Monday, December 17, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Third Intifada Has Begun, and more



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Palestinians: The Third Intifada Has Begun

by Khaled Abu Toameh
December 17, 2012 at 5:00 am
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Emboldened by the "victories," Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal recently reached a secret agreement on the need to launch a "popular intifada" against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their goal is to drag Israel into a confrontation with Palestinian civilians — one that would embarrass the Israelis among the international community and force them to capitulate.
By allowing Hamas to celebrate its 25th anniversary in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority leadership is paving the way for a third intifada against Israel.
In fact, in the past few days, the third intifada has already begun, as violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers have increased in various parts of the West Bank.
Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters have taken to the streets of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Tulkarem to celebrate the event, the first of its kind since the Islamist movement expelled the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Since then, in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority had been cracking down on Hamas, arresting hundreds of its supporters and members and closing down dozens of institutions belonging to the movement.
In recent weeks, however, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has apparently decided to endorse a new strategy towards Hamas. He now considers Hamas a political ally rather than an enemy.
The change came immediately after the Israeli military offensive against Hamas in mid-November.
The rapprochement between Abbas and Hamas reached its peak before and after the UN General Assembly vote in favor of upgrading the Palestinians' status to non-member observer state in late November.
Both Abbas and Hamas see the two events -- the war in the Gaza Strip and the UN vote — as "historic achievements" and military and political victories over Israel.
Emboldened by the "victories," Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal recently reached a secret agreement on the need to launch a "popular intifada" against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources in Ramallah revealed.
The two men believe that such an intifada at this stage would further isolate Israel and earn the Palestinians even more sympathy in the international arena, the sources said.
Abbas and Mashaal are aware, the sources noted, that the Palestinians are now not ready for another military confrontation with Israel -- neither in the West Bank nor in the Gaza Strip.
That is why the two men agreed that the best and only option facing the Palestinians these days is a "popular intifada" that would see Palestinian youths engage in daily confrontations with Israeli soldiers and settlers, especially in the West Bank.
Abbas and Mashaal want an uprising similar to the first intifada, which erupted in 1987, when Palestinians mainly used stones and firebombs against soldiers and settlers, and refrained from launching terror attacks inside Israel.
Yet Abbas and Mashaal seem to disagree on the ultimate goal of the "popular intifada."
While Abbas is hoping that daily clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers will force Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, Mashaal and his Hamas movement are hoping that the uprising would lead to the "liberation of all Palestine, from the Jordan river to the sea."
Abbas and Hamas have decided for now to lay their differences aside and work towards escalating tensions on the ground, particularly in the West Bank. Representatives of the two parties have been holding "reconciliation" talks in Cairo during the past few weeks in a bid to agree on a new strategy against Israel.
Their goal is to drag Israel into a confrontation with Palestinian civilians -- one that would embarrass the Israelis among the international community and force them to capitulate.
Related Topics:  Khaled Abu Toameh

Spain Threatens to Deport Filmmaker for Anti-Islam Documentary

by Soeren Kern
December 17, 2012 at 4:30 am
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The case demonstrates how the fear of Muslim rage is threatening the exercise of free speech in Europe. Firasat said he has received far more threats from the Spanish government than from angry Muslims. "I have been threatened by the authorities [and told] that my refugee status will be revoked; I will be deported back to Pakistan where the death penalty for blasphemy is waiting for me."
The Spanish government has warned a political refugee that he faces deportation for making a documentary critical of Islam.
The move comes after Belgium raised its terror threat level to the second-highest ahead of the release of the film, originally planned for December 14.
The case demonstrates how the fear of Muslim rage is threatening the exercise of free speech in Europe.
The one-hour amateur film, "The Innocent Prophet: The Life of Mohammed from a Different Point of View," by Imran Firasat, was posted on YouTube on December 15 and purports to raise awareness of the dangers of Islam to Western Civilization.
Firasat, a Pakistani ex-Muslim, obtained political asylum in Spain in 2010 due to death threats against him in both Pakistan and Indonesia for criticizing Islam and for marrying a non-Muslim. (Read his story here, in Spanish.)
His film shows images of the Muslim terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York; on the double-decker buses in London and on the commuter trains in Madrid. The movie features many passages from the Koran threatening violence against non-believers. The movie also promises to answer the question, "Was Mohammed an inspired prophet of God, or was he a madman driven by his own demons, thus producing a religion of violence and tyranny?"
Firasat says the film will be translated into English, Spanish and Hindi, and that he plans to release a version in Arabic. Firasat made the film in cooperation with the American pastor Terry Jones, who burned a Koran in April 2012 to protest the imprisonment of the Iranian Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani.
In an online trailer to promote the video, Firasat is filmed standing in Madrid's Plaza de Colón, with the Spanish flag in the background. He says: "If we find the truth about Mohammed, we can find the truth about Islam. Was Mohammed a prophet sent by Allah or was he a molester of children and a murderer?"
Firasat, who runs the website World without Islam (Mundo sin Islam), says he was inspired by another amateur film, "The Innocence of Muslims," which portrayed Mohammed as a womanizer, a homosexual and a pedophile; when it was released in September, it triggered a wave of anti-US protests and riots across Europe (here and here) and the Middle East in which more than 30 people were killed.
At the time, the Obama Administration falsely alleged that "The Innocence of Muslims" was responsible for the murder of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others in Benghazi, Libya.
Firasat told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen that he decided to make the film "when I heard that the U.S. ambassador was slain. I said, 'Okay, you Muslims, use violence, but we will continue to make films. One day one of us will lose.'"
Belgian Interior Minister Joëlle Milquet said on December 7 that the decision by the Coordinating Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM/OCAD) -- the agency which keeps tabs on the terrorist threat in Belgium -- to take the level of threat up from two to three ("severe"), out of a maximum of four, was "a simple preventative measure."
According to Peter Mertens of the Crisis Center, a government agency linked to the Belgian Interior Ministry, which assists in emergency planning and emergency management, "the trailer can be perceived as Islamophobic. The OCAD has evaluated and decided to increase the threat level to the third of four levels. That is serious. We have now informed all of the police forces of the country and have asked to be extra vigilant."
The Belgian government appears afraid of inciting its burgeoning Muslim population after more than 250 Muslims clashed with police in the heavily Islamized Borgerhout district of Antwerp, the second-largest city in Belgium, when the earlier film, "The Innocence of Muslims," was released in September; approximately 300 people, including 50 in Brussels, were arrested.
Belgian intelligence officials interviewed by the newspaper De Morgen said: "It is unclear how reactions to the new movie will be. That is not easy to predict. But recent history teaches us that the reactions can be violent. We cannot risk that the matter is not closely followed."
Belgium is not the only European country to take preemptive action. The Spanish government, apparently afraid of provoking another terrorist attack similar to the train bombings in Madrid in April 2004, has attempted to silence Firasat by threatening to deport him if he goes ahead and releases the film.
According to the Socialist daily newspaper El País, the Spanish Interior Ministry has initiated a process to review Firasat's refugee status -- although the ministry has not specified the precise legal grounds for his potential deportation. Speculation is rife that Spanish authorities will issue an arrest warrant for Firasat for "offending religious sentiments."
In an interview with the online newspaper International Business Times (IBT), Firasat said he has received far more threats from the Spanish government than from angry Muslims.
Firasat told IBT, "Seven years ago I was granted refugee status in Spain for the reason that I used to criticize Islam. It has been seven years [and] since [then] I have taken the fight against Islam very far. And my right to freedom of expression was always respected by this great country. But now suddenly, for doing the same thing which I have been doing since for the last seven years, I have been threatened by the authorities [and told] that my refugee status will be revoked; I will be deported back to Pakistan where the death penalty for blasphemy is waiting for me, and that I may be detained if I continue with the plans to release the movie."
IBT then asked Firasat, "What made the Spanish authorities 'suddenly threaten' you? What could be the reason?" Firasat responded: "That's a very funny, interesting and surprising question, even for me. Why now? I was granted asylum because of my criticisms of Islam. I have formally asked the Spanish government for the prohibition of Koran in Spain. I have given thousands of interviews to radio and TV channels. I wrote articles in newspapers. But I was never told by anyone that what I am doing is illegal. Now suddenly they try to revoke my refugee status, detain me and prosecute me for offending Muslims' religious sentiments. Why? There may be two reasons: Fear of violence by Muslims abroad and in Spain, and conflicts in diplomatic relations with Islamic countries which are investing in Spain…This is not the Spain I arrived in seven years ago, where there was complete liberty of expression."
Some free speech activists say that Firasat is himself guilty of seeking to restrict free speech. In March 2012, for example, Firasat filed a 10-point petition with the Spanish government asking that the Koran be outlawed in Spain, and in April, the Constitutional Commission of the Spanish Parliament announced that it had accepted the petition and had agreed to study it further.
In an interview with the Spanish business newspaper La Gaceta, Firasat explained why he submitted the petition: "There are hundreds of verses in the Koran that encourage believers to kill, hate, discriminate, exact revenge and torture women. A book that promotes violence should not be circulating in a free and democratic society. In the last 10 years, all terrorist attacks have been promoted by Islamic jihad as contained in the Koran."
Firasat continued: "Over 100 places in the Koran mention the phrases such as 'go to war' or 'kill all the infidels until everyone is submitted to Allah.' And the Koran requires Muslims to continue to fight jihad [war in the cause of Islam] until it has captured the Western world, its freedoms and its religion at any cost."
Firasat concluded: "I formally asked the government of Spain to ban the Koran in Spain. It is a book that cannot exist in our free society. There are millions of Muslims who follow the book, but we cannot allow millions of other people who want to live in peace and in freedom and enjoy human rights to suffer and die. I do not understand why the Spanish penal code, the Spanish constitution and the European constitution prohibit violence of any kind and yet close their eyes when talking about the Koran."
Two days after filing his petition, however, the Spanish National Police (Policía Nacional) called Firasat in for questioning after it emerged that he wanted to burn a Koran at the Plaza del Sol in central Madrid.
According to a five-page police statement dated March 5, agents asked Firasat if he "understood that his actions could hurt the religious sensibilities of those who profess the Muslim faith." He was also asked if he was "conscious that the burning of the Koran could be considered a crime according to Title XXI, Chapter IV, Sections 1 and 2 of the Criminal Code…which refers to crimes against offending religious sentiments."
According to Firasat, the agents who questioned him asked him why he did not leave Spain and burn the Koran in another country. Firasat defended himself by saying he is a Spanish citizen and a legal resident with the same rights as any other.
After reviewing his website with the agents, Firasat said: "I am not hurting the feelings of any Muslim. Rather, I am taking an action that seems necessary against a book which gives the message of jihad: killing, hatred, violence and discrimination, which in no way is compatible with Spanish law."
In a newspaper interview, Firasat summed up his dilemma: "Fighting the injustice of Islam is not so easy. On the one hand there are the Islamists who are seeking to kill me, and on the other side our own police, our own system, which seeks to intimidate me and dissuade me from confronting Islam."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics:  Spain  |  Soeren Kern

Disgruntled Protestants Issue Irenic Jerusalem Declaration

by Malcolm Lowe
December 17, 2012 at 4:00 am
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The next Presiding Bishop of the ELCA would do well to forget the obsession with pro-Palestinian activism and pay more attention to the real wishes of the faithful. Ditto for the other churches whose members have signed the Declaration.
Protestants from three continents met in Jerusalem during November 5-8, 1912, to initiate a Protestant Consultation on Israel and the Middle East (PCIME). They subsequently issued a Jerusalem Declaration calling upon their churches to refrain from one-sided censure of Israel and to pay greater attention to the current miseries of Christians in such countries as Egypt, Syria and Iraq.
These were not bishops and archbishops but pastors and well educated laity. For years, many of them had been making such calls, but each as an individual within a specific Protestant denomination in a particular country. New was that for the first time they were sitting around the same table.
The Consultation included informative briefings and field trips, as well as meetings with the two most influential local Christians, the Greek Patriarch and the Franciscan Custos. But the decisive event was the long session in which each of them reported on how his or her church dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Amazingly, despite the variety of denominations and countries, all had a similar story to tell.
Typically, their church would announce a "period of consultation" leading up to some meeting or assembly at which a statement on the conflict would be discussed. Months of silence would follow. Then, shortly before the decisive meeting, suddenly some committee of church bureaucrats would publish the text of the proposed statement, replete with the clichés of Palestinian propaganda. Anyone better informed would be left with little opportunity to protest against this nonsense.
Sometimes forces could hastily be mustered to reduce the bias of the proposed statement. An example of this is the pitiful drama that replays itself every two years in the American Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). But often the prearranged decision would be steamrollered through, against all reason.
The roots of this phenomenon are easily identifiable: Protestant bureaucrats everywhere have the same two sources of disinformation on the matter. One is the miniscule Palestinian Protestant churches (over 95% of the Christian population there is Orthodox or Catholic). The other is their fellow bureaucrats in the secretariat of the World Council of Churches (WCC), who for years have invested large resources in promoting Palestinian aspirations.
The WCC's so-called "Ecumenical Accompanier Program in Palestine and Israel" (EAPPI), for instance, has drilled hundreds of Western Protestant Christians in the Palestinian worldview. The program involves three months of on-the-spot training in Palestinian locations, followed by three months in which the participants go around propagandizing in their home churches. And the "Israel" part of the program? Some of the participants meet vociferously pro-Palestinian Jews.
The Jerusalem Consultation took place in the shadow of three events. 1) The Synod of the Church of England had endorsed the EAPPI. 2) For weeks, Israel was the victim of an increasing hail of rockets from Gaza aimed at its civilian population; a million citizens were rushing to bomb shelters many times a day. 3) A joint letter had just been sent to Congress by fifteen leading US Protestant church dignitaries, in which they challenged the US commitment to aiding Israel's military defenses. The Fifteen included the "Stated Clerk" of the PCUSA and the Presiding Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and of the United Methodist Church.
Israel's missile defense system, Iron Dome, relies heavily on that US military aid; so the Fifteen were undermining Israel's ability to defend itself precisely when Hamas and its like were indulging their fantasy of devastating Israel's civilian population. Of course, the letter of the Fifteen included a token reference to "loss of life from rocket attacks from Gaza and past suicide bombings," but it consisted otherwise in a torrent of criticism poured out upon Israel alone.
Moreover, the points of criticism were not new; Israelis have wearily refuted them on many previous occasions. But never mind – the same old deceptive accusations can be recycled whenever hostility to Israel requires them. The letter was a profoundly immoral gesture clothed in moral posturing.
The participants in the Jerusalem Consultation were rightly outraged at this coincidence of events. Nevertheless, their Declaration is remarkably irenic. After recalling how "certain European and North American church officials approach the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as if it were a zero-sum game" and "fall in line with the international campaign that purports to help the Palestinians by delegitimizing Israel," they urged:
Whether this effect is intended or not, such strategies lend encouragement to the forces that have vowed to destroy Israel – forces that launch rockets at Israeli civilians on a daily basis. We fear that this approach is not motivated by Christian love for anyone, but quite the opposite. We ask the zealous promoters of those strategies to examine their consciences in this matter.
They also identified the greater issue ignored by the Fifteen:
We have also come to see the hostility to Israel as part of a larger pattern. The forces that refuse to tolerate the existence of a Jewish state are fiercely intolerant of other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. We have heard the testimony of Coptic Christians from Egypt and Assyrian Christians from Iraq, among others, about their sufferings at the hands of aggressive Islamist movements. By contrast, we were assured by authoritative church leaders in Jerusalem that the Christian citizens of Israel do enjoy equal rights of citizenship and a good standard of living, despite occasional frictions with some of their neighbors.
Let us recall that the Egyptian Army, equipped with US-supplied weapons, has used lethal force against Egyptian Christians who protested at attacks on their churches by Muslim fanatics. The US is also strongly supporting the Syrian rebel forces, despite reports that the latter are persecuting Syrian Christians. These matters, however, have provoked no letter from the Fifteen to Congress; only US support for Israel merits their attention in the Middle East.
The dedicated PCIME website enables others to sign on to the Jerusalem Declaration. Signatures are coming in. The signatories typically comment that they have been waiting for such an initiative for a long time. This should surprise nobody. A Pew Research poll in June 2012 showed that: "About half of white Catholics (52%) sympathize more with Israel, as do 46% of white mainline Protestants; just 12% in each group sympathizes more with the Palestinians."
Thus the Fifteen are also in blatant conflict with the faithful of their own churches on this issue. Indeed, there are other issues where such leaders claim to speak on behalf of their churches, but actually represent only a minority. Without going into details, let it be noted that the result is an increasing alienation between the hierarchy and the rank and file, together with dramatic falls in church membership.
In the ELCA, for example, there was a drop of nearly 213,000 members during 2011 alone. It continued the conspicuous decline that has characterized this church since its Bishop Mark Hanson entered office in 2001. The next Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, due to be elected in 2013, would do well to forget the obsession with pro-Palestinian activism and pay more attention to the real wishes of the faithful. Ditto for the other churches whose members have signed the Declaration.
Discontent with the pro-Palestinian bias of church functionaries has already spawned such groups as Presbyterians for Middle East Peace in the US and Methodist Friends of Israel in the UK. Indeed, a regional chair of the latter group and the patron of Anglican Friends of Israel were at the Consultations and signed the Jerusalem Declaration. PCIME takes those developments a stage further. The seed has been planted of a worldwide community of like-minded Protestants.
Related Topics:  Israel  |  Malcolm Lowe

Al Jazeera's Plan

by Amin Farouk
December 17, 2012 at 3:00 am
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Al Jazeera wants to destroy the Palestinian Authority's reputation by accusing its senior leaders of complicity in Arafat's death, and forcing an investigation into his "poisoning." Its objective is to bury the Palestinian Authority.
Even as Mahmoud Abbas' minions were extracting the bones of Yasser Arafat from his grave, the Palestinian Authority upgraded its status at the United Nations to "Palestine" and was accepted as a non-member observer state by the UN General Assembly. The timing of the request for recognition by the UN and the grisly exhumation of the PA's "president" were part of the contest between Hamas and the PLO for Palestinian leadership. The contest was won by Hamas.
There are Palestinians who claim that the Palestinian Authority, which was unceremoniously expelled by Hamas from the Gaza Strip in 2007, rules the West Bank only from nine to five -- the day shift; the night shift is run by Israeli intelligence. Otherwise, they say, the Palestinian Authority would long since have collapsed.
For quite some time the leadership of the new Islamic world -- the one that grew like a weed after the Arab Spring -- has been of the opinion that the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas are no longer relevant and should depart.
Before and during Operation Pillar of Defense, Hamas received the support of the Emir of Qatar and was visited by senior officials from Turkey and Tunisia. Hamas received backing from Egypt and became the target of pilgrimages from Arab League representatives as well as a panoply of Islamic luminaries, who were all, like Shakespeare's Brutus, "honorable men."
They all gave Hamas a wind at its back, and, at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, supported it as the "victor" in the battle against Israel, despite the fact that Israel had just defeated Hamas in Operation Pillar of Defense -- a retaliation by Israel for weeks of being bombarded by missiles and rockets from Gaza.
Meanwhile Al-Jazeera TV, owned by the Emir of Qatar, broadcasts that it suspects that the Palestinian Authority was involved in a plot to poison Arafat. Al-Jazeera TV in Arabic also accuses Israel of poisoning him, but hints that the deed itself was actually done by someone on the inside, one of Arafat's loyal followers or bodyguards. That is why the Palestinian Authority gravediggers dug up Arafat's bones with such serious, frozen faces. The skeleton in the closet is the Palestinian Authority, because Al-Jazeera wants to destroy the Palestinian Authority's reputation by accusing its senior figures of complicity in Arafat's death, and forcing an investigation into his "poisoning." Al Jazeera's objective is to bury the Palestinian Authority, such that gaining UN recognition for "Palestine" is the last act the PA will ever perform.
Amin Farouk is a journalist based in the middle east.
Related Topics:  Amin Farouk

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