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In this mailing:
by Bassam Tawil
• February 9, 2017 at 5:00 am
- On the face of
it, the anti-normalization campaign appears driven by political
motivations. However, it turns out that there is also a powerful
Islamic angle to this campaign of hate, which is aimed at
delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.
- The Palestinian
anti-normalization "enforcers" do their utmost to conceal
the Islamic aspect of their campaign. They are not eager for the
world to know that Islam supplies much of the ideology and
justification for their anti-Israel activities.
- Fatwas (Islamic
religious decrees) and statements issued by leading Muslim scholars
and clerics have long warned Muslims against normalization with the
"Zionist entity." Such normalization, they have made it
clear, is considered an "unforgivable crime." The authors
of these hate messages are not opposed to normalization with Israel
because of settlements or house demolitions, but rather because they
believe Jews have no rights at all to any of the land.
- In 1989, more
than 60 eminent Muslim scholars from 18 countries ruled that it was
forbidden for Muslims to give up any part of Palestine.
- The vicious
campaigns to boycott Israel and Jews, while political in dress, are
in fact deeply rooted in Islamic ideology.
- These campaigns
are patently not a legitimate protest. They are not even part of an
effort to boycott Israeli products or politicians and academics. The
real goal of the campaigns is revealed in the words of the Muslim
leaders: that Jews have no rights whatsoever to the land, and must
be targeted through jihad as infidels and enemies of all Muslims and
Arabs
- Settlements,
checkpoints and fences are irrelevant; Muslim scholars want Jews off
what they define as sacred Muslim land. Supporters of BDS and the
anti-normalization movement would do well to consider this fact.
Failing to do so is tantamount to aiding and abetting Muslims to
destroy Israel, and kill as many Jews as possible in the process.
Palestinian "anti-normalization" activists
disrupt an unofficial Israeli-Palestinian peace conference Jerusalem's
Ambassador Hotel, in 2104.
Muslim scholars have feverishly citing chapter and verse from the
Quran and the hadith, the words of the Prophet Mohammed, in their
efforts to encourage Arabs and Muslims to avoid normalization with Jews.
The Quran and hadith have also been leveraged to promote
boycotts against Israel and Jews -- thereby refuting claims by
anti-Israel activists that their campaigns are just about politics.
Palestinians have long maintained that their campaign to ban
normalization with Israel is mainly directed against the Israeli
"occupation" of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian anti-normalization movement, which continues to target
Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who hold -- horrors! -- public
meetings, has in recent years gained momentum, largely thanks to the
ongoing anti-Israel campaign of incitement and indoctrination in the
Palestinian media and mosques.
by Benjamin Weingarten
• February 9, 2017 at 4:30 am
- Meanwhile, the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) continues freely to
operate in America. In the wee hours of election night 2016, in
fact, its Los Angeles office leader called for the overthrow of the
U.S. government.
- The Trump
administration has stated its commitment to fighting Islamic
supremacism, including the Muslim Brotherhood itself.
(Image source: Courtesy of the Investigative Project
on Terrorism)
To what lengths would America's leaders go to protect a group that
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) deemed a terrorist organization?
A bombshell new report from the Investigative Project on Terrorism
(IPT) reveals the alarming answer.
It involves a man who in his almost 50 years of public life has done
more for America's enemies -- first of the Communist variety and later of
the jihadist brand -- than perhaps any other: Iran lobbyist-in-chief John
Kerry.
In the most recent case, he did so in secret, apparently well aware
of the political consequences of exposing the potentially catastrophic
policy he was pursuing to the light of day.
As IPT's report details, Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS) were classified as
terrorist groups by the UAE in 2014, as two of the 83 entities identified
as such for their ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
by Denis MacEoin
• February 9, 2017 at 4:00 am
- At the heart of
its call for peace and justice, however, lies a profound imbalance.
We might say that Ionians, like Quakers and many other Christian groups,
are naïve innocents let loose in the real world. There is a role for
idealists in limited situations. But problems arise when such
do-gooders do not properly understand what lies behind mutual
hatred, enduring antagonism between people, and conflicts in the
name of one cause or another. And here, the Iona Community falls
down spectacularly.
- Kairos is built
on an Islamic, not a Christian narrative. Under Islamic law,
territory once conquered by Muslim armies becomes sacrosanct and can
never be forfeited to non-believers. If non-Muslims take control of
formerly Muslim land (for example, Spain or Portugal), then Muslims
are bound to reconquer it through renewed military action.
- Kairos,
significantly, does not refer to the fact that Jews lived in and
ruled in the region long before the Arab conquests.
- When Christians
choose to ignore the rights of Jews, they deny their own origins in
the land. Jesus was a Jew. The first Christian community was made up
of Jews who adhered to Jewish law. All Christian churches recognize
the Jewish Bible as part of their own scriptural, and the New
Testament is a clear record of Jewish existence in the first
Christian century.
- There never was
a "historic Palestine", and it is disturbing to find a
Christian community buying into the modern Islamic narrative. and
the "Palestinian" inhabitants of the Mandate are a
combination of the descendants of the 7th-century Arab
invaders.
- In Israel,
Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze and other citizens, regardless of
race or religion or any other circumstance, have exactly the same
rights under law to form political parties, serve in parliament,
seek employment. Why does the Iona Community single Israel out?
- Why is the Iona
Community seemingly uninterested in the fate of their fellow
Christians in the Palestinian territories yet determined to accuse
Israel of enormities, when in fact, Israel is the only country in
the Middle East where the Christian population, instead of
diminishing, has grown since the establishment of the state?
- Why, then, does
the Iona Community join forces, not with the people who support
Christians but with Palestinian Muslims who seek to destroy Israel
and who will, in due course, treat the Christians as badly as they
are treated in other Arab Muslim states?
- The Israelis
have never stalled in the peace process: they have made offers and
the Palestinians have turned them all down. There has never been
peace because Israel has no partners for peace. That a so-called
Christian organization should misrepresent history in this way is an
appalling dereliction of truth and honesty on its part.
- When will the
Iona Community come to terms with its far-left bias, its
anti-Semitism, its own reputation, and the harm it is doing to any
real hope in the Holy Land for peace?
Rifat Odeh Kassis, co-author and general coordinator
of the Kairos Palestine initiative, is pictured above giving an interview
to Al-Manar TV, the official TV channel of Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist
organization. (Photo source: Kairos Palestine)
The Iona Community is a famous ecumenical Christian community with
three centers in Scotland, two on the island of Iona in the beautiful
Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland and another on the nearby
Isle of Mull. But the community is also a far-flung body, with members
across the globe. These include people from many denominations, from
Presbyterians and Anglicans to Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Quakers,
not forgetting members who do not belong to any church.
Apart from ecumenism and a broad dedication to prayer, meditation,
and commitment to its own liturgical practices and Rule, the Community
holds it to be central to its ethos that members pursue issues relating
to peace and justice. Among other things, its Rule holds:
that the Gospel commands us to seek peace founded on justice and
that costly reconciliation is at the heart of the Gospel;
that work for justice, peace and an equitable society is a matter of
extreme urgency;
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