Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Head of Al Azhar U tells students to read the "Protocols of Elders of Zion"

In 2009, during his Cairo speech, President Obama said:

I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement.

...As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Today, we can see exactly how enlightened Al Azhar University is.

"The damned Jews keep accusing us of antisemitism!"

The president of Al-Azhar University, Dr. Abd El-Hay Azab, while re-opening the university dormitory following last year's violence, demanded students read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to get familiar with conspiracies the nation is facing.

"I swear to God there is a new colonial war that is targeting our youth in order to destroy your country and homes with your hands," he said, warning the youth against "institutions of fitna" (other religious institutions with different agendas), and requesting the read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to fortify themselves against such conspiracies.

He also said "Zionists are working for the security of Israel through [creating] instability in the region, particularly Egypt," saying that this was a conspiracy against all Muslims and pointing out that these conspiracies against religion in general and against Al-Azhar in particular, as they are spreading the idea that Al-Azhar is stronghold of terrorism.

(h/t Shawarma News)

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

I noted last week that Palestinian leaders will take any international conference and try to hijack it for anti-Israel purposes.

Today is International Human Rights Day. Mahmoud Abbas' speech on the occasion says nothing specific about how Palestinians should respect human rights (outside of signing human rights agreements) - only that this day must be used to attack Israel.

Here is the entire speech so you can see how little Abbas cares about his own responsibility to provide human rights for his people:

In the same year when the international community adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ensure the maintenance of freedom and fundamental rights, and the preservation of human dignity, the Palestinian people faced to their misfortune a project that aims to eradicate them from his land and the denial of their existence, and while this announcement confirmed that the rights contained therein must ensure that each man has basic rights, the Palestinian man was deprived of the most basic national and individual rights, especially the right to life and freedom.

Taking salute today, December 10, of the International Day of Human Rights, the sons of our Palestinian people are targets of a new attack from the Israeli occupation and settlers in the framework of the continuous aggression on the rights and land and holy places of Christianity and Islam, which targets mainly children and young people, protectors of the dream and the future generation.

I've cited in the aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014 nearly 2200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. Since the beginning of October 2015, 117 Palestinians have been killed so far, including 25 children, as well as arrest and torture campaigns against our people, including children, with more than 10,000 Palestinian children arrested, since 2000 to now.

In this regard, the State of Palestine decided to revive this day, particularly in schools all over the country, to highlight the crimes of the occupation against the Palestinian child, and the emphasis on their right, like the children of the world, to live in freedom and dignity upon the soil of his homeland.

Our Palestinian people will continue our struggle to achieve our objectives of freedom and independence and return, and will, at the same time, promote a human rights system and the protection of freedoms and ensure equality and non-discrimination as a basis for our independent state, as a state of all its citizens, male and female, different religions and beliefs, opinions, social circumstances, and the consolidation of National Unity and pluralistic democratic society and human dignity concepts.

Our national unity has been formed and our social solidarity is the guarantor and protector of the national fabric, despite displacement, occupation and illegal practices of colonization and siege and wall barriers.

Our Declaration of Independence has been confirmed in 1988, including the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people in the face of the occupation, and it also stressed the respect and safeguarding of fundamental human rights principles to be protected as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so as to consolidate the gains of our people in the framework of continuous struggle, and the embodiment of an independent Palestinian state, and an expression of its continuing quest to ensure the rights and freedoms of the Palestinian people in the face of the occupation, and meeting for the sacrifices of our people and their aspirations, and Palestine is now an observer in the United Nations and its accession to international agreements, especially in the field of human rights, without any reservations, to promote our national and state struggle to assure every citizen of his rights, and assume the maintenance of law and protection of human rights, as guaranteed by us as we sign these conventions of rights and pledge to fulfill our obligations towards them, through the harmonization of our law and policies with those principles and international conventions.

On this day, we reaffirm our commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and appeal to provide international protection for the Palestinian people, especially children and youth, and the need for accountability of the occupation for their crimes, and to support us in the path of independence and to ensure all national and individual rights of the Palestinian people. Palestine remains the most important test of the international system, and countries must fulfill their obligations to respect and ensure respect for international law, and cut any links between their governments, bodies and companies with the settlements and their products and the occupation forces that protect them, and to link relations with Israel to its commitment to international law and peace.

As we address the people of Palestine in all parts of the country and in the Diaspora, in the camps, cities and villages, to commemorate the International Day for Human Rights and the confirmation of their rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and they continue to be deprived of them, tell the world that we are students of the life and dignity, freedom and peace, and the world must respond to the call of the youth of Palestine, whose steadfastness will defeat the occupation and oppression and triumph of the right and freedom.

Peace, mercy and blessings of God

What a great national leader! When Abbas speaks about the importance of human rights, he means the importance of Israel to cave to his blackmail, not his responsibilities to provide human rights to his people!

This is in stark contrast with how real heads of state act. For comparison, here are statements about Human Rights day from Trinidad/Tobago and Pakistan in years past (the first ones I found from national leaders), where they speak of the challenges of providing human rights to their people.

One other thing: Abbas' last part about the youth whose "steadfastness" will "defeat the occupation" comes very close to supporting knife, car ramming and stoning attacks against Israeli civilians.

"Plaintiffs for Israel"

(This is an advertorial.)

David Abrams is a NYC-based attorney who has an interesting idea. From his "Plaintiffs for Israel" website:

I am an attorney in New York in the United States and a proud Zionist. I regularly engage in litigation in support of Israel and I am a graduate of Shurat Hadin's training program for activist lawyers; and I serve as the Executive Director of the Zionist Advocacy Center. As an example of my work, in conjunction with Shurat Hadin, I filed an unfair labor practices charge against a union which adopted an anti-Israel boycott resolution. You can read about it here.

Like many supporters of Israel, I am concerned about the movement in Western countries to boycott Israel. Although the boycotters claim to be motivated by human rights, they do not seem to care about countries with far worse human rights records than Israel. Although the boycotters claim to be concerned about Palestinian Arabs, they do not seem to care about various Arab countries which formally discriminate against Palestinian Arabs in many different ways.

I also practice civil rights law and I believe that many efforts to boycott Israel violate various laws against discrimination. I believe that many efforts to boycott Israel would not survive a legal challenge, but there is a problem: As an attorney, I normally need a client with "standing," in other words a person who is a direct victim of the discriminatory action who can be the Plaintiff in a legal claim. This is a problem because after a boycott action is announced, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find a suitable client.

The purpose of this web site is to address this problem. I hope to have thousands of people sign up and provide information about their job, school, and so forth. Then, if a boycott is announced, I can quickly find a Plaintiff and spring into action with a demand letter, an administrative charge, or a lawsuit. I am admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey so this web site should not be taken as an advertisement outside of New York or New Jersey. Nevertheless, if you end up involved in matter in some other jurisdiction, I would attempt to find and/or work with a suitable attorney.

I've met David and can vouch that he is for real.

If you belong to an organization or school that looks like it might someday discriminate against you because of your support of Israel, it is better to register for this ahead of time and then if something happens you can be empowered to reach out and fight back rather than be forced to quit.

12/09 Links Pt2: Why Israel became Europe’s whipping boy; Could Houellebecq's World Happen?

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: The wretched reason why Israel became Europe’s whipping boy

It isn’t Israelis who are paranoid; it’s anti-Israeli Europeans. They’re the ones who madly look upon one nation, one people, as toxic, destabilising, destructive, out to get us all and do over world peace. Such swirling paranoia often means anti-Zionism crosses the lines into anti-Semitism.
Some Israelis I spoke to seemed more upset about the turn against Israel in Europe than they were about the more immediate threat posed Islamists in the Middle East. It wasn’t hard to work out why. As one said, “We considered Europe a friend”: “We thought Europe and Israel had a lot in common, being Western and democratic.”
This cuts to the heart of the Euro-elites’ paranoia about Israel, their turn against it: it is really European values, the ideals of modernity and democracy, they’ve given up on. The thing that riles them most about Israel is that it reminds them of what they used to be like, of the values they once espoused, before they lost the moral plot and sank into the cesspit of relativism and post-Enlightenment self-loathing.
Plucky, keen to protect its sovereignty, considering itself an outpost of liberalism… Israel is a painful reminder to today’s morally anchorless European thinkers and agitators of what their nations once were. They hate Israel because they hate themselves.
Israel has become the whipping boy of guilt-ridden Western liberals who’ve given up on the very idea of the West.

Col. Kemp: The ban on visiting Israel is an absurdity

Royals must honour the fallen of our forgotten Middle East war
No fewer than 16,000 British and Commonwealth troops died during the Palestine campaign in the First World War and are buried in the land where they fell. Yet a long-standing Foreign Office ban on royal visits to Israel looks likely to deny these men the honour that has been afforded to British soldiers killed in Europe, Gallipoli and other theatres of war during the centenary years. This policy must be overturned now to ensure their sacrifice is properly recognised.
Ninety-eight years ago today, on December 9, 1917, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem surrendered the Holy City to General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force at the end of a bloody battle against the Turks that began on November 17.
The Palestine campaign has received little attention during the First World War commemorations, but was the second largest British theatre of operations in terms of strength of forces, with troops from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India. It achieved the first defeat of a central power in the war.
British Empire forces sustained 554,828 casualties during the campaign, including 16,000 dead. At the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mount Scopus this year I visited the graves of two of them, Edwin Beard and Leonard Frost, both boys from my school, Colchester Royal Grammar. It saddened me to think that the British Foreign Office is ready to deny these British soldiers the honour they deserve.

Isi Leibler: British Jews Under Pressure

Reviewing the status of Anglo-Jewry can lead to diametrically opposing conclusions. Residing in a northwest London Jewish suburb, one can easily be deluded that life for Jews in the U.K. is rosy. Jewish cultural and religious life is thriving, as exemplified by the mushrooming of synagogues and kosher facilities, not to mention the highly successful educational initiatives like Limmud. Indeed, insulated from the outside world and living and socializing primarily in a Jewish “ghetto,” it is not difficult to convince oneself that life in this Anglo-Jewish Diaspora is almost idyllic.
But this picture is delusional and a far cry from reality. The demographic projections reflect snowballing intermarriage offset by the high birthrate of the ultra-Orthodox — which will make them the dominant element in the Jewish community within the not too distant future.
More importantly, even though British Jews have not yet suffered from the bloody jihadi violence and murders of their French counterparts, as European Jews they will ultimately face the same threat, and if they believe they are in a different category, they are in denial.
Although Muslim jihadi elements are currently less dominant in the U.K. than in France, they face very similar threats from ISIS followers and homegrown terrorists. Moreover, indigenous antisemitism in the form of feral anti-Israelism is as blatant in the U.K. as in France.

Chanukah Video Night 4: SHALOM - Adele "Hello" Chanukah Parody - plus a storybook

Bonus:

Two videos about people in Israel you won't see on the mainstream media

The Druze and the Circassians of Israel:

The Settlers:

UK To Attack Islamist Militant Stronghold Of 'France' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

London, December 9 - British Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans this afternoon to send the Royal Air Force to conduct airstrikes against a concentration of militant Islamic radicals in a place called France, news sources reported today.

The BBC and Sky News published items on their websites to the effect that Cameron had given orders to the military to conduct the strikes, which will target areas of known Isalmist activity that have not yet been hit by the western bombing campaign. France, said Cameron, has long been a source of recruitment for ISIS fighters, and the strikes against it will be part of a larger effort to reduce the threat of terrorism emerging from that area.

Military experts estimate that thousands of Islamic State fighters have joined the organization from various parts of France, both in Iraq and Syria. Certain areas of France are more known than others as hotbeds of militant Islamism, and those regions will face the initial wave of assaults to help reduce them and perhaps hamper ISIS's recruitment efforts. If successful, the bombing campaign will be expanded to other Islamist strongholds, such as Belgium and Sweden.

"Unfortunately, the West has tolerated this cauldron of hateful, violent militarism under the guise of Islam for too long," said the prime minister. "That must end. The Royal Air Force, with intelligence help from several allies, will deploy to hit France mercilessly. The campaign will not cease until we are satisfied that France no longer poses a threat to our way of life."

Cameron insisted that no ground troops would be sent to France. "We will coordinate with other forces on the ground, but the British public can rest assured we will not become mired in a ground campaign. Our priorities are to conduct this operation from the air, and avoid direct entanglements with the enemy. If necessary, we will coordinate efforts with other forces that are on the ground in France," he added.

Opposition leaders called the move foolish. "There are far more pressing matters to be dealt with at home while the prime minister tries to focus public attention on matters overseas," charged Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. "The Royal Air Force has better things to do than waste its time over France, which is probably a lost cause." Corbyn suggested that the RAF might target several of Britain's largest banks, whose assets should be confiscated by the government and redistributed among the country's Muslim immigrants.

12/09 Links Pt1: Terrorist privilege; Murray: The ‘Victim blaming’ trend; Samantha, Powerless?

From Ian:

Terrorist privilege

Two people take 14 lives in California.
Fourteen beautiful people: A woman from Iran, another woman whose family fled Vietnam, a Mexican man. They slaughter the diversity that makes America great. These victims did community service and cared for others.
And what happens? The murderers almost become the victims in the narrative.
No one protests against the extremism and hatred the perpetrators had for others. No one is particularly angry at them. People are outraged at gun laws.
Newspapers run editorials about guns.
A newspaper bashes politicians for offering prayers. US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump makes an outrageously discriminatory remark about Muslim immigrants, and suddenly he is accused of being the reason that “jihadists demonize the US.” There is more anger about climate change and the rise of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Front Nationale in France than there is hatred for the perpetrators and ideology behind the Paris attacks.

Douglas Murray: ‘Victim blaming’ after terrorist attacks is a pernicious new trend

The term ‘victim blaming’ is most commonly used to describe people who claim that a woman walking out in a short skirt is ‘asking to be raped.’ But even this claim is not quite as gut-wrenching as the claim that some people are ‘asking to be killed’ or once killed are effectively ‘guilty of their own murder.’
This most malicious form of ‘victim blaming’ was rolled out in the American press at the weekend by the interestingly named Linda Stasi. In a column in Saturday’s New York Daily News Ms Stasi wrote about one of the 14 people massacred in an Isis-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California (a terrorist attack so terrible that it has made even President Obama admit that a certain type of terrorism might exist. Anyhow – Ms Stasi’s piece is a quite remarkable exhibit on the moral insanity of our time.
Last week after having apparently pledged allegiance to Isis, a husband and wife called Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook walked into a party at Farook’s own workplace in San Bernardino and began gunning down the guests. The couple – now designated as ‘terrorists’ by officials – were then killed in a shoot-out with police. A subsequent search of their home turned up an arsenal of weaponry. So far so bad. But these are strange and confusing times for some people, and Ms Stasi is perhaps the most confused of all.

Little girl demonstrates art of stabbing: “Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!”

Palestinian Media Watch documents the Palestinian Authority and Fatah leadership's messages to its population, showing both the PA ideology as well as how it directs the population to act. The current Palestinian terror wave is an excellent example of how the Palestinian population has responded to the leadership's message. Mahmoud Abbas and other PA leaders sparked the current terror and violence by frequently reiterating the PA libel that Israel is planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they called on Palestinians to "defend it," "bless[ed] every drop of blood spilled" for it, "congratulated" the murderers and much more. Responding to the call, and following the praise and support from PA and Fatah leaders, among them Abbas, who referred to stabbings as "peaceful popular uprising," Palestinians are - independent of the leadership - inciting to murder on social media, including encouraging people to slit the throats of Jews, and committing murder themselves.
The following are examples of social media murder promotion by Palestinians on Facebook.
One video shows a little girl glorifying stabbing. She is asked:
Man: "What do you tell [Palestinian] youth in the West Bank?"
Girl demonstrates with a long knife: "Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!"
[Facebook page of the Jerusalem Intifada's Young People Coalition, Nov. 12, 2015]

Video on Palestinian Facebook page - Little girl encourages stabbing Jews

From JCPA:

The Fatah Central Committee gave its backing to a strategy that combines the terror intifada with diplomatic and legal moves in the international arena aimed at achieving recognition of the state of Palestine as well as an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders with no political quid pro quo from the Palestinians.

The Fatah Central Committee, convened on Sunday, December 6, 2015, at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah. Fatah is led by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) who also serves as president of the state of Palestine, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, and leader of the PLO.

The decisions taken by the Fatah Central Committee shed light on the Palestinian leadership’s policy toward Israel.

The [Central] Committee discussed…the increase in severe attacks against members of our Palestinian people in the occupied state of Palestine (the West Bank, Al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip), including the field executions… The meeting began with readings of Surat Al-Fatihah in remembrance of the souls of the heroic martyrs, and it [the Central Committee] conveyed its condolences and appreciation to the families of the martyrs with hopes for the speedy recovery of the wounded, emphasizing its determination to continue to act in every way to have the prisoners freed and the bodies of the heroic martyrs returned.
The Central Committee did not condemn the acts of violence and terror being perpetrated by Palestinians as part of the Al-Quds Intifada, which is also called the Knives Intifada. On the contrary, it characterized the foiling of terror attacks as “executions,” chose to call the perpetrators “heroes,” and promised to assist their families. The Palestinian leadership thereby gave full backing to the continuation of the terror wave against Israel.

There was more that can be seen in the JCPA article. For example:

The Central Committee condemned the decision of the occupation municipality to establish new facts in the Al-Buraq [Western Wall] area, and views this as a continuation of the change of the existing situation in the city of Al-Quds and particularly in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and its surroundings.
The wording indicates that the Palestinian leadership, with Abbas at the helm, denies the Jewish right to the area of the Western Wall and regards it as a sacred Islamic site that is an inseparable part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

But one other part of the meeting caught my attention:

The Central Committee also called for the enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the territory of the State of occupied Palestine (the West Bank and Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip), especially with regard to the protection of civilians in time of war.

What they are trying to say is for the settlements to be destroyed.

But in fact, Israel is not enforcing the Geneva Conventions in Area A and (in some ways) in Area B under the laws of occupation. If the territories would be considered occupied, then Israel would have to control the PA. Israel would have the right to dissolve the government and to get rid of Abbas.
When Fatah demands that Israel adhere to Geneva, they are being mighty selective in their interpretation of the conventions.

Today's loving @UNRWA teacher

Zia al Talouli is a teacher for UNRWA at the Beit Hanoun Elementary School in Gaza.

He has a lot of love in his heart.

His Facebook page is called "Abusamer Love."

See how much love he has for his charges:

He also loves the idea of stabbing Jews :

Finally, he loves the idea of Palestinian unity - in killing Israelis:

The gun says "The Palestinian reconciliation," and the flag "The Israeli occupation."

See how much love this UNRWA teacher has! What do you think he is teaching his students?

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Rami Hamdallah, the PA's prime minister, said on Monday that there has been a "sharp decline," in grants and external financial aid to the Palestinian Authority of 43% since 2011.

In a press release, on the sidelines of a meeting with a delegation from the Palestinian private sector, to discuss the partnership between the two sides (government and private), Hamdallah said that "aid is still in steady decline, according to the Palestinian budget numbers."

Grants and financial aid received by the Palestinian government since the beginning of the year until the end of October was 685.4 million US dollars, a decline of 27% compared with the corresponding period of last year, according to Palestinian Ministry of Finance figures.

He said, "the government implemented a policy to optimize expenditures, to coincide with the decline of financial grants, and it raised tax revenues during the current year to a monthly average of US $ 175 million, compared with $ 90 million in 2011.

My guess is that the bulk of the decline came from Arab nations who have been losing interest in Palestinian issues for years, but now have their own problems that makes the supposedly keystone Palestinian issue fall way down the priority list.

The New York Times has an interesting article by Isabel Kershner about the (2013) discovery of an ancient synagogue in Migdal and especially its carved stone block that seems to depict the Second Temple - during the Second Temple period.

The archaeologists in charge of the excavations say that this proves that Second Temple-era synagogues served more of a sacred role than a community center role, as many (but not all) had assumed.

But one sentence may reveal the NYT's way of looking at Jews and Arabs in Israel:

In contrast to the current tensions over the contested site in Jerusalem that is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, where the ancient temples once stood, and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, the Magdala project has emphasized religious harmony. The land belongs to a Roman Catholic religious order, the Legionaries of Christ, and the archaeologists who are managing the dig and who found the stone are Dina Avshalom-Gorni, an Israeli Jew, and Arfan Najar, a Muslim.

But Arfan Najar is an Israeli as well.

So why does the article emphasize that the Jewish researcher is Israeli but not the Muslim?

It could be because Palestinians hate when people refer to Israeli Arabs - they claim that they should all be called "Palestinian" (or , in Arabic, "1948 Arabs.") My guess is that the NYT has accepted that argument and does not want to refer to Israeli Muslims or Israeli Arabs for fear of offending anti-Israel Palestinians by being accurate.

A 2012 NYT article by Jodi Rudoren about the very topic of self-identification among a subset of Israeli Arabs pre-judged the NYT's mindset by starting off with

NAZARETH, Israel — Three young Palestinian women sat on the floor at a summer camp this week surrounded by Legos and 3-year-olds. As the toddlers played, the women taught them the color of each block, repeating the words in Arabic, azrak for blue or akhdar for green.

But the seemingly simple scene here in the Galilee was actually caught up in some of the most contentious issues confronting Israeli society: How do Arabs reconcile their identity as citizens of a Jewish state? What is the appropriate role for a growing Arab minority in a state determined to be democratic and Jewish?

Clearly, the NYT has answered that question for all Israeli Arabs by calling them "Palestinian" before asking the question itself.

I don't know how Arfan Najar refers to himself, but clearly the NYT is leaning towards the Palestinian insistence on their terminology and away from the Israeli views, even though thousands of Israeli Arabs live proudly as Israelis.

(h/t Joshua)

12/08 Links Pt2: Answering John Kerry; Tibor Rubin, Holocaust survivor and Korean War hero, dies at 86

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Answering John Kerry

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State's presented options are fantasies.
Finally, Kerry asked, “And wouldn’t Israel risk being in perpetual conflict with millions of Palestinian living in the middle of a state?” The answer is that Israel is at risk of perpetual conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole for as long as the Arabs hate Jews. The millions of Palestinians living within Israel’s borders constitute a far smaller strategic danger to Israel than the millions of Jew-hating Arabs, who have terrorist armies, perched on its international borders.
At the outset of his remarks, Kerry explained that as far as US Middle East policy is concerned, “Our goal, our strategy is to help ensure that the builders and the healers throughout the region have the chance that they need to accomplish their tasks.”
Sadly, this is neither a goal nor a strategy. It is the sort of platitude you’re likely to find inside a Chinese fortune cookie.
If Kerry is interested in an actual strategy, he can fork out 20 bucks and buy my book.

Danny Dannon: Artificial wound of Palestinian refugees has festered too long

Every time Palestinian leaders sit down at the negotiating table, or give a public speech, they never fail to raise the plight of the 700,000 Arab-Palestinians displaced when they refused to accept Israel’s existence in 1948.
For too long, the State of Israel and the global Jewish community have done too little to memorialize and honor the other side of that story — the 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
For many Jews, these are personal stories, family accounts told around the Shabbat table. It is now our duty to ensure that the world finally recognizes the stories of these forgotten refugees.
For over 2,000 years, places like Algiers and Aleppo, Tunis and Cairo, Aden and Tripoli and so many others across the Arab world were vibrant centers of Jewish life. The Jews in these communities did not always have much in the way of material possessions, but they were rich in culture and in the spiritual heritage of our people.

Douglas Murray: The left is to blame for the creation of Donald Trump

A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with the American author and neuroscientist Sam Harris. He is one of the few people on the political left in Europe or America who recognises the problem of Islamic extremism and doesn’t mind talking about it. For this he gets – I think it is safe to say – more trouble than the average liberal left-wing west coast American might wish to expect. But his role on the left, along with Bill Maher, Dave Rubin and a very few others, is incredibly important not least because it should remind people that the great problem of our time does not have to be a partisan issue.
But the political left has a problem at the moment. In Britain it is – as I said here recently – unsalvageable, led by people who have spent their life tolerating and stoking anti-Semitic racism and whose track record shows them not only excusing our enemies but urging them to win. In America the left has not gone this rancid, but the wider political problem is in some ways even starker because in response to the political left failing to identify the problem, the political right has started going off.
The American left has a huge problem in the form of a President who refuses to name Islamist terrorism or identify where it comes from. His likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has the same issue. Of course the word-play this leads to may be perfectly well-meaning, and the desire to ensure that you’re not talking about ‘all Muslims’ when you use the term ‘Islamist’ for instance is a legitimate concern. But when you have 14 people being gunned down in America again apparently in the name of a specific extremist ideology, not identifying where it comes from becomes part of the problem, driving people on all sides mad with rage and making them wonder what else is being kept from them.
Which brings us onto Donald Trump. Last night Donald Trump announced a new ‘policy’ idea which would be to stop any more Muslims going to America. He would even, it seems, prevent Muslim Americans who are currently out of the country on their holidays, from returning home. This is – it need hardly be said – a back of the envelope policy. And it has already had the desired effect. The social justice warriors who mistake Twitter for real life, have been busily signalling their utter outrage at Trump’s remarks. Journalists have seized the opportunity (which the New York Times and others have been trying all along) to insinuate that Trump is in fact the new Hitler. The reaction is as ill-tempered as the original comment. But we should know how we got here.

Chanukah Video Night 3: One Direction Chanukah Medley (MJE, many guest stars) plus bonus "Sevivon"

Bonus:

The antisemitism behind calling Jesus a "Palestinian"

Some large excerpts from an excellent essay by Richard Mather:

It is not just Islam and the Left that are responsible for anti-Zionism and the rise of anti-Semitism. Christians who have embraced Palestinian replacement theology (which has disturbing echoes of the Nazis’ depiction of Jesus-as-Aryan) must also be held to account for the propagation of anti-Jewish hatred.

Jesus was not a Palestinian. There is no reference to Palestine in the New Testament for the simple reason that the land of Israel was generally known as Judea and Galilee until 135 CE. The Gospel of Matthew, which was written around 80 CE does, however, mention “the land of Israel” and the “cities of Israel.” The term Palestine is rarely used in the Tanakh, and when it is, it refers specifically to the southwestern coastal area of Israel occupied by the Philistines who had disappeared as a distinct people by the time of the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BCE.

Christians throughout the centuries have tended to imagine Jesus according to their peculiar prejudices. One of the most outlandish was the Jesus-as-Aryan theory. During the Third Reich, some German Protestant theologians redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence published books defaming Judaism (including a dejudaized version of the New Testament) and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the saviour of the Aryans.

Since the 1960s, a number of Christians (and Muslims) have revived and revised the Aryan Jesus myth as a tool for propagating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionist propaganda. Jesus the Aryan is now Jesus the Palestinian martyr living “under occupation.” The Jews are depicted as a cruel and oppressive people who have merited everlasting exile. And the Hebrew Bible is “de-Zionised” and/or radically reinterpreted by writers and teachers in order to downplay what they say is Jewish “exclusivity” in the Tanakh (the words “Zion” or “Israel” are removed from the Psalms, for example).

The founding document of Christian Palestinianism is the 1967 Arab-Christian memorandum entitled “What is Required of the Christian Faith Concerning the Palestine Problem.” The document, which had the blessing of Catholic and Orthodox clergy, declares that it is “a total misunderstanding of the story of salvation and a perversion of God’s plan for a Christian to want to re-establish a Jewish nation as a political entity.”

In one of its most audacious passages, the memorandum reads: “The Christian conscience should always discern what is the authentic vocation of the Jewish people and what is the other side of the coin, that is, the racist State of Israel.” In fact, the memorandum calls for a permanent exile of the Jews on the grounds that “the Jewish race was chosen to serve the salvation of humanity and not to establish itself in any particular religious or racial way.”

The Christian Palestinianist movement was given a fresh impetus in 2009 with the publication of the Kairos Palestine Document. Subtitled “A moment of truth: A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering,” the paper claims to speak on behalf of Christian and Muslim Palestinians, who apparently share a “deeply rooted” history and a “natural right” to the land.

In contrast, the State of Israel is viewed as an alien entity, and only exists because of Western guilt over the Holocaust. Israel is even associated with the words “evil” and “sin.” According to the text, the so-called Israeli occupation “distorts the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier.”

One of the most vocal Christian Palestinianists is Naim Ateek, who was born in Beth She’an in what is now northern Israel. He was ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church in 1967 and was (until recently) a cleric in St. George’s Cathedral, Jerusalem.

In 1989, Ateek published Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, which drew much of its strength from South American liberation theology. Five years later, Ateek founded an organisation called Sabeel – the Palestinian Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.

The version of liberation theology espoused by Ateek is that of Jesus as “a Palestinian living under an occupation.” In his 2001 Easter message, Ateek spoke of Jesus as “the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint” and he used anti-Semitic language to evoke the image of Jews as Christ-killers:

“In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.”

Yasser Arafat also played on the theme of Jesus as a Palestinian martyr. When he made his first Christmas appearance in Bethlehem in 1995, he invoked the Christian nativity by crying, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.” To which the crowd responded, “In spirit and blood we will redeem thee, O Palestine!”

Other times, Jesus is referred to as a Shahid, a holy martyr of Islam. Arafat often referred to Jesus as the first Palestinian martyr, which is not only historically incorrect, it is at odds with Islamic tradition. There are no references to Jesus as a Shahid in Islamic works, and it is impossible for Jesus to be a martyr if he did not die on the cross, which is the view of the Quran.

Of all the anti-Israel discourses that exist today, Christian Palestinianism is perhaps one of the most disturbing because it resurrects the notion of Jews as accursed Christ-killers who deserve permanent exile. As with all anti-Semitic ideas, Christian Palestinianism is about resentment. It is a projection of a sense of inferiority onto an external scapegoat –the Jews.

As well as being politically motivated, Christian Palestinianism is a religious assault on Judaism and should be seen in the context of centuries of anti-Jewish persecution and ridicule by both Christians and Muslims who are embarrassed and frustrated by the continued existence of the Jewish people.

Make no mistake. The cultural-economic boycott of the Jewish state draws a great deal of strength from Christianity. Much of the anti-Zionism emanating from West can be traced back to faith-based organisations who are either ambivalent about Israel or downright hostile. Christian Aid, the Quakers, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterians are among those who are guilty of demonising Israel.

And then there are individuals such as Reverend Dr. Stephen Sizer (a prominent and notorious Anglican vicar in England) who believes that Jerusalem and the land of Israel “have been made irrelevant to God’s redemptive purposes,” and that Jews were expelled from the land because “they were more interested in money and power.”

In other words, it is not just Islam and the Left that are responsible for the ostracism and demonisation of the Jewish state. Many Christians, especially those who have embraced the new anti-Semitic replacement theology known as Christian Palestinianism, should be held to account for rekindling the same anti-Jewish prejudices and hatreds that resulted in the Holocaust.