There in Jerusalem, yes, in Palestinian Jerusalem, almost two thousand years ago, extremist Jews tortured Jesus Christ, indulged in his torture, and rejected the message of peace he had given, called for, and sought to spread among the people.
Yes, nearly two thousand years ago, those murderers tortured Christ and his disciples, and sought to kill peace and love. They refused to coexist, made hatred to kill love, and robbed people of their joy, security, and tranquility.
In Palestinian Jerusalem two thousand years ago, Jewish militants exposed their true face to the people, showing their hatred for life, their rejection of love, tranquility and joy. They decided to hijack peace and kill it, poisoning the earth with hatred and rejection of the other.
Paradoxically, the descendants of these same people, 2,000 years later, are still practicing their own ancestors' passion to kill peace and love in people. They are still trying to prevent the holy flame from continuing in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Two thousand years ago, they rejected what Jesus had said of brotherhood, peace and love, and their descendants continue to reject them to this day. They practice a deep hatred against all those who believe and seek peace, denying the resurrection of Christ.
They desecrated the religious places, stole the land, and sought to create false truths that had no basis or history, and to steal cities that were not theirs, and temples that were not for them. They are connected to them, looking for an impact they will not find, and a Temple that has no basis in Jerusalem or in all of Palestine.
O ye murderers, you who reject the peace, the murderers of the prophets, get out of our homes, out of our old streets, and melt your hatreds, and go out. Get out of our sanctuary, and our house, and our camp and our land. Get out of our land, and go out, take your hatred and go.
O ye who have practiced in the killing, ye rogue thieves have come out of the cradle of our Christ, Christ is ours... We tell the world that you have to distinguish between the murderer and the dead, between the victim and the executioner, between the thief and the owner. You have to know that Jerusalem since the days before Christ has been Canaanite Palestinian, it was and will remain so, and that the holy sites are Islamic or Islamic under Hashemite guardianship. For those sitting in the White House let the land of Palestine know that Jerusalem is Palestinian, Canaanite Arab, and that the deal of your century or any imaginary understandings will not pass.
There seems to be a fair amount of psychological projection here for someone who claims to value love and be against hate.
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The head of Hamas' "political bureau" Ismail Haniyeh said he is ready to meet with PA president Mahmoud Abbas any time to fix the decade-long rift between the two groups in order to put up a united front against the plan.
Islamic Jihad official Navez Azzam said that the "deal of the century" threatens the entire Arab region and not only the Palestinian cause, because the Arab countries that normalize relations with Israel fracture the Arab world. He said, "Israel is well aware that it will remain in constant danger as long as the Palestinian issue is alive." Which is, effectively, an argument against ever having peace with Israel under any circumstances.
The PFLP said, "The deal of the century is not new. It is the completion of the Balfour Declaration." it and the DFLP stressed how important it is for Hamas and Fatah to get their acts together and stop infighting.
If it was a working meeting, it would have been around a conference table. This was set up as a set of speeches.
There were a couple of dozen of people making speeches - to no one but each other.
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Here is part 2 of my video interview of Kasim Hafeez, Islamic extremist turned Christian Zionist, in Tel Aviv last month.
We discuss Islam in more detail, contrast it with Judaism, and talk about possible ways it could be reformed...in theory.
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Does anyone else remember when a New York Times editorial blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords because of a bulls-eye on a map?
The New York Times published a hideous, obviously anti-Semitic cartoon the day before a gunman entered a Chabad synagogue in suburban San Diego, killing one person and injuring 3.
Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, executive director of Chabad of San Diego County, says in a statement that Lori Kaye, 60, of Poway was killed. He says those injured in the shooting Saturday were Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Noya Dahan, 8, Almog Peretz, 34.
By the standards that a 2017 New York Times editorial published after Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson attempted a mass assassination of members of the GOP House caucus, the Times bears some responsibility.
In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.
Keep in mind that an unsigned editorial means that it is the product of editorial board itself, not just one op-ed writer, and is this the Times’ official position
In a Facebook post about Saturday’s synagogue shooting near San Diego, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan claimed that the shooter had been influenced by a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared in the New York Times earlier this weekend.
Erdan wrote that anti-Semitism in political cartoons extended beyond the pages of newspapers and turned into the “blood of Jews” being spilled in synagogues or other places “identified as Jewish.”
“That is always the true motive for terrorism and murder against our people – not ‘the territories’ or ‘concessions,’ – hatred of Jews,” Erdan wrote.
“The loathsome terrorist who carried out the murderous act in the California synagogue and killed the late Lori Gilbert Kaye was inspired to kill by the same anti-Semitic motives in the cartoon published in the New York Times – [accusations] that the Jews run the world, that the prime minister of Israel runs the world. The Israeli prime minister is portrayed as a guide dog leading a blind man. How much hatred and incitement that illustration contains,” he wrote.
“So people are saying that the newspaper supposedly apologized and that the cartoon’s publication was an ‘error in judgment.’ … You wouldn’t accept such a limp-wristed condemnation of racism and incitement if it were directed at any other minority,” Erdan continued.
Once again, the world witnesses another attack on Jewish people, this time by a white supremacist. It was only six months ago when we mourned the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States, which resulted in the killing of eleven people and injuring seven others.
Today however, the question isn't "why did it happen?", but perhaps: How we got here in the first place?
It was the last day of Passover. Members of the California Jewish community had gathered at Congregation Chabad in Poway, north of San Diego, when John Earnest, 19, opened fire at the congregants, claiming the life of an innocent 60-year-old woman. Three others were wounded, one of them a 57-year-old Rabbi.
While genuine condolences poured in to condemn the antisemitic attack, another group decided it was a good time to reveal their hypocrisy.
Let's start with the NYT, a left-leaning newspaper that's slowly becoming known for its antisemitism. Only three days ago, the NYT internationally printed an antisemitic cartoon of President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The cartoon presents Trump as a blind Jew that is being guided by Netanyahu, an Israeli dog. The NYT then retracted the cartoon, and issued a non-apology. It's one thing to criticize Netanyahu and Israeli policy, and it's another thing to dehumanize an individual simply because he is Jewish.
Giant media corporations have the audacity to publish such content because they know that there is an audience willing to support their antisemitism, and in many cases, these audiences include somewhat influential figures like members of the KKK. Leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan for example, is a self-confessed antisemite. In one of his sermons, he states: "I'm not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite."
The PLO sees Jews visiting the Temple Mount - Judaism’s holiest site - as similar to Muslims massacring Christians in churches in Sri Lanka during Easter.
The Palestinian National Council - the PLO’s legislative body - has compared “the deviant ideology” behind the mass murder of hundreds of Christians by Muslims in suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday to “the ideology that causes settlers to break into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.”
In a strategy to try to keep Jews away from the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Authority and its leaders have declared the entire Temple Mount a part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and exclusively an Islamic site. To support this claim they vilify any presence of Jews on the mount as a “desecration," “defilement," "break-in," or “invasion” of the mosque.
This PA ideology has led to the odious comparison. The Palestinian National Council announced that the murder of more than 250 people in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka is similar to Jews visiting the Temple Mount.
The PNC described the attacks in Sri Lanka as “immoral and contrary to religious and human values,” and similar to the ideology that makes Jewish “settlers” “break in” to the Al-Aqsa Mosque: “[The PNC] added that the deviant ideology that caused these people to commit their despicable crime against the churches in Sri Lanka is the same ideology that causes settlers to break into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, do as they please with it, attack the Muslim worshippers, and prevent them from worshipping freely during the Hebrew Passover holiday (refers to West Bank and Gaza Strip crossings being closed during the holiday due to security concerns -Ed.).”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 22, 2019]
The antisemitic New York Times cartoon positioned Netanyahu as a dachshund, which is not the normal dog one would associate with being a seeing eye dog.
But that breed has often been used in political cartoons to refer to Germany.
In World War I, the dachshund was often used as a stand-in for Germany:
This political cartoon in Punch used the specific idea of a Dachshund as a seeing eye dog to lampoon Turkey's joining the war on the German side:
In World War II, the dachshund was used to symbolize Nazi Germany (including by Dr. Seuss:)
The artist of the offensive cartoon, Antonio Antunes Moreira. had previously compared Israel to Nazi Germany in this incredibly antisemitic cartoon from the 1980s:
The dachshund was not a coincidence. Moreira wanted to again compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
(h/t Irene)
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The International Edition of the New York Times published this editorial cartoon on Thursday:
Bibi Netanyahu, with a large Star of David around his neck, is a seeing eye dog leading a blind Donald Trump.
This image trades in the classic antisemitic tropes of the Jew as a dog, of Jews secretly controlling the US, as this Serbian antisemitic poster from the 1940s shows a Jew acting as a puppet master over both Churchill and Stalin.
Or this Arab cartoon during the 2008 presidential campaign.
If the cartoon was only that, the New York Times could excuse it as just a giant dog whistle that was meant only to criticize Israel and Trump, that was published by an "error in judgment." Which is exactly what it did:
But how can anyone explain the yarmulke on Trump's head?
No matter how much one wants to stretch one's imagination, it is impossible to look at this cartoon and not see the blatantly antisemitic message. Not a "trope," not a "dog-whistle" to antisemites - a cartoon that would have fit perfectly, unaltered, in Der Sturmer. Trump isn't merely a puppet - he is a Jew himself, making him even more odious.
Saying that this is Nazi-level antisemitism is not hyperbole. The neo-Nazi Daily Stormer said that "the image of the blind man Trump being led by the Jewish dog Netanyahu is such a powerfully accurate portrayal of their relationship."
The editorial pages of any major newspaper has multiple editors that stories and cartoons have to pass by. Seth Frantzman of the Jerusalem Post says that there are four such checkpoints in his newspaper. I know from speaking to people who have worked at the NYT that the gauntlet that pro-Israel op-ed writers have to go through to get published is crazy, much more than anti-Israel op-ed writers have to go through.
Lahav Harkov, of the Jerusalem Post, reports "Source tells me NY Times office in NY was genuinely surprised and disturbed by the cartoon. Someone in the International NY Times office in France should answer for this." I believe this; the US edition of the NYT is and has been rabidly anti-Israel and anti-Zionist for a century but it doesn't often cross the line this egregiously. And, as Mark Horowitz notes, the international edition of the NYT has a much more anti-Israel vibe than even the US edition in an front page example earlier this month:
International edition feels more anti-Israel, maybe because audience for it is. Israel features heavily, and only International puts Op Eds on front page. Never in US. So you get front pages that look like this: pic.twitter.com/RYtbWh3sFE
The conclusion? European antisemitism has been so mainstreamed, under the umbrella of "anti-Zionism," that the average NYT International Edition editor in Paris sees nothing at all wrong with a cartoon that treats Jews exactly the way Nazi propaganda did.
The New York Times' reaction is nearly as bad as the cartoon itself. It never said it apologizes, it doesn't say "sorry," it merely makes it sound like an honest mistake. There is no soul-searching, no promises to overhaul the editorial cartoon approval process, no investigative articles in its own newspaper as of yet about how it could have made such a "mistake." It minimizes the offensiveness of the cartoon by merely saying it engages in antisemitic "tropes," when in fact is is pure Jew-hatred.
Their mishandling of this explicit Jew-hatred in its pages means we can expect more such "oversights."
It is also notable that the usual anti-Zionist crowd was almost gleeful to be able to condemn the shooting at the Chabad synagogue near San Diego yesterday, in order to prove how much they are against anti-semitism and implying that the shooting proves that the only antisemitism is from white nationalists, not from their liberal friends. Not one of them - Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, J-Street - that condemned the shootings said a negative word about the New York Times.
Which proves once again that they aren't against antisemitism at all unless it conforms with their fiction that the only Jew-hatred is from the Right. That is not exactly a brave position to take.
This is a pivotal moment, and the reactions so far to this cartoon indicate that the US is well on its way to become as blind to certain types of antisemitism as Europe has been for years.
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This article in the Tehran Times has really mixed messages.
The lines highlighted in yellow are warnings about how hurting Iran's oil exports will harm the entire world. The ones highlighted in green assert that the sanctions will have no effect on Iran's oil sales whatsoever.
Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a former Foreign Ministry spokesman, has said that if Iran’s oil sale is stopped more than one country will be harmed. “From an economic point of view, any fluctuation in oil market will cause harm to a group of countries and not just one,” he told ISNA in an interview published on Saturday.
The U.S. announced on Monday that Washington has decided not to extend waivers allowing major importers to continue buying oil from Iran when they expire in early May.
Hosseini predicted that the U.S. will be harmed by “evil” strategies that is has adopted against Iran. “No country welcomed this decision of the White House except the Zionist regime of Israel and one or two reactionary countries in the region,” Hosseini stated.
He said Iran has a “strategic status” and will not act passively in the face of the “cruel” and “illegal” sanctions. Over the past years Iran has learned how to circumvent sanctions, he added.
He also said that it will not be easy to find an alternate for Iran’s oil.
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Thursday that Trump will not succeed in forcing Iran to capitulate to U.S. economic pressure because Tehran has a “Ph.D. in sanctions busting”.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a statement on Thursday that Iran will not allow any country to replace its oil sales in the global market and warned the U.S. and its regional allies of the ramifications of their decision to halt Iranian oil exports.
In remarks on Wednesday, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tehran will be exporting any amount of crude it wants, asserting that U.S. attempts to zero out the export of Iranian oil will be fruitless.
The Leader also warned that the enemies’ hostile policies will not go unanswered because the Iranian nation would not stand idle in the face of plots.
When Iran is trying to pretend it is not nervous, it means it is very nervous!
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The Palestinians could learn a lesson from the Jewish Zionists who created Israel. In seeking a state in Palestine, the Zionists used shrewd diplomacy and went about painstaking work over decades to reach their goal. They were visionaries grounded in hard-nosed realism who not only made moral, emotional, and historical arguments for their case, but also appealed to the brain, showing those leaders with the power to help them why supporting the Zionist cause was in their interests. Take the Soviet Union, which, contrary to popular belief, was as important as the United States in passing the partition resolution. Zionist diplomats, such as Eliahu Sasson, observed that the Soviets sought to counter the British in the Middle East, and therefore could view the establishment of a Jewish state as a means by which to eject Britain from the region. Moreover, as Martin Kramer notes, Zionist leaders, recognizing the importance of Soviet support for their cause, labored extensively to convince Moscow that, despite not being communist, they were kindred spirits that valued progressivism and collectivism.
And then, when the United Nations proposed its plan, thus endorsing the Zionist goal, the Jews took what they could get. Sure, the proposal gave them less land than they wanted—much of which was desert—and Jerusalem was to be an international zone surrounded by Arab territory. But national independence movements do not reject offers of statehood—except the Palestinians.
The point is that the Zionists did not have maximalist goals and were very practical. Moreover, they adapted to changing circumstances and deftly navigated the waters of high diplomacy with the world's great powers. Simply put, the Zionists put in the legitimate work to make their dream become reality. The Palestinians have not, seeking grand declarations of statehood at the U.N. without the prerequisite efforts to give them true legitimacy, which include negotiating with the Israelis. Meanwhile, the Palestinians, unlike the Zionists, make only crude, emotional pitches for statehood, motivated at their core by hate rather than aspiration. They do not show foreign leaders why a Palestinian state would help them, or the world more broadly. Even the Jews, who have much stronger legal, historical, and religious ties to the land of Israel, did not focus on the treatment they received during 2,000 years of exile while pushing for a Jewish state in the 1930s and 1940s. And then of course there is the Palestinian corruption, incitement, and terrorism, none of which makes for a promising state. If the Zionist approach to achieving statehood was a graceful ballet, the Palestinian one is a bomb hidden inside a teddy bear: a brute approach masquerading as a heartfelt plea for justice.
The Palestinians could take a few notes. So too could the media and anti-Israel politicians, who only perpetuate the conflict by giving the Palestinians a pass on accepting responsibility for their own stateless plight.
The New York Times International Edition ran a cartoon of an apparently blind US President Donald Trump wearing a yarmulke being led by a dog with a Star of David for a collar and with a face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 25.
The cartoon was part of its Opinion section and appeared next to a column by Thomas Friedman about immigration.
The cartoon was condemned by numerous people over the weekend. It appeared on the April 25 edition but in Israel was available with the end of the Passover holiday, coinciding with the holiday and Shabbat, two days when many observant Jews were not active online.
“Another disgusting display of vile anti-Semitic trope celebrated in the NY Times World. The NY Times is signaling to the world that antisemitism is real, here and welcome,” wrote philanthropist Adam Milstein.
Imam Mohamad Tawhidi condemned it on social media, saying it was reminiscent of anti-Semitic Islamist texts comparing Jews and dogs. Others noted that while it had appeared online, it had been removed by Saturday afternoon. The New York Times Opinion twitter account included an editor’s note that said the cartoon “included anti-semitic tropes.”
The Times admitted that the image was “offensive, and it was an error of judgement to publish it.” They said they had since deleted it online.
At a time of rising antisemitism, when we have become increasingly exposed to the notion of dog whistles and tropes that are antisemitic, when there is a lively and active debate about this issue in the US, The New York Times International Edition did the equivalent of saying “hold my beer.”
You thought that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s comments about foreign loyalty or “Benjamins” were problematic. The International Edition of the Times just said: “Let me show you what we can do,” with a cartoon of a yarmulke-wearing, blind US President Donald Trump being led by a dog with a Star of David collar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face for a head.
I didn’t believe the cartoon was real when I first saw it. Many of my colleagues didn’t believe it either. I spent all day Saturday trying to track down a hard copy. I phoned friends, I got a PDF of the edition, and even then I didn’t believe it.
I had to see for myself. So I drove to a 24-hour supermarket. There on the newsstand was the April 25 edition. I flipped gingerly through, fearing to see Page 16.
And then I found it. It stared back at me: That horrid image of a blind US President Donald Trump with a yarmulke being led by a dog with the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, the dog was wearing a Star of David as a collar.
This is what The New York Times thinks of us Israelis. Even if they subsequently said it was an error, they thought it was okay to print a cartoon showing the US president being blindly led by the “Jewish dog”?
And not only that, those who watched as it went to print thought it was fine to put a Jewish skullcap on the US president. Dual loyalty? No need to even wrestle with that question.
An awful lot of people at the NYT had to sign off on that cartoon for it to be published. Who are they, and how are they being held accountable?
The second part of Passover is upon us. I won't be blogging until Saturday night.
Have a chag sameach!
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Geopolitical concerns must never overshadow history. The short term gain, in relation to the memory of genocide and mass murder, is not worth momentary strategic advantages or military agreements. The relationships between Turkey alongside both Israel and the U.S. will continue, even when both countries eventually honor history and formally recognize the Armenian genocide.
On the 104th anniversary of a genocide that paved the way for the Nazi’s to implement the destruction of European Jews, it’s time the U.S. and Israel accept their responsibility to simply recognize historical fact. The longer both countries ignore reality, the longer nations around the world question the moral stature of both Israel and the U.S. For a nation forged from Holocaust survivors, and a country who defeated the Nazis alongside the Allies of World War Two, it’s imperative moral clarity take precedent over whatever benefits are derived from appeasing Turkey on this grandiose issue.
The U.S. and Israel, especially the generations of Israelis and Jews around the world who remember the murder of 6 million souls by the Nazis, must never allow short-term political considerations to overshadow historical record. Had the world recognized the reality of 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children murdered in the Armenian Genocide, Hitler might not have been able to murder 1.5 million children, of which 1 million were Jewish, during the Holocaust.
Six million Jews might have lived, had the world protected the memory of 1.5 million Armenians who’s lives were stolen by the Ottoman Empire.
In addition, Raphael Lemkin stated categorically that genocide, the word he created, originated from his study of what the Armenians experienced 104 years ago. For revisionist historians, Lemkin’s own words provide all the evidence needed to prove categorically what happened to the Armenians is the same planned and orchestrated barbarism committed against the Jews and other peoples across history. As Lemkin states in a 1949 CBS interview, “I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times, it happened to the Armenians and after the Armenians, Hitler took action…”
In 2002, Shmuel Waldman, an American from New Jersey, was shot while boarding a bus in Israel. The terrorist attack killed 2 people and left 40 injured. Among that 40 was Shmuel whose leg was blown apart, forcing him to undergo multiple surgical procedures, and leaving him suffering from PTSD.
The terrorist who shot him was Said Ramadan, a “police officer” working for the terrorists who run the Palestinian Authority. The attack had been planned by senior Palestinian Authority officials and the Palestinian Authority viewed Ramadan as a hero. Waldman joined other victims of terrorism in a lawsuit against the terrorist group, which is funded by American taxpayers, under the Antiterrorism Act.
Waldman v. PLO resulted in a record award of $655 million in damages against the Palestinian Authority terror network. But the verdict was thrown out because an American court lacked jurisdiction over the terrorist group even though the United States provides much of the cash flow that its terrorists rely on.
The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act was introduced and approved to make it clear that accepting security assistance for its "police force" would place the Palestinian Authority under judicial jurisdiction for lawsuits such as these. The PA could stop funding terrorism or face lawsuits from its victims.
A ruthless battle was waged against ATCA by a variety of groups which understood that the Palestinian Authority would not stop funding and promoting terrorism under any circumstances. These groups falsely claimed that ATCA would undermine American and Israeli security. That was a blatant lie.
The only thing that ATCA would undermine was the flow of tax dollars to Islamic terrorists.
Last year, the Palestinian Authority informed the United States that the terror group would no longer accept any aid from the United States that would expose it to ATCA lawsuits. The terror group’s letter suggested that it might revisit its refusal if the law were changed. That’s just what 6 Democrat senators, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein have set out to do, using the false claim of a humanitarian disaster.
“President Trump’s refusal to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people is a strategic mistake,” Senator Feinstein claimed, accusing him of "denying funding for clean water, health care and schools in the West Bank and Gaza."
(h/t Failexa)
So how do you “win?” And why engage in these discussions at all? Because the Israel-haters are not your target audience!
In society, whether you are interacting with folks face to face or in cyberspace, you will encounter three kinds of people:
1. Those who completely oppose the existence of Israel as the state of the Jewish people;
2. A much larger number who actively support Israel;
3. And, far bigger than both groups, the majority who don’t have strong opinions about this issue and usually aren’t paying much attention to it at all, except when it is brought to their attention by a flare-up of violence in the region, an action on the local university campus, or a demonstration in their community.
This last group, not your interlocutor, is the audience that you are trying to reach.
Even if you can’t earn a decisive victory, you don’t want to be afraid to engage and challenge anti-Israel activism. Perhaps you’ll get the haters to think twice, but even if you don’t, you have an opportunity to reach the same audience that they’re trying to recruit.
What you might accomplish is getting a fair-minded person, who is listening to the exchange or following it online, to think more about what you have to say. You might get them to realize that the steady drumbeat of misinformation from the other side might not reflect the reality of a complex ethno-religious conflict that is over a century old. You might even get them to engage in conversation with you, to ask you some genuine questions, and to reconsider some of what they have heard.
The Five Commandments of Successful Advocacy
To best accomplish this, we need to avoid arguing down at the level of some of our opponents. To that end, I offer you The Five Commandments of Successful Advocacy. They are just as relevant online as face-to-face. (Perhaps you were expecting a different, more biblically connected, commandment number? Sorry, I don’t want to suggest that these small kernels of advice were the result of any type of divine revelation.)
Kasim Hafeez is a fascinating person. He was a radical Muslim in his late teens and early twenties and then took a second look at everything he had been taught when he came across The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz.
I had a nice (and fun) discussion with him in a Tel Aviv bar when I was in Israel last month. Unfortunately, the first part of the video is lost due to me, um, not remembering to turn on the camera. (You can find other interviews of him where he describes his life story with less background noise.)
In this part, he talks a bit about how radical Islam works, how Muslims tend to take the Quran literally, his reading of the Dershowitz book and his first eye-opening visit to Israel.
In upcoming parts we will discuss Islam in more depth.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The suicide bombers in Sri Lanka were affluent and well educated. That should tell us something about the war on terror.
In 2015, then-State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf suggested that potential terrorists would not join the Islamic State if they had better job opportunities. "We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium- to longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it's lack of opportunity for jobs," Harf said on MSNBC. "We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people."
Harf is actually right—well, in the narrow sense that combatting Islamist terrorist groups is about more than military strikes. She is woefully—and dangerously—wrong, however, about more jobs being a solution. Yet the view she articulated is not hers alone. Her former boss, Barack Obama, similarly claimed that "extremely poor societies … provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism, and conflict." Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security's program on "countering violent extremism," or CVE, which the Obama administration established to counter radicalization within vulnerable communities, adheres to the same belief. How? CVE treats jihadists like members of street gangs or the mafia—as disgruntled, perhaps defenseless individuals who traveled down a dark path but can return to the light. And creating a better quality of life—a decent job, a reliable income, more responsibilities—is key to that return. In many cases, this framework would, for example, help gangsters who grew up poor with few opportunities. Not so much for the people who join ISIS.
Recent events show why this approach is misguided for Islamist terrorists. On Wednesday, Sri Lankan authorities revealed that most of the suicide bombers who murdered more than 350 people in coordinated attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday were affluent and well educated. "They're quite well educated people," Ruwan Wijewardene, Sri Lanka's state minister of defense, said of the attackers, adding that many came from "middle class" backgrounds. "We believe that one of the suicide bombers studied in the U.K. and then later on did his post-graduate in Australia before coming back to settle in Sri Lanka."
Two of the brothers who carried out the bombings came from one of the wealthiest Muslim families in the capital, a family that, according to a neighbor, was "very well connected, very rich, politically connected as well." The Daily Mail reports they are "the sons of millionaire spice trader Yoonus Ibrahim and were privately educated in Colombo." Another terrorist had a law degree, and two others were married—not the hopeless loners that one often imagines as suicide bombers.
In 2003, Asif Hanif – Britain’s first jihadist suicide bomber – murdered three people at Mike’s Bar in Tel Aviv. He had attended Kingston University. This week, a second alumnus of Kingston University, Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, committed a horrifyingly bloody massacre in Sri Lanka.
A significant number of takfiri jihadist terrorists have passed through British universities over the past couple of decades. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had been a member of UCL’s student Islamic Society and its president in 2006-7 before graduating in 2008, joined al-Qaeda under the guidance of Anwar al-Awlaki and tried to bring down an American airliner in 2009 with a bomb concealed in his underpants. Kafeel Ahmed, a former president of Queen’s University Belfast’s Islamic society, tried to blow up a nightclub in London and then set fire to himself, fatally, in Glasgow Airport in 2007. Yassin Nassari, a former president of the University of Westminster’s student Islamic society, was convicted of smuggling missile blueprints into the UK in 2007. Waheed Zaman, the former president of the London Metropolitan University Islamic society, was convicted of conspiracy to murder in 2010 in a plot to place bombs on several airliners travelling from the UK to North America.
More recently, in April 2019 the BBC reported that no fewer than seven students from the University of Westminster alone had allegedly joined ISIS.
Whenever an atrocity is committed, it is natural to ask: why? What could drive a human being to slaughter his neighbours?
Ideology clearly plays an important part. Humans are, at least in part, rational. We do things for reasons which appear good to us. The beliefs which we hold, guide our actions.
In the case of Asif Hanif, evidence emerged which indicated that he had a connection to Al Mujhajiroun: the splinter group of Hizb ut Tahrir which has emerged as a nexus in many terrorist attacks. With Abdul Mohamed, the picture is not yet clear. We don’t know what meetings he attended, with which preachers, and during which period. Therefore, at present, it is proper to make only the most general of points about ideology and radicalisation.
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Cease Firing
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[image: Dry Bones cartoon, Peace, Oct 7, Jews, War, Cease Fire, Jewish,
Israel, Palestine, Gaza,]
It really is that simple
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Monday, April 29, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
