In this mailing:
- Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: "No Jews Allowed!"
- Dan D. Aridor: Europe Losing its Patience
- Ali Salim: Islamic Cannibalism
Palestinians: "No Jews Allowed!"
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
June 25, 2013 at 5:00 am
June 25, 2013 at 5:00 am
|
Share:
 |
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
The next
time U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Ramallah, will he actually
violate U.S. law to make sure there are no Jews among his entourage, lest he
upset his Palestinian hosts?
"We will approve the meeting on condition there are no Jews."This is what you are likely to hear these days if you request a meeting with any senior Palestinian Authority official in the West Bank.
Palestinian journalists who try to arrange meetings or interviews with Palestinian Authority representatives for Western colleagues have become used to hearing such things almost on a daily basis.
Just last week, for example, a journalist who requested a meeting between Western journalists and a top Palestinian Authority official was told "to make sure there were no Jews or Israelis" among the visitors.
The official's aide went on to explain: "We are sorry, but we do not meet with Jews or Israelis."
Another Palestinian journalist who tried to arrange an interview with a Palestinian Authority official for a European colleague was turned down "because the man's name indicates he is a Jew."
In yet another recent incident, a Palestinian Authority ministry instructed its guards to "prevent Jewish reporters" from attending an event in Ramallah.
It is not clear at this stage if the Palestinian Authority leadership is behind the boycott of Jews and Israelis who seek to meet with its representatives.
What is clear is that Palestinian Authority officials do not hesitate to state in public that they do not want to meet with any Jew or Israeli.
The Palestinian Authority representatives assume that if you are a Jew, then you must be pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian.
The only people with whom they want to meet are those who support the Palestinians and do not ask difficult questions.
That is why the Palestinian Authority earlier this year imposed severe restrictions on the work of non-Palestinian journalists in the territories under its control in the West Bank.
Now, any journalist who wants to visit a Palestinian city or meet with a top Palestinian official needs to get permission in advance from the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information.
Even the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in the West Bank has come out in support of the restrictions. The syndicate has even gone a step further by urging the Palestinian Authority leadership to ban Israeli journalists from entering Palestinian cities and working there without permission.
Some Israeli journalists covering Palestinian affairs, however, continue to defy the ban by visiting Ramallah and other Palestinian cities -- putting their lives at risk.
There were days when Israeli and Palestinian journalists used to work together and help each other in reporting the news. But those days were long before the Palestinian Authority and its representatives started promoting boycotts against Israelis.
It now remains to be seen how Palestinians will react when and if they see their leaders in the West Bank return to the negotiating table with Israel, or meet with a Jewish Congressman or politician.
The next time U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Ramallah, will he actually violate U.S. law to make sure there are no Jews among his entourage lest he upset his Palestinian hosts?
Related Topics: Khaled Abu
Toameh
Europe Losing its Patience
by Dan D. Aridor
June 25, 2013 at 4:00 am
June 25, 2013 at 4:00 am
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
The Europe
of Mr. Hague is not losing its patience; it is losing its nerve, its character,
its values, its home.
At the end of May of this year, British Foreign Minister William Hague made
a statement that "Europe is losing its patience." There are quite a
few reasons for Secretary Hague to have made such a statement:- In Britain a soldier was beheaded in the street, and in France a soldier was murdered. Both attacks seem to be hate crimes of Muslims against Christians.
- 60,000 British women were genitally mutilated due to a ritual practiced by Muslims, and 20,000 more are in immediate danger of being forced to undergo this procedure.
- In Egypt, the original inhabitants of the country, Christian Copts, are been hunted down by the Muslims.
- In Syria, the level of atrocities has reached a new high as chemical weapons have been deployed. The death toll in the civil war is approaching 100,000.
- In Saudi Arabia, women are discriminated against and a culture of women as sex slaves is flourishing.
- An important Palestinian Authority figure, Jibril Rajoub, has just said that Palestinians, if they could, would nuke Israel. No condemnation or rebuff of his statements was heard from any Palestinian politician.
- Mauritania still has slaves; Indonesia still canes people; Iran hangs homosexuals from cranes; Turkey has more journalists in prison than any other country, including Iran and North Korea; Saudi Arabia denies women freedom of movement; does not allow Bibles into the country; and there is no equal justice under law, property rights, free speech, free press, or free worship.
- In Britain and across Europe, Israeli and Jewish speakers, Jewish students or just plain Jews are routinely attacked by what can be described as the new "Brown Shirts" of Europe (and occasionally also in and American and Canadian Universities).
So seemingly it is not hate crimes around the Muslim world, in Arab countries or in Sharia's enclaves in Britain, or even in London that anger Secretary Hague.
The latest hate crime, the beheading of an British soldier in London, propelled one of the most supportive "politically correct" advocates of our time, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, finally to say what no one else dares to say: that there is a "problem within Islam."
In a move reminiscent of Nazi Germany, Britain, led by Mr. Cameron and Mr. Hague, is part of a growing effort in the European Union to label Israeli products exported from beyond the 1949 armistice lines -- where the shooting stopped after Israel survived the invasion in 1948, on the eve of its birth, by five Arab armies. Also known as "'67 borders," after the date of the Six Day War, these boundaries were called by the late, left-wing Foreign Minister of Israel, Abba Eban, "Auschwitz borders" for having, among other vulnerabilities, the width of a mere 14 km, not even nine miles, less than the length of the island of Manhattan. This "waist" now makes up the center of Israel, and is its most populated part.
Notably, the EU does not propose similarly labeling goods from any other territories deemed "occupied." Further, while condemning Israel for what they call "the Territories," the British still "occupy" the Falkland Islands, disputed by Argentina as their Malvinas, on the other side of the Atlantic, nowhere near Britain.
Mr. Cameron and Mr. Hague added their names to list of people who advocated labeling Jewish goods or businesses. At a time when both the State of Israel and Jews are being so violently attacked in so many international forums -- not because of the so-called territories but simply for existing -- this foreign minister is aligning himself with an unholy tradition of British politicians since the days of the British Mandate in Israel, from the end of World War I until 1947. This unseemly policy seems to blind the British bureaucracy and many of Britain's elite to other policies and other times, and is presumably a campaign waged against the legitimacy of Israel and its right to exist in its 3,000 year-old historic home.
According to The Bible and the Sword, a comprehensive study of the historical relationship between the English people and the Jews, and their connection through the centuries to the land known as Israel or Palestine, by the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Tuchman, it was one of the greatest figures in British history, Richard the Lionheart, who sacrificed so many Christians for a chance to conquer Jerusalem. William Marshal, described as The Greatest Knight, also fought for the Holy Land. For Richard the Lionheart and William Marshal, there was no armistice treaty of 1949, "'67 borders," "occupation," or "settlements." Deferring to the Bible, they attributed to a higher authority their excuse for fighting for the land of Israel -- the Promised Land.
Jerusalem is in the heart of the country as it was the hearts of so many Christians who died trying to liberate it from Muslim occupation. In the centuries when the Muslims controlled Jerusalem, it was never a capital. It is nowhere even mentioned in the Quran, not once. Yet it has been mentioned for more than two millennia on the lips of every Jew in their daily prayers, on their high holy days and at every marriage, and it was, and still is, the heart and soul of the Jewish people. Five times a day every observant Muslim turns his back on Jerusalem to pray to Mecca.
William Hague is losing his patience with a connection of more than three millennia between the Jewish people and a tiny strip of land -- a connection that was also so critical for generations of British leaders. Tuchman, in the preface of her book, states that, "The British betrayal of their own impulse in establishing the national home, the white paper policy, the collusion with the Arabs, the ramming of the Exodus and the detention of Jewish refugees from Hitler in new concentration camps in Cyprus, and finally, the encouragement of the Arab offensive on the heels of the British departure was all impossible to relate without outrage."
Those, however, were not the last betrayals by British politicians of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Within a span of eight years, the British proved that Israel and its survival were of no interest to the British "elite." It was in June 1967 that for three weeks the armies of Jordan, Syria and Egypt threatened to obliterate the State of Israel -- which then had no "territories." Not England, not France and not even the United States came to Israel's aid.
A little more than seven years later, in 1973, during the darkest hours of the Yom Kippur War, when the Americans wanted to send an airlift operation to assist the surprised Israelis, they could not find a single Western democracy that would allow the airplanes to land and refuel. Not even England, America's strategic and cultural partner, which was saved by the Americans in two world wars. Not only did the Western countries decline to come to the aid of the remaining few who survived the Holocaust; they even declined to help fuel American aircraft, or allow them to traverse their airspace. The American pilots who saved Europe with their blood had to risk their lives flying a precise route between Europe and the Arab countries bordering the Mediterranean, in order not to violate the air space of European countries. It was only the dictatorship of Portugal that allowed the airplanes to land and refuel in the Azores.
A few years earlier, on December 7, 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, had dropped to his knees before the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943. Many in Poland and Germany were deeply moved by this famous gesture of repentance and apology. As the Chancellor later said, "under the weight of recent history, I did what people do when words fail them. In this way, I commemorated millions of murdered people." That gesture, however, did not prevent Chancellor Brandt from betraying his own words in 1973 by also refusing to allow American airplanes to refuel in Germany. He refused to help the refugees of the Holocaust and their descendents, the very people from whom, on his knees and in tears, he had begged forgiveness.
Great Britain, so quick to condemn Israel and be impatient with it, then virtually embargoed Israel by revoking arms export licenses to Israel after Operation Cast Lead in 2009. Operation Cast Lead was carried out by the then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after thousands of missiles had been fired by Hamas into Israeli towns, targeting civilians, for years. The embargo of 2009 was not an isolated incident: In 2002, the British government also refused to sell ejector seats for F4 Phantom jet planes used by the Israel Air Force. The same Ehud Olmert in 2008 proposed the most far-reaching peace offer to Palestinian Authority President Mohammad Abbas, who rejected it, just as Yasser Arafat rejected Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David in 2000, and as the Arab League rejected Israel's offer to negotiate for the return of the "territories", in its Khartoum resolution a few months after the Six Day War in 1967 -- every rejection without even a counter-offer.
British policy is, as usual, two-faced and hypocritical. Britain condemns Israel at every possible turn, then seeks Israel's assistance and good will. This year the birthday of her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II was celebrated in Israel at the world-renowned Weizmann Institute. Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel and a world-class scientist, made major contributions in assisting the war effort of the Allies in WW I; it is this scientific and technological collaboration that the British government cherishes -- so much so that Prime Minister David Cameron is taking a personal interest in it. Britain has created a technological hub placed in the British embassy in Tel-Aviv -- a first of its kind. The purpose of the hub is to encourage, among other things, Israeli businesses to make their home in Britain. While visiting Israel in November 2010, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague called UK-Israel science and business ties "one of the cornerstones of the relationship between Britain and Israel." It is almost as if history is repeating itself. Trying to accelerate its economy, England is seeking Jewish assistance -- an invitation that resembles Oliver Cromwell, in 1657, lifting the 350-year ban on Jews in England.
Perhaps Secretary Hague and Prime Minister Cameron might become concerned about the lawlessness and infringements of human rights, especially of women, in their own country, Britain -- the direct result of caving into Muslim demands for Sharia law there. This policy of submission should pose a serious concern to the West. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that England can no longer send its own men in uniform out into the streets; British soldiers are not targets in Israel but in London. If Mr. Cameron and Mr. Hague are still concerned about human rights, perhaps they might start by speaking to officials in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, where there is plenty to lose their patience about: The Wahhabis and Muslim Brotherhood rulers systematically trample human rights, women's rights, children's rights, property rights, equal justice under law, rule of law, free speech, free press, and freedom of religion, among other distasteful practices. There is persecution of Christians and anyone else considered "not Muslim enough."
Picking on Jews is relatively easy; there are no real consequences except for revealing the true color of one's own character. Perhaps William Hague need not be concerned with the policy his government promotes regarding Palestine: future generations of Britons might continue their claim to Jerusalem, but from a religious foundation other than Anglican. By that time, the British might find the question of "occupied territories" closer to home, as it already is in Spain, where Muslims are staking claims to "occupied" Andalusia. The Europe of Mr. Hague is not losing its patience; it is losing its nerve, its character, its values, its home.
Related Topics: Israel, United
Kingdom
Islamic Cannibalism
by Ali Salim
June 25, 2013 at 3:00 am
June 25, 2013 at 3:00 am
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
Iran's
determination to become a nuclear power can be viewed as a calculation that
only under a nuclear umbrella will it be able to realize its aspirations in the
Persian Gulf, strike the Americans, neutralize them with a surprise Pear
Harbor-like attack in the Gulf and threaten to destroy the Arab oil reserves.
The bloody gap between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Islam, growing wider every
day, began with the death of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w). Since the day
Islam went forth into the world, many people have been converted by the sword
swung over their heads. Others converted to acquire some of the infidels'
possessions and there were those, needless to say, who were convinced of the
correctness of Islam's path. There were also, however, many who converted,
changed their minds, returned to their original religions and bid Islam
goodbye. There were also inter-Islamic confrontations concerning the leadership
of the institution of the Caliphate, which made others break away, and they
were accused as having deviated from Islam. The Muslims waged wars against
these backsliders, to this day called ridda wars.The ancient argument over the leadership of Islam also gave birth, with bloodshed breathtaking in its cruelty, to the Shi'ite split from Sunni Islam and the deep, abiding hatred that the two opposing schools harbor for one another. To this day that hatred is part of the bloody relations between Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen, to name but a few. Today that hatred and its violence dictate the relations between the Sunni Arab world and the Iranian-led Shi'ites.
One aspect of the conflict is the mass Sunni uprising against Assad's Alawite regime in Syria (the Alawites are a Shi'ite splinter group. There are general Shi'ite-Sunni religious collisions such as the increasing unrest and mass attacks on Maliki's Shi'ite regime in Iraq, and the unrest escalating against Hassan Nasrallah, the murderous leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon. They serve as the anvil where the hammer of Shi'ite Iran's agenda of religious and terrorist expansion is planning to pound the Sunni Islamic countries, most of whose defensive capabilities are chaotic -- the result of the collapse of the regimes after the so-called Arab Spring.
The Iranians have a plan for religious imperialism based along ancient Persian nationalistic lines. They have every intention of wiping away the humiliating defeat they suffered in the past at the hands of the Arabs by recreating the Sassanid Empire and taking control of the Middle East.
The plan is two-pronged: first there is the strategic effort of the so-called "northern axis," intended to strangle the Middle East through military might and continuous, unbroken Shi'ite religious influence from the north, from Iran through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, exploiting propaganda depicting Israel as their joint enemy to anesthetize the Sunni Arabs, who dream of "liberating Palestine and destroying the Jews." The second prong, the "southern axis," is to exploit Bahrain, where most citizens are Shi'ite; to expel the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty and use the country as a bridgehead for overland military invasion, and to prepare for an Iranian takeover of the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia. These two prongs were supposed to be supported by Shi'ite terrorist attacks carried out by Iranian and Hezbollah-operated squads whose objectives were deceit, sowing destruction and weakening the Sunni Islamic states as well as incidentally causing damage to African and European countries.
Fortunately, the Iranian plan went wrong. Despite the chaos reigning in the Islamic countries, along the northern axis (especially Syria) the Sunni uprising, which receives support and an increasingly large flow of Turkish, Arab and Western arms, continues to interfere with and disrupt the Iranian plan. Along the southern axis, Iran does not seem able to topple the regime in Bahrain or take over the western coast of the Gulf. The military support Saudi Arabia and other Arab states give Bahrain make Iran uneasy. In reality, the Americans do not seem to be planning to go home any time soon. They are providing backup for the Arabian Peninsula countries and reinforcing American naval and aerial strength in the Gulf, raising serious questions for any Iranian plan to attack.
Iran's determination to become a nuclear power can be viewed as a calculation that only under a nuclear umbrella will it be able to realize its aspirations in the Persian Gulf, strike the Americans, neutralize them with a surprise Pearl Harbor-like attack in the Gulf, and threaten to destroy the Arab oil reserves. Only with the bomb they are cooking up in their cellars will they be able to carry out their threat of nuclear deterrence of the United States, like North Korea.
The clever plans of the ayatollahs, who, it is well known, have the capabilities and are divinely inspired to plot the fate of the world, are nevertheless going awry. The failure of the Iranian plans and the damage done to the country's economy can be sensed in the mutual accusations of the presidential candidates. Syria, half shattered, is being destroyed, and Assad's regime, which is a critical Iranian link in the northern axis chain, is collapsing. Even the Russians, whose narrow egoistic interests were supposed to avail Iran and arm Syria with S-300 surface-to-air missiles, can no longer prop up the regime.
It seems that the fundamental element of bloodshed in the Arab culture, especially Muslim culture, does not allow us to close ranks and create the political, scientific and material achievements for which we have the potential. The threats of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah to attack Israel in the Golan Heights if Israel again strike Syria, and their claims that Israel smuggles weapons to the rebels, are patently ridiculous. Even the attempts of deputy Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to accuse Israel of responsibility for the events in Syria, claiming it initiated the confrontations and is a common enemy, are pathetic.
Without a doubt, those who initiated the events that led to the Arab Spring wanted a social and political culture fashioned after the West, as was reflected in what we saw on TV a few short years ago. We are slowly coming to realize that this utopian dream will forever remain a dream because we live in a religiously regressive world. However, Iran and its envoys in the Middle East should know that one of the greatest achievements of the Arab Spring is that despite the Arabs' inability to realize the dream of enlightened, Western-style democratic governments, they know with absolute certainty what kinds of regimes they do not want, and they have shown their ability to get rid of them.
The Syrian people have had enough of Bashar Assad, and even if the nightmare continues and other strategic sites besides Al-Qusayr are reoccupied by the Syrian regime, he is finished. Likewise, Hezbollah will be finished by the Lebanese and in the end the Iranians will lose. What is strange is that, despite the calls by Islamist opposition leaders such as Hassan A'boud (head of the Al-Ahrar radical military group) to establish an Islamic state throughout Iraq and Syria and to destroy America and Israel, Sunni Arabs are still waiting for the West to destroy Iran and its various Shi'ite confederates, al-Maliki, Assad and Nasrallah.
Watching the video filmed by the rebels in Syria and seeing Abu Saqr, a well-known fighter from Homs who founded the rebel Farouk Brigades, telling his men to "slaughter the Alawites, cut out their heart and eat it," before he takes a bite out of the heart of a Syrian soldier killed in battle, one can only remember how, during the birth of Islam, Hind ate the liver of Hamzeh, the companion of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w). Some Muslims, it seems, have turned to cannibalism and returned to the period of jahiliyya, the time before the revelation. Unfortunately, religious wars and bloodshed will apparently remain an integral part of Islam.
Related Topics: Ali Salim
To subscribe to the this mailing list, go to http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/list_subscribe.php
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment