Friday, October 23, 2015

Tour guides can't say "Temple Mount" on Temple Mount

This British-born Israeli tour guide may have one of the hardest jobs on earth these days. On the guided tours he leads up to the Temple Mount several times a week, Emmanuel Kushner is under instructions to keep politics out of the conversation — and when it can’t be avoided, at least make sure that whatever he says is politically correct.

With tensions over this Jewish and Muslim holy site boiling over in recent weeks, that can be a daunting task.

Kushner has developed some tricks for avoiding confrontation when entering the eye of the storm. “You guys all know Voldemort, the character from the Harry Potter books, as in ‘he-who-must-not-be-named,’” he begins his pep talk, as the group lines up outside the Temple Mount entrance gate designated for tourists. “Well, that’s gonna be our code. When we’re up there, and I say ‘Voldemort,’ I mean the Temple Mount. I just can’t use those words.”

Muslims refer to the site as the Noble Sanctuary, and language is critical in the current battle of conflicting narratives, all the more so when reference is made to its most salient symbols. These days, when many Palestinians have convinced themselves that Israel is determined to harm the historic mosques located on this site, the last thing a tour guide needs to do is rub in their faces the fact that this is also the site of the ancient Jewish temples.

Do Jews have the right to be equally upset when people call the area "Al Aqsa Mosque" or "Haram al Sharif"? Or are only Muslim sensibilities worthy of being protected?

And might that have to do with the fact that Muslims threaten violence if they become uncomfortable with facts, where even Jewish reporters consider the usage of the normative term for the holy site to be "rubbing it in their faces"?

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NYT notices incitement to violence - in "nationalistic" music

The New York Times has an interesting article that describes how Palestinian Arab youth are addicted to violent, inciting songs and music videos:

The Palestinian teenagers who came one after another into the True Love gift and music shop on a recent afternoon all had the same request: nationalistic songs — the new ones.

The proprietor quickly handed over the CDs that he had just started keeping at the checkout counter, like “Jerusalem Is Bleeding,” featuring the track “It’an, It’an” — “Stab, stab” — with its ominous backbeat.

“When I listen to these songs it makes me boil inside,” said one customer, Khader Abu Leil, 15, explaining that the thrumming score has helped pump him up for near-daily demonstrations where he hurls stones at Israeli soldiers.

Notice the euphemism used for songs like "Stab, stab" - that they are merely "nationalistic."

“Stab the Zionist and say God is great,” declares one, a reference to the spate of knife attacks since Oct. 1. “Let the knives stab your enemy,” says another. A third is called “Continue the Intifada” and comes with a YouTube warning — the video shows the Palestinian woman who pulled a knife at an Afula bus station surrounded by Israeli soldiers pointing guns.

“Resist and carry your guns,” the song urges. “Say hello to being a martyr.”

New tunes pop up online every day, many by little-known artists and with low production values — the YouTube video for “Intifada of Knives” is a crude collage showing the Dome of the Rock with fire underneath and a man with a kaffiyeh covering his face holding a slingshot, then a dagger that eventually is stained with blood. Several simply lay spoken-word rants over Arabic percussion.

The NYT then mentions the song I reported on by Arab Idol winner Mohammad Assaf, but it downplays its message of violence and destroying Israel:

Popular stars have also joined the fray: Mohammed Assaf, the Gazan who became a United Nations good will ambassador after winning “Arab Idol” in 2013, released “Ya Yumma” on Saturday on YouTube, where by Thursday afternoon it had more than 365,000 views. Mr. Assaf’s contribution is more lyrical, less explicit, but also draws from recent events with lines like, “There is no perseverance like yours in Jerusalem and Afula.”

The day after UNRWA admits that some of its teachers indeed spew hatred on social media - and the NYT cannot point out that their very own "youth ambassador" is violating UN policy.

One songwriter lies to the newspaper without being called out on it:

Mr. Balaweneh of “Continue the Intifada” is a 37-year-old father of three whose day job is writing for a Palestinian Authority military-style music troupe. He, too, threw rocks in the first intifada. By the second, which started in 2000, he said he was active “with my poems and with my songs.” Now, he does weddings and political events with his trio, “The Storm,” which he said is based in the West Bank town of Nablus. He said they were “against violence.”

“Our songs are not telling people to go and carry out attacks, our songs are more concentrated on telling people to stand up for their rights, their country, their land,” said Mr. Balaweneh, who lives in Nablus. “Now, because of the current situation, our songs need to have a lot of action in them, in order to make the blood flow and boil.”

This is the song with the lyric "say hello to being a martyr."

Older political songs, Mr. Al Arayas said, mixed protests of Palestinian oppression with dreamy, more optimistic yearnings. He sees the new ones as more blunt.

“This music is made as a way to make the Palestinian people get up and resist,” he said. “The words of these songs, and the music involved with these songs, is a lot more powerful.”

He was interrupted by another young customer, asking, “Do you have any nationalistic songs?”

Mr. Al Arayas asked if he was looking for anything specific.

“I want something hard-core and new,” came the reply. The teenager handed over 20 shekels for two CDs and was gone.

For Palestinian Arabs, there is no distinction between "nationalism" and terrorism.

This article shows that to Palestinians, "nationalism" is simply a code word for eliminating Jews. Which is really what it has always been.

Bernard Lewis implies Mufti sought "Final Solution" in the 1930s

From Bernard Lewis' 1999 book, "Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice", pages 146-7:

The footnote, unfortunately, applies to several pages of text so it is difficult to examine what the specific source was for this last paragraph. But for those who want to try:

This doesn't mean that Hitler was influenced by the Mufti in any way for his own genocidal agenda, but it does show that the Mufti did not merely want to get rid of Zionists from Palestine but to eliminate Jews from the planet - and that this desire may very well have pre-dated the rise of Nazism.

Based on what we know about how he incited Arabs to murder Jews in Palestine, it is not far-fetched.

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

WaPo, HuffPo, NYT all whitewash the genocidal Mufti

It is sort of amazing.

24 hours after Netanyahu withdrew his remarks about the Mufti of Jerusalem and clarified them with specific citations of the Mufti's importance to the Nazi's efforts to destroy all of European Jewry, major media are ignoring his later statements - and doing so while whitewashing a Jew-hating war criminal.

At the Washington Post, an article by Ishaan Tharoor says that the Mufti had little to do with the Holocaust, and his alliance with Nazi Germany had nothing to do with antisemitism but with his antipathy towards Great Britain:

While a convenient ideological scarecrow, it totally obscures the real forces that drew someone like Husseini into the Nazi orbit around World War II.

At the time, Palestine was under British mandate, a colonial context that Palestinians feared would lead to their dispossession. The British were themselves well aware of Arab grievances in the face of Jewish migration.

...The mufti's meeting with Hitler was really about Husseini's own desire to secure national status for his people and be recognized as a future Arab leader.

So simple! Just a convenience. Nothing about the Mufti's virulent antisemitism, nothing about his role in pogroms against Jews in 1920, 1921 and 1929, nothing about his explicitly antisemitic broadcasts or his role in the deaths of hundreds of Jewish children who would have been able to escape Europe if it wasn't for the Mufti.

(Tharoor's bias shines through when he describes the Peel Commission plan, which would have given the Jewish state a tiny, indefensible sliver of land on the coast and in the north, as it "would give the new Jewish state most of the coastline and the country's most fertile agricultural lands. ")

This is a disgraceful whitewash. But not the only one.

The New York Times wrote a major editorial for Friday's paper slamming Bibi for his original, flawed speech - and without mentioning his later words on that topic two days previous, for which they have no retort.

The claim by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a Palestinian persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews of Europe is outrageous.

It is outrageous because the Holocaust is far too terrible a crime to be exploited for political ends, especially in the state linked so closely to the tragedy of the Jewish people. It is outrageous because the only apparent purpose is to demonize the Palestinians and the current leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and to give the impression that their resistance is based solely on a longstanding hatred of the Jews, and not on their occupation by Israel or any other grievance. And it comes at a time of renewed tension in Israel, with a wave of lone-wolf attacks on Jews by knife-wielding Palestinians.

Yet there is a clear line between Haj Amin Husseini's incitement to kill Jews in the 1920s based on his lies that Jews were planning to take over the Al Aqsa Mosque and Mahmoud Abbas' words last month that the blood of Palestinians to "defend" the Al Aqsa Mosque from the hated Jews with their "filthy feet" was "holy."

Just as Jews were murdered in the 1920s based on the lies pushed by the Mufti, so are Jews in 2015 being murdered directly because of the lies and incitement by Mahmoud Abbas and others.

The only way to make this line clearer would be to note that Mahmoud Abbas considers the genocidal Mufti to be a hero.

But the only incitement that the NYT can find is not Abbas' words but rather Netanyahu's pointing out the nearly perfect analogy between the Mufti and Abbas.

This editorial is knowingly trying to cover up Netanyahu's main point by disparaging his earlier statement - and by extension, whitewashing the Mufti's crimes.

The Huffington Post also seized on the Netanyahu speech and the criticism of it without mentioning his later, perfectly accurate comments. Even though that wasn't the focus of the article - a smarmy putdown of members of Congress who were against Palestinian incitement of the type that the Mufti excelled at - the overall effect is to make the readers think that the Mufti was not nearly as bad as Netanyahu made him out to be.

To criticize Bibi's speech without mentioning his correction, and without doing a fact check of the Mufti's crimes, is irresponsible and shows a deep bias on the part of the media.

The Mufti may not have influenced Hitler to murder millions of Jews, but he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the effort which was consistent with his actions in British Mandate Palestine. And any attempt to downplay that fact is at least as bad as Bibi's initial accusations were.

(h/t Jordan, GLR, Alyssa)

10/22 Links Pt2: JK Rowling: Israel needs cultural bridges, not boycotts; Being pro-peace means being pro-Israel

From Ian:

Israel needs cultural bridges, not boycotts – letter from JK Rowling, Simon Schama and others

We will be seeking to inform and encourage dialogue about Israel and the Palestinians in the wider cultural and creative community. While we may not all share the same views on the policies of the Israeli government, we all share a desire for peaceful coexistence.
Cultural boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory, and will not further peace. Open dialogue and interaction promote greater understanding and mutual acceptance, and it is through such understanding and acceptance that movement can be made towards a resolution of the conflict.
Ultimately we all believe in a two-state solution so that the national self-determination of both peoples is realised, with the state of Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security.
Cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change. We wholly endorse encouraging such a powerful tool for change rather than boycotting its use.

UK Court refers Western Sahara imports case to EU Court

Two EU Member States have a strong position on the subject of Western Sahara imports. The Dutch government has stated on more than one occasion that products from Western Sahara cannot enter the EU market labelled as from Morocco, a position shared with the Swedish government. Similarly, the EFTA countries do not interpret their Free Trade Agreement with Morocco to apply to Western Sahara. The United States explicitly excludes Western Sahara from its free trade cooperation with Morocco.
At present, the European Court of Justice is reviewing the legality of both the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement and the EU-Morocco Free Trade Agreement covering agricultural products, precisely because they allow Western Sahara products to enter the EU market as if they were Moroccan.
Western Sahara, in north-west Africa, is the subject of a decades-long dispute between Morocco and the Saharawi people. In October 1975 the International Court of Justice rejected Morocco’s territorial claims over Western Sahara and recognised the Saharawi people's right to self-determination. Since 1975 Morocco has supported the settlement of its citizens in Western Sahara, arguably in breach of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions, which states: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ The United Nations and NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Norwegian Refugee Council have found evidence of human rights abuses.

Fred Maroun: Being pro-peace means being pro-Israel

As an Arab, I proudly support Israel, and I believe that it is the duty of every fair-minded person to support Israel. I have tremendous respect for the Jewish culture, and I believe in the right of Jews to be independent on a land where they have had continuous presence for longer than any other group. I also proudly support the goal of a democratic and peaceful Palestinian state.
Not only is there no contradiction between these two goals, but just as I believe that Israel would benefit from the existence of a peaceful Palestinian state (see “The one-state delusion”), I know that the creation of such a state hinges on Palestinians fully accepting the existence of the Jewish state.
Some Arabs and even some Palestinians understand this. Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid wrote, “Despite what we tell ourselves, Israel is here to stay. What’s more, it has a right to exist. It is the nation of the Jews but also a nation for Israeli Arabs who have better lives than Arabs anywhere in Arab countries. We must accept these facts and move on. The anti-Semitism promoted by Hamas, Fatah, and the BDS movement is not the answer for us Palestinians.” Sadly Arabs such as Eid are few.
Palestinian thugs who are currently engaged in attacks against Jews in Israel are not building a Palestinian state. They are the product of a Palestinian hate culture, and their actions entrench that hate culture even more, further pushing away the dream of Palestinian statehood.
To achieve peace and eventually dignity and statehood for the Palestinians, there is one path and one path only, and it is to denounce terrorism and unequivocally support Israel. (h/t Cliff)

"PA demands Muslim oversight on Temple Mount - or else"

From TOI:

The Palestinian Authority has warned Israel that it will soon halt security coordination with the IDF in the West Bank unless the Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount are given full administrative control over Jewish groups visiting the holy site, PA officials told The Times of Israel on Thursday. The PA is also demanding that Israel take action to stop what it claims is escalated violence against Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank.

“Israel must restore control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf (Muslim trust),” said one official close to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. “This is one of the only measures that can help calm the current situation.”

What a great idea!

The Muslims will give exactly the same rights to Jews who want to visit the holy site as they did before 1967 (none), as they did for the Tomb of the Patriarchs before 1967 (not allowed past the seventh step outside the building), as they did for the Western Wall between 1948 and 1967 (none) or if they are particularly generous, the amount they gave before 1948 (Jews not allowed to bring tables, blow shofars, put up even temporary partitions.)

I hope that the official Israeli response is a gigantic and sincere wish for Abu Mazen to do something anatomically impossible.

.@UNRWA admits that employees post antisemitism on Facebook

From UN Watch:

The spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quietly announced on the UN website that UNRWA employees have, “in a number of cases,” beeen subject to disciplinary action, including suspension and loss of pay, following an investigation that verified evidence published by UN Watch — in one report last week, and another in September — of incitement to anti-Semitic violence committed by at least 22 UNRWA employees.

Curiously, the following statement was made public only as a bracketed addition buried deep in a UN transcript, and not posted as a stand-alone statement by the UN, or indeed anywhere at all on the UNRWA website:

UNRWA takes all allegations of violations of UN principles as well as its neutrality and established social media policies very seriously. UNRWA condemns and will not tolerate anti-Semitism or racism in any form. Every allegation brought to our attention has either been or is being assessed, and where there are prima facie facts to support the allegation, in accordance with due process. Some allegations have been found to be authentic, others not.

Already, working closely with Facebook’s legal team, UNRWA has brought about the removal of more than 90 imposter or unauthorized Facebook pages. In some cases, it has determined the alleged ‘UNRWA staff’ are not in fact UNRWA employees or are no longer UNRWA employees.

However, and very regrettably, in a number of cases so far, the Agency has found staff Facebook postings to be in violation of its social media rules. These postings have been removed and the staff have been subject to both remedial and disciplinary action, including suspension and loss of pay. The remaining allegations are under assessment.

In light of the above, UN Watch is now demanding a full apology from UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness for his McCarthyite tirade against what he called UN Watch’s “baseless allegations about antisemitism.”

This is of course not enough. UNRWA was forced, kicking and screaming, to even get to this point. They need to be transparent about who was suspended, who was fined and who used UNRWA's name when they weren't really employees. UNRWA needs to publicly inform its employees about this policy. They do not appear to be taking this seriously if they don't even issue a stand-alone statement about this.

I will continue to post daily examples of UNRWA employees posting hate and terror-supporting messages. But this is also something UNRWA should be doing themselves. They clearly aren't taking this seriously if they aren't looking for the offensive posts.

Moreover, UNRWA should explain clearly why it allows its own school logos to erase Israel. This is also against UNRWA's stated policies, but nothing has been done against that. By only focusing on the worst antisemitic and pro-terror messages, UNRWA is giving the impression that it has no problem with other posts that are not as extreme are perfectly OK according to UNRWA rules. We need to know where they draw the line, and why these logos are still being used.

10/22 Links Pt1: Fatah: Stab the Israelis! PA: Stone the Israelis!; PATV Praises Terrorists as "Heroes"

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Things We Need to Stop Hearing About the ‘Stabbing Intifada’

Intolerable and inapplicable, too, is the cliché of the “cycle” or “spiral” of violence, which, by putting the kamikaze killers and their victims on the same footing, sows confusion and amounts to an incitement to further action.
Intolerable, for the same reason, are the rhetorical appeals “for restraint” and disingenuous pleas “not to inflame the street,” which, as with the “spiral of violence,” reverse the order of causality by implying that a soldier, police officer or civilian acting in self-defense has committed a wrong equal to that of someone who chooses to die after spreading as much terror as he possibly can.
Strange indeed, how tepid are the condemnations of the stabbings of innocent passers-by and rammings of bus stops — condemnations that I have to think would be less half-hearted if the acts had occurred on the streets of Washington, Paris or London.
More than strange — disturbing — is the difference in tone between the equivocal reaction to the recent killings and the unanimous and unambiguous international outpouring of emotion and solidarity elicited by the fatal hatchet attack on a soldier on a London street on May 22, 2013, a scenario that was not very different from those unfolding today in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Intolerable, again, that most of the major media have paid the grieving Israeli families only a fraction of the attention they have paid the families of the perpetrators.
Intolerable, finally, the minor mythology growing up around this story of daggers: The weapon of the poor? Really? The weapon one uses because it is within reach and one has no other? When I see those blades, I think of the one used to execute Daniel Pearl; I think of the beheadings of Hervé Gourdel, James Foley and David Haines; I think that the Islamic State’s videos have clearly gained a following, and that we stand on the threshold of a form of barbarity that must be unconditionally denounced if we do not want to see its methods exported everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

PMW: Fatah: Stab the Israelis! PA: Stone the Israelis!

While Mahmoud Abbas assures the world in English that he advocates only "peaceful resistance," both his government and members of his political party, Fatah, openly promote terror and murder of Jews, as Palestinian Media Watch has shown. The following cartoons are examples of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah promoting stabbings and encouraging rock throwing. The cartoons were published in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on Fatah's official Facebook page and in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam.
The above image of a Jew screaming in pain with a knife stuck in his shoulder was posted on Fatah's Facebook page. The Palestinian flag is on the blade of the knife and in the background is Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock.
The text in Arabic and in Hebrew on top of the image says:
"Here is Jerusalem, you crazies, beware!"
[Official Facebook page of the Fatah Movement, Oct. 4, 2015]
A few days after this cartoon appeared, and following the murder of 4 Israelis in shooting and stabbing attacks, and several other instances of Palestinians attacking Israelis with knives, Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, referred to stabbings and rock throwing as Palestinian "defense":
"We are defending ourselves today, and will continue to defend ourselves. We are not in favor of escalation. However, the occupation is the one that kills, destroys, and attacks our cities and villages. Of course the defense differs from Palestinian to Palestinian, and there are some among us who defend with a rock, and those who defend with a knife."
[Anadolu Agency, a Turkish news agency, Oct. 9, 2015,
Fatah's European Information and Culture Commission website, Oct. 9, 2015]

Indyk & Axelrod Support Organization Encouraging Stabbing of Israelis

Martin Indyk, Vice President and Director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution & former U.S. Special Envoy for Israeli–Palestinian Negotiations from 2013 to 2014 under the Obama Administration, is the head of the International Council of an organization which is blaming the Israeli government, the police and even Israeli citizens for the current round of violence in the Middle East.
The New Israel Fund (NIF) has a long-documented history of bigotry towards Israel, and among their followers are numerous close Obama & Hillary Clinton advisors, including David Axelrod (pictured above), who every year from 1991 to 2002 was a donor to the New Israel Fund. Karen R. Adler, a former Hillary Clinton chief aide who remains close to Hillary is a NIF donor and President of the Jewish Communal Fund.
NIF’s rhetoric and incitement is apparent during this most recent wave of the conflict. The +972 Blog, for example – an anti-Israel blog which NIF funds – has encouraged and justified violence and stabbings:
Here: “Yesterday I learned a nice quote attributed to Edward Said…’The underlying dimension in the Palestinian struggle throughout its history is the desire to be seen’… Jabbing a potato peeler into the stomach of an Israeli is not going to end the Occupation, but it guarantees a breakaway moment… So grab a potato peeler! I think that anyone who is not a complete introvert should be able to identify with this.”
And here: “…a controllable level of violence in Jerusalem is actually good for the right. The goal is to collect blood – blood that can be sold to the public as an appropriate national response, and this can certainly be achieved by shooting children.”

Tapper Corrects PLO Rep: If I Run At A Cop With A Knife, I’m Going To Get Shot

Jake Tapper corrected chief PLO representative Maen Rashid Areikat Wednesday after Areikat condemned Israeli police for shooting a camouflaged Palestinian who charged Israeli police with a knife.
Tapper questioned Areikat’s statement that a “very large” amount of Palestinians are “executed on the field after they were wounded,” pointing out that many of those who are “executed” are killed because they are committing acts of terror.
“Isn’t Abbas out there saying that two innocent Palestinian teenagers were murdered by Israel, when there is actually videotape showing one of the Palestinian teens charging at Israeli police with a knife before being shot? And the other teen is alive — isn’t Abbas out there saying that?” Tapper asked.
Areikat did not bend to Tapper’s question.
“Does this change the fact that one of them was shot and killed by the Israeli police?” he asked back.
“But there’s tape of them with a knife,” Tapper said and proceeded to play the tape on air.
“This is–this is–this is the problem–OK, well,” Areikat said.

Tapper Corrects PLO Rep: If I Run At A Cop With A Knife, I'm Going To Get Shot

Israel haters reveal their support of terror

Last Friday, students at Boston University held a "Vigil for the Victims of Terrorism" on campus.

There was nothing at the event that was anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian. It was simply an event to stand in solidarity with Israel and to mourn victims of terror.

You must read the reaction from "Students for Justice in Palestine."

We, students, alumni and, community members at Boston University, condemn Boston University Students for Israel (BUSI) and Hillel’s event “Vigil for Victims of Terrorism” and call on Boston University administration to take strong measures to address the misleading and inciting rhetoric that these groups are using.

The event held on October 16th was an example of the one-sided, manipulative propaganda present on our campus. The event was co-hosted by outside organizations such as Israel Campus Roundtable, Zionists Of America, StandWithUs, The Hasbara Fellowships, The David Project, the National Hillel organization, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The presence of these organizations is both alienating to Palestinians on campus and divisive to the greater BU community.

... While we agree all lives should be mourned, the ultra-nationalistic event rejected to mourn the Palestinian lives by urging on their Facebook event, “come and support Israel this Friday.”

The deliberate use of the word “terrorism” to refer to the Palestinians is an attempt to dehumanize them. This serves to divide our campus by triggering families and students at BU, who are deeply connected to Palestine and the experiences of living under the ongoing occupation. We are calling for a condemnation of this inexcusable political agenda that cannot coincide with the mission of inclusivity and cultural diversity at BU. We urge BU students, professors, and administration to foster an inclusive environment and prevent outside organizations from propagating toxic rhetoric that destructs the common ground this community is built on.

Statement by Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine

By condemning terror against Jews, the event organizers are guilty of hate speech!

The subtext is clear: Jews deserve to be axed and stabbed to death, and any expression of outrage is offensive to these self-appointed arbiters of political correctness.

These people who are so concerned about being "inclusive" and the feelings of all people on campus are of course the same people who sponsor the annual "Israel Apartheid Week" there. I don't think they mention Jewish victims of terror in that "inclusive" event.

If there is a silver lining in the current terror spree, it is that people who pretend to be against violence are outing themselves as supporting whatever outrage Arab terrorists decide to do. They are writing articles justifying the attacks as a reasonable response to "occupation" or "settlements."

They are revealing, quite clearly, that their support for "Palestine" is really a front for their hate for Israeli Jews and a Jewish state.

(h/t JW)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Several Arab members of UNESCO recently proposed (on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs) that the Western Wall be declared a part of the al-Aqsa complex and therefore a Muslim holy site. The vote was supposed to take place Wednesday, but the proposal was withdrawn at the last moment, presumably as a result of US pressure.

Like most UN bodies, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has an automatic anti-Israel majority. So if it had come to a vote, the proposal certainly would have passed, despite being a ludicrous inversion of history (as it is, UNESCO decided that Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are Muslim sites).

This is the way things are at the UN, where a resolution that the world is flat and the Moon made of cheese would pass if it somehow could be presented as pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.

The UN was established after WWII in order to provide a way to prevent war and to keep humankind on the path of progress. There are a lot of reasons that it hasn’t worked out; one of these is that the founders apparently didn’t envision the rise of the non-aligned bloc consisting of mostly Muslim countries, many of which were fragments of former colonial entities, that would not be responsive to the desires of the great powers.

It’s interesting the way the Palestinian issue, of all the possible grievances – including others involving Arabs or Muslims – that the UN could deal with, has managed to capture so much of the UN’s time, resources and personnel. No other issue has as many committees, working groups, divisions, or “special rapporteurs” devoted to it; and no other issue by far is the subject of as many reports and resolutions of the UN’s multifarious fora and agencies. And of course nothing soaks up as much money. This is despite the numerous wars and genocides that have occurred since the UN’s founding which the UN has been unable to prevent.

It has gotten to the point that the UN is so dysfunctional that it no longer has a reason to exist. I have on several occasions suggested that those agencies which still provide useful functions (possibly WHO, ITU, and a few others) and haven’t become simply branches of the Palestinian cause be spun off as independent entities and the UN abolished. This would save billions of dollars, probably promote peace, and improve the parking situation in lower Manhattan immeasurably.

But it has occurred to me that the UN is only one example of a more general phenomenon: that of Palestinism invading and occupying almost any kind of institution, monopolizing its resources, and preventing it from fulfilling its originally intended function. Instead, affected organizations pass BDS resolutions, sponsor anti-Israel events and speakers, support bogus ‘research’ and ‘academic’ studies, and in general engage in pro-Palestinian anti-Israel political advocacy.

Consider, for example, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other liberal religious groups, the American Studies Association, student governments, various trade unions and political parties – the list is endless. Even the Jewish community is not immune, with Palestinism – in the form of Ameinu, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, Open Hillel, the New Israel Fund, and others – injecting itself into organizations like the Jewish Federations and JCRCs, campus Hillel groups, and even the World Zionist Congress (which includes representatives of some of the left-wing groups listed above).

But simple counterexamples can be found to the idea that the “pro-Palestinians” are actually motivated by support for Palestinian Arabs. For example, Bashar al-Assad has starved and murdered hundreds of them in ‘refugee camps’ in Syria; and now they are being attacked by ISIS. Little, if anything, has been done by the world – or by any of the above-mentioned Palestinian cheerleaders – to help them. In 1991, some 200,000 Palestinian workers were persecuted and expelled from Kuwait, an action which in the words of Steven Rosen, was “largely ignored by the international community with neither the U.N. Security Council nor the General Assembly doing anything to assist the newly displaced refugees and punish their ethnic cleanser.”

I don’t think I have to explain this. The truth is that the impetus for the spread of the Palestinian movement in so many venues does not truly come from sympathy with Palestinian Arabs, except in one respect: their national project to destroy Israel.

The international community’s love affair with the Palestinian Arabs is actually a “hate affair” with their enemy, the state of Israel. I’m sure that if anti-Zionist Martians were to land on Earth tomorrow, they would be immediately welcomed at the UN and on many university campuses. This is the only way to explain why the devotees of human rights at the Presbyterian Church (USA) have settled on Israel to boycott rather than, for example, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and other countries that so egregiously violate human rights.

But we need to take the analysis one step further. What is it about Israel, among all nations, that makes it such a hate magnet? I can tell you that it is a wonderful country, which goes far out of its way – even to the point of endangering its existence – to do the right thing for minorities, especially including Arabs.

No, the problem is not that Israel is objectively deserving of hate. It is because Israel is a Jewish state, and there is nothing that gets the world’s goat more than the despised Jew being successful and thriving. Pharaoh didn’t trust us and made us slaves in around 1800 BCE, the English expelled us in 1290 and the Spanish in 1492. Whenever the Jews start doing too well, the nations start to worry and act against them.

That’s why Jews were kicked out of country after country, why Hitler and Stalin murdered them, and why students at Berkeley – even Jewish students – flock to join Students for Justice in Palestine. Today, thanks to the Internet and Al-Jazeera, Jew-hatred has been globalized.

The Western attitude has little to do with ‘Palestine’ and Palestinian Arabs. It is all about Israel and Israeli Jews. The West doesn’t want to see us strong and vigorous; our good economy, high birthrate and scientific and cultural achievements are a reproach to them. They prefer the Palestinian Arabs with their cruelty, intolerance and misogyny, perhaps because they can feel superior to them.

If nations had psychologists, this behavior would be considered so irrational as to imply a mental disorder.

The world’s support – via European NGOs, unrelenting American pressure for concessions, Iranian rockets, UN money, and media and academic pogromists everywhere – has had the effect of enabling, excusing and even justifying the extreme savagery of today’s “knife intifada,” in which the Arabs are daily expressing a degree of Jew-hatred unmatched since the Nazi era. Only their lack of means and our armed strength prevents another genocide. The Palestinian Arabs hold the knives, but the world cheers them from the sidelines.

How should Israel act in such an environment of irrational hate?

1. Defeat our enemies. Nobody will help, but on the other hand, if we act decisively (and quickly) nobody will intervene effectively either. Stop trying to fight wars without hurting anyone.

2. Humor the neurotic West, but do not become entangled in its initiatives.

3. Don’t talk about how moral and just we are, or how great our contributions to society. This makes them hate us more.

4. Make them respect us or even fear us if possible. We will not get their love.

5. Don’t explain too much and don’t apologize.

6. Reduce our participation in international organizations to the minimum possible. They only work against us.

7. Try to improve relations with pragmatic regimes like Russia, China, India and Eastern European countries. Nothing can be done with Western Europe and the US.

8. Understand that we can’t be as open, liberal and democratic as we might like. But we mustn’t compromise on the Jewish nature of the state, because if we lose it, we lose the state in its entirety.

We are about to enter a very difficult period of history, the proverbial ‘interesting times’. The rules will be different from those that sustained the Jewish people for the last 2000 years. We’ll survive only if we can adapt.

Why the Mufti is important today

Someone tweeted me about how "Jews are living in the past" and the Mufti of Jerusalem is not important today.

Yet he is. And the reason is because Israel's "peace partners" look at this person who explicitly wanted to destroy all Jews as their role model.

Here is Mahmoud Abbas praising the Mufti in a 2013 speech, one where he specifically also praised Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists as "martyrs."

History is important - because every claim of Palestinian Arabs against Israel is based on false history.

It starts with the myth that there was a separate, distinguishable "Palestinian people" before 1948. There wasn't. There were Arabs who did not think in terms of national borders, who freely moved between Syria and Palestine and Morocco and Egypt as they needed to for economic of other reasons. the idea that the people who happened to be in the area of British Mandate Palestine in 1948 are magically labeled "Palestinian" is an arbitrary fiction. They fully expected to be integrated into neighboring Arab nations the same way many of them had moved to Palestine over the previous century.

That is just one of many myths that animate the Palestinians today.

If the entire Palestinian Arab claim is based on false history, it is Israel's obligation to keep correcting it.

But the case of the Mufti is even worse, because the praise for him is happening today.

If a Confederate flag is offensive today, then how much more offensive is praise for a man who openly espoused and helped participate in the murder of millions of people?

The Mufti gave a speech in November 1943, after he was aware of the Final Solution:

26 years ago the Jews received the Balfour Declaration so they could build a national Jewish homeland. The British betrayed the Arabs and Islam by supporting the Jews. Jews are selfish.

They think they are the chosen people and that all the other people of the world are meant to serve them. The Jews are the enemy of Islam – they are the ones killed the prophet Mohammad!” The Mufti continues, “The Jewish British minister [Benjamin] Disraeli bought the Suez Canal, thus paving the way for the British to conquer Egypt. And Algerian Jews helped France occupy Algeria. ...The Arabs – and especially the Muslims – must expel the Jews from Arab countries.

This is the ultimate solution.

The prophet Mohammad used this solution 1,300 years ago.

The Treaty of Versailles was a disaster for Germany and for the Arabs, but the Germans know how to get rid of the Jews, and this is why the Arab world has such close relations with Germany.

The most important thing is that they have found the final solution to the Jewish problem. Time is working against the Jews even though the Allies are helping them.

He may have even been planning to build death camps in Palestine for the Jews (same link.)

So, yes, the Mufti is important to remember - because by praising the Mufti, the Palestinian Arabs are condoning his hate. And that is a big deal.

The irony is that this "father of Palestinian nationalism" was in the forefront of wanting Palestine to become part of Syria in the early 1920s.

Which indicates the real truth we can learn from history, and is borne out even today:

Arabs in Palestine never really wanted a state so much as they wanted to ensure that the Jews didn't have one.

Times of Israel reports:

Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal told a government-endorsed rally in South Africa on Wednesday that the wave of stabbing attacks against Israelis would continue.

Referring to the terror attacks as “the Jerusalem intifada,” Mashaal told a crowd of several hundred supporters waving Hamas’s white-and-green flag in Cape Town that “the uprisings shall continue until freedom is achieved and the land is for Palestine and its people.”

He compared the Palestinian cause to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

“South Africa, you have achieved your freedom, the people of Palestine are aspiring to attain their freedom,” he said.

“Do not expect that they should stop with the uprising, do not expect that they should stop with the resistance.”

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has expressed “shock and outrage” at South Africa’s hosting of the terror group’s leaders, and on Monday summoned South Africa’s deputy ambassador “for a reprimand,” ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said.

The ANC’s invitation to Hamas “provided a tailwind for terrorism and blatantly and crudely ignored the position of the international community, which considers Hamas a terror organization,” Nahshon fumed.

The Hamas delegation, which also included Mashaal’s deputy Moussa Abu Marzouk, was welcomed at the airport Monday by the ANC’s deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte, according to a senior ANC official.

“It is to demonstrate that the African National Congress is willing to talk to all people who are positive in terms of their attainment of self-determination and nationhood in Palestine,” the official told SABC News.

Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general, said Monday that his party has signed a “letter of intent” with Hamas. “We have an intention of building a long-lasting relationship,” he said at a press conference with Mashaal, calling the delegation’s visit “very important.”

Some South African media outlets covered the rally, but none noticed anything improper in Meshal's speech.

News24 reported it this way:

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal received a massive welcome as he walked on to the stage at a rally being held for him and his delegation in Cape Town on Tuesday.

People rushed to the aisle, protected by bodyguards, to try and touch him as he bounded up the steps of the Darul Islamic Campus in Greenhaven east of Cape Town.

He smiled through a salt and pepper beard and waved back at people in the the packed hall.

The content of the speech was not mentioned.

Voice of the Cape Radio only briefly mentioned his speech but said nothing about his support for the current wave of knifing attacks against Jews.

The crowd chanted praises to God and free Palestine as the delegation entered while the nasheed group of Darul Islam, the venue where the talk is being hosted, performed nasheed songs.

The hall resounded with cheer when Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal addressed them to call for an end to the occupation of Palestine.

“You (South Africans) have attained your freedom and liberation, the people of Palestine are aspiring to attain their freedom and liberation,” Meshaal told the crowd of supporters.

After the rally people said that the address by Khalid Meshaal was inspiring.

Reza Sayed, a student said that it was very inspiring to see that the speech was not against any entity, it was against the occupiers and not just a Jewish state.

Gabiba Khan from Women Who Care said that she was humbled to be in the same room with “these kinds of people, these kind of leaders” when referring to Khalid Meshaal and other attendees from the delegation whom addressed the crowd in Cape Town.

Cape Times also quoted Meshal but ignored his terror calls.

Speaking to loud applause, Khalid said SA’s humanity could not be found anywhere else in the world.

“I admire Zuma’s bold and courageous heart to host us.

“Because of Israel, the international community knows us (only) as terrorists.

“Thanks for allowing us this rare opportunity to tell of our years of struggle against Zionist Israel,” he said.

Mishal said they were pinning their hopes on the ANC to help free the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Your struggle has inspired us to achieve our freedom. We were inspired when you liberated your country. Although we are still subjected to the inhumane brutality of Israel we still believe that one day we will be free.”

When he arrived accompanied by the ANC’s provincial chairman Marius Fransman and an executive member of the ANC David Mahlobo, a fully packed school hall reverberated with chants of “free, free Palestine. Free Al-Aqsa”.

IOL's video of the rally indicates that the speeches emphasized the dangers of "Judaizing" Jerusalem, railing against the idea of "Zionist" Jews being allowed to pray on the Temple Mount and that over 100 synagogues were built in Jerusalem. This clear antisemitic message, that Jews have no religious rights in Jerusalem, was ignored in the reporting as well..

Are there no real journalists in the entire country of South Africa?