Let's talk about the 'occupation' - by Dror Eydar

...And now a point to think about: From the Palestinian perspective, an occupation is a colonialist project by a foreign political group that came from the outside with Western assistance and took over another nation by determining state laws and systems. I know of a country like that: Jordan. Jordan's King Abdullah I was born in Hejaz (today in Saudi Arabia). The sweet British gave him the eastern Transjordan as compensation for the Hashemite family's war against the Ottomans. And so they tore away four-fifths of the mandate territory designated for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
30 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=39169

1. Let's talk about the occupation. Both about the occupation of territory, and about control over another nation. As I have already expressed several times, in my view the heart of the internal Israeli conflict is not control over another nation, but specifically sovereignty over those swathes of the land -- Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem -- whose symbolic weight goes beyond their existence as geographic territory.

This is the question of all questions that has been driving us crazy since our return to history as a living nation with a political claim: Who are we? The question of our identity, which is made up of two parts that formed within us over thousands of years: nationality and religion. The widespread Israeli discourse (which impacts the global discourse) almost always favors the occupation and its consequences.

There are three types of occupation in the western side of the Jordan River. Since the Oslo Accords, we do not rule over the Palestinians as in the past. They enjoy broad autonomy: government, budgets, security forces, foreign relations, a flag and an anthem. Israel does not intervene and does not even control the constant incitement in the Palestinian education and political systems against everything Israeli and Jewish. It is true that the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency are stationed along the perimeter and control movement in the territory. The simple reason: Without a buffer of security, the Palestinian Authority would turn into a major terror zone that will, from the top of the mountain, threaten Israel's population centers and vital arteries.

The Palestinians also enjoy the buffer of security. A glance at the countries around us is enough to make one understand that a similar fate will befall the Palestinian Authority the moment Israel removes its defenses. Hamas is strong in the Palestinian street, and Islamic State, al-Qaida and all manner of evil sleeper cells are awaiting the signal to take over the territory. WikiLeaks documents published a few years ago showed that, behind the scenes, the Palestinians are demanding our protection. Senior officials told me that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would not survive for an hour without our protection. By the way, neither would King Abdullah II of Jordan.

2. When it comes to Israel, the concept of "occupation" expands a lot. It is clear to everyone that since the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the situation there is completely different from what it was before. Israel has completely withdrawn, demolished its settlements and taken its dead, just as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish suggested in his famous poem. And still, the Left and part of the world insist: The occupation is ongoing.

Much to our grief, the warning of the Right came to fruition. The moment that Hamas took control, the Gaza Strip became enslaved (not always at the residents' will) to the near-sole motive for the existence of the political Palestinian: the destruction of Israel. There are many paths to achieving this goal: military, terrorist, diplomatic. The PLO's "Phased Plan" is no fairy tale; it is alive and kicking. Go to the Palestinian Media Watch and Middle East Media Research Institute websites and see for yourself. Do not rely on intermediaries.

As a result, Israel keeps watch over the entry of goods into the Gaza Strip, so that weapons and explosives are not brought in. Experience teaches us that the moment the checkpoints are removed, the Gaza Strip will become a ticking time bomb. The Hamas government has no greater goal than sacrificing its subjects in exchange for a fatal attack in Israel and the killing of Jews. Read the Hamas charter (available online) that serves even now as the movement's manifesto. It is a Nazi document. And so, the "occupation" continues in Gaza too.

When Consuming A Steady Diet of Hate

...People need to understand that Arab violence against Jews is not because Jews are mean to Arabs. The fact of the matter is that if Israel was a 23rd Arab-Muslim country it would be regarded as the most enlightened country in that part of the world; the freest country and the country with most civil liberties for its citizenry, the only country hospitable to the civil liberties of Gay people and of women and of all people, regardless of religion. It is strictly because it is the lone, sole Jewish state that it is reviled by the surrounding Arabs and its hostile European interlocutors.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
01 December '15..





The Elder has a piece from last Wednesday, November 25, entitled, The death cult.

It is the story of two Arab-Palestinian children, one aged 11 and one aged 14, who recently set forth to murder Jews.

The Times of Israel tells us:

In their interrogation, the two children said they carried out the attack as an act of revenge, without planning in advance and with no encouragement from any adults.

“We travelled from Shuafat to Damascus Gate in order to stab a soldier but did not do it because the soldiers were in groups and we didn’t find one standing alone,” recalled the 11-year-old. “Then he told me ‘let’s do an attack together to revenge the death of Muhammad Ali.’ He opened his bag and showed me the knife. At Damascus Gate I bought a pair of scissors and then we boarded the light rail and looked for Jews to stab.” (Emphasis added.)
Looked for Jews to stab.

One thing that needs to be understood is that none of this is new.

Arabs have encouraged their children to harm Jews, or stab Jews, or stone Jews, for many centuries since the time of Muhammad.

In Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations, S.D. Goitein recalls that:

In former times--and in remote places even today--it was common for Muslim schoolboys to stone Jews. When the Turks conquered Yemen in 1872, an envoy was sent from the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul to inquire what grievance the Yemenite Jews had against their neighbors. It is indicative that the first thing of which they complained was this molestation by the schoolboys. But when the Turkish Governor asked an assembly of notables to stop this nuisance,there arose an old doctor of Muslim law and explained that this stone-throwing at Jews was an age-old custom (in Arabic 'Ada) and therefore it was unlawful to forbid it.

Unlawful, under al-Sharia, to forbid it.

People need to understand that Arab violence against Jews is not because Jews are mean to Arabs.

The fact of the matter is that if Israel was a 23rd Arab-Muslim country it would be regarded as the most enlightened country in that part of the world; the freest country and the country with most civil liberties for its citizenry, the only country hospitable to the civil liberties of Gay people and of women and of all people, regardless of religion.

It is strictly because it is the lone, sole Jewish state that it is reviled by the surrounding Arabs and its hostile European interlocutors.

Israel and My Long Journey From Left Field by Vic Rosenthal

...This era has been called a historical inflection point. Humanity is poised at the edge of a chaotic descent into a new dark age. Or maybe not. Israel is on the “seam line” where the forces of Islam and the West are contending for control. What happens here will be of great import for the rest of the world, but we have to win the battle to survive by ourselves. If we do, they’ll thank us in the long run.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
27 November '15..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2015/11/my-journey-from-left-to-right/..

Yes, I admit it. I started out in life as a leftist. In 1982 I thought that we went too far in Lebanon; we should have stopped at the 40 km. line promised by Sharon. I was horrified by the Sabra/Shatila massacres, and participated with the other members of my kibbutz at a Peace Now demonstration in Tel Aviv, calling for the replacement of Begin’s government. I saw myself as ‘pro-peace’, unlike those ‘settlers’.

By the time Oslo was signed I was starting to have my doubts. Sure, only a two-state solution would bring peace, the settlement movement was made up of religious fanatics, but – Arafat? Would he really become ‘moderate’? At least, I thought, we were on the right track with Rabin rather than a dangerous right-winger.

During the 90s, I became aware that Arafat lied all the time, calling for jihad in Arabic while he talked about ‘peace’ in English. I also noticed that terrorism was increasing rather than decreasing (much later, my son was part of a force that entered PLO headquarters in eastern Jerusalem and found documentary evidence that Arafat was paying the terrorists to kill Jews).

In 2000 the dream of a two-state agreement with the Palestinian Arabs disintegrated in the explosions of the Second Intifada. By the time the intifada had been suppressed by Operation Defensive Shield, I realized that there would not be an agreement. But we had to separate from the Palestinians, didn’t we? I recall a conversation with one of my son’s friends. “We have to build a wall between us and the Arabs,” I said. “We can’t live together with them in places like Hevron.”

“Hevron?” he said. “Davka (especially) Hevron!” where Abraham bought land from Ephron to bury Sarah, and where the Jewish population was brutally murdered in 1929. Davka Hevron. I couldn’t answer him.

But Arik Sharon had a plan, called “disengagement.” We would build walls and unilaterally separate from the Arabs. “Separate,” not withdraw. It would be done from strength, not weakness. It would be our choice, not theirs. If they tried anything, we’d crush them.

In 2005 my son got married. All the cars in the wedding procession displayed orange banners in opposition to the destruction of the Gaza settlements and the expulsion of their Jewish residents. I felt bad for them, but Arik, “the bulldozer,” thought it was the right choice. If we couldn’t trust Arik, whom could we trust?

The Arabs, it turned out, didn’t see it the way Sharon did. They saw it as weakness, a surrender and a vindication of their terrorist tactics, proof that the intifada had been a success after all. An argument to continue the violent “resistance.”

Could Arik have made it work? I doubt it, but we didn’t find out because Arik had his ultimately fatal stroke and was replaced by the common criminal and uncommon traitor Ehud Olmert, the worst Prime Minister in the history of Israel, who bungled a war and tried to give the country away to Mahmoud Abbas. To our great good fortune, Abbas wouldn’t take it.

Several wars and countless terrorist murders later, I began to understand the spiritual dimension to the conflict. I saw that the biblical homeland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria was important for more than strategic military reasons. I understood, as Moshe Dayan in 1967 had not, that the Temple Mount was not just of historical importance to the Jewish people. Dayan’s decision to give control over it to the Muslim authorities, just like Sharon’s abandonment of Gush Katif, was seen by the Arabs not as a gesture of strength, but as a surrender. And just like the disengagement from Gaza, it exacerbated the conflict rather than calming it.

But I still clung to the idea that there could be partial solutions. Couldn’t we just annex Area C, where most of the settlements are, and leave the mass of hostile Arabs in Areas A and B? Couldn’t we somehow wall them off and promise to strike them hard if they fire rockets over the walls?

The Rage Less Travelled by Kay Wilson

...The nights were never-ending and even the days felt like night. I clawed my pillow and drenched it with tears. Rage came, rage went and rage came again. It appeared unexpectedly in verbal outbursts on innocent bystanders, or as unleashed fury on unsuspecting walls. Yet despite the long night, the sun did rise again. It shone its light in the form of those mature and brave enough who validated my rage and simultaneously did all that they could to engage me with the mundane and all that life has to offer. And thus I embarked on The Rage Less Travelled.

Kay Wilson..
Medium.com..
23 November '15..

While the blood of innocents was being mopped up off a theatre floor in France, a video titled, “A father and son have the most precious conversation,” goes viral. In the clip the boy tells his father, “We should leave Paris because Les Mechants (the villains) have guns and they will come to shoot us.” The father reassures his son that although the villains have guns, they (the French) have flowers and candles. “Do the flowers and candles protect us?” asks the son. When the father answers in the affirmative, the boy protests, “but flowers don’t do anything!” He is given a reassuring hug by his father and the clip is concluded by the interviewer asking the child if he “feels better,” to which the boy nods and breaks into a smile.

This video was “shared” and “liked” millions of times. Indeed, who can fail to be moved by Western virtues of life over death, culture over barbarity and goodness over evil? In an act of defiance, civilised people who refuse to hate, expel the stench of murder and savagery with fragrant flowers and scented candles, because civilised people believe that hate “will give the terrorists what they want.”

No it won’t.

A psychopath has no capacity to feel, so he is unable to care whether you hate him or not.

When a psychopath Islamist butchered me with his machete, he did it with such force that his blows snapped my ribs and shattered over thirty bones. His only emotion was exasperation: he was “peeved” that a serrated blade was not the ideal tool, because it kept wedging itself into bone, making it “tricky” to tug it out without my blood spurting out over his clothes. They hacked without fury. Murder was a nonchalant, every-day affair, as mundane as the cigarette they smoked after wiping our blood from their knives.

These cold-blooded Palestinian psychopaths who held a machete in one hand and a Malboro in the other, are exactly the same sort of Islamist maniacs who murdered the innocents in Paris. They are sons of Evil, dead in their souls and unreceptive and impervious to the noble morals of Westerners who refuse to hate.

Following the Paris attack, live on British television, someone “photobombed” the shoot and cursed ISIS. Immediately the broadcast returned to the anchor who shuffled in her seat while apologising profusely for the “unexpected bad language.” Given the backdrop of slaughtered corpses piled up on the floor, I would be surprised if anyone with any decency, would actually be offended by hearing someone rage at ISIS by telling them to “fuck off.”

Repression of rage in the name of culture, and sanitising language in response to savagery, is an inverted, delusional, trivial, misplaced and dangerous morality — if clean speech is the dominating virtue.

Rage is not a dirty word, it is not a moral failure. It is a moral necessity and it is a virtue.

We must rage at those who try to murder us and our children, because murder is the most cosmic and irreparable violation known to both man and mankind. Murder steals from families and plunders the unborn generations. Murder grieves friends. Murder rips out souls from communities. Murder wounds a nation and murder irreparably damages our world.

After the murder I too, had no hate. Barren of rage, fury, contempt or disgust, I was wrapped in a protective and balmy dressing of indifference that covered the deep, dark, psychological lesions. I could reel off details of Kristine’s execution with the same passion as reading a bus timetable. And most horrifying of all, I knew that if I ever again had to have the “misfortune” of witnessing a human being chopped up before my eyes, I would be able to watch it happen while smoking a cigarette.

Like any dressing though, leaving it in place would result in infection, gangrene and ultimately death. I had at some point to remove it by owning my right to rage.

And it happened.

The nights were never-ending and even the days felt like night. I clawed my pillow and drenched it with tears. Rage came, rage went and rage came again. It appeared unexpectedly in verbal outbursts on innocent bystanders, or as unleashed fury on unsuspecting walls.

Yet despite the long night, the sun did rise again. It shone its light in the form of those mature and brave enough who validated my rage and simultaneously did all that they could to engage me with the mundane and all that life has to offer.

And thus I embarked on The Rage Less Travelled.

On The Rage Less Travelled, I am compelled to make our world a better place, because once again I have tasted goodness.

On The Rage Less Travelled, I am compelled to act against evil. I make it my business to write letters and lobby governments, to do what I can to ensure that the cold-blooded, Palestinian, psychopaths who tried to murder me, will no longer receive a monthly salary of American and European tax-payers money.

Scapegoating Israel as a temporary relief for a clueless European establishment

...Scapegoating Israel is ‎certainly serving a purpose of temporary relief for a clueless European establishment, which has never ‎known war and does not know how to face it other than with vacuous statements of peace, love and ‎harmony. However, the burning ideology and hatred that fuels Islamic State will sooner or later have to force a ‎reality check on the Europeans. So far, however, it seems that will not be forthcoming anytime soon.‎

Judith Bergman..
Israel Hayom..
20 November '15..

Old habits are hard to break, and in Europe, it would seem, almost impossible. First, Swedish Foreign ‎Minister Margot Wallstrom said that "to counteract the radicalization, we must go back to the ‎situation such as the one in the Middle East, of which not least the Palestinians see that there is no future: We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence."

Then Dutch ‎Socialist Party Chairman Jan Marijnissen did not hesitate to link the Islamic State terror attacks on Paris to the Palestinian ‎issue:‎ "Their behavior eventually is connected also to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The guys -- I assume they were guys -- who carried out the attacks probably come from a ‎group of outraged people from the French suburbs." The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he added, "is ‎the growth medium for such an attack."‎

Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, echoed this sentiment in its analysis, saying that it was necessary ‎that France demand that the international community immediately establish a Palestinian state and that ‎Israel return to the pre-1967 borders.‎

This is classic European scapegoating. While that strategy may have worked for Europe one way or an‎other in the past, this time it will not. Islamic State is targeting the very heart of European cities -- their ‎transportation systems, bars, restaurants, concert halls, and sports stadiums -- and the Europeans can try ‎all they want to run away from the reality of this, but the truth is that there is nowhere to hide. ‎Europe has pandered to the Arab world and tried to appease it for decades and all that it has brought ‎Europeans is carnage, bloodbaths and hell on earth. This hell did not begin on Friday, Nov. 13. It ‎began, on a truly large scale, with Madrid in 2004, when 191 people were murdered and 2,000 wounded ‎in terrorist attacks. Still, even now, Europeans are talking of meeting the seething hatred and ‎determination of Islamic State with love and understanding and -- of course -- a state for the Palestinians.‎

It is time Europe faced the facts: Islamic State, just like al-Qaida, does not care for "Palestine." Even assuming that ‎Europe got its way and managed to force the creation of a Palestinian state, Islamic State would not leave Europe ‎alone. ‎

Contrary to what the above-mentioned politicians and their ilk believe, Islamic State is not about "frustration" and ‎‎"outrage." If terrorist attacks were about frustration and outrage, the world would have experienced a ‎spate of terror attacks from all corners of the world -- occupied Tibet, Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus ‎and so forth. Instead, practically all terrorism originates almost exclusively in the Muslim world. ‎

What Europe refuses to acknowledge, since it happens to be an politically inconvenient truth, is ‎that radical Islamic terrorism is a means to accomplish religious and political domination and to bring about ‎the worldwide Sunni caliphate, which the terrorist leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed in ‎June 2014 with himself as the caliph. The last Sunni caliphate was ruled by Ottoman sultans for 500 years. ‎

The caliphate simply means a single, global Islamic state. It is for the establishment of this state that Islamic State is ‎waging jihad in Europe. Under the jihadist interpretation of Islam, there will be constant conflict until ‎those countries that do not adhere to Islam begin to do so. There is nothing new about this. Muslims ‎have dreamed of the re-establishment of the caliphate for decades. The Muslim Brotherhood was ‎established in 1928 with the goal of re-establishing the traditional caliphate.‎

Islamic State is very explicit about all this, which begs the question of why this piece of information is so hard to ‎digest for Europeans and why they keep rambling on about "Palestine."‎

The world is at war by Dr. Mordechai Kedar

The world has finally seen the light - or is it the darkness? It is going to have to reassess some of its sacred cows if it wants to survive.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
israelnationalnews.com..
20 November '15..

The world is at war. And that's old news. Immediately after 9/11, over 14 years ago, former Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy said that WWIII had begun. The only thing that has changed over the past few days is that the rest of the world is also beginning to realize that it is at war.

The Western world, the immutable objective of World Jihad, has awakened to find itself standing on a firing range where its heart serves as the target and its culture is the bulls-eye.

Tragically, the bell tolls in the form of mass murder and the sight of blood flowing like water Last Friday's attack in Paris was not just the wanton murder of innocents, it was also an attack against the symbols of Western culture: theater, concerts, restaurants, stadiums. In the proclamation claiming responsibility for the atrocity, Islamic State announced that it did not merely attack the capital of France, it attacked the capital of prostitution and adultery and the "standard bearer of the Crusades."

Islamic extremists are at war with the most iconic symbol of Western culture, liberty – and primarily, with the liberation of women.

The attack against the Russian plane on its way from Sharm a Sheikh is part of that war. Russia is fighting the Jihadists in Syria, making its citizens a legitimate target in Jihad eyes. It doesn't matter that these were innocent tourists who only wanted to relax on the Sinai Desert's pristine beaches. And if the crash harms the economy and causes tourism to slump is Sisi's Egypt, that is all to the good. He is, after all, an enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Add to that the cultural by product: those tourists, mostly female, come to the Sinai beaches, drink alcohol, possibly take drugs, and lie on the sand minimally clothed, all of which infuriates Islamic fundamentalists.

The war is not limited to firearms and bombs. More and more people are beginning to discern the gaps allowing the enemy to breach the walls of the West's encampment. The mass migration from Islamic lands, starting in the seventies, is well entrenched in Europe but has not integrated into European culture, has not adopted its mores and has, instead, carefully held on to its original culture, nurtured in neighborhoods where the host country's culture is not welcome.

As a result of last weekend's attacks, French President Francois Hollande announced that France will change its laws to allow the government to cancel the citizenship of suspected terrorists. Now they wake up? Where were they three years ago, in 2012, when Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two sons Arieh and Gabriel and the little Miriam Monsonego were murdered in Toulouse by a murderer who arrived from the Jihadi fields of the Middle East? Where was the French government after the murders at Hyper Cacher and Charlie Hebdo this past January? What steps were taken when Ilan Halimi was barbarically murdered in Paris in 2006? All these terrorist murders were perpetrated by Muslims who could have had their citizenship revoked. France is shutting the barn door now that the horse has bolted.

A "righteous Islamic caliphate" rising out of the ruins of the state of Israel?

...An Islamic caliphate on the ruins of Israel -- that's what the Islamic Movement wants. Openly, and without fear. Because of our helplessness. It's not only Europe -- here, too, the call to turn Israel into an Islamist caliphate is seen as "nonviolent." For all the "human rights," we've forgotten about the right of the Jews to live in their own land. No more. The Zionists changed the rules and turned the tables. Better late than never. A democracy has to defend itself against those who exploit the freedom it grants as a way of destroying it. There is no reason to get upset over the threats and the riots and the "days of rage"; that's their way of deterring the powers that be from enforcing the law. Will government declarations be enforced when it comes to Islamic Movement-affiliated groups that hide behind a thousand different names? Let's hope so. We must not let up. It's time for action.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
18 November '15..

In October 2014, Kamal Khatib, the deputy head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, stood in the midst of a crowd of supporters in Jerusalem and announced: "Jerusalem will not be only the capital of the Palestinian state, but the capital of the coming righteous Islamic caliphate." (Thanks to Dr. Moti Kedar.) In June 2011, Khatib said of "resistance for the purpose of freeing the land from the occupier" that he did not make a distinction between soldiers and civilians: "It's obvious that every Jew is a soldier in the reserves of the Israeli army, so there's no difference between a civilian and a soldier" (MEMRI).

Next to Khatib happened to be standing, ironically enough, Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas, two MKs from the Balad party -- a secular Arab nationalistic movement. The Islamic State, Hamas, and the other jihadist movements have already taught us what will happen in such a "righteous" Islamic caliphate: Hanin Zoabi will go underground, if she isn't caught before that and sentenced to death for being a woman who does not obey the laws of Islam. Ghattas, as a Christian, will meet an even worse fate: He will be crucified. So what were these two doing next to the caliph's second in command? In the fight against the Jewish state, the enemy of my enemy is an ally.

Islamic Movement head Sheikh Raad Salah is the main person responsible for the constant incitement about Al-Aqsa mosque being "in danger." The blood of the Jews (and Arabs) killed as a result is on his hands. This past September, he half warned about and half called for "a third intifada in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem." In 2011, at a conference of the Supreme Arab Governing Committee (of which the Islamic Movement is a member), Salah said, "By 2020, the State of Israel will no longer exist." In light (or in darkness) of the man's incitement activity, this was no mere opinion, but a plan of action. Why are this man and his cohort free? Why do they have Israeli citizenship?

(Must Read) The Transgressions of the Filthy-Footed by Michael Lumish

...The Jews had thriving communities throughout the Middle East, but the Arabs killed them and drove them out because Islamic law, al-Sharia, forbids non-Muslim self-determination on any bit of land that was ever a part of the Umma. Thus Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land is considered an abomination before Muhammad, the Koran, and the Lord God Almighty. The very fact of Israel's existence is considered a humiliation to these backward-looking Islamists. And this is why they bravely send Israeli-Arab children out to stab Jews with kitchen knives. They have not the strength of character to fight their own fights, so they send their own children out to be killed in their stead. It must be acknowledged, however, that it is the Euro-Liberal-West that enables this behavior.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
15 November '15..
Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon..

Over at Israellycool, Deebo has some interesting statistics concerning Jewish visitation to the Temple Mount, illustrated by a couple of very nice pie charts. The statistics come from both the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Press.

Here are the pie charts.

The green represents the percentage of Muslim visitation to the Temple Mount in 2013 and 2015.

The yellowish-orange represent Christian visitation.

And that thin blue line that is almost entirely invisible? That is the "slice" of Jewish visitation to the holiest site to the Jewish people.

Deebo explains:

As you can clearly see, in 2 years the blue slice in the pie has grown by a whopping 0.1% among the more than 4,000,000 Muslim visitors the site receives each year. The increased storming is a sure sign that Al Aqsa will fall to the Zionists. At this rate of 0.05% growth per year, the number of Jewish visitors are expected to surpass that of Muslim visitors by the year 3009, assuming the number of Muslim visitors remains equal for the next 994 years.

Yes. Yes. Al Aqsa will fall to the Zionists who will transgress upon its sanctity with their filthy feet.

The next time that I am in Israel I intend to really filthy my feet up before I go stomping around on Islam's alleged third holiest religious site. I am not exactly sure how to go about doing that, but I am sure that there is mud to be had.

The truth, of course, is that the Temple Mount is not the third holiest anything to anyone. It is, in fact, the holiest site to the Jewish people, which is precisely why Islam claims it as its own.

If the Jews did not revere it in the first place, you can be sure, neither would Islam.

What France and Europe Might or Might Not Learn

...These countries need to be reminded every day that the Islamist terrorists' ultimate goal is to force all non-Muslims to submit to Islam or face death. Sometimes, the terrorists do not even have the patience to offer this choice to the "infidels," and just kill them while they are watching a concert or a soccer match. It now remains to be seen whether the French will wake up and realize that radical Islam is at war with the "unbelievers" and all those who refuse to accept the dictates of Islamic State and other Muslim extremists. This is a war that Israel has been fighting now for more than two decades, but, sadly, with little support -- and most often with venomous obstruction -- from countries in Europe, including France.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
15 November '15..

Earlier this year, France was one of eight countries that supported a Palestinian resolution at the United Nations Security Council, calling for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines by the end of 2017.

This vote means that France supports the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, likely to be ruled by the same type of people who on Friday carried out the most grisly terror attacks in France since World War II.

Today, every Palestinian child knows that in the best case, a future Palestinian state will be run by Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and in the worst case by the Islamic State and its affiliates. Has it occurred to anyone in Europe that the Palestinian people might not want to live under the rule of any of the groups, any more than Europeans would?

France and the rest of the EU countries have long been working against their own interests in the Middle East. By constantly endorsing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli policies, France has obviously been seeking to appease the Arab and Islamic countries. France seems convinced that such policies will keep Muslim terrorists from targeting French nationals and interests. That is probably why the French have made the catastrophic mistake of believing that the policy of appeasement toward Arabs and Muslims would persuade the Islamist terrorists to stay away from France. The French are now in grave danger of mistakenly believing that the November 13 attacks occurred because France did not appease the Muslim terrorists enough.

Sadly, the two earlier terrorist attacks that took place in Paris this year -- against the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and the HyperCacher Jewish supermarket -- failed to convince the French that the policy of appeasement towards Arabs and Muslims is not only worthless, but also dangerous.

Instead of learning from these previous mistakes and embarking on a new policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general and extremist Islam in particular, the French continued with their strategy of appeasement even after the Charlie Hebdo and the HyperCacher supermarket attacks.

Most recently, France voiced its backing for EU plans to label products from Israeli settlements, doubtless thinking that such a move would make the Muslim terrorists happy with the French. But, as last Friday's terrorist attacks showed, the Islamic State and its supporters are not particularly impressed by anti-Israel moves.

Muslim terrorists do not care about the settlements. For them, that is a trivial issue compared to their chief goal and dream: truthfully, to kill all infidels and establish an Islamic empire. The Muslim terrorists who have been murdering Jews in Israel and other parts of the world also seek to kill anyone they perceive as being friends of Western values in general. These include, above all, Christians -- either those unfortunate enough still to be living in the Middle East, but also those living in France and other Western countries.

(Timely) Anticipating Islam’s conquest of Europe and America at Al-Aqsa

...“Europe has become old and decrepit, and needs human reinforcement. […] they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in their midst. We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries – whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you.”...After all, one can find fanatics who come up with deranged rants in every creed. But since Muslims claim the Al-Aqsa mosque as Islam’s “third holiest” site, one should assume that the Islamic Waqf – which was left in charge of the whole Temple Mount after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War 1967 – would ensure that crackpots don’t get a platform in this supposedly so important mosque. Unfortunately, however, the hate-filled rant envisioning a Muslim conquest of Europe was by no means a unique incident.

Petra Marquadt-Bigman..
The Warped Mirror..
First Posted 28 September '15..

Any European who would oppose Muslim immigration by arguing that the current waves of desperate people hoping to find safety and prosperity north of the Alps will pave the way for a hostile attempt to conquer Europe for Islam would certainly be denounced as an “Islamophobe.” But what do you call it when a preacher at the Al-Aqsa mosque – which is usually described as Islam’s “third-holiest” place – passionately announces that “soon, we will trample them [Europe’s Christians and Jews] underfoot, Allah willing”?



In an address delivered some two weeks ago at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Muhammad Ayed argued according to a translation provided by MEMRI that in Europe, “all the hearts are infused with hatred toward Muslims.” According to the Sheikh,

“Europe has become old and decrepit, and needs human reinforcement. […] they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in their midst. We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries – whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you.”

If this sounds “Islamophobic,” the politically correct thing is of course to simply ignore this story – and this is just what most of the mainstream media seem to have done. It almost goes without saying that this is not the first time that politically inconvenient stories from the Muslim world have been ignored. Frequently these are stories that would show deeply ingrained Muslim Jew-hatred; however, the arguably very belated revelations in a recent New York Times report about the shocking “tolerance” adopted by the US military regarding the widespread sexual abuse of children by its Afghan allies also provide a more general indication of how eagerly western institutions apply double standards that downplay or ignore profound evils in Muslim societies.

Personally, I would agree that the above cited remarks by the Al-Aqsa preacher are not necessarily newsworthy. After all, one can find fanatics who come up with deranged rants in every creed. But since Muslims claim the Al-Aqsa mosque as Islam’s “third holiest” site, one should assume that the Islamic Waqf – which was left in charge of the whole Temple Mount after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War 1967 – would ensure that crackpots don’t get a platform in this supposedly so important mosque.

Unfortunately, however, the hate-filled rant envisioning a Muslim conquest of Europe was by no means a unique incident. Over the past year, MEMRI has documented several similar “sermons,” and one can only speculate how many go undocumented and what is preached in local mosques all over the Muslim world.

On July 24, Sheik Ahmad Al-Dweik declared in an address at the Al-Aqsa mosque that the “Caliphate” promised by Allah “will be the number one country in the world.”

At al-Aqsa, a sentinel moment for Islam by Dr. Qanta Ahmed

...Only then can we honor the spirit of our Creation — as a reflection of our joint Maker and as blood-siblings in faith, recognizing the holiest site of Judaism predated the birth of Islam by centuries. Anything other is mere objectification of a site which has been held holy for centuries before, and since, Islam, and to make justification of such objectification is not the work of Islam, but the mark of Islamism, an Islamism which seeks not only to eject the believing Jew from his holy worship but the believing Muslim too. Make no mistake, this is not Islam, This is Islamism. And of Islamism and its insatiable quest for cultural domination, there can be no more Sentinel sign than this.

Dr.Qanta Ahmed..
Times of Israel..
21 September '15..

For some years the gentle rhythm of the Jewish calendar has whispered in my Muslim ear. As my many Jewish friends around the world make their various observations — whether in degrees of devout orthodoxy or — in their own words – ‘culturally Jewish’ but ‘avowedly secular’, it has over the years become impossible for me to ignore the arrival of this, the holiest time of the Jewish year.

It was in South Carolina that I first attended Shabbat services. It was in New York that I first learned of Selichot. It was in Ra’anana, Israel that I first fasted on Yom Kippur. It was in Long Island that I first recited the Kaddish, as we buried my rabbi. It was in Boston that I first celebrated a Jewish marriage. In the intervening years I have grown to anticipate and enjoy the arrival of Rosh Hashanah — the Head of the Year — and the Days of Atonement which immediately follow. As I watch my friends retreat into private observations and reflections, I too reflect, and account, hoping my name might also be recorded in the Book of Life anew.

My Jewish year began with a Jewish wedding in Tel Aviv, Shabbat in Melbourne and Sydney, memorial services in Warsaw, Krakow and Auschwitz as I marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, springtime in Jerusalem joining others in combating anti-Semitism, my witnessed commitment to defend the vulnerable as I accepted an Honorary Fellowship at The Technion-Israel Institute of Science and Technology, and an East Coast summer considering my contribution to honoring Jewish memory with colleagues at the Shoah Foundation.

In between, I have practiced medicine and Islam. I have observed Ramadan, performed my salaat and, as every Muslim with means is required, spent freely in the name of my Maker. Though not a Jew, increasingly I find my Muslim life enriched by the Jewry surrounding it, my Islam informed by the mysteries of the Jewish year experienced through the Judaism vividly embodied by the diverse Jewish people who accompany me in this life.

How different my comfort with the proximity of Judaism to my Islam, a proximity which constantly deepens my attachment to my own faith as well as the faith revealed to us by Moses’. Judaism increases my understanding of Our God and expands my dimensions of Islam. How stark a difference this comfort in Jewish solidarity shown to me from the televised discomfort, the rage of Muslims rejecting Judaism at its epicenter, the self appointed Sentinels purportedly ‘guarding’ Al-Aqsa from the Jewish people, from the Keepers of God’s Covenant. How their aversion recoils, where my attraction draws me nearer. How their rejection colors hatreds violently, as my belief is calmed and soothed by Jewish love. How their repulsion of our sibling and ancestor faith, in one of mankind’s holiest places, an aversion so deep their sibling brethren are utterly unknown to them and through their unseeing eyes, they remain unknown to themselves. How detached these Muslims from the knowledge that Judaism is Islam’s predecessor, the Torah among our Divine Books, Judaism’s tablets, then texts, our Informer, its laws our commandments, its covenants, templates of our foundation, its laws our precedents, its followers, like us ViceRegents of our Maker, no less than our sacred flesh. While I have been circumnavigating the globe deep in the Jewish Diaspora, at the epicenter of Jewish spirit, at the center of Abrahamic faith, the forces between Muslims and Jews repel both peoples magnetically asunder.

As I watch the reports of upheaval at al-Aqsa, the new Jewish year has commenced with turbulence. The discovery of explosives inside the third holiest site of Islam, the IDF’s confiscation of these items to ensure the peace, the incendiary retaliation these measures triggered, sufficient to trigger an EU call for calm and firebrand Iran to demand an OIC Summit, bring me both despair and desolation, my memories of my own visits to these places newly vivid.

What is the link between Boston and al-Aqsa?

The conceptual link between global terror and al-Aqsa, experts say, is a problem that mainly threatens Europe and the U.S., but the escalation of violence on the Temple Mount itself is a problem that is all ours -- and it must be addressed urgently.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
26 April '13..

What is the link between Chechen jihadists, with whom the Tsarnaev brothers -- the alleged terrorists who set off bombs at the Boston Marathon last week -- were thought to have been affiliated, and the inspiration for an east Jerusalem terror cell that reportedly planned to murder Jewish worshippers and police officers on the Temple Mount several weeks ago? How is the ideology that motivated the Boston bombing as well as the foiled Temple Mount terror attempt connected to the Islamic "party of liberation" Hizb ut-Tahrir, which operates within the Palestinian Authority, in east Jerusalem and in secret terror cells in Europe? And what is the relationship between some of the terror cells that have come out of the Israeli Arab population in recent years and these sources of inspiration?

The answer to these questions lies in religious publications, in sermons, in various websites and in Muslim books of religious law. Various surveillance and assessment bodies that deal with this type of material have held the following belief for quite some time: Islamic terror, in terms of its general worldview, boils down to the vision of establishing a global Islamic caliphate, in the spirit of the Prophet Muhammad, with Jerusalem as its capital.

* * *

A particularly vocal supporter of this vision is Sheikh Raad Salah, the head of the northern chapter of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who calls himself "Sheikh al-Aqsa." This vision is shared by at least some of the spiritual authorities that preside over international jihadist terror, which has many offshoots. Jerusalem and al-Aqsa, which have always been regarded as central symbols, have recently begun to play a more central role in the incitement and calls for battle: "Al-Aqsa is in danger." Today, the Muslim world openly blames Israel for planning and trying to destroy their holy mosque. The prevalent description of the al-Aqsa compound as being "held captive, under threat, desecrated and defiled" by Jews and Israelis, fans the flames and injects adrenaline directly into the arteries of jihadist terrorists around the globe.

This process -- interpreting the "al-Aqsa is in danger" call as a green light to perpetrate terror and as a rubber stamp that legitimizes jihadist terror -- has been ongoing for years. There are countless examples. Intelligence agencies in Israel and around the world have plenty of examples on record, but the general public is seldom exposed to them. They suggest a conceptual connection between global terror and al-Aqsa. They also suggest a similar conceptual connection between global jihad and the story in Chechnya, where the al-Aqsa mosque also serves as the connecting link.

The Age of Dissimulation

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
02 November '10

Years from now, when historians seek an overarching concept to define our times, they could do worse than refer to it as the Age of Dissimulation. Today our leading minds devote their energies and cognitive powers to figuring out new ways to hide reality from themselves and the general public.

Take US President Barack Obama's senior counterterrorism advisor for example. On Sunday, John Brennan spoke on Fox News about the latest attempted Islamic terrorist attack on American soil.

Since the Obama administration has barred US officials from referring to terrorists as terrorists and effectively barred US officials from acknowledging that Islamic terrorists are Muslims, Brennan simply referred to the Islamic terrorists in Yemen who tried to send bombs to synagogues in Chicago as "individuals."

Today, practically, the only individuals willing to speak honestly about who Islamic supremacists are and what they want are the Islamic supremacists themselves.

(Read full article)

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