Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 09, 2010

PalArabs: "Frozen in time, addicted to pity"

An astonishingly good piece in the National Post (Canada):

Refugees? Canadians, even if their families have lived here for centuries, know something about refugees. We know Hungarians, we know Vietnamese, we know many others. We admire their energy and their accomplishments. Observing them can be a bracing lesson in human tenacity under adverse circumstances.

But that pattern doesn't cover Palestinian refugees. They are a special case. For many reasons, various populations across the planet are displaced; only the Palestinians cling to their "refugee" status decade after decade. They present themselves as helpless victims of Israeli aggression. They await rescue-- as they have been awaiting it for three generations, since Israel was founded in 1948. Members of other history-battered groups choose to live by an urgent ethic: Get up, get going, make a new life. Palestinians have a different approach: Sit down, wait, stay angry till the world provides for you.

Andrew Roberts, a much-admired British historian, raised the issue of Palestinian refugees in a speech excerpted in the National Post on Tuesday. He argued, correctly, that Arab governments "are rich enough to have economically solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago." The 5,000 or so members of the Saudi royal family could probably handle it by themselves.

Why haven't they done so? They much prefer to let Palestinians remain poor. Every wretched, ill-fed and ill-housed Palestinian can be used as a living rebuke to Israel.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Israel Matzav)

Der Spiegel notices Hamas infighting. Then it calls some of them "peaceful."

Der Spiegel (German only) has an interesting article about Hamas infighting. It starts off with some interesting facts, but then turns into a joke.

A young man whose body was found in a Rafah tunnel last year - it may have been this one - seems to have been murdered by Hamas and dumped there. The man was a whistleblower of Hamas corruption, but his problem with Hamas was that they had abandoned their Islamist roots, not that they were too extreme:

But his death is only one of many unsolved cases in which Hamas is accused of having executed dissidents from their own ranks. Human rights activists in the Gaza Strip, who wish to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the subject, speak of dozens of incidents in which such allegations are raised: "It is almost impossible to prove it, because Hamas covered up these cases."

The rulers of the Gaza Strip seem to purge people in their own ranks and prominent members are not spared. Munir [the man mentioned above], for example, was a major arms purchaser for the organization - a fact that his father admits with pride, but also with additional rage. "It is for them he traveled all over the world; he went for them to Iran, Syria, Ireland. And because he wanted to ensure that the pure doctrine of Hamas is not distorted, they have killed him."

There is a reason why Hamas seems to employ brutal violence to silence critics within its own ranks: Three years after coming to power, many radical Islamists in the Gaza Strip are turning away from their support in droves. Both the moderate and the extreme members of the organization are disappointed, and discontent is spreading on both the right and the left.

YNet also reports on these developments:

News stories about bodies found at sea are occasionally published by Gaza newspapers. The number of such bodies isn't huge, yet not all those drowning victims chose to go swimming voluntarily. The Gazans who found their death at sea include mid-level officials at sensitive government ministries, the Interior Ministry for example, alongside police and security officers.

Some of them were shot in the head before being sent on their swim.

There is a common denominator to these deaths: All of the victims were designated as traitors by the secret service of Hamas' military wing in charge of counter-espionage and executed as collaborators.

And these are not just simple collaborators, but rather, people who penetrated deep into Hamas' government; so deep that Hamas leaders are embarrassed to expose the failure and prefer to make these people disappear, with or without a brief court-martial.

Gaza's streets are teeming with rumors. Stories of people who disappeared at sea or elsewhere stay on the agenda. The whole of Gaza, as if amok-stricken, takes part in the hunt. Posters urging a war on collaborators hang in the streets; the issue is discussed on the radio and during sermons at mosques. In the upcoming school year, the topic will be added to the curriculum, with Gaza children learning about the dangers inherent in collaborators. Teachers will be asked to explain what good, suspicious children do: Turn in their parents.

This huge manhunt is not a sign of strength, says a senior Israeli security official – the opposite is true. These are clear signs of distress for Hamas' regime.

While YNet gives a decent analysis, the Der Spiegel article then descends into farce:

"The party split into hawks and doves," said Sajed Abu Musameh, one of the seven founders of Hamas and one if the more moderate critics of the movement. Many men of his generation had grown up with Jews, says the 63-year-old, who is still a member of the party leadership. Many of these elders believed in peaceful coexistence, not to the power of rockets and suicide attacks. "But the party is now influenced by the young radicals, they represent the majority of the members, our leaders say what they want to hear."

This is patently absurd. The early leaders of Hamas were not moderate by any measure - they gained prominence in direct proportion to the grisliness of their attacks on Jews. They are the ones who drafted the anti-semitic and genocidal Hamas Charter. Now we are hearing that they believe in peaceful co-existence?

The truth is that the Hamas leadership now has something to lose, and their newfound "moderation" is a direct consequence of them not wanting to lose power. Their suppressing of rocket fire is a function of fear, not moderation. That the younger generation, raised on a diet of calls to jihad, notices the hypocrisy is understandable - but it does not mean that the elders are any less extreme, just that they are somewhat wiser and more patient in how to achieve their goals.

To put the words "peaceful co-existence" and "Hamas" in the same sentence shows how far Western journalists have fallen. The only Israelis who would have that same sentence applied to them by the media would be the extreme Left, and the implicit equalization of the two is a major problem in the media. The fact is that "Hamas moderation" is an oxymoron, and using relative terms as absolute terms for both sides is one of the biggest distortions of truth that the world has been exposed to for many years.

Any unbiased look at the situation would show that the most extreme Israelis are more moderate in their goals than the most "moderate" Hamas members. The fact that this is not self-evident to the majority of the world audience shows the huge gap between what journalists report and reality.

(h/t Silke)

Ahmadinejad is a 9/11 "Truther." What a surprise.

From the JC:

The Iranian president has accused “Zionists” of knowing about the September 11 terror attacks in advance and reiterated his denial of the Holocaust.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a conference in Tehran that no “Zionists” were killed in the World Trade Center, because "one day earlier they were told not to go to their workplace".

Five Israelis were killed when the two planes were flown into the Twin Towers in 2001.

Mr Ahmadinejad also claimed that there were no reports that revealed the names of the around 3,000 victims.

He also said that in the aftermath of September 11 the United States and the media “created and prepared public opinion so that everyone considered an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq as [their] right.”

Nah, he's just a harmless crackpot. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The Onion on how to reduce stress

The Onion takes a darkly satiric stab at closet haters of a certain kind:

Overcome Stress By Visualizing It As A Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race Of Creatures

In the discussion group I saw this on, some thought that it was too offensive and that viewer wouldn't get it. But as a fan of The Onion, I'm pretty convinced that this is spot-on.

(h/t YM)

The mystery of Adaisseh, Lebanon

Last week's ambush of Israeli soldiers happened outside the village of Adaisseh, Lebanon.

It just so happens that I have seen that village once.

Last December, I went on a blogger's tour of the northern border of Israel sponsored by the IDF. I mentioned then that the Lebanese village we saw just across the border was being observed by the IDF day and night.

And what they didn't observe was more interesting than what they did see.

In a normal town, one would see children, cars, school buses, playgrounds and other indications of family life.

Yet in this village, there was none of that. The vast majority of vehicles in this village were trucks, entering and exiting.

The IDF told us that what we were seeing was, essentially, a giant weapons storehouse pretending to be a Lebanese village.

I hadn't realized until now that the village was Adaisseh (thanks to Israel Matzav for reminding me.)

Is is a coincidence that the place that the Lebanese army decided to attack Israel from was a fake Hezbollah village?

UPDATE: Here is a video of either Adaisseh or a similar Hezbollah village without people:

There was a brief kerfuffle as some UNIFIL troops from Indonedia abandoned their posts as soon as shooting started, and ran away to a nearby village. This was captured on video:

According to a story in an Indonesian newspaper quoting Al Manar, they took a taxi to this town.

It sure doesn't look like they went to Adaisseh, which would be the logical place to go (and was easily within walking distance.) This seems to indicate that the UNIFIL troops know very well what Adaisseh is all about, and they act as impotently as these Indonesian UNIFIL soldiers did.

For those who want to continue to analyze the event, this footage from a different Indonesian source seems to be different from what we had already seen before. Of course, the snipers who shot first were not with the UNIFIL troops or the camera operators.

Abbas wants a Judenrein Palestine

From the excellent Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, writing in YNet last week:

The Palestinians intend to demand the implementation of the UN resolution regarding refugees, from a Palestinian perspective, which gives the 5.5 million refugees and their descendants the right of return and to settle in the State of Israel. In his briefing to the Egyptian media, Abbas presented this strategy and denied the Jewish character of Israel. He maintains that Israel should, in fact, become a bi-national state, but on the other hand that Palestine must become a state “clean” of Jews.

The term “Israeli” used by Abbas means “Jew,” as the PA sees Israeli Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike as an integral part of the Palestinian people. The future State of Palestine, according Abbas, must resist any Jewish presence in its territory. In other words, the PA embraces a racist policy – Palestinian apartheid – directed at Jews, based on denial of Jewish history and the cultural and religious linkage of the Jewish people to the land.

The anti-Semitism embodied in Abbas’ words refers also to his position towards the NATO observers’ force that may be deployed in the West Bank to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement with Israel. He is opposed to Jews being included in this force; meaning, he will ask Germany and all other partner countries in NATO to use their own forces in the West Bank, in an effort to the exclude any Jewish soldiers.

He didn’t explain how these countries would determine who is a Jew, whether according to orthodox Jewish laws or just if one of the parents or grandparents was a Jew. But even Saudi Arabia didn’t dare oppose the deployment of American Jewish soldiers on its land during operation Desert Storm (1990-1), and no one in Israel ever demanded to disqualify Muslim soldiers from serving in the international observers’ forces in Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Sinai.

The racist language used by Abbas is particularly despicable as it doubts the loyalty of the Jews to their country. It is for this reason that his comments call for a firm Israeli and European response.

Note: Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency published on July 28 its version of Abbas’ briefing to the Egyptian media, quoting him as saying: “I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land”. This version was reprinted by Palestinian newspapers al-Quds and al-Hayat al-Jadida on July 30 and by other Arab newspapers.

A few days later Wafa published a new version of Abbas’ interview to the Egyptian media, where he was quoted as saying: “We have no objection to the presence of a third party after the (Palestinian) state is established, and we don’t oppose that the third party will be NATO or any other force. However, I will not agree that an Israeli, even if he is a Muslim, will be present on my land, but I’ll agree only (to the presence) of a third party. The reason for that is stemmed in the fact that the Israeli is the heir of the occupation, while the presence of the third party is temporary as are the Multinational Forces in your country (Egypt) and UNIFIL in Lebanon.”

I could not find the original WAFA piece - neither their archive nor their search functions work.

The earliest place I could find the earlier, racist quote was July 29's Palestinian Media Center, quoting WAFA. My interpretation of the autotranslation is:

I am willing to accept the existence of a third party after the solution, such as forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and will not accept that Jews be a part of NATO troops, and I will not accept one Israeli to live among us in the Palestinian territory.

Egypt's Al Ahram had identical wording on July 30th, although it is not clear if they were at the briefing of Egyptian journalists or not.

UPDATE: Abbas, not surprisingly, denies these reports through a spokesman who says that it was only the American media that reported his anti-semitic diatribe. Well, as I have shown, it was reported widely in the Arabic media, and no one seemed to be too upset about it. (h/t Suzanne)

Follow-up on Arabs visiting Jerusalem

When I posted yesterday about the resistance in the Muslim world to visiting Jerusalem, I had missed a central conflict on that issue.

My post update showed that an Egyptian minister of religious endowments Zaqzouq is indeed asking Muslims to visit Jerusalem to strengthen ties to the city. What I didn't realize is that this is part of a month-long dispute between Zaqzouq and influential Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, who reacted to Zaqzouq's similar call last month with an explicit fatwa against any such visits. Here is a reproduction of an Al Quds al Arabi editorial about the issue last month:

Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, has constantly espoused a position opposed to the pro-sultan preachers, defending resistance and sacrifice of life for the sake of the nation's causes, faith, and rights, consistently guided by the Holy Koran, Prophet Muhammad's tradition, and the life of the Prophet's companions.

The other day, Dr Al-Qaradawi issued a firm fatwa condemning the calls sanctioning visits to Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem under occupation, regarding such calls as disgrace, proscribed by the Islamic shari'ah, and legitimize the occupation forces. This fatwa came in response to a statement by the Egyptian Awqaf Minister, Hamdi Zaquq, in which he said that he is interested in getting a visa to visit occupied Jerusalem and that his visit constitutes "a great support for the Palestinian cause and people."

The Egyptian awqaf minister represents a ruling regime that has established close ties with Israel on all political, economic, and diplomatic levels. This regime exports gas to the Hebraic State at a very cheap price and imposes an oppressive blockade on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in cooperation with the Israeli government. As such, it is only natural that he should see nothing wrong in travel to occupied Jerusalem and to put on record a precedent encouraging others to follow suit.

Regrettably, Dr Zaqzuq sticks to his position, desperately defending it and not hesitating to announce that he will visit occupied Jerusalem upon getting the necessary visa from the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. He denies that his step is within the framework of normalization of ties with Israel. This insistence on normalization of ties by the Egyptian awqaf minister comes at a time when the Coptic Pope, Shanudah, refuses to permit his church parishioners to visit occupied Jerusalem despite the enormous pressure on him by the Egyptian government, which reached the point of supporting calls to rebel against him and foment divisions among the followers of his church.

We in Al-Quds al-Arabi back Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi's fatwa which incriminates all calls for and all forms of normalization of ties with Israel as long as the territories remain under occupation and face continued grabbing by the successive Israeli governments, which reject peace and continue to commit war crimes in the Gaza Strip and in south Lebanon.

Visits to the occupied territories by Muslim religious clerics and senior officials will only serve to legitimize the Israeli occupation and give a misleading picture to the world about Israel's tolerance towards other religions at a time when it Judiazes Arab mosques and churches in the holy city, undermines the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and implements plans to partition it, if not, in fact, it is seeking to demolish it by the excavations under its foundations.

So in fact Zuqzouq is way outside the mainstream of the Muslim world when he says that Muslims should visit Jerusalem. Qaradawi has a huge following.

Of course, the irony is that the leader of the Palestinian Arab Waqf also wants Muslims to visit Jerusalem. PA waqf minister Mahmoud Habash just released a statement saying that Qaradawi's fatwa plays into the hands of the "occupation."

Here is yet one more example where the Arab world will actively oppose doing what Palestinian Arabs want them to do - and they say they are doing it to help Palestinian Arabs! This fatwa helps isolate the PalArabs from their supposed brethren and it is meant to perpetuate the status-quo of millions of Palestinian Arabs in misery.

It reminds one of the Arab League's first act, to declare a boycott against Palestinian Jews back in 1946, a move bitterly opposed by the Palestinian Arabs of the day - yet the ones who broke the boycott ended up getting targeted themselves, many fatally. But it was all done in "solidarity" with the people who bear the brunt of that decision.

The Western world still cannot wrap their heads around the fact that Arabs have been the ones treating Palestinian Arabs like dirt for over six decades. The intra-Arab hate gets lost in the blinding brightness of their loathing of Jews/Zionists, so clueless Westerners think that Arab nations really stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs.

In fact, they are the ones who are the architects of Palestinian Arab misery, and they have been for a long, long time.

A small example of self-censorship in Gaza

The Palestinian Arab Ma'an website has a short article:

Relations between Hamas and Islamic Jihad are "not tense at all," a Hamas spokesman said Monday.

Sami Abu Zuhri told journalists that the relationship between the two Islamist movements "is strategic. We believe there are stable relations with Islamic Jihad at the highest levels."

The spokesman said his movement consults Islamic Jihad on matters related to "the Palestinian people's interest, and there is field coordination between the movements as efforts to develop better relations are ongoing."

The Hamas official's comments follow a dispute between combatants affiliated to both movements.

The supposed news site, which Western journalists rely on, never had an article describing what the dispute between the movements was to begin with.

In reality, as I mentioned yesterday, there was a short but significant gunbattle between the two last Thursday as well as other recent incidents.

But Ma'an is loathe to report on anything that might anger Hamas, and has been since the Hamas coup when their offices were "visited" by the terror group in charge. Since then, the only time you can see any stories like this are when Hamas officially comments on the story - which they were forced to do because pro-Fatah Arabic newspapers, based out of the West Bank, did not face the same fear and reported about the incidents.

One can assume that Western reporters in Gaza share the same fear that Ma'an does, and would not report anything that makes Hamas look bad.

I've seen this scenario happen often, where the first time various stories get reported is when Hamas issues a statement.

In the end, Hamas ends up having nearly full control over the story. Westerners remain clueless of the real situation in Gaza, instead relying on "eyewitnesses" who are given guided tours of parts of Gaza by people with their own agendas and who spout off statistics that may or may not be accurate, but are invariably believed.

The irony is that Hamas will respond to media reports, as this story illustrates. But since Western reporters are too scared and lazy to challenge Hamas in any way, Hamas gets a free pass in English. In short, the Western media - which should be a watchdog and hold leaders accountable for their actions - is happy to ignore totalitarian leaders in cases such as these, in order to protect themselves and in order to keep their own false memes of Gaza alive.

The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria, part 2

Part 2 of this new series has just gone up. This one is interesting because the woman being interviewed is nothing like the stereotype of the "typical settler" - she is Israeli, she is secular, and yet her love of the land and her ties to her people are no less strong than for religious Jews.

Let's look at some real humanitarian catastrophes (Zvi)

From Zvi:

Iraqi civilians murdered in 2010:
* Jun 2010: 353
* May 2010: 370
* Apr 2010: 376

* first 6 months of 2010: 1965
* 2009: 4645
* 2008: 9221
* 2007: 24599
* 2006: 27767
...

Remember that as the UN investigates Israel for having soldiers who are not willing to be beaten to death by jihadi paramilitaries disguised as "peace activists." There has never been a UN investigation of the brutal terrorist slaughter of literally thousands civilians in Iraq by terrorists trained in Syria and armed by Iran. Why not? A former Iraqi defense minister referred to the Syrian border as the Gate of Darkness. But who cares about thousands of dead Iraqis? The UN needs to spend its time conducting MULTIPLE investigations of Israel, because a bunch of paramilitaries attacked Israeli soldiers.

In a similar vein, 4.3 million southern Sudanese need food aid, according to the UN. The World Food Program needs 500 million dollars, it says, to feed starving Sudanese.

Remember that the next time you read about someone making massive efforts to send wholly unnecessary supplies to Gaza.

"One Mean Jewish Settler"

Silke, in a comment to my last post about the real life of so-called "settlers," linked to an excellent post from a new blog called West Bank to West End.

Here's a small part:

The paradox is that some people only seem to like you once you become mean. A good case in point is the groups of German journalists, politicians and lecturers who are brought to Israel by their government and after having met a wide range of Israeli leaders and experts, come to Maale Adumim to meet settler Judah Ben-Yosef.

I began working for the German government (occasionally) about four years ago. I had no illusions that after two weeks of careful brain-washing by Arab spokesmen and far worse the Israeli Left wing, my two hours wouldn’t go a long way towards changing many minds. I am a chess player, so I defined for myself what I considered to be three realistic, realizable goals:

To physically show them the size of a 40,000 man strong city. I hoped this would go some way to denting the stereotype of the two tents, a goat and a flag Jewish settlement.

To demonstrate that historically Maale Adumim has never been part of any kind of Palestinian or Arab state, that nobody besides us and a few 13th century monks have ever lived here and that geographically there are plenty of other barren mountaintops.

To demonstrate that we are not all religious Right-wing fanatics (like me) but that the population of Maale Adumim contains a cross-section of Israeli citizens Religious, Secular and others; new immigrants and old-timers, Right, Center and even some Left-wingers.

My main objective is to try to dent stereotypes. I believe that when an intelligent person realizes that many of the stereotypes he’s been sold are incorrect, he or she may begin to question them all. This might lead to researching the subject more thoroughly, which in turn even affect some change in opinions.

In many ways it’s the first few minutes that will determine to what extent the tour influences each person. They all look out the windows and see a picturesque, peaceful, modern, well-run Western city. This sight is invariably the exact antithesis of everything they’ve been taught to expect. When stereotyping clashes with reality there is an immediate state of shock, or even crises. In very broad terms one can talk about three characteristic responses:

Some choose to look in the directions of the surrounding mountains rather than at the city. They will henceforth prefer to focus on the “bigger picture” having understood that they know precious little about the “details”

There are those who honestly seem to believe that Maale Adumim is some kind of clever scam that the Israeli government is running to trick visitors like themselves. “Everything here looks fine, but what about the real settlers? Why aren’t you all carrying guns? Is that a Bible?”

Occasionally I come across intellectually honest individuals who absorb what they are being told and ask questions not to try to catch me out, but because they really want to know. Surprisingly, two groups that stand out in this category are journalists from former East Germany and a group of German, Moslem journalists and lecturers.

Read the whole thing.

The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria

Israel Matzav links to a video that appears to be the beginning of an entire series about the "settlers," the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria. The video series is meant to show how these people really live and think, in contrast with how they are portrayed in the media.

Here is part 1, interviewing a grandmother who lives in Bet El who doesn't quite fit the profile of a wild-eyed, gun-toting, Arab-hating settler living on a caravan on a mountaintop that we are so used to seeing:

Libya imposing restrictions on local Palestinians

Libya has implemented a program of taxing all of its Palestinian Arab residents.

According to Al Jazeera (Arabic), Palestinian Arabs in Libya are now forced to pay an annual fee of up to $1550, and they have to endure a host of new humiliations as well.

PalArabs have been banned from working in various jobs, including education. Relatives cannot visit them. Those who own cars are being taxed for more money than their monthly salaries. Travel documents are expiring and not being renewed, yet the Arab League does not allow Palestinian Arabs from obtaining passports from the countries they have lived in all their lives.

Residents note bitterly that all this is happening while Libya made a big show of sending a ship of aid to Gaza.

All of this is in contradiction with Libyan Law #10 of 1998 which was supposed to grant somewhat equal rights to Palestinian Arabs in that country.

(h/t Ali for help with translation)

Gaza power plant shuts down - again, not because of Israel

Once again, Gazans are forced to suffer:

A day after Gaza's sole power plant shut down, the Palestinian Authority said it would deduct 25 percent from salaries to cover rising electricity bills.

Palestinian media Sunday reported the Palestinian Ministry of Finance would reassess the situation in September.

On Saturday, power plant officials in Gaza said the shutdown was due to a fuel shortage caused by the Palestinian Authority's refusal to ship sufficient fuel into the coastal enclave for the latest crisis.

Palestinian media said the latest shutdown is the third since January.

A Gaza Power Authority statement said it held Ramallah's finance ministry accountable, because "the government in Ramallah has not paid for industrial diesel, as agreed with the delegation of independent figures who visited Gaza recently," Maan reported.

AP adds:

Gaza's rulers, the militant Islamic group Hamas, are meant to collect utility bills and send the cash to their rivals, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which use it to buy the fuel.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib says Hamas isn't sending enough money, and on average, they were receiving only $1.3 million a month from the distribution company, while they were paying $9 million for the fuel.

"We need some transparency here. There has to be some kind of audit," Khatib said.

Yet reporters never seem to blame the Palestinian Arab leadership for Gaza's woes. That seems to be exclusively Israel's fault.

Hating Israel more important to Arabs than Jerusalem is (updated)

How important is Jerusalem to Arabs?

While we are bombarded with propaganda about how central Jerusalem is to Muslims and Arabs, one of the striking ironies of the Middle East is that the Arabs who have an opportunity to visit Jerusalem are actively discouraged from doing so.

A few months ago, the Egyptian head of Al Azhar University stated that even though there is no political obstacle stopping Egyptians from visiting Jerusalem, he refuses to do so.

At about the same time, the Egyptian Olympic soccer team announced plans to play a friendly match with a Palestinian Arab team near Jerusalem - and then were forced to cancel that trip, under heavy criticism from Egypt for even considering doing something like this - even to help Palestinian Arab morale.

Soon thereafter, a popular Saudi TV preacher announced that he would broadcast a show from Jerusalem - and then he also quickly changed his mind under withering criticism from his colleagues.

Now, a Jordanian trade union has announced that Jordanians should not visit Jerusalem, even for religious purposes. Such visits, they say, fall under unacceptable "normalization" and should be fought against.

All of these proposed trips were to either be pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, or to help out Palestinian Arabs who feel isolated from even the Arab world. Yet the hatred of Israel is so acute that nothing can trump it.

While Jews will jump through hoops to visit holy places in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, Arabs are ostracized for considering doing the same for their supposedly third-holiest spot.

In fact, the one group of Arabs whose love of Jerusalem is enough for them to ignore this pressure aren't Muslims at all, but Christian Arabs who will travel from Egypt and Jordan to be in Jerusalem during Easter - even at the price of being punished back home by their employers and neighbors.

The greatest irony is that Palestinian Arabs would welcome any visit from their erstwhile "brethren." So it is not only that hating Israel is more important than the holiness of Jerusalem, but it is more important than helping Palestinian Arabs as well.

UPDATE: The Islamonazism blog points out that an Egyptian minister is indeed calling on all Muslims to visit Jerusalem - but to make Israel look bad:

Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq called on Muslims worldwide to visit Jerusalem and assert its Islamic identity.

In an interview with the Arab daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Zaqzouq attacked the traditional Arab policy of tourism boycott against the Jewish state. He warned Israel’s building in the city could smother Islamic sites.

"I say to those who insist on not visiting [Jerusalem] before its liberation: my worst fear is that you will have nothing to visit after Israel realizes its plans in Jerusalem and elsewhere,” Zaqzouq was quoted as saying.

Zaqzouq said his tactic of urging a worldwide conversion on Jerusalem could be used to expose any subsequent Israeli hypocrisy, should the Israeli government refuse to grant them entry permits. He said Muslims could then turn to the international community claiming religious discrimination.

"This would produce powerful leverage, in lieu of the current negative Islamic boycott," Zaqzouq said. "We are wrong to define Jerusalem as a Palestinian issue. Rather, it is a purely Islamic issue concerning 1.5 billion Muslims."

According to official data issued by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, only 1,870 Egyptians entered Israel in the first six months of this year. In comparison, some 77,000 Israeli traveled to Egypt during the same period.

"There are two sources of pressure preventing Egyptians from traveling to Israel," Sobhy Essaila, a researcher at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies told The Media Line. "The first is social and peer pressure placed on any individual wishing to travel to Israel. The second is the notion that the Egyptian security keeps a record of anyone traveling there."

Essaila denied that the Egyptian security apparatus outwardly pressured Egyptians not to travel to Israel, but the simple fact that they were being monitored put people off any visit. He added that traveling to Israel was regarded as a form of normalization which was widely rejected by the average Egyptian.