Al Azhar leader rejects PalArab sheikh call to visit J'lem

Al Masry al-Youm reports that the habitually lying, inciting and Jew-hating Sheikh Tayser Tamimi of Jerusalem has called on Arab Muslim and Christian leaders to visit Jerusalem to combat nefarious Zionist plans to Judaize the Jewish capital city. Tamimi even added a new accusation: the Jews are now using chemicals to eat away at the walls of the Al Aqsa mosque, causing it to disintegrate from the inside! (I wonder who the collaborators are that painted the walls of the mosque with this caustic chemical.) Anyway, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, new head of the prestigious Al Azhar university, rejected Tamimi's call out of hand:

I refuse to visit Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque at the moment and I call on Muslims not to visit and obtain an Israeli visa, because that means supporting Israeli occupation and the recognition of its legitimacy.

The irony that an Egyptian sheikh is saying he knows what is better for Palestinian Arabs than the PalArabs themselves is seemingly lost.

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PalArabs claiming that prison guards tore Koran

Publicity-seeking Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi of Jerusalem seems to have a quota of how many outraged press conferences he needs to give per week. If nothing outrageous happens, he's duty bound to make it up. Today's non-story of outrage is the claim that an Israeli prison guard in Ashkelon's prison tore a Koran. As Tamimi said, "the Koran contains the Enshrined Word of God Almighty, revealed to His Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, a divine and sacred book, proving the biggest miracles of the Prophet peace be upon him, and any violation of the sanctity and holiness is an act contrary to the teachings of divine laws and international conventions that guarantee freedom of belief and worship and [desecrating it is] one of the biggest religious and moral vices."  He seems to be very serious about his outrage that a Koran is torn in an Israeli prison. Yet the only English-language story I can find about a Koran being torn in an Israeli prison comes from 2005, and the circumstances were somewhat different:

A female Palestinian security prisoner in Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison tore up pages from a copy of the Quran and threw them toward the toilet during a routine search Sunday, the Israel Prison Service said. The 22-year-old detainee from a village near Hebron is an Islamic Jihad member who was arrested three months ago in suspicion of hostile terror activity. She resisted a routine search by a female guard, and then took out torn Quran pages from her skirt and hurled them toward the toilet. The guard handed the torn Quran pages to the prison’s director, and Prison Service officials said she showed heightened sensitivity to the holy Islamic book. A month ago Palestinian security prisoners detained in the Megiddo Prison claimed prison guards tore up pages from Quran copies during searches of their cells. However, a special investigative committee found the prisoners themselves had torn the Quran copies in an attempt to stir controversy. According to the Prison Service, prisoner representatives apologized for the incident, saying it was a Hamas-affiliated minority that carried out the act.

So in 2005, Korans were torn by both Islamic Jihad members and Hamas members in Israeli prisons. You will recall, of course, the outrage and riots that spontaneously broke out against those groups because of how much every believing Muslim loves the Koran and is uncontrollably outraged whenever it gets desecrated, no matter who does the vile act. You mean you don't remember those 2005 riots against Hamas and Islamic Jihad?

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Jordanian Christians visiting Jerusalem for Easter under threat

Remember the absurd Reuters article that implied that Israel was doing everything it could to discourage Arab Christians from visiting Jerusalem, and that Israeli policies were keeping Christians from Arab countries away?

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Many of the Arab Christians flocking to holy sites in Israel this Easter Sunday come from neighboring Jordan.

But they do so at a price.

Those who make the trek – and, as part of a broader rise in religious tourism, more are making it every year – risk their professional reputation and their family’s disapproval.

For a country whose 1994 peace treaty with Israel was never accepted at the popular level, receiving an entry stamp, let alone a visa from Israel, is considered “treason” to the Arab cause.

But despite a growing movement to discredit those involved with the “Zionist enemy,” hundreds of Jordanians risk their careers and reputation to complete a pilgrimage to holy sites in Israel’s occupied territories.

“I cannot help it,” says Daoud Yazeed, a Jordanian Christian who disguises his pilgrimages as business trips. “Jerusalem is calling.”

In 2009, 15,000 Jordanians traveled to Israel, the most of any Arab or Muslim country. While a majority of them were visiting Palestinian relatives, a significant number are part of a growing trend of religious tourism.

According to tour operators, an increasing number of Jordanian Christians and Muslims – Jerusalem is Islam’s third holiest city – are taking part in all-inclusive week-long trips through Nazareth, Hebron, and Jerusalem, priced at $600.

But under the Anti-Normalization movement, spearheaded by Islamists and professional associations opposed to Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty – or “normalization” with Israel – those found to have normalized are disbarred from their union and lose their professional licenses, which are required by Jordanian law.

Families further face the public humiliation of being added to a once-publicized blacklist of individuals and companies that deal with the “Zionist entity.”
'Anti-normalization' activists

Anti-Normalization activists are determined to crack down on the practice this holiday to bring to light those who have “normalized with the enemy,” according to Muslim Brotherhood and National Anti- Normalization Committee leader Hamzah Mansour.

“This is supporting Zionist efforts to rid the holy lands and Palestine of its inhabitants, and it is forbidden,” he said.

He compared trips to Jerusalem to the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca which is considered the duty of every adult Muslim, pointing out that the journey is not required if a worshiper has poor health or a lack of money.

“Al Aqsa is occupied territory and you are not expected to pilgrimage to Al Aqsa. God understands,” Mr. Mansour said, calling on Jordanian Christians to pray in local holy sites this Easter to “support the local industry.”

According to the professional associations, they have yet to revoke union memberships over normalization. But the threat itself has deterred hundreds, if not thousands, from making the trip, or pushed their travel into secret, tour operators say.

Normalization, however, was the last of the concerns for Ramzi Mustafa, one of 200 Christian pilgrims from Egypt – the only other Arab country that has made peace with Israel – in the holy city this weekend with organized tour groups.

He said his participation in processions on Via Dolorosa on Good Friday is a way of showing support for the Palestinians and the need for peace, not support for “Zionism.”

And what do the Arabs of Jerusalem think about all this?

Nor do Muslim pilgrimages suggest support for occupation, says the head of Jerusalem’s holy sites, Sheikh Mohamed Azzam Tamimi.

"Jordanians and Egyptians, all Arabs should come and see the holy city,” he said, noting that due to visa restrictions most of the visitors are from Asia, not the Arab world. “We may be under occupation, but supporting our efforts is not normalization.”

Politics should not prevent Arab Christians and Muslims from traveling to the holy city, according to William Shomali, auxiliary bishop of the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, who welcomed all Arabs to take part in Easter services.

“Our dream is for all Arab Christians and Muslims to come and pray in the holy city,” he said, acknowledging the current situation has been “difficult” for Arab Christians across the region.

“They should come regardless of the political situation,” he said. “We should separate politics from religion, even if certain parties want to join them together; all have the right to pray in the holy sites.”

The Islamists in Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere threaten those who want to come to Jerusalem for any reason - religious or to give cultural support for Palestinian Arabs. The PalArabs who they pretend to be supporting are unanimous in their desire for the visitors, even if they get an Israeli visa stamp.

It just goes to show once again that the people who pretend to care about Palestinian Arabs really only care about hating Israel, not supporting their Palestinian brethren.

It also shows that Israel welcomes these Arabs into the country, and it indicates that Israel is much more interested in freedom of religion for the holy sites under its control than Arab nations ever were.

By way of example, some 105,000 visitors were expected in Jerusalem this week, as opposed to the 10,000 or less that would come during Holy Week before the Six Day War. Any implication that Israeli policies have reduced the number of religious visitors to Jerusalem (as the Reuters article implied) is not only a lie, but an egregious lie.

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This week's scoops and exclusives at EoZ

Every once in a while I get the unbecoming urge to brag a little.

Here is a partial list of the journalistic scoops, interesting stories and original analysis that are simply not available in the Western media - just from this blog, just from this week:

Israeli flag raising in Qatar - Israelis at a sports meet in Qatar cause Arab angst
Egyptians cancel soccer match with Palestinian Arab team - because it might imply "normalization" with Israel
Algeria reveals the extent of its participation in 1967, 73 wars - it wasn't only Egypt, Jordan and Syria
Another internal attack on police in Gaza - lots of these in recent months
Two Malaysian pre-teens married to middle-aged men
"Violence erupts" - all by itself! - media bias
Abbas adopts a boy. Love or politics?
Gunbattles, kidnappings, rocket fire in Gaza. The usual. - Gaza remains a mess even with Hamas' hard line
Tamimi doesn't even pause in his lies and incitement - the man behind the riots
Major Muslim religious group calls for jihad against Israel - Nothing new but isn't it still news?
Libya worried about turnout to Arab Summit - Arab unity, again
Saudi cleric calls for destruction of Grand Mosque in Mecca - because of men and women mixing
Nuclear disarmament conference to be held - in Iran - cynical manipulation of Western useful idiots
Convicted felon in Gaza - pretending to be a US congressman and Fake congressman now scamming Egypt - The Egyptian government, major newspapers in Gaza and Egypt, and possibly Hamas have been taken in by this nutcase

Is there any professional, full-time journalist in the world who would not be proud to get this many scoops in a month, let alone a week?

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PalArab news roundup 3-19-10

It looks like the PA canceled a 2003 decree by Yasir Arafat that established the Supreme Council for Islamic Courts. The leader of this council is none other than Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, the person who daily incites against Israel and who is most responsible for the recent riots in Jerusalem. This story needs to be followed.

The Palestinian Arab patent office recorded 55 patents in 2009, of which only 13 were for inventions actually created by Palestinian Arabs. (In 2008, Israel received 1166 patents.)

A Hamas site brags about a Molotov cocktail thrown at Jews in the West Bank on Wednesday night. the site refers to the driver and passengers as "rapists." In 2009, there were nearly 300 firebomb attacks and over 22,000 stoning attacks on Israeli roads by Arabs, according to Arutz-7.

Hamas claims that Jordan has been cooling relations with the terror group, and actively discouraging Hamas supporters in Jordan.

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Tamimi doesn't even pause in his lies and incitement

Sheikh Tamimi, the main architect of the lie that Israel was planning to lay the cornerstone of a new synagogue at on the Temple Mount last Tuesday and the man most responsible for the riots in Jerusalem, now has "revealed" the next fictional plan to take over the mosque.

Without a hint of apology for being so consistently wrong, Tamimi now is talking about a comprehensive Israeli plan of archaeology and tourism called "Jerusalem First" that is, of course, centered around the Al Aqsa mosque. He mentions 15 projects in this initiative, of which no less than 9 are aimed at Al Aqsa. He also mentions a new synagogue being planned to be built near or on the mosque.

As usual, I can't find any real mention of this purported plan. Jerusalem sees many plans for development, some of which work out and some which do not, like any vibrant city.

Tamimi seems to spend his day scouring the Internet to find any hint of such initiatives so he can grandly announce them to incite the Arabs to riot. He's been doing this for years. And not for a moment do the Palestinian Arabs seem to notice that 99% 0f these threats never materialize and that Tamimi is a clown. On the contrary, his statements consistently get major coverage in the Arabic press.

So, he keeps on inciting violence with his lies. When lies are an integral to the very fabric of one's culture, lying is not a shortcoming - it is an asset.

(In that same vein, the Al Qassam website has a memorial of a terrorist killed seven years ago, and in that context quotes Mohammed as saying "War is deceit." This is not in the Quran but in a hadith.)

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So today is the day!

Today is the day that Palestinian Arabs have been convinced the Jews will start construction of the Third Temple.

This "news" has been all over the Palestinian Arab media for months, ever since Ha'aretz publicized an unsourced claim that the 18th century sage the Vilna Gaon had predicted the building of the Third Temple today, Rosh Chodesh Nisan.

Some PalArabic media have even been publishing a photo of the cornerstone that Israel supposedly is planning to place today.
Palestine Today mistranslates the banner as saying that the cornerstone will be dedicated "on Tuesday," a seeming mistranslation of "third" which in Hebrew is translated as "the third day." However, this photo is from last year, and while the Temple Mount Faithful website definitely wants the Third Temple to be rebuilt, it doesn't indicate anything special about today.

The person most responsible for this lie is Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, who incites Palestinian Arabs to riot literally every day. Tamimi, along with other sheikhs, are always warning about threats that simply do not exist, almost always centered around the Temple Mount. Most of their warnings get a little play in the press but a some of them take hold of the imagination of easily excitable Palestinian Arabs and they get the riots that they so passionately want.

Interestingly, while many Palestinian Arabs are credulous enough to believe Tamimi's and his cohorts' lies, the Arab media as a whole know by now that it is simply an exercise in incitement.

Palestine Today complains bitterly today that Arab satellite TV stations have not been giving any coverage to Jerusalem lately. They whine that the Palestinian Arabs have been warning about the danger to Al Aqsa mosque for a week and a half now, but the Arab TV stations do not have any shows about Jerusalem and instead air infomercials about miracle cleaning products. (They interviewed one anonymous employee who claimed that it was deliberate censorship as they have specific instructions not to escalate tensions with Israel and that it is a business decision. )

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