Friday, July 05, 2019
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: The dark shadow Iran is casting on the world
WSJ: Pilgrimage Road and Palestinian Memory
Analysis: Gulf governments sponsored anti-Semitic hate preachers during Ramadan 2019
Melanie Phillips: The dark shadow Iran is casting on the world
The indifference shown to this Jew-baiting over the past two decades and more has helped legitimize and embolden ever more unambiguous demonstrations of this deranged mindset, along with a wider cultural confusion.
Four months ago in Britain, upon learning that the best-selling novelist Richard Zimler was a Jew, two cultural organizations dropped their invitations to him to appear at their events. They said they feared protests by their members and others if they invited a Jewish writer.
Against the backdrop of a bill in the Irish parliament, the Dail, to boycott Israel, an Irish News columnist Brian Feeney wrote that Iran was “the only democracy in the region—no, Israel isn’t.”
After U.S. Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demeaned the Holocaust by comparing detention centers on America’s Mexican border to Nazi concentration camps, political and cultural figures piled in to support her. When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum voiced concern about using Holocaust analogies in this way, more than 430 scholars who research the Holocaust and genocides urged it to retract its criticism as “fundamentally ahistorical.”
In Britain, the government wants to build a Holocaust memorial next to the Houses of Parliament to combat Holocaust denial. Yet Britain is still an enthusiast for the Iran deal, even despite the recent discovery of a Hezbollah bomb factory in London.
Sweden, where the authorities notoriously turn a blind eye to rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement, intends to hold a conference on antisemitism next year in Malmö. That’s quite a statement. For Jew-hatred in Malmö is so bad that last month the spokesman for its Jewish community said it might close down altogether in the coming decade.
This is the international background against which Iran is ramping up for war. In Israel, there’s a grim acknowledgement of a world which, while paying ever more extravagant lip service to the victims of the Holocaust, prepares to betray them at every turn.
More than half-a-century ago, the West fought off Nazism. That fight is what it really means by “never again.”
WSJ: Pilgrimage Road and Palestinian Memory
Two thousand years ago Jews walked the Pilgrimage Road as they came from around the world to visit the Temple. Rabbinic texts abound with descriptions of the processions that occurred, and the road - first discovered 15 years ago - parallels these details in an exquisite way. Now pilgrims will be able to ascend stairs as their predecessors once did.
But the Pilgrimage Road is located on land in eastern Jerusalem that Palestinians claim for themselves. Palestinian official Saeb Erekat contended that the road is a "lie that has nothing to do with history." Erekat and many other Palestinian leaders have long denied what archaeologists and historians consider basic and uncontroversial facts, such as the existence of the Temple.
The excavated path is only one bit of a literal mountain of archaeological evidence, uncovered in most cases by secular archaeologists, that confirms the historical fact of Jerusalem's ancient connection to the Jewish people. In an age where actual facts are all too often eschewed for "personal narrative," the Pilgrimage Road is another reminder that peace can only be attained through the recognition of historical truth.
RT! The Truth is revealed! The ancient Philistines from the Bible were Greek Europeans! They had NOTHING to do with the current “Palestinians” who are Arabs that came from Arabia! האמת נחשפת! הפלשתים היו אירופאים, ללא כל קשר ל״פלסטינים״ שהם ערבים מערב https://t.co/AKHpCJNug8
— Yair Netanyahu 🇮🇱 (@YairNetanyahu) July 4, 2019
Analysis: Gulf governments sponsored anti-Semitic hate preachers during Ramadan 2019
Ramadan is a holy month in the Sunni-ruled Gulf monarchies. In addition to daylong fasting, one other aspect of the festival in this region is that governments sponsor a range of religious programming in order to burnish their religious credentials, particularly at state-run mosques and on state-owned television stations.
However, many Gulf governments fail to provide adequate oversight when sponsoring Ramadan programming, arranging events that feature religious leaders who have a longstanding record of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. Even if such preachers are more measured in their remarks at these particular government-sponsored events, their state hosts still run the risk of legitimating proponents of bigotry.
Qatar
The Government of Qatar continued to be the worst offender in this regard.
The global media outlet Al Jazeera, which the State Department describes as “government owned,” published an offensive video during the second week of Ramadan this year that denied and distorted basic facts about the Holocaust. Following outcry, the network removed the video, suspended two journalists, and said it would apply some sensitivity training.
Yet at this same time the religious fundamentalist most empowered by Al Jazeera, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, continued to remain in the regime’s good graces.
Even though Qaradawi has advocated genocide against the Jewish people and advocated terrorism against American civilians and soldiers in Iraq, Qatar’s ruler kissed Qaradawi and gave him the seat at his side at his Ramadan iftar, ahead of all other preachers and for at least the fifth year in a row.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Qaradawi published a column in a Qatari paper dehumanizing Jewish people by calling them the offspring of apes and pigs.
Nor were the views broadcast by Al Jazeera or published by Qaradawi an isolated phenomenon during this Ramadan.
