Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 14, 2014

11/14 Links Pt1: Channeling incitement through Abbas’s free pass; Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Channeling incitement through Abbas’s free pass

As if the escalating terrorist attacks in Israel over the past few weeks haven’t been bad enough, what has been so dismaying is the way the West simply refuses to acknowledge what is happening in front of its eyes.
Numerous Western media outlets described the murderous attacks by Palestinians ramming their cars into Israelis in the street as “car crashes” or “traffic accidents.”
Yet Fatah’s official Facebook page featured cartoons, lyrics and other messages encouraging Palestinians to run over Israelis with their vehicles. Preposterously, it raved that the Aksa mosque was under threat. “Run over, friend, run over the foreign settler!” it screamed. “The Jews are defiling al-Aksa – will you not rage?” As the director-general of the Strategic Affairs Ministry Yossi Kuperwasser said this week, the violence – which has developed into stabbing attacks – is the inevitable result of the systematic dehumanization of Jews ingrained in Palestinians’ psyche from early childhood. Day in, day out they are told that the Jews are “the descendants of apes and pigs,” that they have “no historical connection to Jerusalem,” that they are “defiling” the city with their presence and that those who kill them are heroes.
Such venomous indoctrination is being perpetrated by Palestinian school textbooks, social media, cultural activities – and by Mahmoud Abbas. This supposedly moderate Palestinian leader has now revealed himself openly as a principal instigator of violence and mass murder.

Fatah Official: Palestinians Who Sell Land to Jews Should Be Hanged on Electric Poles

Exclusive: Hamas bombed Fatah officials' homes and faked ISIS claim of responsibility

It was Hamas that bombed homes and vehicles belonging to Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip last Friday, making sure to forge a false claim of responsibility by the Islamic State in Gaza, a Western intelligence source speaking exclusively to The Jerusalem Post revealed on Thursday.
The incident – which caused damage but no injuries – was conducted by Hamas’s armed wing, Izzadin Kassam, without a heads-up to its political leaders, the source said.
“We will not allow the return of internal conflicts, chaos and anarchy to the Gaza Strip,” Hamas spokesman Eyad al-Bozom said after the blasts. “The security services will pursue anyone who had any connection to these criminal acts until they are brought to justice.”
The intelligence source said such activities may form a pattern of operation conducted by Hamas when it wants to hurt its rivals without being blamed.
The source added that the explosion at the French Cultural Center in Gaza City on October 7 was the work of Izzadin Kassam. In that case as well, Hamas issued a false claim alleging Islamic State responsibility.

Antisemitism conference in Berlin ignores Muslim Jew-hatred

The NYT reports:

Against the backdrop of what several speakers called an unmistakable rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, the American ambassador to the United Nations warned on Thursday that the increase in attacks poses a threat to European values, and urged leaders to step up their efforts to thwart anti-Jewish sentiment.

“Make no mistake – we have a problem,” said Samantha Power, a top aide to President Obama, at a conference here organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She said the growing number of anti-Semitic acts “are not only a threat to the Jewish community, they are a threat to the larger project of European liberalism and pluralism.”

The two-day conference was attended by only about two-thirds of the 57 member states, most of whom, unlike the United States, sent deputy-level representatives.

Ms. Power, speaking firmly, chastised European leaders, asking why fewer countries were attending the gathering than were present a decade ago, when representatives passed a resolution on fighting anti-Semitism, known as the Berlin Resolution. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi of Israel noted at the time that the measure had been adopted with the force of law in only 12 of the 57 participating states.

Here is Samantha Powers' speech. (Full text here.)

The only specific groups she mentioned as having antisemitic attitudes were right wing groups in Europe. The only mentions of Muslims she gives are two anecdotes of Jewish groups (in Sarajevo and in London) helping Muslims in trouble. She elliptically mentioned that antisemitic attitudes were being manifested in anti-Israel protests - protests that she emphasized were an important part of a pluralistic society - but she did not once mention that Muslims are the major purveyors of antisemitism worldwide today, even as she mentioned specific attacks on Jews in Europe that were done by Muslims.

And it was not only Samantha Power. The conference's closing statement mentions nothing about rabid incitement against Jews happening daily in Muslim countries.

The conference agenda shows that there was not a single session talking about endemic antisemitism coming from Muslim communities in Europe and Arab states However, there was one about right-wing nationalism:

Working Group IV: The Relationship between Nationalism and Anti-Semitism. Nationalist and populist political parties in Europe have been part of the political landscape for some time, employing at various times anti-Semitism as part of their ideology. However, concerns revolve around the recent electoral success in some countries of extreme right-wing parties that openly use anti-Semitism as part of their party platform. There have also been troubling incidents of individual politicians from more mainstream parties making unabashed use of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Furthermore, challenges emerge from charges of anti-Semitism brandished openly in the political arena. This working group will discuss ways to counter manifestations of anti-Semitism in the political arena.

Of course, there are some manifestations of antisemitism among some right wing groups in Europe, but almost all of the actual attacks have been coming from Muslims. Malmo, Paris, Toulouse, Brussels, Berlin, London - Muslims have been behind the events we've all read about, not right wing nationalist groups. Even The Guardian, when writing on the resurgence of antisemitism, mentions the Muslim factor.

The fact that the biggest source for hate and incitement has been ignored and downplayed by this conference shows that the conference itself is not meant to seriously address antisemitism, but rather to pretend to address it by using it as an excuse to attack the groups that they want to attack anyway and to ignore the major source of hate in the world today.

From what I can see online, this conference was a joke. Nothing will come out from it and already it is being watered down from the original Berlin conference on the topic ten years ago. It is an exercise in self-congratulatory politics so attendees can pretend that they "did something" - but nothing so drastic that they could put themselves in danger from radical Muslims who live in their own areas.

(h/t Ronald)

UPDATE: I'm told on Twitter that this working group addressed this.

Working Group VI: Addressing Anti-Semitism against the Background of the Conflict in the Middle East
At the 2004 Berlin conference, OSCE participating States emphasized that international developments, including those in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism. A lack of differentiation between the actions of the state of Israel and Jewish communities in OSCE participating States can lead to direct threats as well as to attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. This working group will address ways for governments and civil society to identify effective approaches to countering anti-Semitic discourse in connection with conflicts in the Middle East. This will include a discussion about relevant educational tools.

Maybe the group was great, but the descriptions seems to me to still be trying hard not to offend Muslims rather than attack the topic head on.

From Ma'an:

A group of Palestinians stuck on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing into Gaza on Thursday called upon Egypt to open the crossing after three weeks of closure in order to allow them to return to the Gaza Strip.

"We have been stuck in Egypt for 20 days, but no one has helped us or even talks about us," Talal Salim, one of those stuck at the crossing, told Ma'an.

The Palestinians stuck at the border are victims of the Egyptian government's policies regarding the crossing's opening hours, which can be sealed shut for weeks at a time with little notice.

The most recent closure came after a bomb hit Egyptian soldiers in el-Arish, 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of the Gaza border. The crossing was closed in response, despite the lack of a clear relationship between the incident and Gaza.

The Deputy Minister of the Interior in Gaza, Kamel Abu Madi, called upon Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing permanently, arguing that "there is no excuse for its closure."

Outside of Israeli, Jewish and Arab media, this story has been almost completely ignored. (The Huffington Post published an article that buried the Egyptian closure in a larger diatribe against Israel.)

However, when Israel closed the its crossings for a couple of days earlier this month after rocket fire, wire services reported on this worldwide.

Construction materials were also being imported from Egypt to Gaza, so that has stopped along with the people being stranded, medical patients with nowhere to go except Israel, and students who cannot get to their Egyptian universities.

So why does an Israeli closure for two days get far more media coverage than an Egyptian closure of three weeks and counting?

We all know the answer.

Islamic Jihad is taking credit for the current wave of stabbing attacks in Israel by bragging that they started the trend nearly thirty years ago.

They write:

The beginning [of the knife revolution] was in 1986 when the fighter Khaled Jaidi shook the pillars of the occupation and settlers when he headed to the Firas market looking to stab;for his first goal was a settler (Haim Ezran), first fatality of a usurper from the stabbing knife of Islamic Jihad at the hands of pure Mujahideen.

This daring operation began a new phase in Gaza.

Jaidi did not stop at this point but continued the mission and went continuing his resistance with a knife, terrifying the settlers and (stabbing) three others.

He was arrested by the Zionist occupation forces on 24.12.1986 and sentenced to three life sentences in prison, and he gained freedom in a deal after 23 years of captivity.

Here is how the first two victims were murdered:

An Israeli from Ashkelon was fatally stabbed while shopping in Gaza Saturday. The victim, Haim Azran, 35, was assaulted from behind in an alley off the main street and knifed twice in the throat and once in the back.

He was aided by a friend, Mordechai Mordi, who summoned help from the local military head-quarters. An ambulance rushed Azran to Barzilai Hospital. He was taken by helicopter from there to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba where he died of his wounds.

[Yisrael] Kitaro, 43 years old, was killed when he took his taxi to the auto repair shop in Gaza that his Shimshon Taxi Company has been using for the last 14 years. Many Israelis have their car repairs done in Gaza because the labor rates are cheaper.

While Mr. Kitaro was waiting outside for the work to be completed, a man came up behind him and slit his throat. Bleeding profusely, Mr. Kitaro managed to stagger about 100 yards - none of the Arabs would get near him - before he was picked up by a Border Police squad. By the time he was transferred to hospital, he was dead. The Israeli police have imposed a curfew on the neighborhood and rounded up several suspects.

The terror group goes on to describe many other stabbings done by "heroic" and "pure mujahadeen".

As usual, you will not be able to find a single Arabic-language voice denouncing a culture that turns people who stab random Jews to death into heroes.

That is how one can judge a culture. The near-absence of opposition to randomly stabbing civilians to death, on moral grounds is one of the most under-reported stories in Western media.

There are always going to be extremists in any group of people, but Western media chooses not to notice the huge amount of support given to the terrorists by the silence or cheerleading of hundreds of millions of Arabs for terrorism against Jews. Only a tiny minority actively kill - but the vast majority condone it, based on the absence of anyone saying in their own language that these kinds of attacks are reprehensible.

So Islamic Jihad has a blank check from the Arab world to praise murderers without fear of being put on the defensive by their own community.

Rage and calm (Poster)

Commenter Matti found this poster was on the Fatah Facebook page:

The caption says "When Jews desecrate....We get angry!"

And there was also this:

Posters spread over Jerusalem calling on Palestinians to"Get angry" for"Jews have entered AlAqsa & stomped on Quran" pic.twitter.com/3GtOlz3tev
— Mudar Zahran (@Mudar_Zahran) November 5, 2014

What can you say about a "peace partner" where there is constant incitement to violence like this?

I tweeted this poster earlier, using real headlines:

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.