While newspapers say that he denied having anything to do with a plot to assassinate Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, and that he was even a member of the PFLP, he admitted to the plot in his plea bargain. Moreover, he essentially admitted to and justified the plot in this PFLP website, no longer online, from 2011, which also calls him a member of the group ("comrade.")
Moreover, this PFLP website listed him as one of their members, #8, who participated in a hunger strike only this past September (autotranslated):
Which can only mean one of two things. Either these "human rights" organizations consider murdering Jewish Israelis to be a human right, or they don't believe that Jews in Israel are human to begin with.
Either way, calling Hammouri a "human rights defender" proves that the term "human rights" has lost all meaning, and indeed means the opposite of its original definition.
In this, they agree with the PFLP itself, which makes that equation between murdering Jews and "human rights' explicit, as one of their officials said ten years ago:
We reaffirm our commitment to our goals, principles, and inalienable Palestinian national rights. Some of which have been recognized and approved by international norms, principles, agreements, resolutions, international law and human rights. The first of these rights is the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation by all means and methods.
Every Palestinian understands "all means and methods" to include terrorism against civilians.
"Human rights organizations'" defense of Hammouri indicates that they agree.
(h/t GnasherJew)
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The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has released a new survey of Palestinians. It was taken between December 7-10.
The most notable finding was that a huge majority of Palestinians support the formation of terror groups like "The Lion's Den."
72% of Palestinians (84% in the Gaza Strip and 65% in the West Bank) say they are in favor of forming terror groups such as the “Lions’ Den,” which do not take orders from the PA and are not part of the PA security services; 22% are against that.
Even more, 79%, are against members of that group surrendering to the PA, and 87% say the PA does not have the right to arrest members of those groups to prevent them from carrying out attacks against Israelis.
In general, the Palestinians are more negative about Abbas than they had been in previous polls. Only 23% of Palestinians are satisfied with Abbas' leadership.
Support for terror increased: 55% support a return to "armed confrontations and intifada" to break the current deadlock. Given a choice of the best way to obtain an independent state, 51% choose terror, an increase of 10 percentage points in three months; only 21% choose negotiations, and 23% choose "popular resistance. "
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Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Al Arabiya that there is a chance the Palestinian Authority will return to an official policy of terror in the near future.
Palestinian news sites quoted the interview, where Abbas renewed his threat to cancel security agreements with Israel. “If Israel continues with its actions, I will cancel the security agreement with it. Why continue? Why am I committed to security coordination? And we can breathe without security coordination. Before that, we were breathing, and our people were fighting the occupation,” he said, referring to the second intifada terror spree.
Abbas went on to say that terrorism is still on the table: "I do not endorse armed resistance at the moment, but I may change my mind later."
He then elaborated, "I do not adopt military resistance at this time, but it is possible that I change my mind tomorrow or after tomorrow, or any time.
"We grew up in the armed resistance, until we reached the international club,” Abbas added, apparently pining for the days in the 1970s when Palestinian international terrorism resulted in Europe and the UN rewarding the PLO with increased prestige.
We recently noted that both the PLO Executive Committee and the Fatah Revolutionary Council, both led by Abbas, supported terrorism as a right under international law in meetings this month. Here he is saying that the Palestinian Authority, also under his control, might follow suit.
And this interview, where Abbas says that terror is an option - meaning he has no moral problem with it, just it is not a smart tactic at this time - will likewise be ignored by the media.
Because they already spent their entire capital on the lie that Abbas is a man of peace, and the truth takes a back seat to the narrative and admitting they have been wrong since he took over from Arafat.
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On Thursday, the US Justice Department issued a press release on the arrest of the man who threatened New Jersey synagogues, which were put on alert last week.
A Middlesex County, New Jersey, man was arrested today for transmitting via the internet a manifesto containing threats to attack a synagogue and Jewish people, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced.
Omar Alkattoul, 18, of Sayreville, New Jersey, was arrested this morning and is charged by complaint with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce on or about Nov. 1, 2022. ...
“No one should be targeted for violence or with acts of hate because of how they worship,” U.S. Attorney Sellinger said. “According to the complaint, this defendant used social media to send a manifesto containing a threat to attack a synagogue based on his hatred of Jews. Along with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners, we acted swiftly to respond to the alleged threat. There is nothing the U.S. Attorney’s Office takes more seriously than threats to our communities of faith and places of worship. Protection of these communities is core to this office’s mission, and this office will devote whatever resources are necessary to keep our Jewish community and all New Jersey residents safe.”
The complaint against Alkattoul describes many examples of his antisemitism and bigotry. It is worthwhile to read what he said and wrote, because the media usually shies away from trying to understand Jew hatred.
According to the document, Alkattoul left an Arabic language audio message on a social media platform in early October:
With God’s permission, we will conquer Andalusia, O
French! And we will conquer Jerusalem, O Jews.
With God’s permission, he will slaughter you, O swine
and monkeys, God damn you. And I pledge allegiance
to Abu-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi,[2] may God
protect him; and I will obey him during hard times
and good times. With God’s permission, the Jews will
be frightened; the promise is near.
He also wrote a manifesto called "When Swords Collide" that appears to be his public statement after a planned synagogue attack. When he shared it on another social media platform with a group of perhaps 20 people, some of them praised the document.
Here are the parts that the FBI published:
All praise is due to Allah SWT, I am the attacker
and I would like to introduce myself. . . I am a Muslim
with so many regrets but I can assure you this attack
is not one of them and Insha’Allah many more
attacks like these against the enemy of Allah and the
pigs and monkeys will come.
I will discuss my motives in a bit but I did target a
synagogue for a really good reason according to
myself and a lot of Muslims who have a brain.
Let’s be aware of the fact that the Jews promote the
biggest hatred against Muslimeen even in the west.
The Jews are in fact a very powerful group in the west
which is why western countries today shill for them on top of the murtadeen [apostates] in Saudi Arabia and every Arab
country.
This attack was just to remind the Jews that as
long as 1 Muslim remains in this world they will
never live a pleasant life until the Muslims in
Palestine, Syria, West Africa, and South Asia are
living a pleasant life. The Jews support terror
against the muslimeen and always have . . . . So the
motive of this attack is hatred towards Jews and their
heinous acts and I don’t want anyone to tell me for a
second that “not all Jews support terror against
Muslims” yes they do! They have since day one.
Their Torah justifies their acts and let’s keep in mind it
was a Jew that tried to kill the nebi SAW.
Other sections of the document contained the following titles:
• “Why hatred towards Jews is a good thing even if they’re not Zionists”
• “The right-wing ideology of the Jews”
• “The term ‘anti-Semitic’ and it’s true meaning”
• “The ‘Holocaust’”
• “The ‘good’ Jews,” in which ALKATTOUL states, “Good jews do not exist unless if they convert to Islam. . . . I hate jews based on their actions and their religion that justifies the actions they do.”
It is unclear how close Alkattoul was to implementing the plan. He said contradictory things to the FBI and to friends on social media, sometimes showing bravado and sometimes admitting that he is very insecure. He said to a correspondent in August that his planned synagogue attack, which he estimated might take him six or seven years to organize, would involve bombings, shootings, and “maybe” beheadings.
It is obvious that this hate has little to do with "Palestine."
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Hamas' Al Resalah quotes a Palestinian think tank "Muetta" that monitors "acts of resistance," proudly reporting:
Resistance activities continued in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem against the occupation forces and settlers during the last 24 hours.
The Palestinian Information Center "Muetta" monitored 29 acts of resistance in the West Bank and Jerusalem during the last 24 hours, most notably 3 shootings against the occupation forces, confronting settlers' attacks and destroying their vehicles.
Even Israeli media doesn't report on most of these incidents.
There was a heinous terror attack on Saturday night, as a Jewish man and his son went to go shopping at an Arab-owned convenience store. A terrorist shot at them, killing the father and injuring others, and he then shot and seriously injured the medic who came to help the injured.
Here the terrorist is seen being mowed down by an Israeli security guard and then shot dead by another.
A dead Jew is cause for celebration for the Arabs of Hebron. Sweets were handed out, fireworks were shot in the air and cars went out for an impromptu parade.
Terror apologists love to say that Palestinians aren't antisemitic - they are merely exercising the right to "defend themselves. "
Killing civilians isn't "defense." Celebrating the death of Jewish civilians is pure hate.
And no one can credibly deny that these celebrations are antisemitism - a hate that the world tolerates from Palestinians.
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At the socialist site Jewish Currents, writer Alex Kane provides us with an excellent example of anti-Israel agitprop - and even justification of terrorism - disguised as a critical analysis of the definition of terrorism.
Like all good propaganda, the article starts off with a very reasonable point:
ON OCTOBER 9TH, a Palestinian shot and killed Noa Lazar, an Israeli soldier serving at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp. Three days later, a Palestinian gunman killed Ido Baruch, a soldier who was guarding Israeli settlers as they marched near the Palestinian town of Sebastia in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the Shuafat attack a “severe terrorist attack,” and said the assailant behind Baruch’s shooting was a “despicable terrorist.” The Jerusalem Post, Israel HaYom and i24 News referred to the Shuafat shooting as a “terrorist” act. The centrist Anti-Defamation League as well as the liberal Zionist J Street also referred to the shootings as “terror” attacks.
This broad consensus across the Zionist political spectrum reflects a commonly-held view among many Israelis and Israel advocates that the killings of soldiers engaged in a military occupation are acts of “terror,” in the same category as indiscriminate attacks on civilians. But this view represents only one pole of a discursive struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, and, more broadly, Western countries and formerly-colonized nations, who have clashed in international fora like the United Nations (UN) over whether violence against agents of a military occupation ought to count as “terrorism.”
While different countries have codified their own definitions of terrorism in their national laws, “there is no international legal consensus on the meaning of terrorism,” said Ben Saul, Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney and author of the book Defining Terrorism in International Law. According to Saul, there is general agreement among states that the deliberate killing of civilians to achieve political goals constitutes terrorism; the disagreement lies in “whether insurgent or guerrilla attacks on soldiers in armed conflicts should also be called terrorism.”
Kane is partially correct - not only Israel but most Western nations and media usually refer to attacks on their own soldiers as terrorist attacks, but generally not attacks on other nations' soldiers (not just "agents of a military occupation" as Kane claims.) For example, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed over 300 US and French soldiers was referred to as a terrorist attack in US statements and news articles even though the targets were military.
However, the official definitions of terrorism adopted by many countries do not give exceptions for attacks against soldiers. Most Western countries make no mention of civilian or non-combatant targets in their definitions. The FBI defines international terrorism based on the identity of the attackers being associated with designated terror groups; attacks against armed forces are not excluded.
Be that as it may, Kane's initial point has validity - one instinctively associates terror attacks with civilian targets - and he leverages that to skillfully pretend that other criticisms of the use of the term have equal validity.
Since 2000, countries at the UN have tried to come to a consensus on what’s called the Comprehensive Terrorism Convention, which would codify the criminalization of terrorism in international law. But consensus has again stalled due to disagreements on how to classify national liberation struggles. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a body of 57 mostly Muslim-majority countries, argues that violence committed by those in a struggle for self-determination—a term referring to a people’s ability to form their own state and govern themselves—should not be covered by the terrorism convention but rather by international humanitarian law, which governs the permissible use of force based in part on the “principle of distinction” between civilians and soldiers. The OIC’s argument is aimed at exempting Palestinian and Kashmiri fighters from being considered “terrorists” under international law when they launch attacks on Israeli or Indian soldiers who currently occupy their lands. The African Union and League of Arab States share the OIC’s perspective: Both bodies have adopted regional terrorism conventions that exclude struggles for national liberation from their definition of terrorism.
Here's where we see the depth of Kane's dishonesty. Building on his initial point, he frames the objections of the OIC and others in terms of their targets, saying that their main objections are against considering attacks on "occupying soldiers" to be terrorism.
But that is not what they are saying. The OIC's proposed definition would exempt any attack, even against civilians, even targeting women and children, from being considered terrorism as long as they are "in situations of foreign occupation" or any "armed conflict." It was written, at the height of the second intifada, deliberately to excuse Palestinian suicide and bus bombings.
And this is borne out by parallel activities by anti-Israel activists who have attempted to claim that even directly targeting Jewish civilians are part of a legitimate "right to resist" - by any means. Richard Falk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote that "Palestinian resistance to occupation is a legally protected right" specifically in reference to the second intifada attacks on Jewish civilians.
Kane is presenting these justifications for attacks on civilians as merely objections to use of the term "terrorism" against soldiers. By not mentioning these facts, he is framing the controversy over the definition of the term "terrorism" as two sides making reasonable, equally valid points and that their disagreements are only about attacking the military.
Kane then subtly justifies attacks on civilians, again by using misdirection to pretend he is only talking about soldiers:
According to George Bisharat, an emeritus professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, “terrorism” is “a buzzword” intending to cast violence against occupation soldiers as illegitimate. In Israel/Palestine, “it’s being used for its political and rhetorical impact to discredit any violent resistance against Israel’s occupation,” he said, which is why “the non-aligned nations, as they call themselves, are insistent on the principle that violence exercised to advance the right of self-determination is not illegal.”
The legal distinction Kane is making has suddenly changed from target of the violence (ostensibly, soldiers) is to the reason for the violence - "self-determination." Kane introduces Bisharat as only talking about targeting soldiers, but Bisharat's words say otherwise. If "violence exercised to advance the right of self-determination is not illegal" then that includes all attacks, including civilians. (Bisharat himself knows that attacks on civilians is illegal, but he is unhappy about it, ludicrously complaining that the inaccuracy of Palestinian rockets makes it too difficult for Palestinians to adhere to international law by only hitting military targets.)
Which means that Kane is classifying attacks on civilians as just another valid position. He's too smart to say it explicitly, but the Bisharat sentence is in fact the main point that he wants to give the reader - that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate because it is resistance.
In fact, the tone of the article is that Israel is unjustifiably referring to legitimate resistance as terrorism, while those who have cheered and funded the murder of Jewish civilians (the non-aligned nations) have solid legal ground for their support.
There is another layer to Kane's propaganda techniques.
This entire article is meant to obfuscate a basic fact. By only talking about Palestinian attacks on soldiers, he is implying that soldiers are the main targets of the terror groups. But the terrorists, whether they are Hamas or Fatah or Lion's Den, make no such distinctions. Their own words and publications never say that they only want to attack soldiers - their targets are "settlers" and, to them, every Israeli Jew is a "settler." When they attack soldiers and guards it is because those are the ones on the front lines, not out of any concern for international law or the definition of terrorism. When the armed groups have the opportunity, they attack civilians, and indeed they prefer to attack civilians because they are softer targets.
This is why the attackers are terrorists by any definition. And that is exactly what Alex Kane and Jewish Currents wants you to forget.
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Israeli security services suspect that it was a terror attack, since nothing was taken from her.
The suspect, Mousa Sarsour from Qalqilya, was found this morning after apparently committing suicide, hanging himself in an abandoned Tel Aviv building. He had a valid work permit in Israel.
When attacks like these happen, the reactions (and non-reactions) from the anti-Israel crowd reveal a great deal.
Palestinian terror groups are happy - but they pointedly do not mention the age of the victim. Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades describes the victim as "a Zionist usurper killed in a commando operation." Palestine Today, associated with Islamic Jihad, called her a "female settler."
More mainstream Palestinian newspapers understand that murdering an elderly lady is not something to be proud of. So they are instead quoting the suspect's family, saying that he suffers psychological problems - but he couldn't have murdered her anyway.
Jewish anti-Zionists who claim to care about human rights become deathly silent when the victim is an elderly Jewish woman. The anger that they show when Israeli forced kill a teen throwing Molotov cocktails evaporates when the Jewish victim did nothing to provoke the attack. Their righteous indignation, ready to ignite on a moment's notice at the death of a Palestinian, is simply nonexistent. I can find nothing in the social media accounts of the anti-Israel activists I follow.
To them, Palestinians are pure good and Zionist Jews are pure evil, and they are so invested in pushing that narrative that they will never say a negative word about a terror attack, no matter how heinous. They will go to rallies to support Rasmea Odeh but do not want you to know the name Shulamit Rachel Ovadia.
The man murdered an 84-year-old woman and then committed suicide. Horrifying and shocking by any measure. The man was not investigated and from what has been published so far, it is not known what his motive is. What's more, it is very uncharacteristic for someone with a nationalistic motive to commit suicide after a murder. But the fact that he was Palestinian and she is Israeli, is also enough for the newspaper Haaretz to call him a "terrorist"
And maybe he was "just" a psychopath?
So that's it, a Palestinian cannot be a psychopath, because if he kills an Israeli, that means he is by definition a "terrorist". I don't know what was the motive behind this horrible act. It seems that even the police and the network do not know. But I do know that there are Palestinians who are "just" psychopaths. By the way, there are also such Jews.
To Etkes, the characterization of a murderer of an 84 year old woman as a terrorist is just evidence of Israeli racism. (He also uses the propaganda method of "sure, the attack is horrifying, but look at how terrible the reaction is!")
His theory might make sense if there were random murders of unrelated Palestinians by Palestinian psychopaths. In general, there are very few reports of anything like that.
Mousa Sarsour went out of his way to kill a Jewish woman in Israel, and even if he did have psychological problems, the reason for choosing a Jew has everything to do with Palestinian antisemitism that is called "nationalism." It has everything to do with the social and monetary benefits in Palestinian society of murdering Jews.
Most terrorists, including suicide bombers, are not entirely sane. To claim (without evidence) that this was just a psychopath is simply another way to justify terror.
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NPR has a segment pretending to analyze the very valid reasons why Palestinian terrorists from Jenin try to kill Jews in Tel Aviv cafes by interviewing his gracious host, one uncle of the terrorist who murdered three in a Tel Aviv cafe in April.
NPR justifies terror and humanizes terrorists.
What compelled a young Palestinian man to open fire at a bar in Tel Aviv last month? It was one of several deadly attacks in Israel that has sparked a military crackdown in the occupied West Bank, where a prominent journalist was recently killed covering an Israeli raid. NPR's Daniel Estrin visited the Jenin refugee camp to trace one early spark that ignited the latest flames.
DANIEL ESTRIN: Amin Khazem invites us to his rooftop porch in the Jenin refugee camp.
From your rooftop, you can see the whole camp.
AMIN KHAZEM: Yes.
ESTRIN: What are you growing here? All these rooftop plants, what are these?
KHAZEM: Small oranges.
ESTRIN: Amin is also raising two parrots ...And looking after his 5-year-old grandson, whose T-shirt, shorts and shoes feature the silhouette of an M-16.
Here, the culture in the refugee camp is a culture of jihad and martyrdom," Amin says. They carry the memories of their families' old villages, destroyed when Israel was created.
KHAZEM: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Wow. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine - can't even count how many bullet holes are - oh, on that wall, too.
KHAZEM: From the Israeli army.
In his Twitter thread on the story, Estrin says that the IDF took over Khazem's rooftop in 2002 in Jenin - meaning that the bullet holes are likely from Palestinians shooting at the Israelis, not from the IDF. But he doesn't bother to clarify that in the NPR story.
ESTRIN: Scars from a major battle with Palestinian militia 20 years ago. It was the Palestinian uprising. Young men from this camp were going to Israel to carry out deadly attacks. Israel stormed the camp and destroyed hundreds of homes. Amin's 29-year-old nephew Raad watched all of this when he was this little boy's age. One night last month, Raad wasn't home in the camp.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: A Palestinian assailant opened fire inside a crowded Tel Aviv bar, killing three Israelis.
ESTRIN: Hundreds of Israeli officers and armed civilians launched a manhunt through the streets of Tel Aviv. Officers say they found Raad at dawn and killed him in a firefight.
KHAZEM: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Amin says the family was shocked. Raad was a techie. He invested in Bitcoin and was financially stable. But his uncle says neighbors shot Raad in the legs several months ago in a dispute over a loan. He says Raad wanted to shoot them back, but the family convinced him to reconcile. He did, and a week later, he was in Tel Aviv. Did this personal anguish drive him to kill Israelis, knowing he likely wouldn't come back alive?
KHAZEM: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Amin denies any connection. He says Israel links Palestinian attacks to personal hardship to undermine the fight for Palestinian rights. Raad's father was a senior commander in the Palestinian security forces, trained by the U.S. to round up gunmen, bring order and prepare the ground for an independent Palestine. But here, Palestinians are fed up with their own security forces who brought no security and no independence.
KHAZEM: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: He says, "we fell in love with the United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court in the Arab states and ended up with delusions. People have reached a dead end. There's no horizon that we we will be liberated without us liberating ourselves." He says the camp is full of guns.
It doesn't take much to realize that Ra'ad was humiliated at not being able to take revenge on being shot by his neighbors, but once his family convinced him not to, he had to regain his honor somehow - and killing Jews is always a reliable method to do that.
In fact, this was alluded to in a video from another of Ra'ad's uncles, who praised the murderer for shooting Israelis instead of his fellow Palestinians - which is what he wanted to do!
Khazem can be seen is in the background of this video of the other raving uncle.
Estrin simply accepted the words of the terrorist's uncle - which is the Palestinian narrative that justifies all murders of Jews as a natural response to Israeli actions.
Notice that they aren't featuring any interviews with the victims' families. Only the terrorists must be understood and sympathized with.
Hamid Dabashi, a professor at Columbia University, writes in Al Jazeera that Muslims and Jews should work together to fight antisemitism.
Sounds reasonable. right?
But this is a smokescreen for Dabashi to to spew his own hate - to claim that Zionism is an ally of antisemitism, that Israel is a colonialist state beholden to European powers while at the same time the Europeans want to export all Jews to Israel, and other hateful nonsense that appears to actually justify modern Muslim Jew-hatred.
For example:
The Zionists claim that the establishment of the state of Israel is to protect Jews against persecution. This is a false claim. The establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine, where Jews have always lived alongside Muslims and Christians, was a European colonial project and as such has exacerbated the terror coming towards the Jews.
Meaning, Muslims who killed Jewish immigrants were justified because it is all Europe's fault.
Let's back up to how Dabashi describes contemporary European antisemitism:
The numbers are staggering and Europe-wide. "Antisemitism is rising sharply across Europe, experts have said," according to a recent report by the Guardian, "as France reported a 74 percent increase in the number of offences against Jews last year and Germany said the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks had surged by more than 60 percent". The article further says: "The figures confirm the results of three recent Europe-wide surveys showing Jewish people feel at greater risk, and are experiencing markedly more aggression, amid a generalized increase in racist hate speech and violence in a significantly coarser, more polarized political environment."
The deep roots of anti-Semitism in Europe are widespread and murderous. From a prolonged history of pogroms to the Crusades to the horrors of the Holocaust, and a long and nasty history in between, European Jews have been the consistent subject of baseless slander, vicious defamation, malignant lies and rumours, wild and vilifying conspiracy theories, all resulting in massacres and ultimately genocide under Nazi Germany. In no other continent, country, or culture have Jews ever been so brutalised as they have been in Europe.
Although no other clime or continent is entirely immune to it, anti-Semitism is a specifically European disease, with European Christianity a main culprit in the carnage.
But look at all the recent attacks against Jews in Europe:
In 2012, in Toulouse, Mohamed Merah shoots dead four people, including three children, at a Jewish school.
In 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche attacks the Jewish Museum in central Brussels, killing two Israeli tourists, a French volunteer and a Belgian museum receptionist.
In 2015, gunman Amedy Coulibaly, claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group, takes hostages at a Jewish supermarket, killing four.
Also in 2015, Omar El-Hussein, a 22-year-old Dane of Palestinian origin, killed a Jewish volunteer security guard outside a synagogue and wounds two police officers.
In 2018, 85 year old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was savagely murdered by two men, one of whom shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he was killing her.
And these are just the major events. In Sweden, "pro-Palestinian" protesters have been heard saying they want a new intifada to kill the Jews and call Jews "apes and pigs."
They aren't Christian.
Dabashi deliberately erased every single major deadly incident of antisemitism in Europe in order to support his argument that all European antisemitism is Christian. The only mention of an actual attack was the murder of Ilan Halimi by a Muslim gang - but Dabashi just calls them a gang.
In other words, Dabashi - while pretending to be against antisemitism - is erasing rampant Muslim antisemitism in Europe, virtually the only flavor of antisemitism that has actually been killing Jews in Europe over the past decade.
Why does he do this? By mentioning Halimi's murder he shows that he is aware of the many deadly attacks against Jews by Muslims in Europe, so this cannot be an oversight. Dabashi wants to deliberately erase history to bolster his thesis that Muslims cannot be antisemitic and only European Christians can, Why?
The answer can be found in his vitriol against Zionism:
Today, anti-Semitism is real and Zionists are categorically unqualified even to detect, let alone to fight it. Jews are the victims, Zionists the beneficiaries of anti-Semitism. ...
To fight anti-Semitism, the fighter must have moral authority. As a racist apartheid state, Israel lacks that moral authority. As an ideology of racist occupation of Palestine, Zionism lacks that moral authority. As active, hardcore or liberal advocates of that ideology of land theft, occupation and incremental genocide of Palestinians, Zionists lack that moral authority.
According to Dabashi, Zionism is so evil that Zionists have no moral authority - the implication that they have forfeited their very right to be considered human beings.
Of course, Palestinian terror attacks towards "Zionists" in pizza shops and discos are justified because Zionists are immoral subhumans. But he is saying more than that by not mentioning any Muslim attacks against Jews in Europe. That deliberate omission can only be interpreted as a justification for the murder of Jews by Muslims.
The Muslims in Europe weren't attacking Jews bur fighting back against the evil of Zionism. That's why these attacks don't fall in the category of antisemitism - murdering a Holocaust survivor is the action of a freedom fighter. After all, statistically speaking, she was probably a Zionist.
The irony is that while Professor Dabashi says that Zionists cannot claim to be able to define antisemitism, he has proven in this very essay that he is supremely unqualified not only to speak about antisemitism but about any moral issue whatsoever.
Hamid Dabashi is a completely disgusting individual who whitewashes and justifies Muslims murdering Jews.
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Writing in The Washington Post, Rabbi Marc Schneier says:
Why don’t Muslim leaders speak out?
That question comes up every time terrorists purporting to be deeply religious Muslims carry out armed attacks that kill innocent people. Where, commentators ask, are the moderate Muslim leaders and why aren’t they decrying the horrors perpetuated by fellow Muslims?
In fact, mainstream Muslims are speaking out, clearly and consistently. Leaders around the world, many of whom I know personally through my work at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, have issued strong and unambiguous statements virtually every time a violent attack has occurred, condemning such acts as immoral and counter to the fundamental precepts of Islam.
Yet somehow their responses are not being heard, barely registering in the public consciousness.
He gives examples of widespread condemnations by Muslim leaders, for example of the hostage taking in Australia and the massacre in Peshawar.
Schneier even says that Muslim leaders are condemning European antisemitism:
For example, after riots by a predominantly Muslim crowd in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles attacked a synagogue and Jewish businesses, the local Muslim Association sent a letter of solidarity and support to the vice president of the synagogue. National Muslim leaders took part in an interfaith ceremony that denounced the violence and called for reconciliation. French Council of the Muslim Faith head Dalil Boubakeur, who attended the ceremony, affirmed that the vast majority of French Muslims are not anti-Semitic. How could they be, he asked, when they themselves are battling racism?
To praise Muslim leaders for condemning a massacre of 130 children is faint praise indeed.
There is no political cost for a Muslim to denounce a massacre of children. There is no political cost for a Muslim leader outside ISIS-controlled areas to denounce ISIS. There is little downside for Western Muslim leaders to send letters of solidarity to Jewish victims of terror.
The question is how many Muslim leaders are willing to denounce Islamic-inspired terror, publicly and to their own confregations, when there is a political cost.
Some do. A wonderful example is Sheikh Samir Aasi, Imam of the main mosque in Akko (Acre), whose condemnation of the Har Nof synagogue attack resulted in one of his flock attacking his car with acid.
However, the emphasis on condemnations misses the point.
The fact is that the percentage of Muslims who support terror is not tiny. A significant number of Muslims in Muslim-majority countries think that suicide terrorism is sometimes or often justified.
This adds up to hundreds of millions of Muslims who justify terrorism.
When Westerners want to see Muslims condemn terror, it isn't "Islamophobic" as Max Fisher claims. They aren't demanding a mea culpa to Western audiences to demean Muslims. The desire to see Muslim leaders condemning terror is a response to the disconnect between how Muslims portray themselves to the West as being against extremism and the fact that hundreds of millions of Muslims don't have a big problem with terrorism.
The point isn't soliciting condemnations. The point is the solve the problem of Islamic terror.
The question that needs answering is how can so many Muslims openly admit extreme positions worldwide without fear of being shamed by their own Muslim leadership.
If terrorism was as widely and thoroughly condemned in Islam as Rabbi Schneieir claims, then the Pew poll would show low single-digit numbers for each country's citizens supporting terror. The relatively high numbers indicate that there is a serious disconnect between what we are being told and the reality. Schneier is adding to that disconnect.
No one cares about the condemnations per se; what the world cares about is that the terror stops. Since the vast majority of terror attacks (and, now, antisemitism) are done in the name of Islam, it is reasonable to expect Muslim leaders to be in the forefront of fighting terrorism - not just condemning it but addressing it within their own communities and mosques, finding our root causes of how extremism makes it into their own communities and coming up with Islamic-centered solutions that can both convince the youth that terror is not acceptable and that can effectively defeat the ideological roots of Islamic terror.
If moderate Islam is the choice of the vast majority of Muslims, then that majority does have the responsibility to fix the problem with their extremist Muslim brothers. Condemnations are only a small, visible component of what needs to be a major, soul-searching effort.
That is what the world is not seeing.
I don't doubt that most Muslim leaders detest ISIS. But the fact is that ISIS emerged from their own belief system. And extremist ideologies like that of ISIS is offering something compelling for young people to want to join it. Perhaps it is the perception that extremism is aligned with piety, perhaps it is from years of being indoctrinated with the idea that Muslims are under attack and it is time for them to take revenge, perhaps something else. But this is not a problem that can be solved by non-Muslims. The responsibility lies with Muslim leaders, both in the first and third worlds. and like it or not, the rest of the world is not seeing the excruciating soul-searching and strategy that is a necessary component of solving this problem that is clearly in the heart of the Islamic world today, not peripheral to it.
In a speech on New Year’s day, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for a “religious revolution” in Islam that would displace violent jihad from the center of Muslim discourse.
“Is it possible that 1.6 billion people (Muslims worldwide) should want to kill the rest of the world’s population—that is, 7 billion people—so that they themselves may live?” he asked. “Impossible.”
Speaking to an audience of religious scholars celebrating the birth of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, he called on the religious establishment to lead the fight for moderation in the Muslim world. “You imams (prayer leaders) are responsible before Allah. The entire world—I say it again, the entire world—is waiting for your next move because this umma (a word that can refer either to the Egyptian nation or the entire Muslim world) is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
He was speaking in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, widely regarded as the leading world center for Islamic learning.
“The corpus of texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. You cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You must step outside yourselves and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”
Reader Greg points out the Australians for Palestine website, where we see this graphic prominently featured:
So-called "pro-Palestinian" advocates don't even try very hard to say they believe in a two state solution or in Israel continuing to exist.
Even though Australians for Palestine's Statement of Principles pretends to advocate for a two-state solution, they say:
...all of Jerusalem remains the subject of final status negotiations because of its strategic importance in reconnecting the northern region of the West Bank to the southern region.
In other words, Israel has no rights over even the parts of Jerusalem west of the Green Line.
Australians for Palestine upholds the inalienable right of Palestinian refugees to return home. This right is enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948. No agreement, negotiations or parties which purport to trade away the right of return or any other inalienable rights can have any legal basis and cannot bind or compel the Palestinian people to accept them. The right of return is as much an integral part of the Palestinians’ right of self-determination as it is of individual and collective human rights.
Meaning that even if the PA agrees to forgo this "right" in any peace plan, AfP and similar groups will not accept that peace proposal and will continue to agitate to destroy Israel demographically. (I do not need to mention that UNGR 194 does not give this right, it certainly does not apply to descendants and it was roundly rejected by all Arab states.)
Australians for Palestine adopts the position that Israel has the right to exist as does Palestine based on the 1967 borders according to UN Resolutions 242, 338 and 194. The right of Israel to exist is not exclusive to, or more valid than, the right of Palestinians to exist. How they shall exist is the issue still to be resolved.
So Israel's existence is still up for grabs. Maybe it will end up being ensconced in a cafe in Tel Aviv.
Australians for Palestine recognises the right of Palestinians to legitimately resist Israel’s oppressive occupation within the territories occupied in 1967. ...
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states quite clearly: “It is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected under the rule of law.” By failing to protect Palestinian human rights, the international community has driven the Palestinians to resist their occupiers and oppressors.
So Arab terrorism is the fault of the West!
But...
Australians for Palestine adopts the position that terrorism violates the right to life, and therefore, is contrary to the fundamental principles of humanity embodied in international humanitarian law. This applies equally to the oppressor and the oppressed.
How to resolve these two paragraphs? Clearly the first one justifies terror, but the second pretends to condemn it. Chances are that they simply define "terror" as something only Israel does. Problem solved!
Finally,
Australians for Palestine adopts the position that pressure must be put on Israel to end its occupation and apartheid policies against the Palestinians through boycotts, divestment and sanctions. The failure of diplomacy and dialogue, and an international community led by the United States unable and/or unwilling to confront Israel and demand that it respect international law and United Nations resolutions condemning its policies, leaves this as the only non-violent option to bring about change. Therefore, Australians for Palestine will appeal to our government to uphold international law and apply sanctions on Israel; appeal to institutions such as churches and universities to divest from corporations that do business with Israel; and, appeal to the general public to use their own power to boycott products and services that benefit Israel.
Even though these sanctions hurt Palestinian Arabs, and if Palestinian Arabs would divest from Israel their economy would crash and burn.
Now, note what these principles do not say.
Not a single word of responsibility for Arab countries to treat their Palestinian "guests" as equal citizens of their countries. Not a word about the systemic discrimination that Palestinian Arabs suffer in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere. Not a thing about the conditions in the camps that hundreds of thousands still live in, nor a call to dismantle them. Nothing about inter-Palestinian Arab squabbles and unifying the cause.
All of its concrete demands are against Israel. It advocates "resistance" against Israel, it advocates boycotts and sanctions against Israel and advocates destroying Israel demographically.
So why exactly is it considered "pro-Palestinian"?
The Arab News goes even beyond calling terrorism "natural" for Arabs:
Israelis killed a Palestinian youth for driving a bulldozer onto the midst of a crowd in the heart of East Jerusalem and killing three Israelis last week. But the reaction of the Western political leaders to the action of the Palestinian worker, one of over a million and half living in humiliation of the Israeli occupation, amounted to killing him and other Palestinians a thousand times.
Yes, this brilliant writer from our "moderate" friends in Saudi Arabia considers a condemnation of the purposeful killing of Jews to be equivalent to killing a thousand innocent Palestinian Arabs. This is the sort of sick mentality that is mainstream in the Arab world.
While the Western leaders did not feel any compunction in condemning the poor building worker in the harshest words they could find in the dictionary, they did not have the guts to describe the incident as the natural and likely reaction of a human being put to indignities beyond his endurance powers.
Indeed, a fully employed Palestinian Arab, who gets paid by evil Jews hellbent on destroying his dignity, is quite justified in killing them en masse because of his abject humiliation.
In other words, Arabs are naturally (really, genetically) prone to murder because their honor is far more important than mere Jewish lives, and the West doesn't have the guts to realize this simple fact and start praising the murderer instead of condemning him.
Over the past six months 365 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, most of them civilians, with children accounting for 50 percent.
I don't know about the 365, but the 50% number is wholly fictional, but it must be OK for an Arab to make up statistics making Israel look bad because, after all, he is being humiliated by the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. If killing is justifiable, certainly lying is.
It is high time that we made a clear distinction between the acts of terror, particularly from a state that calls itself a democracy, and the acts springing from frustration, injustice and humiliation.
In one sentence the author has just justified every single Arab and Muslim terror act over the past century, because each one must have sprung on some level by someone's "frustration" or perceived "humiliation." This, of course, also includes terror attacks against Saudi Arabia itself, not to mention 9/11.
This Palestinian youth was a human being with normal feelings of pride and honor. He could not be blamed for losing his equanimity for a moment when he thought about the plight of his brothers and sisters who are being treated like dirt in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and put under a blockade denying them the most basic requirements of life.
Our good editorialist has now descended from pure fantasy into mind-reading as he not only justifies a terror attack, he places it in a context where such an attack is positively praiseworthy.
The author, Abdul Aziz Al-Suwaigh, is a diplomat who has been an employee of Saudi Arabia's Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
And this is all done in English in a newspaper that cannot publish anything without the approval of the Saudi royal family.
A blog post by Richard Landes about this post here
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