Showing posts with label status quo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label status quo. Show all posts

Sunday, April 09, 2023

The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement today saying that the holiest site in Judaism must never have Jews.

The Ministry condemned the "storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Sharif." which it says "constitutes a violation of the historical and legal status quo existing in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and a violation of the sanctity of the holy places."

The official spokesman for the ministry, Ambassador Sinan Al-Majali, stressed that Al-Aqsa Mosque, with its entire area of ​​144 dunums, is "a place of worship for Muslims only."

Majali added "the Israeli government bears responsibility for the escalation in Jerusalem and in all the occupied Palestinian territories, and for the deterioration that will worsen, if it does not stop these incursions into Al-Aqsa."

What are the boundaries of Al Aqsa? Well, they include the Kotel. The Jordanian government considers the Kotel to be a part of Al Aqsa Mosque, and therefore they are saying that Jews have no right to be there, either, except perhaps for very limited times that the Ottoman Empire allowed Jews to visit since 1852, which they consider the beginning of the "status quo."






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Wednesday, April 05, 2023

This morning's New York Times article about the clashes at Al Aqsa mosque, written by  Raja Abdulrahim and Patrick Kingsley, is filled with anti-Israel bias.

And it does not mention the single most important fact that would change the entire complexion of the article.

The Israeli police raided the most prominent holy site in Jerusalem early on Wednesday to detain scores of Palestinians who had barricaded themselves inside, prompting armed groups in Gaza to fire rockets into Israeli airspace and the Israeli Air Force to respond with strikes on military sites in Gaza.
The phrase "prompting armed groups in Gaza to fire rockets into Israeli airspace" is incredible. 

Israel doesn't "prompt" deadly rocket fire. That decision is made solely by terror groups, and they will always have an excuse. But the "Newspaper of Record" shares the logic of terror groups that shooting rockets into the south of Israel is a "natural response" to events in Jerusalem. 

And note the wording, "into Israeli airspace." Were they firing balloons? While some of the rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome, others hit the ground (a factory was damaged and others fell harmlessly in unpopulated areas.) 

Why couldn't the NYT say that rockets were fired into Israel or towards Israeli residential areas - phrases which would be far more straightforward and accurate? Because that might make readers a little sympathetic to the victims of the rockets! Rockets that are fired into "airspace" aren't dangerous. If it wasn't for gravity, they wouldn't have hit anything at all! 

The police forced their way into one of the two main prayer halls at the contested holy site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In the ensuing confrontations, police officers struck Palestinians with batons and Palestinians fired fireworks. Palestinian news outlets said the police had fired tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets.
Now, which came first - the batons or the fireworks? The Times implies that the fireworks were shot to defend against batons, which is clearly the opposite of the truth..

Here are some of the spent fireworks casings.




Clashes often occur at the Aqsa Mosque compound, which Jews call the Temple Mount, during periods of tension in the region. Officials and diplomats have been warning that the overlap of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins on Wednesday evening, could make such clashes more likely.

The police said the Palestinians had locked the doors of the prayer hall, the Qibli Mosque, from the inside and barricaded the entrances, hours after the taraweeh prayers, which are held nightly during Ramadan. The police said they had raided the mosque after prolonged attempts to persuade the worshipers to leave.
...Some Palestinians had called for worshipers to go to Aqsa for itikaf, a tradition of staying overnight in a mosque for worship, which is practiced especially during Ramadan. They expressed concern that with Passover beginning, more Jewish worshipers would come to the site.

This is a gross perversion of the truth. And there is no doubt that Raja Abdulrahim is knowingly deceiving the readers.

Israel made an agreement with the Jordanian government, which controls the Waqf at Al Aqsa, that there would be no i'tikaaf at Al Aqsa on weeknights. The reason is because Palestinian and Islamist groups have urged Muslim youth to stay overnight in order to attack Jewish visitors the next morning. 

Israel arranged that other nearby Jerusalem mosques would be able to accommodate any Muslims who want to adhere to the custom. In previous years, Al Aqsa did not allow i'tikaaf either.

The Waqf issued a memo confirming that no one was to stay overnight outside of Thursday and Friday nights, and the last ten days of Ramadan. 

Israeli forces have been enforcing the agreement. Up until this morning, the worshipers have left peacefully. This frustrated the Islamists who have been trying to incite violence since Ramadan started. There were plenty of articles in Arabic claiming Israeli forces violently removed the worshippers, but there was no video that could incite the public.

The Islamists needed that video.

So last night, Palestinian youth barricaded themselves in the prayer hall hours after the last prayer of the night. They had already stockpiled fireworks and stones. And when they refused to leave, Israeli forces entered to enforce the Waqf agreement. 

Now they had the video they wanted, as they shot fireworks and threw stones from within the holy site. 



The New York Times purposefully omits anything about the agreement with the Waqf, and gives credence to the idea that Jews are the ones who are the aggressors here and Muslims have the right to block Jews from quietly praying on Judaism's holiest site:

For decades after capturing the site from Jordan in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, Israel prevented Jews from praying at the compound. But they have been tacitly allowed to do so in recent years, which has angered many Palestinians and Muslim states in the region.

And the Times further justifies the violence:

Some Jewish activists recently called for sacrificing a goat at the compound to observe Passover, something that the Israeli police have repeatedly said they would prevent.

The NYT desire to hide the fact about the agreement with Jordan to avoid events like that of this morning is clear here:

Since Ramadan began two weeks ago, the police have been forcing Muslims to leave the Aqsa compound after the nightly taraweeh prayers to ensure that they do not stay overnight. The police have also prevented many young Palestinian men from entering the mosque compound for morning prayers, according to Palestinian news outlets.
Without mentioning the Waqf memo, the reader is left with the impression that Israeli police want to disrupt an important and sacred Muslim tradition for no discernible reason. 

This article may adhere to the New York Times' objectivity guidelines, but it is not objective. Every phrase is slanted to damn Israel, and the most crucial information that exonerates Israeli police actions is simply missing.





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Tuesday, April 04, 2023

The official Wafa news agency published this report in its English edition today.

I have shown how the story would be marked up by any editor who was more interested in truth rather than anti-Israel propaganda.


JERUSALEM, Tuesday, April 4, 2023 (WAFA) – Israeli police this morning and since last night restricted entry of Muslim worshippers into Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, a site Muslims seek to hold all day and night prayer vigils during the holy fast month of Ramadan, in order to secure entry of Jewish fanatics into the Muslim holy compound. The Jordanian  Muslim Waqf authorities had already agreed to restrict the all-night vigils, and those who are trying to spend the night are violating that agreement. 

Local sources said the police checked the ID cards of people trying to hold the dawn prayers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and turned back the young ones potential troublemakers at its gates.

Extremist Muslim groups like Hamas have encouraged Muslims to stay overnight to be in position to harass Jewish visitors the next morning. 

At the same time, the police forcefully peacefully removed all worshippers from the Mosque following the late-night prayers and prevented worshippers from keeping an all-night vigil as per Israel’s agreement with Jordan, which the Waqf has publicized.

Meanwhile, dozens of Jewish fanatics stormed Jews visited the holy compound since today’s early hours, walking around its yards and some holding religious rituals in violation of the decades-old status quo that specifically ban non-Muslims from performing any kind of religious ritual inside the walled, 144-dunum holy compound that includes Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock along with several other prayer buildings. praying quietly and respectfully as Jews have been doing for years at their most sacred spot without incident.

Under international law, Jews have the right to worship in their holy spaces. 

Muslim officials expressed concern that Jewish fanatics Jews intend to bring in animals to sacrifice inside the compound tomorrow as an offering with the start of the Jewish Passover holiday, a step they warned could spark serious trouble. 

The fanatic These groups, encouraged by the presence of a far-right Israeli government that includes extremists ministers in key posts, have advertised rewards for anyone who can bring in animal offerings inside the compound to sacrifice for the religious holiday.

Israeli police have instructions to block any such attempt, and they have done so in previous years under other governments, so the stated fears of Muslim officials are baseless. Their statements of concern appear to be designed more to incite violence than to tamp it down.




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Thursday, March 30, 2023

The Jordanian Waqf and Israeli authorities agreed that Muslims would not be allowed to stay overnight in the Al Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan - a ritual known as i'tikaaf - except on Friday and Saturday nights, and on the last  ten days of Ramadan.

Here's the Waqf's memo:


When Israeli forces peacefully removed the Muslims who were in the mosque last Sunday night, there was immediate outrage among Palestinians - but when they saw this memo, their anger has been redirected towards the Waqf itself.

This is because Palestinians had been calling for Muslims to stay overnight specifically to attack Jews who visit the holy site in the mornings. (Jews are not allowed to visit in the afternoons during Ramadan, and also not during the last ten days of the month.) 

Now there is a campaign to force the Waqf to change the policy and allow i'tikaaf  every night. The reasons given by the activists start off claiming that it is a religious right - but invariably they end up saying that it is political. 

Political analyst Yasser Al-Za'trah, tweeted, "Not allowing i'tikaaf in the Al-Aqsa Mosque throughout the month of Ramadan is tantamount to an implicit recognition of the Jews' right to storm it every day."

Activist Nidaa Walid, tweeted, "We will not allow the Al-Aqsa Mosque to be defiled. It is our duty to gather and bind in it," adding, "O heroes of Palestine, do not allow settler gangs to slaughter their alleged offerings inside Al-Aqsa."

Here's a case where religion is being used as an excuse to attack Jews. Al Aqsa has never had i'tikaaf during the first half of Ramadan, and the only previous time there was a call to do so was in 2015, again specifically to be used as a means to go after Jewish visitors. 

And even though this is an attack on the status quo of the Temple Mount, we are not hearing any voices of concern from the Europeans and Biden administration officials who are so quick to defend the status quo when it is supposedly threatened by Jews. 

If the status quo is only enforced one way, then it is meaningless. And those who pretend it is sacred in only one direction prove that they are just using it as an excuse to limit Jewish rights. 




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!

 

 

Sunday, March 26, 2023



The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that thousands of Muslims jammed the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the surrounding streets on Friday, the first Friday of Ramadan.

It is one of the ten days of the year that Jews are banned from the sacred site, the second holiest site in Judaism. 

Wafa interviewed one of the worshipers, who explained why she came. "It is our duty, we, the people of Hebron in particular, and Palestine in general, to stay in it by praying in it, because our presence here enrages the occupation and its settlers who are trying to Judaize the Haram, and we must protect it through our permanent presence and prayer in it." 

The main reason to go to the site is apparently not for prayer, but to send a message to Jews and enrage them.

This point was repeated by Palestinian officials as well.

The Director General of the Hebron Endowment, Nidal al-Ja’bari, told Wafa, “Today, thousands of worshipers came the first Friday of Ramadan in all the Ibrahimi Mosque's corridors, squares, and internal and external courtyards. The sanctuary will remain purely Islamic, and the Jews have no right to it."

He added, "Jerusalem, Hebron, and Palestine, along with the unified Arab and Palestinian sanctities in them, will remain, and will not be the legacy of the abhorrent Israeli occupation."

The preacher of the sanctuary, Sheikh Atta al-Muhtaseb, urged during his Friday sermon that Palestinians  flock and pray in the building, to protect it and provide for it in light of the arrogance of the occupation and its settlers.

The language is never how holy or sacred the site is. It is never about the importance of Abraham to the Islamic religion. Invariably, when Palestinian are talking about the holy sites in the land, it is is terms not of their importance to Islam but their desire to rid those sites of Jews

The Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount were off-limits to Jews altogether when Muslims controlled the region. They make no secret that they want things to return to the way they were - a status quo from the 19th century. 

And much of the world agrees with this official antisemitism of the Palestinians. 




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Itamar Ben Gvir caused a furor when he visited the Temple Mount back in January. But not really. All the umbrage regarding his “provocation”—walking while Jewish—was manufactured  by bored reporters who have nothing else to write about; by left-wing reporters who lust to smear Israel in print; by Hamas, the PA, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and yes, the United States of America. The latter, of course, demanded that Israel maintain the “status quo” at holy sites, which means that the Jordanian Waqf remains in charge; Arabs get the full run of the Temple Mount; but Jews are rushed through the compound under guard and may not linger or pray. The thrust of all this is that Jews are somehow intruders in their own land, in their holiest city, on their holiest spot, and that they are stealing them from the Arabs.

It’s not a new accusation. As Alex Sternberg noted in a recent piece, ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ The history of a 100-year-old lie, the libel that Jews are taking over the Al-Aqsa Mosque is old. The falsehood, motivated by politics, originates with Haj Amin El-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem:

An early enemy of Zionism, Husseini regularly engaged in incitement against the Jews of then-Palestine. In 1920, this resulted in five deaths and 211 injured. In 1929, Husseini used the occasion of Tisha B’Av to tell an Arab crowd that the Jews were coming to destroy Al-Aqsa and rebuild the Temple in its place. “Al-Aqsa is in danger!” he shouted, pointing to throngs of Jews squeezing into the narrow alleyway at the Western Wall to commemorate the Temple’s destruction.

Angry mobs surged through the Jewish communities of then-Palestine, attacking peaceful Jews and raping, killing and looting. Hundreds were killed in Hebron, Safed and Jerusalem.

Husseini was jailed by the British, released shortly after and then appointed Mufti of Jerusalem. This new title gave him a coveted position within the Arab community.

Dr. Sternberg goes on to discuss Ariel Sharon’s infamous visit to the Mount which has long been said to be the catalyst for the Second Intifada, also known as the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”:

Following [Sharon’s] visit, the Palestinians launched a terrorist war that resulted in thousands of Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

Despite the claim that Sharon started the intifada, the truth was revealed years later and confirmed by Arafat’s wife and Nabil Shaath, a Fatah Central Committee member.

Sternberg’s otherwise excellent account of the events here falters. The truth was not revealed later, but immediately after the peace talks. Or at least to the Israeli army, who sent IDF representatives to brief the members of the small Judean hilltop settlement where I resided at the time, Metzad.

Sternberg description of events taking place at that time offers us the background for that briefing:

In July of 2000, Arafat returned from peace talks at Camp David with then-President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak had offered Arafat 97% of Judea and Samaria, which Arafat refused.

One of the sticking points was sharing the Temple Mount with the Jews. While Clinton considered this reasonable, it was a condition Arafat was unwilling to accept. Clinton was furious and blamed Arafat for the breakdown of the talks. Needing a diversion to deflect Clinton’s anger, Arafat ordered his underlings to plan the new intifada. Sharon’s trip to the Temple Mount took place two months later, providing a convenient excuse to launch the wave of terror.

Here too, Sternberg’s account appears to miss a crucial point: that Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was an annual visit. This fact was well known to all, up to and including “Arafat and his underlings.” Sharon went up to the Temple Mount every year before the High Holidays—and that yearly visit was factored into the planning of the intifada from its very inception.

I know this because the same July that Arafat returned from Camp David in a tizzy, I sat among the other 30-some residents of Metzad, waiting to hear why we had been assembled. We soon learned that the army had come to warn us of a large and serious wave of Arab terror planned for September, around the time of the High Holidays (and my due date). The IDF not only had intelligence that the intifada would occur, but they had that intelligence already in July, when the intifada would have been in the earliest stages of its planning.

Already then, the Israeli army knew the Arabs would justify their unbridled slaughter of the Jews by blaming it on Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. This was alluded to by the IDF at that meeting of July 2000 on Metzad. You might have called it a guess—the prediction that terrorists would use the annual Sharon Temple Mount visit as a pretext for violence. It wouldn’t have been a difficult guess, considering it was Sharon’s custom to visit the Temple Mount every year before the holidays. But the army didn’t need to guess, because they had cold, hard intelligence. Right from the very beginning, as things were going down.

For argument’s sake however, let’s stipulate that my memory is faulty. Let’s say the army did not know and did not actually tell us that Ariel Sharon’s impending, regularly scheduled visit to the Mount would be used to justify the slaughter. It would still have come as no surprise: El-Husseini did it 100 years ago when he incited the mobs to slaughter Jews by telling them that the “Yahud” were taking over Al-Quds. That same 100-year-old excuse was still going strong in 2000 when Sharon dared walk on the Temple Mount and it is still strong now in 2023, when Ben Gvir does the same.

Terrorists like to accuse Jews of taking over the Mount and the mosque. As much as many Jews wish that were true, the reality is that the Temple Mount is administrated by the Jordanian Waqf; and Jews aren’t even allowed to pray on the Mount, let alone enter or even go near the mosque.

Ariel Sharon, for example, did not enter the mosque or even approach it. Yet this is how his visit—the planned excuse for the intifada—was reported by the Guardian (emphasis added wherever the Guardian fudged the truth, outright lied, engaged in hyperbole, or omitted salient facts—the “people” are JEWS, the “riots” are TERROR, the “West Bank” is Judea and Samaria, the “Haram” is the Jewish Temple Mount, and so on and so forth):

Dozens of people were injured in rioting on the West Bank and in Jerusalem yesterday as the hawkish Likud party leader, Ariel Sharon, staged a provocative visit to a Muslim shrine at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, Mr Sharon and a handful of Likud politicians marched up to the Haram al-Sharif, the site of the gold Dome of the Rock that is the third holiest shrine in Islam.

He came down 45 minutes later, leaving a trail of fury. Young Palestinians heaved chairs, stones, rubbish bins, and whatever missiles came to hand at the Israeli forces. Riot police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets, shooting one protester in the face.

The symbolism of the visit to the Haram by Mr Sharon - reviled for his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Lebanon - and its timing was unmistakable. "This is a dangerous process conducted by Sharon against Islamic sacred places," Yasser Arafat told Palestinian television.

All of this was and remains a lie. There was no provocation resulting in a “riot.” The intifada and its pretend catalyst had all been meticulously planned two months earlier. You might even say 100 years earlier, when El-Husseini launched the time-honored tradition of Arab terrorists blaming their Jewish victims for getting dead, a popular sport for more than 100 years.

Ben Gvir should have sold tickets.



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Monday, January 30, 2023

Former HRW head Ken Roth and other haters of Israel like to claim that antisemitic attacks by Muslims to Jews are often a response to Israel's actions, and therefore Israeli actions is partially responsible for those antisemitic attacks.

There is a tiny grain of truth there, but the modern antisemites are looking at the issue from the wrong angle.

We need to have a short overview of Islamic attitudes towards Jews.

Many apologists claim that Jews thrived under Muslim rule, and insist that Jews had a "golden age" in Spain under Islam. They purposefully airbrush two major but critical features of Jewish life in Muslim countries.

The first thing they ignore is that, while Jews under Islam did not suffer nearly as much as they did under Christendom, there were still some periods of serious persecution. Jewish Virtual Library summarizes some of the worst cases:
On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. The riot was incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power.

Similarly, in 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in an offensive manner. The killings
touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.

Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830 and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 hundred Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.

Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt and Syria (1014, 1293-4, 1301-2), Iraq (854-859, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Despite the Koran's prohibition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in Yemen (1165 and 1678), Morocco (1275, 1465 and 1790-92) and Baghdad (1333 and 1344).

Even so, these persecutions and pogroms did not approach the horror of those under Christian rule, for two reasons: Islam did not have the same antipathy towards Judaism as a religion as Christianity did, and Muslim leaders would allow Jews who were forced to convert to convert back in later generations. At the same time, most Jewish rabbinical leaders in Muslim lands said that conversion to Islam was not considered idol worship and did not require martyrdom; Jews could accept the Muslim declaration of faith without violating Torah law and remain secret Jews much easier than the crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal.  

The second thing that the apologists ignore is the pervasive issue of dhimmitude. Jews were legally defined as second class citizens, and usually had to submit to humiliating rules and the jizya tax, in exchange for state protection. By any yardstick, this was official persecution of a minority - apartheid, if you will - limiting how Jews could act, dress, pray, work, travel and interact with Muslims. 

 Given that Jews didn't have any better options, they generally accepted this tradeoff, because most Christian countries were worse. Muslims were of course quite comfortable with this class system with Muslims on top, dhimmis in the middle and infidels on the bottom, not to be tolerated at all. 

For the better part of a millenium this was the situation of Jews in the Muslim world - second class citizenship that was accepted, punctuated with occasional cases of major persecutions. 

This was the status quo. 

And Zionism has upset that status quo.

Zionism is the philosophy that Jews deserve to be treated exactly like other peoples. It is compatible with modernity - and utterly incompatible with the Muslim view of Jews since the 8th century. 

Today's Muslims don't attack Jews because Jews are mistreating Muslims and Arabs. They know that Muslims are treated far worse in other Muslim countries. They attack Jews because they cannot stomach a world where Jews assert their rights, and they want to put the Jews back in their proper place. They do not want Jews to challenge their worldview. They want to turn back the clock to the good old days where they could strike Jews for riding a donkey. 

That's why they claim to want a binational state - but only one where they are the majority. It would be a step towards re-asserting their control over Jews and placing Jews back to dhimmitude. Anything less is an insult to their pride and honor. 

How better to assert your superiority than to attack Jewish institutions and Jewish people? How better to revert to a situation of Jews fearing to upset their Muslim overlords than to instill fear through terror today?

So in a narrow sense, Israeli actions do prompt Muslim antisemitic attacks - because Israeli actions are showing the world that Jews will not be pushed around anymore, no longer depending on gentiles for their safety. Jews are ready to pro-actively stop terror attacks on their own terms, not weakly surrender to the whims of the current ruler. 

So, yes, some attacks by Muslims against Jews are indeed a reaction to Israel's actions - but they are not tit for tat, nor a cycle of violence. They are an attempt to take Jews back down a few notches to what Muslims consider their proper place. 

This is only part of the story. Antisemitism goes much deeper that that. It is a remarkably adaptive hate, and this is only one component of the Palestinian version. Palestinian Christians maintain the supersessionist ideas of the Church; Palestinian socialists frame the conflict as a class issue where Jews are the oppressive class, Islamists like Hamas believe that killing Jews is a necessary step to salvation in end times. Amazingly, all these conflicting philosophies of antisemitism co-exist beautifully because antisemitism itself is, I believe, an independent mindset that can find an infinite set of excuses to justify hate, and it is the only belief system that Palestinians have in common with each other. (And this is also why today's "progressives," who should oppose dhimmitude and support Zionism as a Jewish minority rights movement, instead find other excuses to oppose Jewish assertions of self-determination.)

But within the historical Muslim frame of reference, modern antisemitism is a desire to put the Jews back in their place. And every time Israel asserts Jewish rights, mainstream Muslims get angry enough at this humiliation to want to kill Jews and terrorize them to submit, as they did in what they consider the good old days.

Obviously, a crazed psychological linkage between Jews acting assertively in their defense and Muslima attacking Jews is not the Jews' fault. Only bigots think Muslims cannot control their emotions, that they cannot accept a multicultural world where all peoples have rights, and that they are not responsible for their actions. And only antisemites would blame Jews for antisemitic attacks.

But the linkage is there. 

And if we are going to fight a war against all the kinds of antisemitism that are out there, we need to understand the different and often contradictory motivations that make hating Jews so appealing to so many. 

(Some information from Professor Mark R. Cohen)



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Thursday, January 19, 2023

There was a brief international incident at the Temple Mount on Tuesday:

Jordan’s ambassador to Israel visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Tuesday after earlier leaving the holy site in protest at being held up by police at the entrance, prompting a diplomatic protest from Amman.

The Jordanian foreign ministry said it summoned Israel’s envoy Eitan Surkis after Ghassan Majali was allegedly “refused entry” to the Temple Mount. A statement from the ministry said Surkis was handed a letter of condemnation.

But Israeli police — and also Jordanian reports — indicated that rather than refusing him entry, cops briefly held him up since he hadn’t coordinated the visit with them.
The Jordanian Foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting that visits of Jordanians to the site need to be coordinated with Israel:

The political advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Ambassador Ahmed Al-Deek, considered the statements of the Israeli spokesman a flagrant violation of the existing historical, political and legal situation in the mosque.

He noted that the attempt to justify the Jordanian Ambassador Ghassan Majali's objection to the reason for the absence of "prior coordination" is also a change in the legal status of the mosque.

Ambassador Al-Deek confirmed that the Islamic Endowments Department is exclusively responsible for organizing entry and exit to the mosque, and is also responsible for all mosque affairs and its courtyards, and that Muslims do not need any prior coordination or permission from the occupation police to enter the mosque.
So Jordan claims that Israeli demands for prior coordination is a new demand, and a violation of the status quo on the holy site.

Is that true? Of course not.

In 2012, Director of the Jordanian Public Security Lieutenant General Hussein Majali visited the site "under strict Israeli guard," Arab media reported. No one complained about that - the controversy about that visit is that one of the Israeli police was a woman whose hair was uncovered.

In 2013, Prince Hashem bin Al-Hussein, King Abdullah's brother, visited the Temple Mount, also "under the escort of Israeli security and police," entering through the Mughrabi Gate that visitors use. No one said a word about any violation of the status quo.

Because it was, and is, the status quo.

In 2021, however, Jordan started signaling they wanted to change the status quo. Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah canceled his planned visit to the Mount at the last minute because Israeli police were going to accompany him as he entered, and he felt that this was an insult. 

They didn't say at the time that Israel was violating the status quo, but that the existing status quo was unacceptable to them. (You may recall that Jordan briefly blocked Bibi Netanyahu from visiting the UAE by not giving his flight permission to cross their airspace, in a diplomatic temper tantrum.) 

This week's incident must be seen in that context.  Jordan wants to change the status quo, and how better to do that than to insist that Israel is violating the status quo? 

That's how gaslighting works, after all.



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, January 18, 2023



The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that a delegation from the EU visited the Temple Mount this morning, where they politely listened to anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda spouted by the head of the Waqf, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib.

The delegation included 35 representatives and consuls from the European Union. 

Al-Khatib "stressed the importance of their visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque as an Islamic mosque under the tutelage of King Abdullah II, the guardian of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Al-Quds Al-Sharif."

Al-Khatib accompanied the 35 representatives and consuls on a tour where he described "the occupation’s attempt to change the status quo" on the site. 

He then told them that the only ones that should be changing the status quo were the Muslims, claiming that there were many Hashemite construction projects there that Israel prevents from being completed.

In a sane world, new construction projects on the Temple Mount would be considered a violation of the status quo. 

Al Khatib then described his description of the status quo: he called for a "return to the historic status quo of the mosque as an Islamic mosque for Muslims alone, with its 144 dunams, with all its prayer corners, courtyards and complexes, below the ground and above it."

According to Jordan News, the delegation aimed to "confirm European support for the legal and historical status quo of the holy site and its Hashemite Custodianship." 

No one seemed to disagree with the Waqf's definition of that status quo as not allowing any Jews to ascend.


The signed agreement between Jordan and Israel does not give the Hashemites custodianship over the Temple Mount. It says "Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines."

Which means that Israel makes the decisions, while respecting and giving priority to Jordanian wishes. But the language makes it clear that the ultimate decisions are up to Israel.

Notice also that the agreement says nothing about Jordanian influence on Christian sites, which al-Khatib claimed are under Waqf custodianship as well.

I doubt that anyone from this delegation has ever read the actual agreement, which is the only document that matters under international law - an agreement that explicitly gives Jews "freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)





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Friday, January 06, 2023

Earlier this week, after Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount without incident, there was a very telling exchange at the daily State Department briefings:

QUESTION: Just to cut to the chase on this, you talk about how you’re opposed to any unilateral actions and that you support – or oppose any effort to change the status quo. So do you believe that this visit alters the status quo in any way?

MR PRICE: Look, Matt —

QUESTION: And do you not support it? Do you think that it was a bad idea? Would you prefer that it had not happened?

MR PRICE: This visit has the potential to exacerbate tensions and to provoke violence. As we’ve said, we’re deeply concerned by any unilateral actions that have the potential to do that. So yes, we’re deeply concerned by this visit. Now, when it comes to the historic status quo, it’s not for me to define from here what the historic status quo is; it’s not for the United States to prescribe what the historic status quo is. That’s a question of history. It’s a question for —

QUESTION: Certainly you know what the historic status quo is?

MR PRICE: It’s a question for the parties themselves, including the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, whose role as the custodian of Jerusalem’s holy sites, again, we deeply appreciate.
The United States position is that the status quo must not be violated, but it doesn't know what the status quo is. 

Yesterday's address by the US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood at the UN Security Council sheds some more light on the US position:
Secretary Blinken has said very clearly that it’s absolutely critical for all sides to exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric, at the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount and other holy sites in Jerusalem, both in word and in practice. In this spirit, we oppose any and all unilateral actions that depart from the historic status quo, which are unacceptable.
While he didn't directly say that Ben Gvir violated the status quo, in the context of an emergency Security Council session to condemn Israel for allowing the visit, and with not a single word to tamp down the anti-Israel rhetoric there, it seems pretty clear that the US position is that any "provocative actions" are violations of the status quo.

But only "provocative actions" on the Israeli side. 


When Palestinians stockpiled stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails inside the actual Al Aqsa Mosque multiple times over the past decade and then used them, I could find no mention by the State Department that these actions were "provocative." At the time, they said "we welcome the steps the Israeli Government has taken in recent days aimed at avoiding provocations" but I do not see any indication that turning the mosque into a weapons cache has ever been considered provocative. 

In fact, I cannot recall a single time that any country besides Israel has accused Palestinians of violating the status quo, even when they excavated hundreds of  tons of rubble that contained countless priceless Jewish antiquities to build a brand new, 7000 seat mosque underneath the Temple Mount in the 1990s. It is hard to imagine a bigger violation of the status quo than that, but there were no UN sessions about it.

Putting it all together, we see that according to the US, anything that upsets Palestinians is a violation of the status quo. Because by definition, anything that upsets Palestinians is "provocative" - it provokes them, no matter how trivial it is in practice. And the US makes no distinction between "provocation" and "violating the status quo."

Looking back on the January 3 State Department statement, this becomes clear. If the status quo is defined by "the parties themselves" and Israel's opinion is ignored on the issue, as it has been this week, that means that the only people who define the status quo are the Palestinians and Jordanians - and they can define it however they want, even to change it daily, based on what "provokes" them.

A few months ago, they were "provoked" by a Spanish Christian tourist (that they called a "Zionist settler") showing her legs on the Temple Mount. They were "provoked" by other Christian tourists who carried some Jewish-looking souvenirs they had just bought in the souk on their tour. They are provoked every day that Jews visit the Temple Mount, with headlines in the newspapers about Jews "desecrating" the holy site with their very presence.

According to Israel's best friend, any "provocation" by non-Muslims that causes an uproar is a violation of the status quo and deserves condemnation. And that should concern anyone who cares about Jewish rights. 




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Wednesday, January 04, 2023

First photo of the Temple Mount


The Arab Center in Washington, DC published a paper by Mounir Marjieh that described the "status quo" on the Temple Mount, and of course accused Israel of violating it.

Marjieh's honesty is suspect from the start:
Since the 19th century, the Al-Aqsa compound has been governed by a Status Quo arrangement, a modus vivendi that prevents discord among conflicting parties. Accordingly, Al-Aqsa’s administration belongs to a Muslim institution, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, which is under the custodianship of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This custodianship has repeatedly been reaffirmed and recognized by the international community, including the United Nations, UNESCO, the Arab League, the European Union, Russia, and the United States, and was officially recognized in the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.
Actually, Israel 's treaty with Jordan doesn't say anything about "custodianship," only that Israel will "respect" Jordan's "special role" in Muslim (not Christian) holy sites in Jerusalem. The language makes clear that Israel is the one that makes decisions, not Jordan. Furthermore, the language implies that Jews can pray in the Temple Mount by referring to " freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance" and "freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace."

Jordan's signature on the treaty makes it binding international law.

Now let's look at his description of what the status quo supposedly is, which seems a bit inconsistent and contradictory.

After many disputes among European states in the 19th century for control over various holy sites in Jerusalem, the Ottoman Empire issued a series of decrees to regulate the administration of Christian holy sites by determining the powers and rights of various denominations in these places. The most important of these decrees was an 1852 firman by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I, which preserved the possession and division of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and forbade any alterations to the status of these sites. This arrangement became known as the Status Quo.

In 1878, the Status Quo was internationally recognized in the Treaty of Berlin, which was signed between European powers and the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Article 62 of the treaty stated that: “It is well understood that no alteration can be made to the status quo in the holy places.” Article 62 of the Berlin Treaty extended the Status Quo to include all holy places and not only Christian sites. The Status Quo arrangement is a unique and delicate legal system that contains a specific set of rights and obligations that were created over centuries of practice and are now considered binding international law. It therefore supersedes any and all aspects of domestic law.
The Imperial Firman of 1852 only concerns itself with Christian holy places, not the Temple Mount.

The Treaty of Berlin does not refer to the firman in any way.  It does mention a status quo, without giving details of what it is. However, it can easily be read to say that Jews have the absolute right to worship in their holy places, including the Temple Mount.  Article 62 says:

The Sublime Porte having expressed the intention to maintain the principle of religious liberty, and give it the widest scope, the Contracting Parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. 

In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the public employments, functions and honours, or the exercise of the various professions and industries. 

All persons shall be admitted, without distinction of religion, to give evidence before the tribunals. 

The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hierarchical organization of the various communions or to their relations with their spiritual chiefs. ...

The rights possessed by France are expressly reserved, and it is well understood that no alterations can be made in the status quo in the Holy Places.
So we have a contradiction: the Treaty of Berlin says it supports freedom of worship, but also the status quo must not be changed.

Whatever that is. (The placement of that phrase in a paragraph about France implies that the "status quo" comment is only referring to Christian holy places.)

The Ottomans banned all non-Muslims from the Temple Mount until the early part of the 19th century. Marjieh claims that the status quo was "created over centuries of practice and are now considered binding international law." But if it was created over centuries, and for most of that time non-Muslims could not ascend, doesn't that mean that the status quo allows non-Muslims to be banned forever?

Moreover, Marjieh adds another dimension to his definition of the status quo:

Until August 2000, and despite occasional breaches and escalations, the Status Quo functioned relatively smoothly, with the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf collecting small fees from non-Muslims and tourists, who were allowed to enter the holy site provided they followed the rules of the Waqf....

[Now,] Temple Mount groups and Israeli extremists enter from al-Magharbeh Gate as well, and the Waqf is prohibited from preventing them from entering the site. The Waqf can no longer prevent Israelis in military fatigues from entering, although this act is banned per the mosque’s regulations.
So now the Status Quo is defined not as "the conditions for centuries before the Treaty of Berlin" but as "whatever the Waqf decides it is." The Waqf used to ban Jews and Christians, then they allowed them for a fee, then they came up with a rule to exclude religious Jews (as Marjeih complains that cannot do under horrible Israeli law.)  

According to this new theory, the Status Quo is subject to the whims of the most extremist Muslims in Jerusalem.

If it can change for any reason, it is not a status quo by definition.

However, as mentioned, both the Treaty of Berlin, and the Israel/Jordan peace treaty, as well as numerous instruments of international law, guarantee freedom of worship for all. None of them say that you can define a space that has been historically the holiest spot on Judaism as an exclusively Muslim place of worship. 

According to the Arab Center, the status quo means that the Muslims can make up any rules they want - and that this is international law. It doesn't take much to show that this argument is not only false but nonsensical and contrary to actual, signed international treaties and conventions - including the one they use as Exhibit A.




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The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reports:
The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, decided to assign the Palestine Mission in New York to take immediate action in the United Nations and the Security Council to condemn and stop the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque by members of the Israeli government and extremist groups, in a serious violation of the historical and legal status in occupied Jerusalem. 

His Excellency stressed the importance of this international move to stop this dangerous Israeli escalation against Islamic and Christian sanctities, noting that this move is taking place in coordination with the brothers in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and working with brotherly and friendly groups in the United Nations.
The United Arab Emirates – a member of the United Nations Security Council – is expected to call for an emergency meeting of the council in order to discuss the violation of the status quo on the Temple Mount, following Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to the holy site on Tuesday.
I look forward to this. 

Because either the Security Council will throw the issue out, because nothing in the status quo was violated in any sense, or it will prove itself to be an utterly worthless organization. 

I am looking forward to seeing the wording of the draft resolution. It will reveal a great deal about the UAE, the larger Arab world and the Palestinians. And the vote, if it happens, will starkly show which members of the Council have any integrity whatsoever. 



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Tuesday, January 03, 2023



Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount today to mark the Jewish observance of the 10th of Tevet fast day.

He didn't even pray there, as far as I can tell from reports.

He has visited the site before without incident. Other ministers have visited the site without incident. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Jews visited the Temple Mount in 2022, according to Palestinian sources.

So what exactly makes this a major news story? Nothing happened that hasn't happened many times before without incident. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is that there was more security than usual, which makes sense given the threats by jihadists.

This is a perfect example of terrorist supporters manufacturing a crisis, inciting Muslims into a frenzy, and the media happily doing their part to promote the idea that an utterly normal event is a precursor to an apocalypse.

The story isn't the visit. 

The story is the incitement and the threats which are independent of anything Israel does or doesn't do. The story is the attempt for Palestinians to impose their own rules on Jews and Israel by using dire threats of war and a new intifada.

Everyone has a script in this play, and everyone plays their own role that matches their agendas. 

For the New York Times, it was to describe the visit as a hugely provocative insult to Palestinians in paragraph 1, before admitting that nothing actually happened in paragraph 2:

In one of his first acts as Israel’s minister of national security, the ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir made a provocative visit to a Jerusalem holy site that is sacred to Jews and Muslims early Tuesday under heavy guard, defying threats of violent repercussions from the militant group Hamas and eliciting a furious reaction from the Palestinian leadership.

The visit to the site, a frequent flash point in the Old City of Jerusalem where past Israeli actions have set off broader conflagrations, was the first by a high-level Israeli official in years, and passed without incident. 

No, past Israeli actions haven't set off broader conflagrations. They were used as excuses for broader conflagrations.  

In the case of former prime minister Yair Lapid, this was an opportunity to act counter to the interests of Israel, warning against the visit and saying that if Ben-Gvir visits, "people will die." But as a politician, he is more interested in bringing down the current government than in doing what is best for Israel. (And Netanyahu acted exactly the same when he led the opposition in the Knesset.)

In the case of reporter Barak Ravid, he immediately asked US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides for his reaction. Nides did his part by implying (but not saying) that the US was unhappy with the visit, saying, “To be very clear - we want to preserve status quo and actions that prevent that are unacceptable. We have been very clear in our conversations with the Israeli government on this issue.” Since this visit didn't change the status quo, I'm not sure why Nides said that - whether it was a warning or an implication that this visit was more than it was. I don't know the exact question Nides was answering, so it is possible he was not referring to the visit altogether, and this was Ravid's implication. His job depends on juicy quotes.

In the case of Arutz-7, they chose to interpret Nides' comments as a direct "slam" of the visit. Because that sells papers. 

In the case of the Palestinian Authority, this was an opportunity to issue more threats. The PA spent yesterday telling its people that a Ben Gvir visit would be an insult to Islam, and today they are telling their people that it was an grave insult to Islam. 

For terror groups, yesterday they warned that such a visit would ignite a religious war and an explosion over the region, and today they are calling for exactly that response - showing that it wasn't a warning but a desire.

For Palestinians, I cannot find any spontaneous protests about the visit. I'm sure that the interested parties are planning these "spontaneous" protests in the coming hours, though. Because that is their role in this play.

Just because nothing happened doesn't mean that the actors don't want to work.





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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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