Palestinians: "No Place for the Zionist Entity in Palestine"

by Bassam Tawil • February 26, 2019 at 5:00 am

Hamas and Islamic Jihad should be given credit for their clarity and honesty regarding their ambitions. The two groups are clearly saying that their ultimate goal is to see Israel removed from the region and replaced with an Islamic state. As far as they are concerned, the conflict with Israel is not about a settlement, a checkpoint or even Jerusalem. Instead, it is about the presence of Jews in what they regard as their own state and homeland.
What will happen the day after a Palestinian state is established? The answer, according to Hamas and Islamic Jihad (and other Palestinians) is that they will use it to continue the "armed struggle" until the liberation of the supposedly occupied cities of Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Tiberias, Haifa and Ashdod. Under these current circumstances, a Palestinian state will pose an immediate existential danger to Israel.
The Islamic Jihad threat to turn Israeli cities into "hell" by firing missiles at them needs to be taken seriously by those who are working on the upcoming US peace plan. Any land that is given to Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank will be used in the future by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a base for launching rockets and missiles at Israeli cities. Then, the terror groups will not need accurate, long-range rockets to achieve their plan to destroy Israel's population centers: they will be sitting right across the street from them.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad control nearly two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Each group has its own political leadership , as well as militias that possess various types of weapons, including rockets and missiles. Pictured: Hamas militiamen parade their weapons in Gaza City, on July 20, 2017. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

A Palestinian terror group says that its engineers have developed "accurate and destructive" missiles that can reach the "occupied" cities of Tel Aviv, Netanya and Jerusalem. Abu Hamza, spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad organization in the Gaza Strip, threatened that his group's "rocket unit" would turn Israeli cities into "hell."

"There is no place for the Zionist enemy on the land of Palestine," Abu Hamza said. "Either they leave this blessed land, or they will be dealt one painful strike after the other."

Islamic Jihad is the second-largest Palestinian terror group in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas. Neither group recognizes Israel's right to exist. Both say they are committed to the "armed struggle until the liberation of all Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River."

The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad see Israel as one big settlement to be uprooted from the Middle East.

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Ireland's Raw Bigotry

by Peter Baum • February 26, 2019 at 4:00 am

The Irish legislation, banning the import of goods from Israeli communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines, not only coincides ironically with the U.S. Senate passage of a motion to prevent anti-Israel boycotts, but also constitutes a breach of European trade law.
These Irish "humanitarians" also do not seem to care about the suffering of the inhabitants of the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip, who continue to suffer from large-scale abuse and persecution at the hands of their own despotic leaders.
Meanwhile, other nations actually guilty of serious human rights abuses, war crimes and ethnic cleansing -- such as Syria, Iran, China, North Korea, Turkey and Russia, to name a few -- are spared Irish indignation and legislation.
Ireland's legislation appears to be less about actually helping Palestinians to have better lives than an effort to eradicate Israel.

Parliamentarians in the Republic of Ireland are displaying an unprecedented level of hostility towards Israel, unparalleled by that of any other member state of the European Union -- inviting the question about Ireland's long, distasteful history of anti-Semitism. Pictured: Leinster House, seat of the Irish Houses of Parliament. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Parliamentarians in the Republic of Ireland are displaying an unprecedented level of hostility towards Israel, unparalleled by that of any other member state of the European Union -- inviting the question about Ireland's long, distasteful history of anti-Semitism, which clearly predates the frequently used pretext of hating the State of Israel.

The "Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018" -- supported by the Republican and Nationalist political parties of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein and Independents -- would ban the import of goods from Israeli communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines (the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights). The Irish legislation not only coincides ironically with the U.S. Senate passage of a motion to prevent anti-Israel boycotts, but also constitutes a breach of European trade law.

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