Wishing Israel Away
A disparate group of Islamist clerics has been busily predicting that the State of Israel will disappear in 2022, citing the Koran for support.When the world demonizes Israel
The prediction has been circulating in earnest since March, when Muslims around the world marked the holy month of Ramadan. According to an article on the pro-Hamas MEMO website by Mohammad Makram Balawi, a Palestinian writer living in Istanbul, the belief that Israel will be removed from the map at some point this year “is widely spread by some Muslim religious scholars, Palestinian and non-Palestinian.”
Balawi mentioned two clerics in this regard. One of them, Sheikh Bassam Jarrar, preaches at a mosque on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank. The sheikh is apparently “97%” certain that Israel will vanish in 2022 due to calculations based on an ancient numerical system that assigns number values to the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet.
“According to Jarrar’s calculations, based on many Koranic texts, 2022 represents the actual beginning of Israel’s downfall,” he wrote. “On March 5, 2022, according to Jarrar, a huge event will mark the beginning of the ‘Israeli downfall.’ How it will happen is not yet clear.”
Of course, March 5 has been and gone, and Israel is still there. As for the second cleric discussed by Balawi, Iraqi Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed Al-Rashed, he provided little that would bolster Jarrar’s claims. Among Al-Rashed’s reasons for Israel’s imminent collapse is a story about a Jewish neighbor of his in Baghdad in 1948, the year of Israel’s creation, when he was just a child. The woman, who was said to be “wailing” at the time, told Al-Rashed’s mother “that Jews had declared a state in Palestine, and there is a Jewish prophecy that stated that if Jews established a state, it would be a sign of their destruction and would not last more than 76 years.”
Islam is not the only faith to dress up superstition as credible assertion. Still, the significance of such beliefs is better gauged by measuring their popularity rather than debating their contents. Among Palestinians, the belief that Israel’s disappearance will be a feature of 2022 is not exactly uncommon.
Israeli leaders largely operate under the illusion that if only Israel were able to avert every Palestinian Arab civilian casualty, rein in all hilltop youths and silence all raving rightwing Zionists, the world would acknowledge that the greatest and most heartfelt desire of Israelis is to live in peace and let its neighbors enjoy peace and freedom.UN appears to be furthering Hamas’s agenda
Amid mounting evidence that this is not so; amid episode after episode that proves that the world’s media and academic elites subject Israel to a perpetual kangaroo court, despondency sets in: “The Goyim are all against us.” “The world hates us for no reason.” “Oy vey!” These and other expressions of gloom and frustration are routinely repeated by millions of Jews around the world.
Yet few people realize how un-Jewish these utterances are. Sure, the world is unjust, petty and cruel to the Jewish people, but since when is it the Jewish way to face fate with resignation?! The challenge and opportunity for Israel is to see the vast vistas that global bad faith opens for the Jewish state.
Projecting Jewish standards of justice and rationality on the world, Israel assumes that any action that infringes international law infuriates the world even more. The opposite is true! Billions of people already view Israel as a terrorist, racist and genocidal state. It is thus not surprising that any Israeli concession to morality fuels further spite and pettiness: Would you view a terrorist, racist and genocidal state sympathetically if it chose to provide healthcare to its enemies? You, like most people, would assume that this is just another cynical and manipulative ploy to hoodwink the world!
Much of the world has been raised in cultures where for millennia Jews have been viewed as the embodiment of cunning and treachery. Therefore, Israeli morality fuels rather than placating global rage and indignation against Zionism and the Jewish people.
For this reason, Israel has nothing to lose and much to gain by declaring an all-out war on her enemies. For goodness sake Israel, don’t just eliminate Hamas head Yahya Sinwar! Make sure that every single Hamas rally in Gaza and the 'West Bank' gets obliterated!! If the usual suspects then condemn you, don’t worry: Are they going to call you nasty names they haven’t in any case already called you before?!?!
When retired British Col. Richard Kemp took the floor at the United Nations Human Rights Council on June 14, he did something controversial. He dared to accuse the UNHRC’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Israel and its disinformation campaign of furthering Hamas’s illegal war against Israel.
It’s unsurprising that the Palestinian Authority sought to interrupt Kemp by raising a point of order. Kemp’s comments triggered the representative for the PA, clearly Hamas’s rivals. By shifting the perceived paradigm of conflict from between Israel and the PA ruling the West Bank, to between Israel and Hamas, Kemp stole the spotlight from the PA, which has increasingly struggled to remain relevant as more Palestinians have entrusted Hamas to champion their cause.
Most importantly, Kemp exposed the UNHRC for seeming to advance Hamas’s agenda. However controversial his comments, Kemp is surely correct in his assessment that the UN and its agencies appear to be furthering Hamas’s agenda. By delegitimizing both Israel and the PA – Hamas’s sole competitor for power – while absolving Hamas of culpability, the UN has afforded Hamas the moral high ground and has paved the way for it to terrorize, rule and dictate with impunity.
Hamas’s agenda, like those of other terrorist organizations, seeks radical change by delegitimizing the status quo. By delegitimizing Israel, Hamas can justify its violent aspirations to destroy the country and kill Jews worldwide as enshrined in its charter.
The UN appears to have come to Hamas’s aid when it comes to absolving Hamas of wrongdoing and scapegoating Israel. To date, the UN has refused to even once condemn Hamas by name in a resolution. In 2018, the General Assembly even came to Hamas’s defense, voting against a resolution that sought to condemn Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli civilians.