which use Islam to justify attacking Jews.

It isn't Israel that seeks a religious war. It is the Palestinians, and their own religious justifications are accepted without any objection by the world.

But whenever Jews assert their own religious desires in the land of the Torah, they are demeaned - not only by Palestinians - for acting in such a primitive, non-enlightened manner.

The Palestinians claim, and much of the world accepts, the idea that only Muslims have an unquestioned religious claim on the land and the holy sites that were all invariably Jewish holy sites 1500 years before Mohammed was born.

Jewish religious claims are treated with scorn while Muslim religious claims are accepted without question. And part of the reason is exactly because religion is the major component of the Palestinian nationalist philosophy.

Disparaging the Jewish religious claims to the land - especially while not questioning the Palestinian Islamic-based claims - is another manifestation of the antisemitism that is accepted as normal nowadays..

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!

It seems as if Palestinians WANT a religious war

For the past week, Palestinian Arabic media have been filled with stories about how a Jewish extremist group planned to offer a Passover sacrifice on the Temple Mount.

Most of them never mention that the same group has made the same or similar plans in previous years, and they were always stopped well before any potential scary lamb would be brought anywhere close to the Al Aqsa Mosque or any other Muslim site on the esplanade.

Then, on Monday:

The head of the Returning to the Mount movement, Rafael Morris, was detained on Monday on suspicion that he was going to try and sacrifice the Paschal sacrifice on the Temple Mount, as police completed their preparations ahead of the Passover holiday, which will begin on Wednesday evening.

Two activists from the movement were arrested last month after putting up notices in Arabic in the Old City of Jerusalem offering payment to anyone willing to store lambs near the Temple Mount for the Paschal sacrifice.

As of this writing, a day after the arrest, I do not see a single Palestinian news site mention this - even as they continue to write extensively about the "threat" of an animal sacrifice at Al Aqsa.

In fact, Hamas announced today that the stabbing of two Israeli soldiers in Israel are a "response" to the planned sacrifice that will never happen as well as to Jews visiting the Temple Mount normally.

If they really were so frightened of the worldwide repercussions of a lamb appearing on the site, wouldn't they consider this arrest to be good news, or at least newsworthy?

But one would not expect to see any coverage of Israeli arrests and Israeli forces physically blocking any Jews from breaking the law if the point of the coverage is to incite violence against Jews on Ramadan.

They want anger and hate towards Israel and Jews, and any news stories that blunt their accusations must be censored.

They are trying to provoke the very religious war that they love to warn the West that Israel is provoking.

And then, when Passover comes and goes with no sacrifice, they will claim that it was their steadfastness that blocked the Jews from their attempts to slaughter the lamb, and not Israeli policy.

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!

Middle East Jews in December 1947 in danger from Palestinian Arabs, Syrians, Egyptians - and British soldiers

Continuing my look at the news from 75 years ago for Jews in the Middle East, from the Palestine Post from December 14-18, 1947.

Here's a story from December 14 that was not at all unusual, of Jewish civilians being targeted and killed by Arabs.

Here is a massacre of Jews who were bringing food to a Jewish children's village from the December 15 edition. This slaughter is barely mentioned nowadays.

A follow-up story notes that five of the dead were under 18 years old.

On December 16, we see that Arabs were happily embracing the "spirit of Hitler" in their genocidal aims:

Jews didn't only have to be concerned about attacks by Arabs. Here is a horrific story of a Jewish girl raped by British soldiers.

The only way to demand justice from a rape by British soldiers was to go to...British police.

Later in the month, an attempt to hear the case was stymied when the male witness could not be found. That is the last I could see about this story.

Meanwhile, on December 17, we see how Jews in Arab countries continued to be threatened and harassed:

There were daily stories of Jewish civilians being shot individually, so many that the stories about them were short and often lumped together (12/18):

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!

Headlines from 75 years ago

All from newspapers published on December 2, 1947.

General overviews of the conflict often skip over the period from the Partition resolution to May 14, 1948, when Arab armies officially attacked. The threats and attacks on Jews in Palestine and throughout the Arab world are downplayed. But the media at the time documented it.

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!

Abbas spokesman: Jews visiting the Temple Mount are "invasions, not visits"

From the official Palestinian Wafa news agency:

The daily storming by Jewish extremists into the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque and its courtyards, which are rejected and condemned, has become an invasion and not simply a visit, today said the spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

He stressed the importance of preserving the legal and historical status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque, warning that the continuation of this invasion would turn the conflict into a religious war with serious repercussions.

He called on the US administration to assume its responsibilities and compel Israel to stop its escalation and storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque before it is too late.

He pointed out that the continuation of double international standards and ignoring United Nations resolutions have become a cover and protection for incursions and blatant Israeli violations of international law, which encourages the occupying power to persist in its crimes.

So Jews peacefully visiting the Temple Mount, walking around its perimeter, not bothering any of the Muslims there, not interfering with any Muslim religious rites, are characterized as "invading."

And the only people who keep warning about a religious war are the Palestinians who insist on using war terminology like "invasion" to characterize quiet and peaceful visits.

The people who want a religious war are the ones who say Jews walking and quietly praying is an unacceptable event - while hurling rocks and firecrackers, playing soccer and volleyball, and waving the Hamas flag are the proper ways to honor the holiness of the site.

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!

The obvious truth the world doesn't accept: Palestinians are responsible for Palestinian violence.

"Jihad" original AI-produced artwork

We've seen this show before. And it keeps repeating because the world lets it happen.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ruled that three Jewish teenagers who bowed down and said the "Shema" prayer on the Temple Mount should not have been banned because they didn't violate the law.

The State of Israel is appealing the decision - meaning that the state is against Jewish rights on the Temple Mount.

That's crazy enough. But the court ruling is starting an entirely new round of incitement from Palestinian Arab leaders, saying that this is a holy war.

Hamas official Mushir al-Masri called this "a declaration of religious war" and said "If our messages do not reach the occupation through mediators, they will find their way through missiles."

Similarly, Palestinians are warning that there will be violence if the Flag March on Jerusalem Day goes to the Temple Mount. There is no way that it will, but they are inciting violence for that day - getting hotheaded youth ready for violence whether Israel does anything or not, preparing their firebombs and stones, and with no desire not to use them.

And then, when violence breaks out, the Palestinians say that they were reacting to being "provoked," and the world blames Jews for causing Muslims to become violent.

It seems obvious, but it needs to be emphasized:

Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount isn't incitement.

Marching in Jerusalem with flags isn't incitement - even if it is on the Temple Mount.

Drawing a picture of Mohammed isn't incitement.

Even burning a Koran isn't incitement.

They may be extraordinarily disrespectful, or they may be freedom of speech or freedom of religion, or they may be knowingly provocative. But they do not cause violence.

Muslim reactions to them cause violence. Incitement and stabbings and Molotov cocktails are the responsibility of the people who call for violence and those who act on it - no matter what the provocation.

The Western world has accepted a narrative where Jews are expected to turn the other cheek when they are insulted or provoked, but Muslims are expected to turn violent - meaning that the Jews are at fault no matter what.

This is not only antisemitic. This is disrespect and bigotry against Muslims.

It is a bigotry that is eagerly sought by Muslims who want to be framed as perpetual victims. Those who stab random Jews are given a pass because of "occupation" or, if it is within the Green Line, some other imagined justification. Arabs and Muslims are animals with no free will, according to "progressive" people who always say Jews are at fault, no matter what.

Until the world makes it very clear that Palestinian violence is not a result of Israeli actions, but a decision made by Palestinians themselves and they are wholly responsible for it. When NGOs and the media link Palestinian violence to "occupation" or fictional "apartheid" or whatever the fashionable euphemism for Jewish evil is nowadays, they are accepting that violence. And Palestinians are happy to take on the role of wild animals who cannot control themselves.

The truth is clear cut. Terrorists are responsible for their actions. Not those who the terrorists blame.

We are seeing incitement to terror happening, today - and the world is silent. It is not acceptable and it encourages more attacks on Israelis and Jews.

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!

Antisemitic CAIR defines all pro-Israel Jews as "Islamophobic"

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which recently defended one of its officials who labeled virtually every organized synagogue in America "enemies," just issued a report on "Islamophobia in the mainstream."

The main point of the report is identifying "26 Islamophobia Network groups (that) spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about Muslims and Islam."

The members of this supposed "Islamophobia network" include Americans for Peace and Tolerance, CAMERA, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Gatestone Institute, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and The Lawfare Project.

The idea that this is an "Islamophobia Network" is insane.

But then they go into actual antisemitism. They identify some of the funders of these supposedly Islamophobic groups, and - surprise, surprise - they find Jews!

The Adelson Family Foundation, Arie and Ida Crown Memorial, Combined Jewish Philanthropies

of Greater Boston, Hochberg Family Foundation, Irving I Moskowitz Foundation, Jewish Communal

Fund, Jewish Community Federation of SF, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, Jewish Community Foundation of the Jewish Fed. Council of Greater L.A., Kovner Foundation, Mirowski Family Foundation, Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Family Foundation, and the The Jewish Community Foundation, plus others. All major Jewish charities or charities that give heavily to Jewish causes are..."Funders of Anti-Muslim Bigotry!"

Those irresponsible, bigoted Jews!

CAIR defines Islamophobia as "closed-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims." So it should be simple for them to identify how, exactly, these organizations are Islamophobic, right?

Not one of the organizations I am familiar with fits their own definition of Islamophobic.

Here's how they describe CAMERA, the watchdog organization that points out anti-Israel bias in the news media: "This organization serves as a lobbying and media-monitoring group that spreads misinformation pertaining to Muslim Americans. Its overall mission is to undermine the credibility of Muslim American individuals and organizations. "

Good to know that CAIR knows CAMERA's mission better than CAMERA does!

They say the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a "neoconservative lobbying group [that] encourages the Islamophobic “war on terror” narrative and policies." They say the phrase "war on terror" is Islamophobic. George W. Bush, who coined the term, must be an Islamophobe too.

Gatestone Institute is "an anti-Muslim hate group."

Investigative Project on Terrorism is a "hate group."

The Middle East Forum is "an anti-Muslim policy center that produces and perpetuates hate speech, propaganda, and misinformation."

The Lawfare Project is an "anti-Muslim hate group."

In none of these cases can they find evidence that supports their definition of Islamophobia. In a couple of cases they dig up old contextless quotes from members of these organizations that they claim are Islamophobic, but even those do not fit their own definition.

Their description of MEMRI is particularly absurd: "MEMRI is a pseudo-research organization that carefully selects and purposefully inaccurately translates news from Muslim-majority organizations to

provide justification for anti-Muslim propaganda. The organization’s translations have been widely criticized for inaccuracy and inflammatory representation. "

MEMRI's translations are accurate, full stop. I couldn't find a single criticism of the thousands of MEMRI translations that is less than ten years old. This academic paper criticizing MEMRI from a native Arabic speaker at a UAE university admits MEMRI's "accurate translations on a linguistic level."

The only thing these organizations have in common is that they do not support CAIR's antisemitism and its historic support for terror groups. That is CAIR's real definition of "Islamophobia."

The ADL - which somehow is not on CAIR's list - describes the organization and its founders:

Some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas. Hamas is designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the United States and is also viewed by the EU as a global terrorist organization.

In addition, some of CAIR’s leadership have used inflammatory anti-Zionist rhetoric that on a number of occasions has veered into antisemitic tropes related to Jewish influence over the media or political affairs.

Key CAIR leaders have frequently expressed vociferous opposition to Israel and Zionism, claiming at times that Zionism and Zionists are fundamentally racist. (See below: Key CAIR Staff on Israel and Zionism).

Antipathy towards Israel has been a CAIR staple since the group was founded in 1994 by several leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a now defunct organization that was once described by the U.S. government as part of “Hamas’ propaganda apparatus.” Nihad Awad, who was IAP’s Public Relations Director, became CAIR’s first Executive Director, a position he retains today. IAP was active in the U.S. from 1981 until about 2004, and categorically rejected a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, writing in a December 1989 communique: “The only way to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, is the path of Jihad…Hamas is the conscience of the Palestinian Mujahid people.” In 1987, immediately following the establishment of Hamas, IAP began to print and distribute Hamas literature, including Hamas communiqués and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In response to CAIR’s involvement with the Holy Land Foundation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation distanced itself from the organization. In the past, the FBI had interacted with CAIR representatives regarding community outreach activities, civil rights complaints and criminal investigations. However, in 2008, the FBI issued an instruction to its field offices that they should sharply curtail “non-investigative interactions” with CAIR.This instruction was elucidated in an April 2009 letter to the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, in which the FBI explained that it would cease to liaise with CAIR “until [they] resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.” To our knowledge as of this writing, the FBI has not retracted this protocol.

CAIR has supported and advocated for Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted by an Israeli court in 1970 for her role in a 1969 bombing of a supermarket that killed two Israeli students, and who was later released as part of a prisoner exchange.

Israel-haters love to say that Zionists falsely accuse critics of Israel of antisemitism. As usual, this is projection. This report proves conclusively that CAIR falsely accuses critics of Islamic terrorist organizations of being "Islamophobic."

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.

PA official who calls for "jihad" tells Christians "it is not a religious conflict"

Mahmoud al-Habbash is Mahmoud Abbas's adviser on religious and Islamic affairs and also the chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.

Yesterday he greeted a delegation of Christian. human rights and interfaith leaders from Belgium, where he assured them that "Palestine" has nothing against Jews and that the conflict is not a religious one.

As usual, the delegation didn't research who they were meeting with beforehand, and eagerly lapped up Habbash's words.

Habbash, who tells non-Muslims that the Palestinians are not interested in religious conflict, in 2014 he said that Jihad should be directed toward Jerusalem. "Jerusalem is still waiting. Jerusalem is the direction. Jerusalem is the address," Habbash stressed, adding that "evil hands" (Jews) were "conducting a filthy game" intended to weaken the Islamic nation and "to divert the compass away from its true direction."

In 2018 he was even more explicit that there was a coming religious war between Islam and Islam's enemies, which presumably include the people who visited him from Belgium:

As always, these delegations from around the world are so thrilled to meet with Palestinian leaders - but they never check out these very same leaders' hate beforehand. In the end, they legitimize it.

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Turkey hosts anti-Israel conference with participants from 50 countries - and Hamas

More than 700 people from 50 countries from around the world participated in the “Together Against the Deal of the Century and Normalization” conference in Istanbul, Turkey on Friday.

This is the eleventh session of the annual anti-Israel conference.

It was organized by the World Coalition for Jerusalem and Palestine along with the Center for Relations of Turkey and the Islamic World, the Pioneers International Foundation, the World Coalition for Women in Support of Jerusalem and Palestine, the World Youth Coalition, Sports for Solidarity with Jerusalem and Palestine, the Association of Palestinian Scholars Abroad and the World Scout Coalition in Support of Jerusalem and Palestine.

There is quite a cottage industry in creating anti-Israel organizations!

The head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, delivered a speech where he called on participants in the conference to "develop a plan, a program of action and a vision to bring down the deal of the century and projects to liquidate Palestine."

You know how Palestinian leaders like to accuse Israel of turning the conflict into a religious war? Well, Haniyeh said that anti-Israel actions "represents a legitimate duty and a national and international duty on every Muslim."

These conferences happen all the time. They result in a statement of support for Palestinians and Jerusalem and perhaps vague promises to create a fund for them. Nothing ever happens, and the participants fly to the next conference.

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"Sex jihad" (updated x2 - a skeptical view)

From AFP:

Tunisia's women's ministry said Saturday it would come up with a plan to counter the growing number of women traveling to Syria to wage so-called "sex jihad" by comforting militants.

Interior Minister Lotfi ben Jeddou told the National Constituent Assembly on Thursday that Tunisian women had gone to Syria where "they have sexual relations with 20, 30, 100" militants.

"After the sexual liaisons they have there in the name of 'jihad al-nikah' – [sexual holy war, in Arabic] -- they come home pregnant," he told MPs.

Ben Jeddou did not elaborate on how many Tunisian women had returned to the country pregnant with the children of jihadist fighters.

On Saturday, the health ministry statement said it had noted "an increase in the number of young women leaving for so-called jihad al-nikah", although it did not give any figures.

Jihad al-nikah, permitting extramarital sexual relations with multiple partners, is considered by some hardline Sunni Muslim Salafists as a legitimate form of holy war.

Media reports have said hundreds of Tunisian women have gone to Syria for this purpose, in addition to hundreds of Tunisian men joining jihadists battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Earlier rumors of "sex jihad" in other contexts have been bitterly disputed and called hoaxes, but Tunisia's government seems to be confirming it in this case.

It is not hard to imagine that single Muslim women who have already lost their virginity might be interested in turning their statuses from potential outcasts to heroic jihadists.

UPDATE: MEMRI has the video of Jeddou's speech:

UPDATE 2: This post casts doubt on the story, and notes that no corroborating evidence has been found yet. (h/t Gidon)

Jihad, Apocalypse, and Anti-Semitism

An Interview with Richard Landes -The main goal of modern Jihadism - a cataclysmic apocalyptic movement - is Islam's dominance over the world. It makes millennial claims, promising that once Islam rules everywhere, there will be world peace. -Jihad, as the millennial war, operates in modern times on two major levels. The first is that of outright violence. Its aggression emerges in most places where Muslim majorities share a border with another culture. The second level expresses itself in demopathy, or the invocation of civil society's values to undermine that system from within. -Since its inception, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an apocalyptic forgery about the final stages of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, has been the Judeophobe's favored text. After World War II, among its most enthusiastic 'believers' have been Arab intellectuals and political elites. -There is a significant overlap between the religious Hamas and the 'secular' PLO in their use of apocalyptic rhetoric. Its characteristics include global conspiracy theory, total war, virulent anti-Semitism, contempt for human life, and child sacrifice."