Youm7 (Seventh Day) is one of Egypt's most popular newspaper sites and one of the top 300 Internet sites worldwide, with roughly the same world rank as Buzzfeed.
Over the weekend it published an astonishingly antisemitic story, written by Dr. Huda Darwish, Professor of Comparative Religion, Zagazig University.
It starts out like this:
The Jews have been known to deal with usury, bribery, the creation of lies, creating division among nations, the provision of false and misleading information to the peoples, and the swaying of hearts and minds.
Our purpose in writing these lines is to reveal the root of the Jewish personality, which accepts subterfuge in all its meanings and types - whether religious, political, economic or social - by following all means of camouflage and concealment to achieve its purposes.
It gets worse. Jews who were forced to convert or die by both Christians and Muslims are characterized as having infiltrated these religions in order to destroy them from inside. For example:
In the course of the ages, Jewish sects have become assimilated to other faiths, whether forced, coercive or voluntary. These sects adopted secret methods that were vague enough as to reach the practice of worship of other religions openly, while their rituals were held secretly and hidden away from the eyes. These include New Christians who lived in Europe on the Iberian Peninsula since the 15th century, and the Dounma or Sabbatean sects of Asia who lived east in Turkey since the 17th century.
The Marranos, with their commercial investments, formed pressure groups on the peoples of those countries, where they managed to infiltrate into the ranks of the monks, adding intolerance to Christianity. The Jewish rabbis succeeded in converting to Christianity and held positions as supreme preachers in the state, such as popes, priests, baptists and members of the Inquisition, to sentence to imprisonment, murder and burn the accused Jews for the preservation of their property.
Thus, the Jewish penetration in Spain and Portugal was led by the ingenuity of the Jews in the disposition of money and speculation. They were the money changers, the financiers and the owners of the financial and commercial houses. They represented the vanguard of liberalism groups in the world in order to elevate the individual at the expense of the state.
The professor goes on to say that Sabbatean Jews also infiltrated Ottoman society and Muslim sects like Sufi and took major positions while practicing Judaism in secret.
To this day, many individuals belonging to the Marranos and Donna sects continue to live hidden among the peoples of the earth, infiltrating them with deceit and hypocrisy, as if they do not constitute a danger among them, in order to enable Zionism, to undermine Christian and Islamic sanctities, to build the Greater State of Israel and to achieve glory Of the Jewish people in the land and the west.
This is pure antisemitism, in one of the world's most popular websites.
Western media and human rights groups, as always, remain silent. Because while they all claim to be against antisemitism, when actual Arab and Muslim antisemitism shouts out to them "Look at me! I'm proud to hate Jews!" they look the other way.
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Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, shocked Jewish leaders at a closed-door meeting in New York last year. "In the last several decades, the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given," said bin Salman, according to press reports. "It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining." The future king even said that the Palestinian issue was not a top priority for the Saudis, adding that Saudi Arabia "has much more urgent and important issues to deal with" in the Middle East.
Less than two years earlier, in the same city, then-President Barack Obama devoted just one sentence of his last speech before the United Nations General Assembly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One sentence was still more than the year before, when, for the first time since becoming president, Obama did not even mention the conflict during his annual speech at the United Nations. Compare that with Obama's first three speeches before the General Assembly—in 2009, 2010, and 2011—in which he focused 10 percent, 23 percent, and 18 percent of his lengthy remarks, respectively, on the peace process. The drop-off is striking.
The cases of bin Salman and Obama represent the growing indifference of two pro-Palestinian groups—the Arab leadership and the Western, liberal elite—to the Palestinians being stateless and underdeveloped. The two cases also serve as microcosms of a larger trend: the world growing increasingly apathetic about the Palestinian plight, with traditionally sympathetic voices less interested in trying to help—save for the radicals of the Western progressive movement, who have an irrational hatred of Israel, and perhaps some Arab populations. One reason for this trend is the surge in chaos across the Middle East unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A belligerent Iran on the march, the Islamic State wreaking havoc, the war in Syria showing the depths of humanity's cruelty—how much attention can political leaders give to the Palestinians with such priorities in the Middle East? But the other reason, which is hard for pro-Palestinians voices to acknowledge, is the stubbornness, the rejectionism, the Jew-hatred, and anti-Semitism of the Palestinians themselves.
People want to remember their ancestors as noble or as victims, never as perpetrators.
Nothing has really changed. Despite all the righteous Gentiles, Eastern Europeans would again probably incinerate the Jews. In fact, in Ukraine today, the city has sold what is a mass grave of Jews murdered in Poltava to a real estate developer. Only last year, the existing monument for the Poltava victims was defaced with “Heil Hitler” and “Death to the Kikes.”
Barbarians is a film of agonized conscience. It reminded me of the film Aftermath which fictionalizes the 1941 pogrom of Jedwabne’s Jews at the hands of their Polish neighbors. Like Odessa, and like Ostroleka, Jedwabne’s Jews were herded by their neighbors into barns and buildings and set on fire. A contemporary Christ figure who tries to do the right thing is literally crucified by the Poles who do not want to be held accountable for their evil, greedy deeds.
Pasikowski’s powerful film Aftermath caused a huge controversy in Poland—it was banned in some Polish towns—as did Jan Gross’s painstaking documentation of this same atrocity. The Polish government threatened to strip Gross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and his impeccable research was hotly challenged. Something similar happened to Anna Bikont who also published The Crime and the Silence—another superb piece of research on this subject.
Nazi Germans industrialized ethnic cleansing. Catholic priests and nationalist leaders incited their populations to take up their proverbial pitchforks and torches and begin hacking away, burning Jews alive, possessing their tiny apartments and their pitiful crockery. Jedwabne and Ostroleka were both impoverished, agrarian communities, not large cities. The Jews did not have enviable crystal and chinaware.
See this hard-hitting film about the barbarians in our midst. It will be opening in New York City on July 19 at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles on July 26.
Three years ago today, a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist murdered 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel while she slept in her bed. The terrorist was killed by Israeli security personnel at the scene.
Since the murder, the Palestinian Authority has paid the family over 50,000 shekels, just because their son murdered an Israeli 13-year-old girl and died a “Martyr” as they call it.
A substantial part of the PA’s "Pay for Slay" program is to pay the families of dead terrorists a monthly allowance. Since being elected as Chairman of the PA in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly approved increasing the monthly allowances paid to the families of dead terrorists. Currently, the PA pays such families at least 1,400 shekels/month, with additions for terrorists who were married, terrorists who had children and terrorists who lived in Jerusalem or other parts of Israel.
The different institutions headed by Abbas have all referred to the murderer as a “Shahid” (Martyr) - the highest honor achievable in Islam according to the Palestinian Authority.
Reporting on the murder, both the PA’s official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and WAFA, the official PA news agency, referred to the murderer as a “Shahid,” as did PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi.
Also honoring the murderer, Fatah immediately posted his picture on Facebook, declaring him a “Martyr.”
The murderer’s mother expressed her pride in her son, stating that “My son is a hero. He made me proud.” She also encouraged other young Palestinians to carry out similar murders:
Mother of terrorist Muhammad Taraireh: “My son is a hero. He made me proud. My son died as a Martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, he [my son] has joined the Martyrs before him, and he is not better than them. Allah willing, all of them will follow this path, all the youth of Palestine. Allah be praised.”
[Hebron News YouTube channel, June 30, 2016]
Top left: "71 years from the occupation of Palestine"
Writing on white sign: Normalization (of relations with Israel)
The two sticks holding the stick on which the Palestinian guy is roasted: on one it says "Balfour Declaration" on the other it says: "Trump Declaration"
Top: "The sun of truth cannot be covered by a sieve"
In sun: "Palestine from the River to the Sea"
In brown writing: "Deal of the Century"
Top: "Greater Israel is the result of Arab normalization (with Israel)"
On flag: "From the Nile to the Euphrates"
Arab normalization wholesale!
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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The IDF Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee tweeted an image from someone at Islam's holiest site, the Kabaa in Mecca, with a handwritten message wishing Jews a peaceful Sabbath, "Shabbat Shalom."
Adraee commented, "How beautiful is coexistence and mutual respect!"
Arab media are fuming. They are assuming that someone who wishes a peaceful Sabbath for Jews must be Jewish themselves, and therefore this is proof of a Jew who infiltrated the Muslim-only city of Mecca and its holiest spot!
Because no self respecting Muslim would ever send good wishes to Jews!
This story shows not only that individual Muslims are getting more comfortable with being public about their interest in and friendship with Jews and Israel (since this was sent to the IDF's Adraee) but also it proves that the Muslim claim to only be against Israel and not Jews is so much garbage.
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The Palestinian Authority on Saturday night released Hebron businessman Saleh Abu Mayala after he had been detained upon his return from the US-led economic conference in Bahrain.
According to Palestinian reports, the decision to release the businessman came following a threatening letter from the US Embassy.
Mayala had attended last week's conference in Bahrain with a small group of Palestinian colleagues, led by businessman Ashraf Jabari, who is viewed with deep suspicion by fellow Palestinians and authorities for his close ties to Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
A PA security official said intelligence services detained Mayala in Hebron for interrogation, without elaborating on the reason for the arrest.
Aside from Jabari, the identities of the other Palestinian participants were not publicly announced, though a picture of some of them at the conference was widely circulated on social media.
Another participant, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said he and the other Palestinian attendees feel they are in "great danger," having been threatened by the PA and on social media.
The NYT adds:
Intelligence officers summoned another conference participant, Ashraf Ghanem, also from Hebron, by phone on Friday night, after they did not find him at home. Instead of turning himself in, Mr. Ghanem was sheltering on Saturday in Mr. Jabari’s house, according to the two men, in the Israeli-controlled section of Hebron — an area where the Palestinian Authority security forces cannot operate without prior coordination with the Israelis.
A Palestinian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on a sensitive security issue, said the Palestinian businessmen’s participation in the conference was “tantamount to betrayal,” adding that Palestinian law punishes those who betray their homeland. Once the Palestinian leadership had decided to boycott the event, he said, participation was not optional or a matter of individual freedom.
A second government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrest. He said there had been public pressure on the Authority to put those who attended the conference on trial.
And, absurdly:
Reached by phone, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of information, said he did not know anything about Mr. Abu Mayala’s arrest.
That is only the beginning of the farce.
Palestinian media did not report on the arrest until Israeli media did not allow them to ignore it. At first only an Israeli Arab news site mentioned the report. Finally, a small Palestinian news site mentioned it, but spun the story to pretend that Mayala turned himself in out of shame for the terrible thing he did:
[Abu Mayala's] family said: "From the first moment we learned that a family member was present at the conference, we denounced this news and took the appropriate measures. We asked him to leave immediately and return to Hebron and heresponded to our request and contacted the relevant authorities.
Al Jazeera reports that the businessmen are being threatened:
Earlier this week, Palestinian social media users circulated online a list of Palestinian businessmen who attended the event in Manama.
The handful of Palestinian businessmen who attended the workshop have been branded as "collaborators" by some in the Palestinian leadership.
Perhaps the most absurd part of this story is that before the conference, PLO executive director Saeb Erekat claimed that all Palestinian businessmen voluntarily boycotted the conference - an allegation that the world media believed - but he offered to "help" anyone who felt threatened to attend, asking them to reveal themselves beforehand.
No one was stupid enough to do that.
As the workshop was underway, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Voice media listed the names of the Palestinian attendees as an implicit threat, naming Ashraf al-Jaabari, Khaldun al-Husseini, Saleh Abu Miyaleh, Marwan al-Zubaidi, Jaris al-Taweel and Mohammed Aref Masad.
UPDATE:
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When former vice preisident Joe Biden spoke of the civility he practiced in the Senate with segregationist Democrat senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, my friend Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), among others, saw an opportunity, and jumped all over him.
He condemned Biden’s remarks and demanded he apologize.
“Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people and for everyone,” Cory said in a statement. He followed up with a tweet of a photo of black marchers in the Memphis sanitation workers strike of 1968 holding signs that said, “I am a man.”
Cory is right. Biden should not be praising segregationist senators. Segregation is affront to the Biblical insistence that all humans are equally God’s children and that we are all one human family. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became the greatest American of the twentieth century by dismantling segregation, a movement for which he paid with his life.
But how does this square with Cory’s bizarre comments about being open to meeting with the foremost antisemite in America, Louis Farrakhan?
Asked whether he would meet the Nation of Islam leader at a campaign event in Nevada, Cory said, “I don’t feel the need to do that, but I’m not one of these people that says I wouldn’t sit down with anybody to hear what they have to say.” He then added that he is very acquainted with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam from his time as mayor of Newark, N.J., stating, “I am very familiar with Minister Louis Farrakhan and his beliefs and values.”
Huh?
What Cory should, of course, have said, is this:
“I just condemned a former vice president of the United States for saying he hung out with segregationist senators. So of course I would not meet with Louis Farrakhan, who has called Jews ‘termites,’ ‘satanic,’ and referred to Hitler, who murdered six million Jews, as ‘a very great man.’ I have enjoyed wide moral and financial support from the Jewish community throughout my political career. In addition, I served as President of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s L’Chaim Society at the University of Oxford and I’ve spoken at synagogues throughout the United States who treated me with love and respect. I would never insult the my Jewish friends and supporters by meeting with a man who demonizes Jews and incites violence against them, especially a time of rising global antisemitism.”
But Cory did not say any of that. Instead, he left the door open to meeting a man who employs Nazi terminology about Jews. (Everyone knows the one thing you do with termites is exterminate them.)
In late 2013, hundreds of thousands of angry Ukrainians took to the streets to demand the resignation of Viktor Yanukovych, their country’s corrupt, pro-Russian president. Following months of violent clashes in which dozens of people were killed, Yanukovych fled to Moscow and by March 2014, Russian forces had occupied the Crimean Peninsula and began fomenting separatist uprisings in the Ukrainian east.
During the revolution, the Jewish community of Kiev had been subjected to a series of anti-Semitic attacks and in the aftermath of the revolution, many worried that their situation would deteriorate further. However, despite a Russian propaganda campaign warning about the rise of Ukrainian fascism, the real threat to the country’s Jews came not from domestic ultranationalists or anti-Semites but rather from Russia itself. In April 2014, Russian-backed separatist fighters declared a People’s Republic in the city of Donetsk near the Russian border, setting off a war that still rages to this day.
Over the course of the conflict, more than a million and a half people were displaced, including many Jews living under separatist occupation. Among those who fled the war zone were the overwhelming majority of Donetsk’s estimated prewar population of 11,000.
One of them was Pinchas Vishedski, a diminutive Israeli Chabad Hasid who had arrived in Donetsk soon after the fall of the Soviet Union and had worked for decades to rebuild Jewish life in the city.
The UK Labour Party on Friday reportedly reimposed the suspension of an MP two days after it was lifted, amid an ongoing furore over the party’s handling of complaints of anti-Semitism.
Chris Williamson, a Corbyn ally, was filmed in February telling a meeting that the party was “too apologetic” and had “given too much ground” in its response to anti-Semitism allegations.
He was reinstated Wednesday after being suspended pending an ethics review.
However a member of the panel which allowed Williamson’s return to the party, Keith Vaz MP, said he felt the decision should be reconsidered.
Following Vaz’s comments, the Labour general secretary, Jennie Formby, told the party’s national executive that Williamson’s case would be on the agenda for the next meeting of its disputes committee, the Guardian reported.
“Subsequently, the whip is not restored as the decision is still pending,” a source told the BBC.
Williamson, an MP from Derby North, tweeted on Friday that he is “naturally concerned by the lack of due process and consistency in how my case is being handled.”
The following is Judea Pearl’s speech at the fourth annual UCLA Jewish Graduation on June 16.
Dean [Maria] Blandizzi, friends, families, distinguished guests, and especially you, the graduates.
I am deeply honored by the opportunity to address this graduating class, and to speak to you on topics that are so very dear to my heart.
I know that I am speaking today to a unique group of graduates. Unique, because all of you felt the need to add a distinctly Jewish color to one of the most memorable days of your life.
And the question you are probably asking is: What is the nature of this extra color we call Jewish? Is “being Jewish” some sort of a birthmark with which one is burdened or blessed for life? A genetic incident? How can one be proud of a genetic incident? Is it a religious belief? An ethnic loyalty? A commitment to a certain mode of behavior or perspective? An attitude? Is it just a collection of sweet childhood memories, decorated with mother’s cooking? Or a language to communicate with our ancestors and decode their wisdom and experience? Most importantly, could a coherent, meaningful answer ever emerge from a community whose members view the question through such diverse prisms?
The question is not trivial, and it shook up the core of my soul 17 years ago, when our son Daniel was murdered in Karachi, Pakistan, and his last words, facing his abductors’ camera were: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish — I am Jewish. Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.”
These words have since become an identity banner to every Jewish soul, to every lover of Israel, and to every scholar of peoplehood. But at the time, they raised more questions than answers: What did he mean? What does any of us mean when he or she says: “I am Jewish?”
In Britain, a campaign by the former Conservative party chairman Baroness Warsi to outlaw Islamophobia is falsely accusing the Conservative party of institutional Islamophobia and Islamophobia-denial. This is clearly an attempt by British Muslims to appropriate for themselves the moral high ground now supposedly occupied by British Jews as a result of the unaddressed anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
Anti-Jewish appropriation and inversion are fundamental to Islam. One reason why the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is anathema is that Islam teaches that the real, authentic Jews are … the Muslims. Thus, Osama bin Laden declared in his Letter to the American People:
“It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. … If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.”
Since pious Muslims believe that Islam is perfect and everything else is the province of the devil, Muslim aggression against Jews and others becomes self-defense while defense against it becomes aggression.
All espousing the Palestinian cause go along with this surreal appropriation and inversion agenda. In turn, it plays directly into the post-modern discourse of the West where lies are believed as truth and truth disdained as lies in accordance with the dogma of secular ideologies from multiculturalism to environmentalism.
Like Islam, these ideologies are also premised upon the perfection of the world, agendas which brook no dissent and which demand that heretics be destroyed.
If you feel you are living in a terrifying, discombobulating and sinister hall of mirrors over anti-Semitism, Israel and Islamophobia, this is why.
Over the last few weeks Rosa Doherty from the Jewish Chronicle has spoken to several campaigners fighting antisemitism about the impact that struggling against anti-Jewish hate was having on their mental health. Yesterday, the Jewish Chronicle published three articles. The first contained a few case studies. The second featured some comments from mental health experts, taking a wider look at the impact anti-Jewish hatred was having on the community. The third was about lessons the Jewish community can learn about how to deal with these issues.
I don’t shy away from anything and remain fully aware that you cannot possibly face a tsunami of hate and abuse without it having an effect. I was more than willing to open up to Rosa to discuss the personal cost of fighting antisemitism. Others did too. Sara Gibbs spoke of ‘tearful nights, nights feeling disbelieved, ignored and alienated’. Miriam Mirwitch, chair of the Young Labour movement, did open up but also spoke of her reluctance to discuss the issue so as not to show weakness. Which in itself says much about the cost people are being forced to pay. Emma Feltham, probably the most notable non-Jewish face of grassroots activism against antisemitism, felt ‘forced’ to see a doctor because of mental health issues surrounding this fight. Like most who publicly defend Jewish people, Emma has also required help from both the CST and the police.
Rosa spoke to a handful, I know dozens. Behind the scenes a massive self-support network has opened up amongst activists. And what about the more public figures? Like Rachel Riley or Tracy Ann Oberman. All these brave female fighters have the added ingredient of misogyny to deal with too.
"Palestine under the Moslems. A description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500," by Guy Le Strange, 1890, is a translation from Muslim geographers and pilgrims who traveled through and to Palestine from the Muslim conquest through the 19th century.
It mentions the may capitals that Muslims set up in various divisions of Syria and its southern districts in Palestine - and none of them are Jerusalem.
Ramlah is in Israel, and Palestinians never talk about how historically important it is for them. Wikipedia in Arabic doesn't even mention that Ramlah was ever a capital city, although this book mentions it repeatedly from multiple sources.
And just in case you aren't clear, it is stated flatly that while Jerusalem had importance for Muslims (and there was an attempt once to redirect Muslim pilgrims from Mecca and Medina to go to Jerusalem instead,) Jerusalem was never the political capital of any Muslim entity.
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"The United Nations Wednesday hosted a special session on the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred at which Israel's U.N. ambassador urged world powers to "declare war" against anti-Semitism.
Danny Danon recommended that the U.N. produce an annual investigative report on anti-Semitism, that the U.N. Secretary-General appoint a special envoy for combatting anti-Semitism and that the global body add 'ending anti-Semitism' to the list of so-called 'sustainable development goals' it has set itself. The U.N. currently has set itself 17 such goals to meet by 2030, including climate action, education, zero poverty levels, and full gender equality...
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded the audience that the Holocaust was 'only as far back as a single average human lifespan' and noted that while Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany had been defeated in World War II, 'anti-Semitism has not been extinguished. Far from it.'...
However, Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News that the Guterres must do more to address anti-Semitism, which she said goes largely unchecked throughout the global organization.
'The U.N. Secretary-General paid the usual U.N. lip-service to the Holocaust, and then declared the United Nations fights the ills of bigotry and anti-Semitism as a matter of its very identity,' Bayefsky said. 'That's false. The U.N. provides a global platform to promote anti-Semitism dressed-up as anti-Zionism, the hatred of Israel, and falsehoods about Israeli crimes.'
'I fear the truth is that as long as we believe that the United Nations - an organization controlled by forces antithetical to human rights,' she added, 'is part of the solution to limiting the reach of anti-Semitism, the less likely we will ever get there.'"
Reviewing two new biographies of Hitler, one by Peter Longerich and the other by Brendan Simms, Daniel Johnson takes stock of the connection between the dictator’s hatred of the Jews and his hatred of the West:
While Longerich places the main emphasis of his book on a comprehensive account of how Hitler exercised power, Simms is more interested in the question of why. Both agree that he saw the war as an existential struggle against “the Jews,” especially from 1941 onward. Longerich shows that Hitler himself was responsible for the radicalization of the war against the Soviet Union into one of racial extermination. But this process was part of Hitler’s need to implicate an often reluctant German nation not only in his pitiless bid to reverse the unexpected defeat of 1918 but also in his genocidal project, above all the annihilation of European Jewry, thereby deliberately incriminating his compatriots and allies.. . . .
When Hitler declared war on the U.S., in one of the last of his Reichstag speeches on December 11, 1941, he claimed that Roosevelt, like Woodrow Wilson before him, was “mentally disturbed” and that his long tenure in office could only be explained by the sinister “power” behind him of “the eternal Jew.” Simms gives this speech prominence in his account: there Hitler set out in detail his claim that “the American president and his plutocratic clique” intended to establish “an unlimited economic dictatorship” over the world. The world was now, he declared, at war—a war between the German Reich and the “Anglo-Saxon-Jewish-capitalist world.” . . .
To this day, here in Britain, there are politicians who combine anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Semitism. They peddle the politics of resentment, of the “have-nots” against the “haves.” They call themselves socialists and their enemies Nazis, but they often turn a blind eye to mass murder and they like to make scapegoats of the “Zionists.” We all know who they are. And we British, of all people, ought to know better than to lend them our votes.
Inon Dan Kehati leads a group known as The Home, a grassroots organization promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, working on the inside, with the people who are directly and personally affected. They see the problems blocking efforts towards peace created by outside interference of self-appointed peace envoys and promises of money coming from the United States and the European Union -- money that ends up lining the pockets of the Palestinian Authority.
I asked Kehati about how, from his perspective, the Palestinian Arabs feel about the plan.
Q: what do you make of what is going on in Bahrain, especially the idea of dealing with the economic part and working from the ground up instead of trying to create a state first?
Kehati: I don't think it can bring any momentum or any progress to the (peace) process. Any foreign involvement here, especially western involvement, is just interfering.
Q: Among the people you work with, both Jews and Arabs, do they share a similar pessimism that Trump (and especially Kushner) are getting involved in things that are beyond their ability (and right) to try to control?
Kehati: Most Palestinians that I know, they want prosperity and definitely what Kushner says, that the Palestinian people want prosperity and want better conditions and economic grown and stuff is very true. But the way that it comes from the US -- most likely the PA will make an obstacle so that it will fail eventually. I don't see how it can work.
As long as the PA is there, nothing is going to change. The PA is also playing a double game because they are the Israeli arm regarding managing security in Judea and Samaria -- but it is a dictatorship at the end of the day.
Q: So the Palestinian Arabs actually are siding with Abbas against Kushner's "Peace To Prosperity" plan?
Kehati: Yes, the Palestinians, I am afraid, do agree with Abbas on this issue. Simply to speak about economic prosperity and about money that basically will not go downward to the people is something that does not appeal to Palestinians.
I think that Abbas might take advantage of this conference, and the fact that its basically speaking about economic issues that will definitely not go down to the people -- and abuse it to gain more support from the Palestinians, even though 9 out of 10 Palestinians don't see Abbas as their president or as their leader.
That is the western thinking that does not speak to the emotions and the basic needs of the Palestinian people, but speaks from a western financial perspective about something that is more complex. Again, a total failure to understand the deep motives behind the Palestinians.
The thing is about human rights -- we are not talking about political rights. Freedom of movement, freedom to travel and easing of the military rule: these are the things that speak more to the Palestinians. This is money that basically would go most likely to corrupt leaders or dictators or just corrupt people. This money will not flow downwards.
Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli scholar of Arabic culture who works with Kehati and his group, has written about the conference in Bahrain along similar lines.
On the one hand, whether coming from the nationalistic claims of the Palestinian Authority or the religious perspective espoused by Hamas, neither group will recognize the validity of a Jewish presence in the land. Add to that the actions the Trump administration has taken in recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and removing support for the "Palestinian refugees."
Palestinian resistance to western involvement is more than just a rejection of foreign involvement per se. Echoing Kehati, Kedar also sees a rejection of the western approach to solving these kinds of problems:
PLO spokesmen are up in arms because, in their opinion, dealing with the economic issues before solving all the other problems – Jerusalem, the refugees, borders, Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, water, sovereignty – are a result of the American conception that money, work and economic development can solve everything. [emphasis added]
Involving other Arab countries would seem to be the way around that problem. But according to Kedar, there is more to the Palestinian rejection than just opposition to the involvement of the West:
Another serious flaw in the "Deal of the Century" is that it involves additional Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. This is totally unacceptable to Palestinian Arab spokesmen because years ago, Arafat established the rule that "independence is a Palestinian decision," meaning that the Palestinians are the only ones allowed to decide on their own destiny and future.
The administration makes a big mistake. It shows lack of understanding of the psyche of the Palestinians when it starts with material benefits as a carrot, so that Palestinians can see what they would be missing if they reject the political part of the plan.
This is something that is likely to create the exact opposite reaction among the Palestinian public that the administration hopes it will elicit.
Not every analyst is as pessimistic.
Yoni ben Menachem, an Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, and a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center, thinks that Palestinian opposition to Abbas outweighs their opposition to the Bahrain Conference.
Reporting on the protests have not been so clearcut. According to The Times of Israel, hundreds protested on Monday. On Tuesday several thousand took to the streets in Nablus to protest against the conference, but around Ramallah there were only about 30 who showed up. Similarly, in Bethlehem, the protesters numbered only in the dozens.
Ben Menachem believes that the corruption and incompetence of Abbas have in fact undercut his ability to disrupt the conference and the steps that will follow. In an article about The Palestinian Failure in Bahrain, he notes that Abbas originally called for a general strike, then instead called for 3 days of demonstrations instead, perhaps recognizing how little influence he really has.
The failure of Mahmoud Abbas has become the street talk in the territories, and he may give the Trump government the impetus to begin unilaterally implementing parts of the economic plan discussed at the Bahrain conference. Mahmoud Abbas did not go out of his way to thwart the Bahrain conference and acted as if he understood that the game was over and that he could not stop the gathering. The PA has not formulated a national plan to deal with President Trump's "bargain of the century" and is content to make do with denunciations and threats. [Translated from the Hebrew with Google Translate]
Whether this is an overly optimistic view remains to be seen, with various factors in play along with the established traditional Palestinian suspicions outlined above. And as Kehati points out, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority will not make things easy.
Besides, there still remains the Arabs in Gaza, where Hamas -- which is no less corrupt and incompetent than the PA -- rules with a stronger hand.
I corresponded with someone who told me about a friend, a simple Palestinian Arab who doesn't care about Bahrain. The PA and the Ramallah NGOs do not speak for him, and he doesn't know what the Bahrain peace plan is. All he wants is a job and to bring home food for his family. These are the people, not the officials and those who join their protests in the streets, who will ultimately decide the fate of Trump's deal.
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Last month, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil tweeted that he supports the right of Lebanese women to pass citizenship to their husbands and children, except if they are married to a Palestinian or Syrian men.
It caused a bit of a ruckus in Lebanon but his explicit bigotry didn't make a ripple in the international media..
Earlier this month, he again went to Twitter to say, “It is normal to defend the Lebanese labour force against any other foreign labour, whether it be Syrian, Palestinian, French, Saudi, Iranian or American, the Lebanese come first!”
The Syrians and Arabs of Palestinian descent who are in Lebanon generally have nowhere else to go, so of course they need jobs. Yet he lumps them in with other foreign workers, who are also an important part of the workforce as they are throughout the Middle East.
Again, there was some regional controversy over his comments, and the rest of the world yawned. I didn't see any "pro-Palestinian" groups issue statements of condemnation.
Anti-Palestinian bigotry in the Middle East is simply not a story unless it can be ascribed to Lebanon's southern neighbor.
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Over the past few days, the number of fires being set by Gaza arson balloons has increased markedly, with nearly 100 fires set this week alone, causing major damage.
The Gaza terror groups that set these fires are known as "lightning units" - and at least one of them made up T-shirts.
The Gaza groups are very proud of the fires they set, with a lot of coverage in Arab media of the fires and the release of videos extolling the groups.
A video set to a popular song, Palestinian border unit members launch incendiary and explosive laden balloons towards #Israel today. A total of about 19 fires were reported today. #Gazapic.twitter.com/uMxMqI5EMQ
Reports today indicate that Israel has given concessions to Gaza groups to stop the balloons, which is being criticized by opponents of the government.
An Israeli official confirmed Friday that the country had agreed to a number of economic concessions for the Gaza Strip in exchange for an end to arson attacks and other violence along the border.
“In response to a request from the United Nations and Egypt, Israel will return the fishing zone [to 15 nautical miles] and the flow of fuel, in light of a promise that Hamas will stop the violence against Israel. If Hamas will not abide by this commitment, Israel will reinstate sanctions,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Friday, despite the agreement, an incendiary device disguised as a book was sent into Israel on a bunch of balloons, while other balloon-borne incendiaries caused several fires in the border region.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 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.
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Elder of Ziyon
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