Caroline Glick: Europe’s war against the Jewish state
Europe is the epicenter of the political war against Israel. Europe fights Israel on the streets of Europe. Europe fights Israel in the corridors of power in Brussels, other Western European capitals and the UN. Europe fights Israel in Israel itself.Ben Shapiro: No, Protests And Violence Against Israel Aren’t Trump’s Fault. They’re Just Anti-Semitism.
Europe’s war against Israel is a passive-aggressive campaign fought and denied simultaneously. But in recent years, the mask has fallen over and over again.
In the days that have passed since US President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement that the US recognizes that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and is beginning to take concrete steps to move its embassy to the city, Europe’s war against Israel has again become impossible to deny or ignore. Europe’s response to Trump’s announcement has been extreme, violent and more outspoken than the response of the Arab world.
The EU-funded Palestinian Authority reacted to Trump’s move by exhorting its subjects to riot and attack Israelis.
Sunday, Yassin Abu el-Qura heeded his call. Qura stabbed Asher Elmalich in the heart and critically wounded him. Elmalich was a security guard at Jerusalem’s central bus station.
According to Channel 2, Qura is a member of a prominent family of Fatah members with close ties to the PA and its EU- and US-funded and trained security forces. His father is the commander of one of the security forces in Salfit, in Samaria. Two of his brothers are also PA security officers.
Around the same time Qura was stabbing Elmalich, the British government announced it was providing the PA with 20 million pounds in supplemental budgetary funding.
Qura’s attack was notable because it took place against the backdrop of lackluster attendance at PA-organized protests. As former US Middle East mediator Aaron David Miller tweeted on Sunday, the low attendance at these demonstrations, like the low attendance at anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations in the Arab world is an “indication of how much the region has changed [in recent years] and the loss of centrality of [the] Palestinian issue. [The] Palestinian street is exhausted; the Arab street has disappeared.”
But while the Arab street was indifferent to Trump’s declaration, the European street went berserk. Thousands of protesters assembled in London and Paris, in Berlin and Stockholm. They burned Israeli flags and called for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews.
On Monday, a would-be suicide bomber failed at killing Americans in the same way he failed at life: self-implosion followed by utter shame and humiliation. But Ayaked Ullah, 27, still garnered a hint of media sympathy by stating that Israel’s recent bombings of the Gaza Strip had driven him to action. According to CNN:
Recent Israeli actions in Gaza compelled Ullah to carry out the attack, a law enforcement source said. The suspect was upset, in his words, with the "incursion into Gaza," the source said, but did not elaborate on what incursion he may have been alluding to. Israel launched airstrikes this weekend against what it said were Hamas targets in Gaza after several rockets were fired out of Gaza towards Israel. This came amid widespread protests over President Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
This is asinine. The attack was planned for a certain amount of time; the only incursions into Gaza happened this weekend. But this is the constant lie from Islamist sympathizers: that it’s Israel that lies beneath their evil. That’s not true. It’s hatred of Jews.
In Malmo, Sweden, a synagogue was firebombed, supposedly in retaliation for President Trump’s announcement that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem. What does the synagogue have to do with Trump’s announcement? Nothing. But Jews are Jews, and must be attacked. Protesters in Malmo chanted, “We want our freedom back, and we will shoot the Jews.” A second synagogue was firebombed in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Meanwhile, in London, protesters chanted, “Khybar, khybar,” a Koranic call to violence against Jews. And in New York, Imam Mohammad Qatanani of Passaic, New Jersey chanted, “With our souls and our blood, we will redeem you, oh Aqsa!” Nerdeen Kiswani, representing the New York City Students for Justice in Palestine, shouted that all of “Palestine” should be liberated, including Tel Aviv. Demonstrators chanted “Khybar” as well.
Does any of that have to do with Jerusalem? Does any of it have to do with Israel? Or does all of it have to do with religious hatred of Jews?
Trump Did Not Bring Jerusalem Crashing Down
On Friday, it seemed that every journalist in Jerusalem was waiting for something to happen at the Damascus Gate in the Old City—one of the most popular entrances Muslims use to reach the famous Al-Aqsa mosque for Friday afternoon prayers, and a common site for big protests. Yet the resulting melee was not the massive demonstration everyone seemed to be waiting for.
Israeli soldiers stood in dozen-person groups at the entrances Muslims use to reach Al-Aqsa, and in frequent smaller clumps all along the way. I asked one soldier stationed at the corner of Al-Wad, the street leading to the mosque, whether this Friday was any different from others, and whether he expected any problems. He smiled, and said it was the same as any other day. A few feet away, a man selling bread concurred. “Every day is a day of rage,” he told me in Arabic.
The divided city is one claimed by both Israelis (in West Jerusalem) and Palestinians (in East Jerusalem) as their capital, and American presidents have typically treated its status as an issue to be resolved through negotiations. In the wake of Trump’s announcement, people in the Palestinian half of the city are angry, but few seemed eager for the new intifada, or uprising, that some Muslim leaders are calling for.
Crowds of men began streaming into the city for midday prayers. A few older women obligingly shouted things like “Trump is bad!” when they saw the waiting crowd of foreign journalists. All was quiet for about an hour, and then the same giant crowd streamed back out, many people stopping to shop on their way back to the Damascus Gate, where the cameras were conveniently waiting.
The area outside Damascus Gate is literally set up like a stage: Big steps lead down on three sides to the lowered platform where people emerge from the Old City. A few dozen people stood on the steps and chanted in Arabic, holding a sign featuring a truck that called on America to “dump Trump” and another sign showing Trump’s lips as urinals. A throng of journalists surrounded this group, outnumbering them roughly three-to-one. As protesters moved, the cameras shifted around them, moving like a flock of birds near a power line. Most Palestinians, however, went home.