Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 13, 2014

11/13 Links Pt2: Lumish: “You Stole Their Land”; A Serious Medical Journal Just Went Mental

From Ian:

Author of ‘Best Speech by an Israeli Diplomat Ever’ Calls Time on Palestinian ‘Narrative of Victimhood’ (INTERVIEW)

I first encountered the name of George Deek at the end of September, when a reader sent me a link to an entry on a Norwegian blog headlined “The best speech an Israeli diplomat ever held.” Whether the speech deserved that ultimate praise is an open question, but it was certainly one of the more powerful personal accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I’ve ever read. The fact that its author was a 30 year old Christian Arab citizen of Israel, a native of Jaffa, and the current number two at the Israeli Embassy in Oslo, with an enviable command of Arabic, Hebrew and English, only made the person of George Deek more intriguing.
This week, I conducted a long interview with Deek over the phone. He spoke rapidly and eloquently for over an hour, weaving his personal story into the wider fabric of the Middle East’s myriad ethnic, religious and political conflicts. Deek made the case that his own, sometimes frustrating, quest to succeed in a Jewish state offers a scintilla of hope to the other countries of the Middle East, where – as we are seeing once again in Iraq and Syria – sectarian and communal divides are much more stark and brutal. That he did so with a charm that almost compels you to agree with him is by the bye; the intellectual merits of his arguments warrant serious consideration, and perhaps indicate that Deek has a future ahead of him as a liberal Arab writer or politician.

Michael Lumish: “You Stole Their Land”

The eastern coast of the Mediterranean has no more indigenous people than the Jewish people. We were there thousands of years prior to the Arab conquests. We were there, in no particular order, before the Romans or the Persians or the Babylonians or the Brits. There are no other people on this planet, from an historical perspective, who can lay greater claim to the Land of Israel than the people of Israel, the Jewish people.
Is there really any argument to be made that this is untrue?
Can, for example, San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi – who is building an academic career based on spreading hatred toward Jews among liberals and progressives – honestly argue that Jews have less claim to Judaea than do Arabs? Arabs conquered and now control 99.9 percent of the entire Middle East and it is somehow unjust that the native Jewish population hold onto any portion of our historic homeland?
It is entirely absurd, but this is the poison that they are selling.
The best and most straightforward manner of dealing with this nonsense is to remind western liberals that Israel is Jewish land. Just as France is French and England is English and Portugal is Portuguese and China is Chinese, so Israel is Jewish. The very word “Israel” means the Jewish people.
Now, unlike France, Engand, Portugal, or China, we are willing to share that land, but no one can tell us that it is not Jewish land.

Chloé Valdary: The Missing Piece: Jewish Lives Matter

“Yes it’s true that Jews have been an oppressed people. But lots of people are oppressed.”
Dr. Clayborne Carson — the director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University — gave this flippant response when I pointed out that Jews are an aboriginal people who come from the land of Israel, who have always yearned to return to their land. The trivialization of the persecution of a people could not have been captured so perfectly; but what was tragic about Carson’s statement was that the man who subtly diminished the plight of an indigenous civilization carried the name of Dr. King’s legacy; and indeed, Dr. King is turning in his grave.
Yet this was the sentiment that colored most of the arguments put forth by the debaters at Stanford’s panel discussion event entitled, “Whose Rights? An educational debate on the dis/connection between the U.S. Civil Rights Movement & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” In reality, neither Jewish nor Palestinian rights were truly substantially addressed. I brought up the former incessantly, but to no avail; the concept of the right of Jews to live anywhere on the face of the earth including Judea & Samaria is one which needed no responding to; the debaters preferred to ignore it. They also preferred to ignore the curtailing of the right of Jews to worship freely at their holiest site; the right of Jews to enter certain areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority; the right of Jews to buy land from Arabs; the right of Jews to visit the burial sites of their forefathers and mothers; the right of Jews to live anywhere in the land between the river and the sea.

1922: Arabs warning of riots are not exactly being friendly

This comes from testimony of Louis Lipsky to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, April 1922:

I also point out from the attention of the members of the committee the method of inciting a riot by constantly reiterating the possibility of riots.

The Arab press has been carrying on for the last three or four months a propaganda intended to warn the Jewish people that riots were coming. Now, I am not speaking of the Arab people in general, or the peasants working in the fields, but of the agitators in the cities, members of nationalist clubs in the cities, members of Arab nationalist clubs. They are the ones, these members of the Arab nationalist clubs, who are responsible for carrying on this propaganda, which keeps on repeating again and again that riots are coming. The action which has been taken by the British Government and by the Allies is intended to protect Jewish interests. The Balfour declaration prevents riots; the influx of new Jewish immigration prevents riots. It is the assumption that every act on the part of the Jewish people is inherently wrong, and therefore produces riots. The idea is put forth that every act of the Jewish people to maintain business or establish themselves or every act of the Jewish people in trying to get a foothold tends toward riots, and is used as an argument in favor of riots. It is said that if you do this or that riots will happen. I submit that that is not an indication of friendship, and that any witness who presents this plea or any witness representing any group who develop such ideas of animosity and hatred in his demands ought to have his testimony very carefully scrutinized by the members of this committee.

Sound familiar?

Of course, then as now, the same leaders who "warn" of riots are the ones who incite the riots. The book quotes the British report on the beginnings of the 1920-1921 riots in various parts of Palestine that killed dozens:

At 9 a. m. on the morning of April 4 [1920] the usual band of Hebron pilgrims to the feast of Habi Moussa entered Jerusalem, to the accompaniment of sword brandishing, shouting, and dancing. Several notables, including the Sheikh of Hebron, began to harangue the crowd. The speeches, coupled with a display of the portrait of King Feisel, soon worked up the excited audience to a dangerous pitch of enthusiasm, and suddenly the window of a Jewish shop was shattered and stones commenced to fly. The crowd swept through the Jaffa Gate into the old city, brutally attacking the Jewish passers-by and methodically looting the Jewish shops. The Jewish casualties numbered 170. Significant is the fact that children and aged people together constituted 50 per cent of the injured. It is noteworthy that there were simultaneous attacks in three different Jewish quarters of the old city, and for two hours the infuriated mob was free to wreak their worst on helpless victims, of whom so heavy a toll was taken.

Sinister rumors and blood-curdling threats of massacre continued for the succeeding days to disturb the Jewish population...

11/13 Links Pt1: UN and EU funded Al-Quds Uni honors murderer; US sailors attacked in Turkey

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Agenda of death

The violence is not driven by an attempt to improve the lives of Palestinians. The desire to revenge the deaths of Gazans killed in this summer’s Operation Protective Edge and the police’s killing of Kheir a-Din Hamdan in Kafr Kana last Friday is part of the equation. But the underlying source of the terrorism – which also precipitated this summer’s Gaza operation – is a violently reactionary Islamic triumphalism that says non-Muslims – particularly Zionists – are vile interlopers in a consecrated land.
This applies to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – the center of the unrest – as well as to Tel Aviv, as Aloni’s brutal murder demonstrates. The Palestinian offensive should not be seen in isolation from Islamic State’s bloody jihad, as Ynet’s Ron Ben-Yishai observed.
Suicide bombings, the second intifada and the victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections soured Israelis on the prospects of negotiating peaceful cooperation with their Palestinian neighbors.
The present wave of attacks is reinforcing this pessimism.
Israelis want to believe in dialogue, but the Palestinian religious fanatics getting behind the wheel or grabbing hold of a knife have a different agenda altogether.

UN- and EU-funded Al-Quds University honors murderer

Four days after Palestinian terrorist Ibrahim Al-Akari killed two and injured more than 13 Israelis in Jerusalem, the UN- and EU-funded Al-Quds University honored him by naming a tournament after him.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Khawaja, in charge of the Physical Education Faculty of the Al-Quds University, which organized the tournament, explained that:
"The Martyr (Shahid) Ibrahim Al-Akari Tournament... it was a national activity held in honor and appreciation of the soul of the heroic Martyr Ibrahim Al-Akari." [Al-Ayyam, Nov. 11, 2014]
In July 2013, the UN announced a donation of €2.4 million (close to 3 million US dollars) from the EU and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) to Al-Quds University, the aim of which would be to "contribute to the development and protection of Palestinian cultural heritage in the old city of Jerusalem." [UNDP website, July 2, 2013 and Al-Quds University website, accessed Nov. 12, 2014]

Mordechai Kedar: An Intifada of Arab Disappointment - with Themselves

One of the most important characteristics of a nation is a strong feeling of unity that allows its people to achieve the goals that it deems important. A people with a strong and unified national identity is able to put aside personal, political, ideological and sectorial differences so that its citizens can work together to succeed in reaching a goal that is important and significant to all of them.
Real leaders sense the people's will to unite for the sake of a national cause and can overcome the differences between them; if they do not, they will be replaced by others who are better than they, who know what the priorities are when there is a crucial national objective at stake. A people with a strong feeling of unity can handle a democratic country that does not fear differences of opinion and changes in government, because these do not degenerate into violence and therefore do not endanger its existence.
In contrast, a nation with a weak and fragile identity has chronic disputes that spill over into rhetorical violence and violent acts between its different sectors, with very little cooperation occurring between them. Different sectors feel threatened by each other leading to serious distrust. The nation's symbols are not strong enough to unite its population groups, each of which has goals differing from the other. This kind of nation will invent an external enemy in the hope that the war against it will unify the people for the sake of a higher interest, a war. This kind of nation raises the question of whether its citizens have enough of a feeling of commonality to keep them together and allow them to form a nation-state.

PA magazine insert cartoon shows Rabbi Glick as a snake, his shooter as hero

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Today, the bi-weekly paper The Capital City, which is distributed with the official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, featured a cartoon portraying Rabbi Yehuda Glick as a snake. Terrorist Mutaz Hijazi, who attempted to murder Rabbi Glick on Oct. 29, 2014, is seen trying to strangle Rabbi Glick while saying: "You make me mad!" [The Capital City, bi-weekly distributed with official PA daily, Nov. 13, 2014]

The Capital City lists as its "general supervisor" Othman Abu Gharbieh, who is a member of Fatah's Central Committee and the Secretary General of the Popular National Conference of Jerusalem, the PLO institution that publishes this bi-weekly.

The front page of the bi-weekly also honors terrorists. Under the headline "Jerusalem will speak only Arabic" are pictures of two terrorists: Mutaz Hijazi who shot Rabbi Glick and Ibrahim Al-Akari, who killed two and injured more than 13 Israelis in Jerusalem.

The original cartoon was published in Ar-Raya of Qatar.

UN extends "East Jerusalem" for propaganda purposes

From the UN OCHA:

On 29 October, an Israeli rabbi and settler leader of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation was shot and severely injured, reportedly by a 32-year-old Palestinian man from At Thuri neighborhood, in East Jerusalem. The latter is allegedly affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement. Later that night, in the context of an arrest operation, Israeli forces killed the suspected perpetrator, during an exchange of fire with him, according to Israeli media.

This incident further fueled existing tensions and clashes across East Jerusalem which have been on the rise since the last summer. Since 1 July 2014, four Palestinian have been killed and 1,333 injured including 80 children by Israeli forces in East Jerusalem; during this period, three Israelis were killed and another 65, including 33 civilians, were injured by Palestinians in the same area.

The Begin Center, where Glick was shot, is west of the old Green Line.

The UN is trying to pretend that Palestinian terrorism is all a result of "occupation" so it has an interest in lying about where they do their attacks to justify that fiction.

Of course, few reporters question anything the UN releases.

The changes to the status quo on the Temple Mount

JCPA just released a paper describing what the real status quo has been on the Temple Mount since 1967, and how it has changed.

Reporters and politicians should read this rather than make blanket statements they know nothing about. It also shows how Dayan acted without any appreciation of the Jewish attachment to the Mount. Here are some excerpts:

There were few restrictions on visitors and none of Jews specifically in this 1925 book
(which incidentally acknowledged that the Jewish Temples were built there.).

A few hours after Israel won the Six-Day War and unified Jerusalem Moshe Dayan came to the Temple Mount and began to devise the arrangements that would eventually be called the status quo. He ordered the lowering of the Israeli flag that had been raised at the site and the removal of the force of paratroopers who had liberated the Mount and set up permanent quarters in the northern part of the compound. In the following days, Dayan acted alone consulting with only a few experts. His main advisor was David Farhi, an expert on Arab affairs and lecturer in the history of the Islamic lands at the Hebrew University.

Farhi, who greatly influenced Dayan, put special emphasis on Islam’s basic attitude toward Judaism. Dayan was apprised that for hundreds of years Jews had suffered in the Muslim world solely as an enslaved people, without rights to any political status. Having rejected the teachings of Muhammad, they had come to be seen as an accursed people that had distorted the message of God.
Dayan thought, and years later committed the thought to writing, that since the Mount was a “Muslim prayer mosque” while for Jews it was no more than “a historical site of commemoration of the past…one should not hinder the Arabs from behaving there as they now do and one should recognize their right as Muslims to control the site.”

Dayan believed that the new order he designed on the Mount was the best way to prevent the national-territorial conflict from turning into a religious one that would be much more dangerous.
The basic elements of the status quo he devised included:

The Waqf, as an arm of the Jordanian Ministry of Sacred Properties, would continue to manage the site and be responsible for arrangements and for religious and civil affairs there.

Jews would not be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, but they would be able to visit it. (This right of freedom of access to the Mount was also eventually anchored within the context of the Protection of Holy Places Law.)

Israel, by means of its police force, would assume responsibility for security in the sacred compound, both within the site itself and regarding the wall and gates surrounding it.

Israeli sovereignty and law would be applied to the Temple Mount as to the other parts of Jerusalem, to which Israeli law was applied after the Six-Day War. (This stipulation was approved more than once by the Israeli High Court of Justice.)

It was later decided that the only entrance gate through which entry to the Mount by non-Muslims, including Jews, would be permitted would be the Mughrabi Gate, which is located at the center of the Western Wall, whereas Muslims would be able to enter the Mount through its many other gates.

Over the years the raising of flags of any kind was prohibited on the Mount.

Dayan felt duty-bound to try and create a barrier between religion and nationalism and prevent the conflict from taking on a religious hue. He believed that Islam should be allowed to exercise religious sovereignty over the Mount – religious sovereignty as opposed to national sovereignty. He thought it would thereby be possible to confine the Arab-Israeli conflict to the national-territorial dimension, while eliminating the potential for a conflict between the Jewish religion and the Muslim religion.

In granting Jews the right to visit the Temple Mount, Dayan sought to mitigate the power of Jewish demands for worship and religious sovereignty at the site.

In granting religious sovereignty to Muslims on the Temple Mount, Dayan believed he was mitigating the power of the site as a center for Palestinian nationalism.

In retrospect, the concession Dayan made in the name of the Jewish people was indeed immense, colossal, almost inconceivable. The Jewish state entrusted its holiest place to a competing religion – the Muslim religion, for which the place is only the third in holiness, and gave up the right to pray there.

What made this concession possible from the Jewish public’s standpoint was mainly the stance of the rabbis – both ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist. At that time (unlike today) an overwhelming majority of rabbis upheld the Halakhic prohibition on Jews entering the Temple Mount at all. From that standpoint, forbidding prayer at the site was not even relevant.

This was an alliance of interests – between religion and state – not often seen in Israel, and it won the backing of the High Court of Justice.15 Israel’s supreme legal authority indeed recognized Jews’ right to pray on the Temple Mount, but posited that this right was diminished by the near-certainty that exercising it would entail compromising public order and the security of the population as the conflict turned into a religious one. Thus, the triad of state, rabbis, and High Court of Justice made the status quo on the Temple Mount a lasting reality. In the first two decades after the Six-Day War, only few questioned it.

The following is a list of the changes in the status quo that have occurred on the Temple Mount, and the processes and considerations that led to them.

The original status quo barred Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, but it allowed Jews to visit it. Today, however, even visits to the Mount by Jews (even without prayer) are often prevented or substantially restricted.16

This change stems from the incitement, threats, and violence that the Muslims are deploying against the Jews who try to ascend the Temple Mount. At the crux of the incitement is the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” calumny, which is directed at the State of Israel and accuses it of intending and planning to topple the Al-Aqsa Mosque.17

In the past Jews were allowed to visit not only during the week but also on Sabbath days, and even within the mosques. Today that is no longer possible. Likewise, entry to the Mount by Jews having a religious appearance is limited to groups. Their visits are carefully monitored by Waqf guards and policemen. Visiting hours on the Mount for Jews and tourists have been restricted to Sunday through Thursday, for only four hours each day: three of them in the morning and one in the early afternoon.

...The considerable expansion of the Muslims’ prayer areas on the Mount is part of a proclaimed intent of the Muslims and the Waqf to turn the whole compound into a prayer area, thereby precluding any possibility in the future of even allocating a corner for Jewish prayer.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the intra-Muslim struggle over priority on the Temple Mount between actors such as Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel fostered intensive activity on the Mount by the last of those four. Concomitantly, the prayer areas of Solomon’s Stables and ancient Al-Aqsa were prepared, and the leader of the Northern Branch, Sheikh Raed Salah, who dubs himself “Sheikh Al-Aqsa,” greatly upgraded his own religious and political status at the site. Salah is known for radical and inflammatory sermons against the State of Israel, the Zionist movement and Jews, and for baseless calumnies about the Temple Mount.

In the face of this major change in the situation on the Mount, the Israeli government appeared weak and reluctant. It feared that more resolute action would ignite a conflagration, accepted what had been done after the fact, and in effect perpetuated the situation there indefinitely.

After the Six-Day War the state, and subsequently the High Court of Justice, had determined that the laws of the State of Israel applied to the Temple Mount.19 Today the situation is different. De jure, the State of Israel has indeed upheld this principle; de facto, already for many years the laws pertaining to planning, construction, and antiquities on the Temple Mount have not been enforced, or have been enforced only very partially and unofficially.

Hamas' Qassam Brigades brag that their first murder was of a rabbi

Hamas' Felesteen newspaper has a photo essay of their new "popular army" that is being trained by the Al Qassam Brigades.

Some of the members are graduates of the high school terror training that Hamas had announced earlier this year

The accompanying article goes through the illustrious achievements of the Qassam Brigades.

According to the story, the "operation" of the Brigades was to murder the rabbi of Kfar Darom, Gaza on January 1, 1992.

Doron Shorshan

In reality, the murder was of Doron Shorshan, a farmer, shot to death as he was returning from the greenhouses. (A few months later Rabbi Shimon Biran from the same village was also murdered. )

It is most telling that Hamas (and Hamas apologist media like Middle East Monitor) want to emphasize that their first victim was. specifically, a rabbi and not a farmer or soldier. The thought that their first victim was a "rabbi" - the most Jewish of Jews to them - is what makes them proud.

Given how important symbolism is to Arabs, this proves - as if any more proof is needed - that Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups are based on Jew-hatred, not on anti-Zionism.

11/12 Links Pt2: Obama’s False Choice on Israel; Kevin Vickers to be honoured by Israeli Knesset

From Ian:

Obama’s False Choice on Israel

Until the political culture of the Palestinians undergoes a sea change that will make peace possible, talk about what Israel must do is a waste of time. The overwhelming majority of Israelis who, unlike Obama and many American Jews, have paid attention to the Palestinians’ consistent rejection of peace understand this and are prepared to wait until then. Considering that the status quo has lasted for decades after we first heard arguments about it being unsustainable, it is not unreasonable to think that it can go on for a very long time indeed without Israel being obligated to endanger its security in order to avoid its continuation.
That’s a position that all friends of Israel, whether liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, should be willing to accept even if it goes against our instinctive American belief that all differences can be split in a spirit of compromise that even moderate Palestinians still dreaming of Israel’s destruction don’t share. The only real choices facing Jews and other friends of Israel is whether they are prepared to give the President a pass for his destructive attitude toward the alliance because of his party affiliation or if they are so detached from a sense of Jewish peoplehood that they will tolerate the mainstreaming of anti-Israel attitudes that are growing dangerously close to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Any argument to the contrary is merely a partisan attempt by Obama apologists to change the subject.

Dan Joseph of MRC exposes a failed protest against Sabra Hummus

My friend, Dan Joseph, a journalist with Media Research Center recently went to a protest in Georgetown, Washington DC. Dan was kind enough to give me some time out of his busy schedule to tell me what the premise of the protest was and how he was able to get these anti Israel activists to admit their disdain for Israel’s existence. This recent protest was directed at Sabra products which creates hummus and various other types of dips that many people all over the world enjoy. The forecast of these protests is becoming increasingly smaller since Protective Edge. As Dan pointed out to me, people are much more aware of the fact that Hamas perpetrated these attacks directly on Israel, and social media awareness has woken many people up that Israel is not at fault for the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. We applaud Dan for his unapologetic support for the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
“The protest started, and it was raining on and off, it grew in numbers and was there for an hour. I hid camera to side, walked up as objective observer, they tried to stop me from interviewing them. Their line of reasoning behind the protest was that Sabra hummus sends care packages to IDF, Golani Brigade who they accuse of doing all sorts of terrible things, we couldn’t find anything troubling with the Golani Brigade’s involvement in the war in Gaza. Once they figured out who we were it got more hostile and they got defensive about their protest, tried to make it light, get them to say crazy things and that throws them off, “Israel is guilty of genocide and any company does business with them is guilty of genocide.” Dan Joseph
And this:
“One man came out and said “Israel does not have the right to exist.” They’re (the protestors) are very good at hiding and keeping on their talking points, it’s very hard to get them to admit their antisemitism. They will say they have Jewish friends, but that they hate and are against zionism. Once you get them to say the truth of their agenda the truth wins out. “ Dan Joseph

Anti-Israel Protestors Target Hummus

Kevin Vickers to be honoured by Israeli Knesset

Israeli parliamentarians will honour Canada's sergeant-at-arms, Kevin Vickers, on Wednesday for the actions he took during the shootings on Parliament Hill.
On Oct. 22, Vickers, 58, shot Michael Zehaf-Bibeau after the gunman stormed Parliament Hill.
Vickers is being invited to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to meet his Israeli counterpart and talk about security. While there, he will be recognized by the speaker of the Knesset and will be asked to rise in his seat in the gallery to be acknowledged by Israeli legislators.
Vickers is in Israel to attend a major conference on security in Tel Aviv, a trip planned long before the shootings in Ottawa. He is part of a delegation sponsored by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs that includes other Canadian police and security officials.

"If Israel takes over Jerusalem, then Palestinian nationalism will die"

Rami G. Khouri is about as moderate a Palestinian commentator as you can find. He is Christian, recognizes that the Temple Mount is holy to Jews and is willing to blame Arabs for their mistakes.

Even so, he justifies the recent spike in Arab terror:

The absence of PA forces under the control of President Mahmoud Abbas also means that those forces cannot quell Palestinian demonstrations against Israel, as happens in all other parts of the West Bank, where PA forces more often than not act to defend Israel as much as to keep peace among Palestinians, unfortunately. Arab Jerusalemites are essentially ungoverned and unrepresented politically, because they do not fall under Palestinian authority and they are underserved by an Israeli state that also keeps building new settlements on lands surrounding the holy city. Because of this condition of living in a political vacuum, Palestinians in Jerusalem have only themselves to rely on to defend their lands and rights, and in cases of extreme threats and violence used against them, they resort to violence such as we are witnessing these days.

Then he says something interesting:

The intense symbolism of Jerusalem for Palestinians includes two dimensions: the holy sites of the Noble Sanctuary, especially the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque, but also the city as the capital of Palestine, even though a Palestinian state does not exist yet. If Jerusalem is allowed to fall to Zionist colonialism and become fully Judaized, the entire Palestinian national cause would have been dealt a fatal blow. Jerusalem has always been a central battle in the Arab war with Zionism — but for many Palestinians it is now also the last battle.

The PLO covenants of 1964 and 1968 did not mention Jerusalem once. The Palestinian National Charter of 1968 likewise does not mention Jerusalem a single time. (Fatah's charter does mention Jerusalem once.)

If Jerusalem has always been so central to Palestinian Arab nationalism, then why was it ignored for so long?

The interest that Arabs altogether, and Palestinians in particular, have shown in Jerusalem has been proportional to the interest that Jews have to assert their national and religious rights in their ancient capital. Between 1948 and 1967, Jerusalem was an unimportant Jordanian city, and there were no mass pilgrimages there. Only when Jews started to say that Jerusalem was theirs, and always has been, have the Arabs decided that it is supremely important for them too.

And this spills over even into the writings of a "moderate."

The fact is that if Palestinian nationalism cannot survive without Jerusalem, then it is an artificial construct to begin with. The nearly exclusive use of the Dome of the Rock as the constant backdrop for Palestinian press conferences is a relatively recent phenomenon.

They don't want Jerusalem - they want to ensure that Jews do not have Jerusalem. Because they know that Israel without Jerusalem is just a secular state, and they can deal with a secular state, because such states come and go. They cannot deal with a proud Jewish state that asserts rights that go back to before Islam existed.

Khouri has subconsciously revealed the shallowness of the Palestinian national cause. If it was about rights, or refugees, or land, or even "justice," then they could have a state. But it isn't about any of those. It is about the symbolism of controlling Jerusalem. And the only reason that this is so important is because of the Arab honor/shame society that cannot stomach the weak, dhimmi Jews asserting rights on land that everyone knows they have been tied to for thousands of years. The minute they give up on Jerusalem, they give up on the goal of expelling Jews from political power in the Middle East.

EU: "We're Not Antisemitic - We Haven't Had A Holocaust In Like 70 Years" (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

We're Not Antisemitic - We Haven't Had A Holocaust In Like 70 Years

By The European Union

The recent spate of antisemitic violence in France is deplorable, as were the various attacks on Jews in Belgium and elsewhere over the last several months. But it would be irresponsible and malicious to say that Europe as a whole remains antisemitic - we haven't had a Holocaust here in almost seventy years.

The Holocaust was easily humanity's - and Europe's - darkest hour. Entire ethnic groups ganged up on a defenseless minority and tried to wipe them out. But to claim that the continent and culture that gave ruse to such a horror and the continent and culture of today have similar characteristics is to engage in petty demagoguery. It's been nearly seven decades since we last engaged in the systematic vilification, persecution, torture, internment, starvation, and slaughter of Jews. That's a whopping 2,207,520,000 seconds between us and the worst crime in the history of mankind.

And it's not as if we've even come close since. We learned some important lessons, such as how to put perpetrators of genocide on trial after they've already slaughtered untold numbers. Not just in far-flung places such as Rwanda and Cambodia, but right here on European soil - we stood firmly on the side of human rights and the sanctity of human life when we put Slobodan Milosevic and his ilk on trial. It was a bold move, sitting in our courtroom in The Hague and shaking our fists at the murderous policies of Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic in the former Yugoslavia years earlier.

Not that vigilance is unimportant. We Europeans know well the vigilance necessary to prevent our sense of ethnocentrism from causing others to feel discrimination. That it why we refrain from real action against the rhetoric and violence of Muslim immigrants. Europe knows it must never perpetrate violence against Jews. And far be it from us to impose our sensibilities in that regard on our immigrants, who might have very different ideas about Jews and how to treat them.

There will always be a vocal minority in our midst that refuses to internalize the lessons of the Holocaust. But to define us by them would be unjust. We haven't placed Jews in concentration camps in 3,600 weeks. Keep them from reaching the shores of Palestine, yes, and support the equation of their aspirations for a homeland with racism, sure, but kill them? No - that is no longer our ethos. It hasn't been for, like, seventy years, as far as anybody can prove.

We can leave that part to the Arabs.

11/12 Links Pt1: Why Abbas Will Not Condemn Terror Attacks; Hamas 2nd Richest Terror Org

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Abbas Will Not Condemn Terror Attacks

Secretary of State Kerry's "peace process" actually put Israelis and Palestinians on a new collision course.
Not a single Palestinian Authority official has denounced the wave of terror attacks on Israel. They, too, are afraid of being condemned by their people for denouncing "heroic operations" such as ramming a car into a three-month old infant.
Kerry and other Western leaders do not want to understand that Abbas is not authorized to make any concessions for peace with Israel. For Abbas, it is more convenient to be criticized by the U.S. and Israel than to be denounced by his own people. Ignoring these facts, Kerry tried to pressure Abbas into making concessions that would have turned the Palestinian Authority president into a "traitor" in the eyes of his people. Abbas knows that the people he has radicalized would turn against him if he dared to speak out against the killing of Jews.

As Israelis Are Murdered in Palestinian Terror Attacks, Psaki Urges ‘All Sides’ to Show ‘Restraint’ (VIDEO)

Matt Lee: All right, I’m just going to assume that, correct me if I’m wrong but when you say all parties must show restraint, you’re talking about the, who are you talking about?
Jen Psaki: Well, we’re talking about the Israelis, the Palestinians, any who are uh, involved in these uh, eh, tension-raising, rhetoric-raising incidents.
Matt Lee: Okay, but I mean, if you’re standing at a bus stop or something and someone runs a car into you or comes up and stabs you, I don’t know how to, I mean, those people aren’t, don’t need to exercise restraint, do they?
Jen Psaki: Well, Matt, I think I’m referring to the fact that we know that there have been, there’s been rising tensions in the region that has led to some of these incidents, I think we are all aware of that (laughs).
Matt Lee: In terms of the restraint and the rhetoric.
Jen Psaki: Um hmm?
Matt Lee: Are you seeing any, I mean, uh, last week you were pretty down on both sides or you were up, you were pleased with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s calls, uh, and uh the stuff that he did with the Jordanians about getting the tensions around the Temple Mount down, but you weren’t particularly happy with President Abbas, is that, is that changed?
Jen Psaki: Well, I think they also said last week, I was speaking to one incident of Prime Minister Netanyahu, obviously there have been a range of issues and events that have led to the rising tensions in the region, that both sides need to do more to [unintelligible].

Daily Press Briefing: November 10, 2014 (starts 29:16)

Israel's faulty calculus

In response to Palestinian unilateralism, Israel must also assert full sovereignty over any areas in Judea and Samaria deemed necessary to maintain its security. Palestinians living in any annexed lands should likewise be given a path to citizenship and the option to relocate.
If a further entrenchment of the IDF is temporarily necessary, then forces should be deployed in requisite numbers.
Finally, Israel must consider cutting ties entirely with the PA, allowing it to collapse like the house of cards it is. The country can, and will, deal with whatever comes afterwards as long as its borders are secure and a military presence exists in close proximity to any cities under continued Palestinian control.
The alternative to asserting Jewish rights is worse – and in plain view: an endless cycle of violence waged by sworn enemies under the guise of a phony peace process. There is no white dove fluttering its wings at the end of the peace tunnel, which is nothing less than another underground conduit for more terrorism from the likes of Fatah and Hamas.
Pandering to murderers is not why Jews fought and died for the establishment of Israel. The goal was never the creation of a banana republic devoid of direction or intestinal fortitude; one which, unless it gets its act together – and soon – might no longer be worth fighting for at all.

PA official calls for jihad, then warns of religious war

You know how Mahmoud Abbas liked to warn that Israeli actions in Jerusalem would lead to a religious war?

Only one side is calling for a religious war, and it isn't Israel:

In a November 6, 2014 interview on Palestinian Authority TV, Mahmoud Habbash, former PA minister of religious endowment, said that waging Jihad for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque was a duty incumbent upon every Muslim worldwide, and warned that the flames of a religious war "could reach the U.S., Washington itself, Europe, Asia, Africa, everywhere." In a sermon delivered in Ramallah on November 7, 2014, in the presence of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Habbash said that the battle being waged in Jerusalem is "the final phase, after which our banners will fly... over the minarets of Jerusalem, over its churches, its domes, its hills, its mountains, its alleys, and its homes." The sermon was broadcast by the PA's Awda TV channel.

Following are excerpts:

Awda TV, November 6, 2014

Mahmoud Habbash: Today, protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque and waging Jihad – both with one's own body and through aid – for the sake of Al-Aqsa constitute an individual duty, incumbent upon every Muslim man and woman from all corners of the Earth.
[...]
We are witnessing an insane war, being waged against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the holiest place for Muslims in Palestine.
[...]
If this escalation continues – as President [Abbas] himself warned – it might ignite a religious war. Some people might just ignore it when they hear the term "religious war." They do not fathom what religious war means and how dangerous it might be. Simply put, a religious war would mean that every Israeli would become a target for any Muslim, from America to Japan, from the north to the south. From everywhere. Every Muslim would feel that his religious and faith are under threat, and that one of his holiest sites is being targeted by those Israelis, and would conclude that the Israelis are enemies, and therefore, constitute targets, for the sole reason that they are Israelis.

Once all the Arabs and Muslims from all over the world join the fray in the direct, physical, and operational sense, the [Israelis] will face a war against 1.5 billion Muslims.
[...]
This religious war will not be limited to Palestine. Its flames could reach the U.S., Washington itself, Europe, Asia, Africa, everywhere. Is that really what they want? It's not what we want. When we warn of a religious war, it is not an attempt to threaten anyone or arouse fear. It is a genuine warning to the world and to the U.N. Security Council.
[...]
Palestinian Authority TV, November 7, 2014

The Prophet Muhammad has given us orders and we obey them. We are grateful to Allah for choosing us, selecting us, to live in Jerusalem and its environs. We confront [the enemy], challenge it, entrench ourselves, and defend the places holy to our religion and our nation. We are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most holy place in Islam, the place to which the Prophet Muhammad made his nocturnal journey, and the cradle of Jesus.

We are protecting the land of the prophets from the enemies of the prophets. We are protecting the land of the divine revelations from the enemies of the messengers. The battle that is being waged today in Jerusalem, my brothers – by Allah, I believe that this is the final phase, after which our banners will fly, by the will of Allah, over the minarets of Jerusalem, over its churches, its domes, its hills, its mountains, its alleys, and its homes.

Sounds a lot like the mob, doesn't it? "We don't want to burn down your store, but you give us no choice!"

The Palestinian Authority just threatened every "Israeli" (wink, wink) worldwide, by saying that if Israel enforces civil rights for Jews, then Jews worldwide will pay.

And not one Western leader will denounce this.

UNRWA media advisor pushes anti-Israel fauxtography (UPDATE)

UNRWA media advisor Adnan Abu Hasna has a high-profile job in Gaza.

Here he is with then-EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton:

And with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon:

Here is what the Facebook page of Adnan Abu Hasna looks like, today:

The photo caption says "A despicable Israeli puts his feet on a Palestinian girl. Let this picture reach the entire world in 24 hours. All you have to do is click 'Share'. "

As we've shown, this photo is fake. it was part of a Bahraini street theater.

The photo with the chain mail caption that Hasna shared was uploaded by Ghad.PS newspaper FB page back on April 17. Hasna shared it on November 8.

Most of the Arabic comments point out that the photo was fake, mostly because the IDF does not use Russian rifles.

However, Adnan Abu Hasna didn't bother to read the comments - or he ignored them deliberately. He didn't think twice about forwarding FB "chain mail." He saw an anti-Israel photo, and by Allah, he had to follow the instructions to share it.

And he is a UNRWA media advisor!

Why would UNRWA hire someone as a media advisor who propagates lies so easily?

Oh, right. That's what UNRWA does. Constantly, blatantly, incessantly.

Never mind - dumb question. The real question is how the world tolerates a United Nations agency that disregards the truth so much?

Oh, right. The lies are mostly against Israel. Never mind.

(h/t IronyDome, Ibn Boutros)

UPDATE: It appears I am mistaken. The picture was placed on his timeline by one of his friends. I regret the error. One day I need to learn Facebook. (H/t Bob Knot)

Today's fake Gaza "journalist"

On August 29, UNESCO issued this press release:

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, today denounced the killing of Palestinian journalist Abdullah Murtaja, who died on 25 August.

“I condemn the killing of Abdullah Murtaja,” the Director-General said. “Journalists must be able to carry out their work in safe conditions and their civilian status needs to be respected at all times. Society needs to be kept informed of events, never more so than when living in the shadow of conflict.”

I had previously found a photo of Murtaja with a rifle, but I didn't think he was a terrorist fighter. Until now.

A new video was released showing Murtaja giving his "martyr" statement meant to be shown posthumously.

The "journalist" who worked for Hamas' Al Aqsa TV, was also an Al Qassam Brigades terrorist. Hamas is calling him a "media martyr."

It is a war crime to have fighters pretend to be protected civilians. Will UNESCO release a statement condemning Hamas' using fighters who masquerade as journalists?

See also Israellycool. And Bob Knot found this poster: