We often hear that the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is the third holiest site for Muslims, behind Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. What remains unspoken is that the gap between numbers one and two to the distant number three is the size of the Grand Canyon.
Mecca is THE holy city of Muslims. It is there where Muslims perform the hajj, their pilgrimage to the Kaaba stone. During the week of the hajj, over 2 million people come to the city, of which roughly two-thirds are from outside Saudi Arabia.
During the hajj, many Muslims also visit Medina, where Muhammed is buried, about 280 miles away. Visitors come from Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt, among other Muslim-majority countries.
The same cannot be said for Muslim visitors to Jerusalem, which only draws local Arabs.
In 2019, before the pandemic dramatically impacted travel, Israel had over 4.5 million tourists visit the country. The two neighboring Arab countries with peace treaties with Israel barely came: Jordan had a mere 19,200 people visit Israel and Egypt had 8,000. Combined, the two countries accounted for 0.6% of tourists to the holy land. Amman, the capital of Jordan is less than a two hour drive from Jerusalem, an easy day trip.
Yet no one comes.
Turkey, which has long had relations with Israel, barely sends any tourists or pilgrims to Israel. The four Muslim majority countries, which recently struck normalization agreements with the Jewish State similarly have almost no visitors.
If al Aqsa is so holy, why don’t any Muslims from around the world come visit?
Some holy sites in the Jerusalem skyline, open to all under Israel
Christians make the pilgrimage to Israel all of the time. Italy alone had nearly 191,000 people come to see the various holy sites. Greece, with a population 1/10th the size of Egypt, had nearly 42,000 visitors to the Jewish State, or more than five times as many as Egypt. While Greece, Turkey and Israel were all once part of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim interest in Jerusalem is vastly different. While roughly 417 Greeks per 100,000 go to Israel each year, only 37 per 100,000 Turks visit.
Israel allows access for Muslims to ascend the Temple Mount to visit al Aqsa every day, and even bars non-Muslims during Islamic holy days to facilitate Muslim prayers. Over one million Muslims went to Jerusalem during Ramadan in 2023, almost every one a local Arab, many who came repeatedly.
The al Aqsa Mosque is a holy shrine for local religious Muslims, while the entire Temple Mount is the holiest location for world Jewry and central focus of Judaism.
Many anti-Zionists point to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (Britain), the San Remo Resolution of 1920 (Britain, Italy, France and Japan), and the United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947 as examples of foreign intervention against the will of the region’s inhabitants. While the Jews had thousands of years of history in the land and a religion which is uniquely tied to the land, the local Arabs did not want Jews in their midst. The Palestinian Arabs’ desires were ignored because foreigners sought to help Jews reestablish their rights in their homeland.
Those same anti-Zionists don’t pause in their push to ignore the will of local Israelis today who do not want millions of Arabs from abroad to move into their country. Not only do the pro-Palestinian advocates ignore the will of millions of Israeli citizens, they dismiss that Israel is a sovereign country with its own laws, something that was never true of Palestine before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Those same individuals point to United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948 Article 11 which states that refugees should be allowed to return to their homes if they are willing to live in peace. Somehow they ignore three critical items: 1) Palestinian Arabs refuse to coexist in peace, as shown in their terrorism and quarterly polls; 2) there are only a few thousand refugees from 1948, not millions of people which include descendants of people who left the region, many taking citizenship elsewhere; and 3) that resolution was for a moment in time and no longer relevant. For example, Article 8 says that greater Bethlehem and greater Jerusalem should be under United Nations control – are they advocating that Bethlehem be stripped from Palestinian Authority control?
The Ottomans and British may have ignored the wishes of the local Arab population in Palestine but they had the authority to do so. Today, there is no basis for the United Nations, the European Union, or anti-Zionists in the US Congress to impose their will over the common position of both the Israeli government and Israeli population.
The Arab-Israeli conflict gets so much ink and analysis because the region is always in flux.
Yet some things remain constant.
The Israelis and Palestinian Arabs poll themselves frequently about sentiments on a variety of topics. Occasionally, they conduct joint polls as occurred on January 24, 2023. The Palestinian Center of Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) and Tel Aviv University’s International MA Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation (Israeli Pulse) issued their report as Palestinians and Israelis engaged in a series of attacks. The joint poll is another tool to assess how Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs (there are no Palestinian Jews anymore, as Palestinians exclude Jews from the definition) consider different aspects of living together, and how trends in such attitudes change.
In many ways, the groups agree on much: only about one-third of Israelis and Palestinians supports a two-state solution, a percentage that has continued to decline since 2016. About 85% of both Israelis and Arabs do not trust each other, and 84% of each considers themselves the victim in the conflict. About 60% of each group fears for their safety, roughly 93% of each group believes that they are the rightful owners to all of the land, and about 70% of each thinks the conflict is a zero-sum relationship, in that what’s good for one side is bad for the other.
The areas with some gap in sentiments includes engaging in an all-out war, with an estimated 40% of Palestinians and 26% of Israelis in favor, and roughly one-third of Israeli Jews willing to share the land with Palestinians but only 7% of Palestinians willing to share any land with Jews.
That last figure – only about one in fourteen Palestinians Arabs are in favor of sharing any of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – is frightening and should be read in the context of another question in the joint poll.
“When did the conflict begin?”
To read the news and consider the ideas floated to bring peace to the region, one would imagine that the respondents would answer “the 1967 Six Day War,” to the question when the conflict originated, as that is when “occupation” began and those are the contours proposed in the Saudi Peace Plan. Yet only 8% of Palestinian Arabs and 5% of Israeli Jews believe that is the beginning of the conflict.
A majority of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews (60% and 52%, respectively) believe that the conflict began with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the Zionist immigration wave. It is the increased presence of Jews in the region – with international support – that is the core of the conflict, and why only 7% of Palestinians would consider sharing any of the land with the Jewish “colonialists.”
Only Israeli Arabs don’t hold this position, as they believe the conflict began with Israel’s declaration of independence, which makes sense as that is when their reality began. Similarly, they are the group most likely to promote good relations between Jews and Arabs (70%), followed by Israeli Jews (56%). Almost no Palestinians want to promote good relations (22%), as it has been blacklisted under the banner of “normalization.”
Palestinians do not believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict is about land or religion. They believe it is about the physical presence of Jews in the land they view as singularly theirs. Until the world focuses on changing this jaundiced Palestinian viewpoint, there is no hope for a peaceful resolution.
The “cycle of violence” is continuing in the holy land, in a phrase that inappropriately conveys similarity.
Last week, the Israel Defense Forces went after a terrorist cell in Jenin which was planning attacks against Israelis. The gun battle resulted in nine dead Palestinians, seven of them terrorists.
Hours later, a Palestinian Arab shot and killed seven innocent Jews coming out of synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath. The terrorist was killed. The following day a 13-year old Palestinian shot and injured a father and son walking on the streets of Jerusalem on the Sabbath. The perpetrator was taken into custody.
There is no moral equivalence between the actions of Palestinians attacking innocent Jews and Israel defending its citizens. There is no equivalence of intent which is lost in the phrase “cycle of violence.”
While Israel has created a multi-ethnic democracy which has tried to live in peace with its neighbors, Palestinians continue to demand a purely Arab and Islamic region, ethnically cleansed of Jews.
Palestinian Arabs and their supporters claim that they have a “right of return” to towns in Israel based on two principles. One is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (established December 10, 1948) and the other United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (issued the following day, December 11, 1948). These are grossly misapplied, and if anyone wants to see a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, this issue is a complete roadblock.
UDHR, Article 13
Article 13 of the UDHR makes two statements that Palestinian propagandists assert give Palestinians the right to move into Israel:
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Regarding the first point, the freedom of movement is “within the borders”, meaning that any Israeli Jew or Arab should be free to live anywhere inside of their home country of Israel. This clause has nothing to do with Palestinian Arabs or wards of UNRWA who live outside of Israel. It simply means that Israeli Arabs should be free to move into Israeli towns – where grandparents may have lived or entirely new locations – as long as there are no security matters which render such movement impossible.
As it relates to the second point of leaving and returning to a country, there are two issues with Palestinians using this clause to move to Israel: the people and the land.
Israel is a new country, founded on May 14, 1948. There are only an estimated 20-30,000 elderly Arabs who lived in Israel on that date who now reside outside of the country’s recognized borders. The other 14 million Palestinian Arabs were born elsewhere and have no such claim to “return” to Israel, including the 6.4 million registered persons with UNRWA.
The second related matter has to do with the borders of Israel. If one were to take the non-factual view that the land of pre-1948 Palestine is a single country (it was a region / territory), then the millions of Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank today still live in that same country, so there is no argument under the second clause. Only the Stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs) in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan could argue to move into Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. The right of return in UDHR relates to returning to a country, not a particular town or region.
UNGA Resolution 194, Article 11
As opposed to the general UDHR meant for all people, UNGA Resolution 194 was specifically adopted for Palestinians. Article 11 calls out the matter of returning to “homes,” not a country as specified in UDHR:
“Resolves that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.“
At the most fundamental level, General Assembly resolutions are simply suggestions and not binding in law. Israel is not beholden to GA resolutions.
Critically, Palestinians have shown in deeds and words since the founding of Israel that they are not willing to “live at peace with their neighbors.” Add to the fact that only 20-30,000 people at this time are actually “refugees” makes this resolution relatively meaningless in application.
Two State Solution
Those people who back the notion of a “two-state solution” for the Israeli-Arab Conflict, with one state for Jews and one state for Arabs, should be appalled at the idea of a Palestinian “right of return” to the Jewish State. The Jewish State currently has 25% of its citizenry being non-Jews. It would destroy the basic principle of the “two state solution” for millions of Arabs to enter Israel. It is even more outrageous, when the United Nations demands that NO JEWS be allowed to live in a future Palestinian State. There’s no two-state solution if 50% of the Jewish State is comprised of non-Jews and 0% of the Arab State has Jews.
One State Solution
For advocates who argue for a single Jewish-Arab country and that Palestine was always a singular country, there are a couple of considerations.
One, Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza already live in such country, so are not and have never been “refugees” but just internally displaced people, taking billions of dollars from the world’s largess over the past decades. Resolution 194 Article 11 is specifically for refugees which excludes Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. Only UDHR 13.1 would argue for freedom of movement within the single country, if security matters permit.
Secondly, there is only return to a country under UDHR 13.2, not to villages where grandparents once lived. Allowing refugees from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to move to the West Bank or Gaza satisfies this clause as much as moving inside the borders of Israel.
Palestinian Sentiment
Importantly, Palestinians have no interest in either of these solutions. According to the PCPSR December 2022 poll, only 32% of Palestinians support a two-state solution and 26% support a one-state solution with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. That compares to 55% who favor terrorism against Israelis, to destroy the Jewish State and replace it with a single Arab state. It’s outrageous for Palestinians to demand the right to move to homes under UNGA Resolution 194, and skip the basic premise of coexistence that the resolution demands.
The poll also showed that the right of return issue was the second most important issue for Palestinian Arabs, behind establishing a state. The fact that UNGA Resolution 194 requires coexistence while Palestinians support new armed gangs can only be viewed as an attempt to better infiltrate and take over the Jewish State, as part of establishing a new Palestinian State.
Sentiment of Israeli Arabs
When polled in June 2018, Israeli Arabs were the most likely to cap Palestinian refugees coming to Israel (the proposed question used a figure of 100,000 people) with the balance going to a new state of Palestine and getting compensation for lost property. A whopping 84.1% of Israeli Arabs supported such limited “right of return”, compared to 21.3% of Israeli Jews and 47.5% of Palestinian Arabs. When offered a different formulation in which a capped number of Palestinians would get permanent resident status but not citizenship in Israel, and Jews in the West Bank would similarly get such status in a new Palestinian State, Israeli Arab support (63.8%) dwarfed that of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs with 36.1% and 31.7%, respectively.
Beyond the differences in granting a Palestinian “right of return” among Israeli Arabs, Jews and Palestinian, the same poll showed a big difference in support for a two state solution. Not surprisingly, no Israeli Arabs favored the idea of “apartheid” or expulsions of the other, while 14.9% of Israeli Jews voted in favor of minimal rights for Israeli Arabs, and 17.2% of Palestinians favored expelling all the Jews from the region.
SAPs in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan
The Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) only poll people in Gaza and the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have control and self-determination, having been given land to administer by Israel. The SAPs who might have some actual claims under UDHR and UNGA Resolution 194 are those in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as described above but were not polled.
Almost all of the SAPs in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship so cannot be considered “refugees.” Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank after the 1948-9 War against Israel, and granted all Arabs living there citizenship– as long as they were not Jewish – in 1954. Palestinian-Chileans have the same non-claim to move to Israel as these Palestinian-Jordanians.
The Palestinians who might be considered “refugees” with rights to move to the holy land are those elderly Palestinians who left Israel in May 1948 and now reside in Lebanon and Syria, countries which have denied them citizenship for almost their entire lives. Of the 1.2 million SAPs in those two countries (18.8% of the total people getting services from UNRWA), around 2% are over 75 years old and would qualify to move to Israel under UDHR Article 13.2, and under UNGA Resolution 194, Article 11, if they are willing to live with Israelis in peace. While it is well understood that Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza have no desire to live peacefully with Israelis, it is possible that those in UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria might.
If one advocates for a two-state solution, one must simultaneously be against a Palestinian “right of return” for any Arab other than the elderly living in UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria. All other Palestinians wishing to return to the region would need to move to Gaza or the West Bank under the approval of the Palestinian Authority. This has long been the logical bipartisan approach of both Democrats and Republicans.
In summary, there are very few people who qualify for a Palestinian “right of return” and there is very little support for, or belief that it can be implemented peacefully amongst the people in the region.
The Catholic Pope went to Iraq in March 2021 to visit the land that used to be home to nearly two million Christians. A country which was at one time an example of coexistence, routed its Jews in the 1940’s and 1950’s and other religious communities over the past decades. The Christian population has plummeted by 80 per cent.
Upon arriving in Iraq, Pope Francis said “Iraq has suffered the disastrous effects of wars, the scourge of terrorism and sectarian conflicts often grounded in a fundamentalism incapable of accepting the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups.” He used the term “fundamentalism” without tying it to Islam, so as to not offend his hosts and trying to build bridges to salvage the remains of the Christian community.
No one is confused about the situation.
Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group, published its 2021 World Watch List highlighting the 50 worst countries for Christians. Other than North Korea (#1) and India (#10), all of the worst anti-Christian countries had a Muslim majority. Not surprisingly, almost all of these countries have seen their Christian populations decline.
Yet, about 500 miles away from Iraq, next to war-torn Syria, lies the new Garden of Eden, a sanctuary for Christians in the center of the Middle East/ North Africa (MENA): the Jewish State of Israel.
When the Modern State of Israel was founded in 1948, there were 34,000 Christians in the country. That number has grown by 5.2 times, to 177,000 today. It is a rate higher than the growth of the Christian population worldwide and dwarves the rate of change of Christians in the MENA region.
Christian tourists also love visiting Israel. In 2018, Christians made up 56% of the tourists visiting the modern Jewish State. The country actively encourages Christians to come visit to see the birthplace of Christianity and visit sacred sites.
Being baptized in the Jordan River are Latin celebrities, from left, Zuleyka Rivera, Luis Alfonso Borrego, Andrea Escalona, Sherlyn González, and Carlitos Perez-Ruiz (Luis Fonsi’s manager). Photo courtesy of America’s Voices in Israel
In 2015, the Christian community built a new museum in the heart of Israel’s capital of Jerusalem, the Friends of Zion Museum. It is designed to “tell the stories of both the dream to restore the Jewish people to their historic homeland and of the brave non-Jews who assisted them in the realization of this dream.” It is a feat of religious harmony enabled by the Israeli government in Judaism’s most holy city. It stands in sharp contrast to the treatment of Christians and Christianity elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Pope’s tour of the Muslim Middle East is a reminder to Christians everywhere of the uniqueness of the one Jewish State and reasons to continue its commitment to see Israel thrive.
In late 2019, some Democratic candidates for president stated that they would condition American support for Israel with Israel’s behavior regarding Palestinian Arabs. Former Vice President Joe Biden considered the suggestion made by Senator Bernie Sanders (as well as Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg) to be “bizarre.”
Biden seemed to further cement his position of not compromising on military aid to Israel in a recorded message to an AIPAC conference on March 1, 2020 when he reiterated that “I will never boycott [Israel]…. Israel must be able to defend itself. It’s not just critical for Israel’s security, I believe it is critical for America’s security.”
As Biden tries to court the Sanders supporters who are highly critical of Israel, it remains to be seen how far Biden will tilt towards the anti-Israel stance of Team Sanders who demand a boycott of Jewish homes and businesses east of the Green Line and funneling Israeli military aid towards rebuilding Gaza.
To appreciate the “bizarre” Sanders conditional approach to Israel, consider America’s approach to the Middle East overall.
American Blood
The United States has thousands of troops deployed throughout the Persian Gulf.
Country
U.S. Troops
Operations
Bahrain
5,000
Headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (USNAVCENT)
Qatar
10,000
Home to the Al Udeid Air Base, which includes the forward headquarters of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT)
Saudi Arabia
2,500
Prince Sultan Air Base
Kuwait
14,500
U.S. uses Camp Arifjan, Camp Buehring, Ali Al Salem Air Field and the naval base Camp Patriot
Iraq
6,000
Remaining troops after Operation Inherent Resolve to fight ISIS
Oman
600
Relatively small footprint
UAE
5,500
Al Dhafra Air Base hosts several U.S. fighter, attack and reconnaissance aircraft of the U.S. 380th Air Expeditionary Wing.
There are over 225,000 U.S. troops stationed abroad but the United States has no permanent base in Israel and no troops are stationed there. Based on the shared principles of democracy and trust, the United States relies on Israel as a partner in the region and supplies it military aid to defend itself.
In June 1996, a truck bombing killed 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.Credit…U.S. Navy, via Associated Press
Treasure
The United States spent roughly $2 trillion to fight wars in Iraq and has spent over $2.5 trillion fighting in Afghanistan. It has spent tens of billions of dollars maintaining its various bases throughout the Persian Gulf and supporting and protecting the Arab and Muslim Persian Gulf countries.
In Egypt, the United States has provided over $40 billion in military aid and $30 billion in economic assistance since 1980. The United States also provides over $1 billion of aid to Jordan every year, in addition to billions of dollars of loan guarantees.
In total, the United States has spent roughly $5 trillion since 2001 on countries in the Middle East, excluding Israel. Almost all of that money has been expenses to stabilize failing regimes and protect U.S. interests. There has been almost no investment in technology development to advance the U.S. military.
However, when it comes to Israel, the United States has benefited from an INVESTMENT in a close ally. As described by the U.S. State Department,
“Israel has long been, and remains, America’s most reliable partner in the Middle East. Israel and the United States are bound closely by historic and cultural ties as well as by mutual interests.”
The U.S. gives Israel over $3 billion per year in military assistance, much of which is spent procuring American products. Israel shares the technological advancements that it develops to enhance America’s military capabilities. In total, the U.S. has given Israel roughly 1/80th of the funds it has spent on the rest of the Middle East, while receiving over 80 times the benefits in technological advancement.
Conditionality
The United States has spent $5 trillion this century on Middle Eastern countries that do not share American values, yet the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been mum.
Saudi Arabia, a major trading partner, executes minors – in public. It kills people for basic human rights like converting religion. It executes men for engaging in homosexual sex (it only beats woman who are lesbians). Women are forbidden to drive and cannot leave the house without a male escort or approval.
No one seems to care.
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also have a death penalty for apostasy, converting from Islam. Kuwait, Oman and the UAE have capital punishment for people dealing in drugs. The Palestinian Authority has capital punishment for Arabs who sell land to Jews.
Yet there have been no calls from Sanders or other Democratic Socialists to condition aid to these countries which KILL people for basic human rights. There are over 70 countries – mostly Arab and Muslim – which consider homosexuality a crime, and there is not a peep about placing any conditions on trade and assistance.
The singling out of Israel for allowing a basic human right of a family living in a home and protecting itself from missiles is both hypocritical and antisemitic. Threatening to withhold or divert military aid to Israel which directly benefits American security interests while saying nothing to spending 80 times as much on Arab and Muslim countries is insane. And putting thousands of American lives in danger for backwards regimes while denying Israel the ability to protect Israeli and American interests with ITS OWN SOLDIERS is outright un-American.
Team Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib should not be allowed on any foreign policy committee or have any hand in crafting the Democratic Platform. They are dangers to America on multiple levels.
Racism is a form of hatred which believes that all members of a particular group are inferior and/or evil. In itself, it is ugly but not dangerous, a localized noxious belief system based on bigotry. Racism becomes toxic when it spreads and obtains power.
Such is the state of Palestineism, the effort to weaken, shrink and destroy Israel because it is a Jewish State, as well as to vilify Jews and deny their rights, history and dignity in the Jewish holy land.
The Arab World
Palestineism has been present in the Arab and Muslim world for a hundred years.
Denying Jews and the Jewish State has been at the forefront of the Palestineism. Even before Jews reestablished Jewish sovereignty in their holy land in 1948, Arabs rioted and killed Jews throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, and petitioned the British who oversaw the Palestine Mandate to bar and limit the entry of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. When Israel declared itself a Jewish state, the armies of five neighboring Arab Muslim countries invaded with the stated desire to destroy it completely. The Arabs evicted Jews from all lands they seized and specifically forbade Jews from obtaining citizenship (Article 3). Fellow Arab and Muslim nations followed suit, with ten Arab and Muslim countries expelling one million Jews after Israel was founded, irrespective of whether their fellow Jewish countrymen were Zionists.
To this very day, there are 30 Arab and Muslim countries which refuse to acknowledge the basic existence of the only Jewish country despite 20% of Israel’s population being Muslim, even while they recognize other countries including Myanmar which actively persecutes Muslims. The acting-President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas continues to refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, an acknowledgement which would have no impact on creating a new state of Palestine.
The Arab world’s objection to Israel is specifically that it is that is it Jewish.
“They [Jews] are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah…”
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious”
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… O Abdulla, there is aJew behind me, come and kill him…”
“The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…”
“Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people…”
The Palestinians elected Hamas to 58 percent of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 with this antisemitic jihadist charter full of sinister conspiracy theories about Jews (Articles 17, 22 and 30, among others).
The institutionalized Arab hatred of the Jews has developed into a full-blown vile ideology, as it attempts to validate its desire to wipe out Jews from the region.
The foundational document of the Palestinian Arabs claims that Jews have no history in Palestine, erasing the history and essence of the Jewish people (Article 18).
Throughout the Muslim world, Jews are actively dehumanized and stripped of their dignity, referred to as the “sons of apes and pigs.” It is a doctrine of racial superiority which is morally condemnable.
Mahmoud Abbas said that Jews have been hated for centuries because “of their function,” which is why they are always massacred. He continued his screed that in recent history, the “imperialist powers” tossed those unwanted Jews out of their countries into the Middle East, poisoning Palestinian land with the wretched people. It is blame-the-victim approach worthy of a sickening governing body which excuses honor killings of women.
The fabric of Palestineism is that Jews are disgusting foreign invaders who have no rights nor claims to Arab land.
This immoral Palestineism ideology manifests itself in many ways:
The Palestinian Authority has a law which calls for the death penalty for any Arab who sells land to a Jew.
The PA gives lifetime stipends to Arabs who murder Jews.
When Muslims ruled Hebron, they refused to allow Jews from entering their second holiest place, the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs.
Muslim Arabs continue to refuse to let the Jews pray at their holiest location, the Jewish Temple Mount.
The list goes on.
Palestineism, in its very essence, is about the repression of the dignity and integrity of Jews as human beings, with full rights to live and worship freely in their holy land. The toxicity has spread from the leadership and the state-controlled media to infuse the people who are the most anti-Semitic in the world.
Palestineism in The Rest of the World
Palestineism was built on Jew-hatred and conspiracy theories. The calls that Jews are “colonialists” and invaders of “Arab land” has been picked up by others, including leaders in the western world.
In Great Britain, Jeremy Corbyn is a member of the Labour Party who adopted Palestineism early in his career, often comparing Israelis to Nazis. He was once an outlier, but the toxicity infected the rest of the party when he was elected the party leader in September 2015 and began replacing senior party people with like-minded racists. Jews began to leave the Labour party in droves – including members of parliament – finding the antisemitism intolerable.
In the United States, Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) were elected to congress in November 2018, and accused Jews of having dual loyalty and buying off members of the government to support Israel, racist tropes which the two Muslim women have not made about Irish-Americans, Mexican Americans or any other group. They contend that the most liberal nation in the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is an apartheid state, inverting the root cause of racism in the region, deflecting Muslim antisemitism. Meanwhile, these same members of Congress believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran which hangs gays by cranes in the streets and is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, should not only not be boycotted, but given a legal pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran has called for the destruction of Israel – coincidence?
Palestineism is employing the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel, the sole Jewish state as a tool in its jihad. Corbyn, Omar and Tlaib are pushing for economic warfare against Israel, supposedly in the name of giving Palestinian Arabs a state.
The European Union is considering unique labels for products manufactured by Jews in the Israeli territory of Area C in the West Bank, but not those manufactured by non-Jews. It is the very definition of racism in suppressing the dignity of one human being over another. Will it label products made by Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir differently? By Christians and Muslims in Cyprus?
The toxicity of racism embedded in the Palestineism is not just spreading, it is being mainstreamed and defended by political leaders outside of the Muslim and Arab world. Denying Jewish history and repressing Jewish dignity are no longer viewed as morally condemnable and socially unjust, but essential ingredients to the creation of a Palestinian state, because those sentiments are demanded by the Arab world and Palestinian leadership. As it is considered improper to malign the “marginalized” in liberal circles, the alt-left is parroting the Palestineism propaganda, rather than condemning the racism.
So, schools in the Palestinian territories named for terrorists get European funding. Textbooks which deny the humanity and history of Jews are disseminated by the United Nations. Monies which flow to the murderers of Jews are reimbursed by Arab and non-Arab countries alike.
It is the very embodiment of toxic racism.
Palestinian Arabs could achieve sovereignty and statehood in Gaza and Areas A and B tomorrow, but Palestineism has more malicious demands: that Israel not be a Jewish State; that Jews be forbidden from living anywhere in Palestine; and that Jews be denied access and rights to their holy sites. It is Palestineism that is the roadblock to creating a state of Palestine and an enduring peace in the region, nothing else.
Palestineism is a sinister jihad, a direct antisemitic assault on the humanity, dignity and integrity of Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State and the polar opposite of coexistence and decency. It must be condemned loudly, clearly and often by everyone.
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), advocate for boycotting Israel,
upon being sworn in as a new member of the US Congress
On July 10, 2019, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered a speech regarding the horrible situation of terrorism in Africa which outlined a multi-step approach to tackling the growing problem.
Should he truly believe that those are the best methods for combating terrorism globally, he must begin to implement them in the region where the U.N. has tens of thousands of employees working for decades in an area where terrorism reigns under its blind eyes: among the Palestinian Arabs in the Arab-Israel Conflict.
Secretary General Antonio Guterres talks about fighting terrorism in Africa, July 2019
(photo: UNEP, Duncan Moore)
Below are Guterres’s main points on combating terrorism, and the situation in Gaza, West Bank and other areas where the United Nations cares for Palestinian Arabs:
Working Together and Information Sharing. Guterres said that the global community should be “working together to share counter-terrorism information.” He noted that terrorism in Africa, such as the Kenya-Ethiopian border, could be best fought by sharing “information, expertise and good practices.”The U.N. agency for Palestinian Arab “refugees,” UNRWA has nearly 32,000 employees in Gaza, the “West Bank,” Lebanon, Syria and Jordan (a figure which grows even faster than the number of registered persons). Yet the UN limits its activities to education and healthcare, and does not provide any information to Israel about terrorists from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah or other known terrorist groups in the effort “to detect, identify and disrupt violent extremism and to bring terrorist to justice.” Regrettably, over the past several decades, the U.N. has never acted to stop terrorism – even with basic information sharing which Guterres called for in Africa. The UN has actually done the opposite, leaving its schools open to store weapons and as launching sites for missiles against Israel.
Halting the Narrative of Grievance and Promoting Good Governance and Good Jobs. Guterres outlined some of the underlying causes which allow terrorism to thrive, saying that it is important to stop the “narratives of grievance, actual or perceived injustice, and promised empowerment” as well as changing the dynamics “wherever human rights are being violated, good governance is being ignored and aspirations are being crushed.”Yet the U.N. has actively promoted the narrative of “grievance and injustice” in telling the Palestinians that they have a right to move to a house where a grandparent once lived, regardless as to whether they had actually owned any property and for how long. As such, the U.N. has fueled the Gaza riots for the past years with the promise that through the United Nations, the Arabs will get to move into Israel.Regarding “good governance,” the U.N. operates in Gaza in concert with Hamas, just as it operates in Syria with mass murder Bashar al-Assad and coordinates in Lebanon with operatives of Hezbollah. Rather than make any attempt at fostering human rights and good governance, UNRWA turns a blind eye as it hands out jobs and benefits to the stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs).Further, rather than heed Guterres’ comments regarding terrorism in Africa of “strengthening State institutions and civil society, building durable peace and promoting sustainable development to tackle thepoverty, inequality and lack of opportunity that feed despair,” the U.N. has been active in promoting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of Israel movement, pulling good jobs out of the West Bank. It has similarly made light of the Trump administrations efforts to invest billions of dollars into the Palestinian economy, thereby helping fuel poverty and lack of opportunities.
Engaging Women in the Fight Against Terrorism. Guterres sees a particular role for women to play in fighting hatred and violence, saying “We must fully engage women, who play multiple roles in relation to violent extremism and its prevention — as victims, as those recruited and radicalized, but most importantly as influencers and leaders in prevention and agents of peace.”But the U.N. has stood by while women are championed as murderers, not as “agents of peace.” All one has to do is look at schools and squares named after female terrorists. The U.N. stands by while official Palestinian Authority TV broadcasts mothers who say they are proud of their terrorist children. It is not as though the U.N. offers no opinions; it complains bitterly when the U.S. and Israel try to stop the pay-to-slay program which encourages terrorism.And as a simple matter of decency which must start on the local level, how has the U.N. said or done nothing while Gaza leads the world in honor killings of women on a per capita basis? Instead the U.N. produces long papers describing the plight of Palestinian women are solely because of Israel.The U.N. hasn’t enlisted Palestinian women to combat terror; it has promoted them to be part of the terror. It is well past time for this to change.
Stop the Online Provocations and Hate Speech and Promote Jobs. It many ways, this point is similar to halting the narrative of grievance Guterres mentioned above. He said “youth unemployment not only limits personal fulfilment and drains away hope, it also undermines social cohesion and could threaten security.” Further, “With the rise of misinformation on social media and the Internet, young people also need education and empowerment to denounce manipulative narratives, xenophobia and hate speech, which can all lead to online radicalization.”As described above, the U.N. has effectively worked in concert with the BDS movement to kill good jobs for Palestinians in the West Bank fueling unemployment. It also makes little or no effort to stop or condemn the incitement on Palestinian TV and Facebook pages. In fact, it does the opposite, as many UNRWA officials use Facebook to post calls for terrorism against “Zionist dogs”.In regards to the swelling ranks of young people, the United Nations has actively been involved with “creating” the youth, by not advancing the U.N.’s own stated goals of birth control, even though UNRWA touches 99.4% of all Arab women. The U.N. gives Palestinians first world medical treatment while they have children at the rate of third world countries, which has inflated the Palestinian Arab refugee population by 1 million people – under the care of the United Nations.
The Victims of Terrorism as Advocates for Peace. Guterres continued that the UN must “support the victims and survivors of terrorism, including victims of sexual violence and children exploited by terrorist groups,” who must be central to the fight against terror.So the United Nations builds a portal on the victims of terrorism. It writes about victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria, places of horrible terrorist attacks (each almost 100% Muslim, except for Nigeria which is about 50/50 Christian/Muslim). Israel doesn’t get a mention.
Stopping the Flow of Money to Terrorists. Guterres said “mitigating the threat of foreign terrorist fighters, empowering and engaging youth, countering terrorist financing and improving aviation security” are critical in the efforts to combat terrorism.An interesting read on the subject of halting the flow of money to terrorist is “Harpoon” by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Israel actively is involved in the fight to stop the flow of funds to terrorists, but it is done despite the United Nations. The circus of the UN has countries including Kuwait and Indonesia (both almost completely Muslim) condemning Israel for withholding monies which the Palestinian Authority pays to terrorists’ families.
If the UN Secretary-General really believes in his formula for stopping terrorism, and desires peace in the Middle East, he should begin using his 32,000-person force on the ground servicing Palestinian “refugees” and the global forum to follow his principles including: sharing information on Palestinian terrorist groups with Israel; stopping the narrative that descendants of people who once live in Israel have any ‘right of return’; not facilitating or participating in any manner with the BDS movement; refusing to provide any services in Gaza as long as Hamas is in power and there are schools named after terrorists; having Israeli victims of terror address the United Nations; and backing Israel in suspending payments to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continues its pay-to-slay activities.
Guterres laid out his plan to stem terrorism around the world. As the Palestinians are his adopted wards, he can actively stop the terrorism in Israel. If he only showed the will to follow his own advice.
Mohammed Morsi, the once democratically-elected ruler of Egypt, died on June 17, 2019 while in court. His death is a useful time to consider the difference between most Arab Muslim countries dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood and that of the Palestinians.
Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood was developed in Egypt in the early 20th century, not long after the British and French Mandates took control of most of the Middle East. It espoused the adopting of Islamic sharia law in all aspects of society and the unification of Muslim lands to thwart western “imperialism.”
The Brotherhood grew to a major force and was involved in a number of violent acts including assassinations before it was banned by Gamel Abdel Nasser. His successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak were similarly cautious about them, but it was the “Arab Spring” in 2011 that truly afforded the group to chance to come out from the shadows and run aggressively in the country’s election in 2012. It won 52% of the vote and was declared the winner on June 18, 2012, with the party’s leader Mohamed Morsi sworn in as president on June 30.
Morsi’s tenure would last just a year as concern about how his reforms would play out worried non-Muslims and liberals. The military took over and arrested Morsi and hundreds of other members of the Brotherhood. Many were sentenced to death, with several – like Morsi – spending the rest of their lives in courts pleading for their lives.
Palestinian Arabs and Hamas
The Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Israel and Gaza was launched in 1987 together with the first Intifada, and called Hamas. Hamas published its charter in 1988, calling for the death of Jews around the world and the complete destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. It was the most antisemitic ruling document of any party ever written – including from Nazi Germany.
Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) viewed Hamas as a political rival to his own Fatah party. He did not ban it as much as tried to use and abuse it, much the way political enemies do.
When the Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and held elections for president and parliament in 2005 and 2006, respectively, Hamas participated with the support of the U.S.’s Bush administration. Hamas won 58% of the parliamentary seats. In its rivalry with Fatah, it fought a mini-war in 2007 to seize control of the Gaza Strip, which it continues to hold to this day.
Saudi Arabia and other Muslim States
The Muslim Brotherhood denounced the Saudi monarchy for both allowing U.S. soldiers on “Muslim land” during Operation Desert Storm, and the ongoing close relationship that the monarchy maintains with the west. The government designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2014, as a long developing post-9/11 U.S. initiative on the “War on Terror.”
Syria banned the Brotherhood and considered membership in the group a capital offense as far back as 1980. The UAE labeled the group a terrorist organization in 2014, around the same time as Saudi Arabia.
The principal backers of the Muslim Brotherhood are Qatar and Turkey. Its messages can be found throughout the Qatar-owned media outlet, Al Jazeera. Turkey’s strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved his country much further towards sharia over his tenure. Both Turkey and Qatar are significant backers of Hamas.
The Muslim Brotherhood has some deep support in the Muslim Middle East, with calls for institutionalization of sharia law and a caliphate, quite similar to the goals of the Islamic State/ ISIS. The MB has been banned and prosecuted by the leaders of most of the Muslim countries as a threat to their ruling status, and the leaders use their military and court system to suppress the group.
The Palestinian Authority does not have a strong leader. Mahmoud Abbas has no military and barely a court system. Abbas cannot bring himself to strike a compromise joint government, and he risks losing foreign funding if the Palestinian government includes a terrorist organization. His attempts to woo the Palestinian Arabs to Fatah have been weak, as he has not brought the economy and self-determination which many had hoped for.
Morsi’s life and death is a window into the Muslim Middle East: people who desire a caliphate and to be ruled by sharia law, in competition with leaders who want to maintain their own power as well as access to money and respect from the western world. As long as that non-Muslim world continues to demand Middle East oil and shipping through the Suez Canal, the tension will continue. When it stops caring, the caliphate of the indigent will be here.
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