Our history and sovereignty are slipping away

A column, possibly from the Second
Temple, among rubble on the Temple
Mount

Fresnozionism.org..
12 October '12..

This is one of those issues that ought to be shocking, but about which nothing is done. For years — I've written about this before — the Muslim Waqf that controls the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying archaeological artifacts of Jewish provenance at the site. The photo above, (h/t Israel Matzav) taken by journalist Michael Freund on the Temple Mount, shows a piece of a column that he believes was part of the Second Temple, in the midst of a pile of rubble.

Apparently out of fear of inflaming Muslim sensibilities — and we know how easy that is — the government of Israel, which theoretically has sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, has never done more than file mild protests over the deliberate destruction of Jewish history.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials, including Mahmoud Abbas (like Yasser Arafat before him) actually deny that there was a Jewish Temple on the site, calling it an ‘alleged Temple’! So what do they think their Waqf buddies are smashing up?

But this is only half of it.

Ceren - Forum With Israeli Scientists “Offends Muslims”

Omri Ceren
Commentary/Contentions
26 October '11



http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/26/forum-israeli-scientists-muslims/#more-772169

It’s come to this:

University of Sydney scholars set to exchange ideas with visiting Israeli experts on neuroscience, tissue regeneration and other cutting-edge research areas are being warned the event will offend potential Muslim undergraduates.

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of the university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has urged his colleagues to withdraw from the research gathering, and the university administration to cancel it. Dr. Lynch has been a strong supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign designed to isolate Israel. He says he has been asked to intervene by the Campaign for Justice and Peace in Palestine….

He says most Muslim students live in the west and feel “a sense of resentment and alienation resulting from the predominance of pro-Israeli voices in Australia’s political and media discourses.”

The poor dears. They feel “resentment and alienation” from “political and media discourses,” and because of that doctors aren’t allowed to make progress on curing brain diseases. Really, there’s nothing like having the director of a “Peace and Conflict Studies” program explain why the mere presence of Israelis at a scientific conference aimed at human betterment is an affront to Muslims. And to think, some people have suggested that anti-Israel viciousness in the Ivory Tower has allowed hatred to cloud clear thinking.

Australia has managed to nurture a fairly active – albeit still very fringe – anti-Israel boycott movement. The insanity has touched the country’s mainstream parties, but it remains a broad embarrassment to normal Australians and to mainstream Australian politicians. Australian media has been complicit in fomenting anti-Israel bias – taking articles about how Israel wants genuine, not indirect peace talks and headlining them, “Israel to reject new peace talks” – but even they couldn’t stomach [former Australian Prime Minister] Rudd’s hysterical overreaction to the use of Australian passports in the al-Mabhouh hit, which included abandoning Israel to the UN’s Goldstone lynch mob.

All of which is to say, don’t expect Lynch’s call to become anything but the passing disgrace that it is. His instinctive rhetorical appeal to multicultural victimhood – nonetheless – is deeply revelatory personally and institutionally. Pathetic appeals to Muslim resentment, marshaled as pretexts for halting scientific research and medical progress. Perfect.

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Berkeley conference distorts Arab-Jewish relations

Bataween
Point of No Return
16 May '10

The good news is that academics in Middle East Studies departments in the West are turning increasingly to the study of relations between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world. The bad news is, as this Front Page report of a recent Berkeley conference shows, that the agenda often serves the propaganda myth of pre-Zionist 'peaceful coexistence', or in this case a 'Jewish-Muslim civilisation'. Why so few Jews still live in the Arab world today is never really addressed. The more radical think of Jews as Arabs of the Jewish religion, others downplay the dhimmi status of Jews under Islam. As Nathan Weinstock once described their unequal relationship: Jews were to Muslims as the horse to its rider - allowed to survive as long as the beast was useful to its master. (With thanks: Michelle, Ami)

A conference at the University of California, Berkeley, on April 28-29, 2010 (and continued at UC Davis on April 30), “Muslims and Jews Together: Seeing From Without; Seeing From Within,” was billed as a major international symposium for “the inauguration of the Program for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations at UC Berkeley and the establishment of a UC-wide and West Coast working group for the study of Muslim-Jewish relations .”

The conference was a collaborative effort between the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at UC Berkeley and the Jewish Studies Program at UC Davis. Its stated purpose was to use the frameworks of traditional Middle East studies and Jewish studies to develop a new academic field focused on the historical interaction between Muslims and the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews who once lived among them. Most of the participants were historians or anthropologists specializing in North African Jewry, particularly Morocco.



CMES chair Nezar AlSayyad introduced the conference with a discussion about “building bridges” by re-framing the term, “Jews of Islam,” into something that could be equated with Judeo-Christian civilization: something he called “Judeo-Muslim civilization.” CMES vice-chair and conference organizer Emily Gottreich echoed AlSayyed’s comments in her introduction to the first panel, describing the “Jews of Islam” as “an awkward and unfortunate” construction and seconding the notion of “Judeo-Muslim civilization.”

(Read full article)

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Bibi’s Secret Letter to Obama

Netanyahu tries (well, should try) to straighten out Obama regarding the miseducation he received from Rashid Khalidi.


Leon de Winter
Pajamasmedia.com
21 April '10

Dear President Obama,

It saddens me that I have to be frank with you, frank and impolite, but our last meeting didn’t end peacefully. It’s hard to accept the contrast: you bow for an obscene tyrant, you joke around with corrupt Latin-American caudillos, then you insult me — the prime minister of America’s best friend, Israel.

May I conclude that your friend Rashid Khalidi has not been talking to you in vain during all those dinners and parties you hosted for each other?

Some geopolitical problems are complicated on the surface, but deeper there is often a simple truth which highly educated left-wing academics like you fail to recognize. The truth of our conflict with the Arabs isn’t longer than two dozen words:

Muslims don’t accept non-Muslims ruling a piece of land that the Muslims consider sacred Islamic land until the end of times.

Rashid Khalidi has never been this clear with you. He explained to you that the Jews of Israel were hated because of their treatment of Palestinian Muslims. He never exposed to you how the Arab Palestinians are treated in Lebanon, or how other Muslims are being treated by fellow Muslims. Look at the mass slaughter the Muslims of Iraq commit upon each other, or the Muslims in Yemen.

(Read full story)

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A Letter to Gaza

Nonie Darwish
Frontpagemag.com
15 April '10

I recently received an email accusing me of hating Arabs and my father. This email is typical of Arab media accusations of my views regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since most Arabs have no chance to read my book, Now They Call Me Infidel, Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror, which explains in detail my position, I will answer the email in this article. First, below is the translation of the Arabic language email which I received without a signature:

Salam to you,

With all of our pride in your father we pray that Allah will bless him with entering paradise, which is the wish of every person after this short prideful meaningless life. I want to ask you, has your father become your enemy after his death? We in the city of Gaza take pride in your father and I live on a street by the name of Shahid Moustafa Hafez which also has a school by the name of Shahid Moustafa Hafez. We never forgot his sacrifice, so how could you become an enemy to the tortured Palestinian people who are still suffering at the hands of Arab Zionists? I ask Allah to give you health and strength.

Awaiting your response and thank you in advance.

Here is my response:

Dear Gaza resident,

Your email touched me as sincere even though your accusations are wrong. I am not the enemy of Arabs and I assure you that I love my original culture and people. What makes me different is that I do not only love Arabs, but I also love the Jewish people. I am speaking my conscience. I respect their right to live in peace in their tiny homeland, Israel. I understand how that could be puzzling and unbelievable to many Arabs, to love both Jews and Arabs.

We Arabs have suffered from an unnatural and consistent indoctrination into Islamic supremacy and Jew hatred for over 1400 years. Thus it has become unfathomable to the Arab mind to comprehend loving both Arabs and Jews and wishing both well. Our culture has deprived us for many centuries from loving all of humanity as equals, through intense religious indoctrination resulting in self-imposed isolation and non-integration with other cultures. This isolation and jihad against non-Muslims has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Muslims everywhere are trying desperately to save face, reform Islam’s image and deny the undeniable. But they also want to have their cake and eat it too. While they are telling the world Islam is a religion of peace, they still want to continue with the jihad against non-Muslim countries. While one leader says, let’s kill all the Jews and take over Rome, another says to Western media that Islam is a religion of peace and we are deeply offended by the anti-Islam rhetoric. To play this sick game, Muslim culture must live a dysfunctional double life where everyone is deceived, including Muslims.

(Read full article)

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How Our Muslim Allies Understand the "Crisis" Between the US and Israel

Harold Rhode
Hudson New York
17 March '10

Given the so-called crisis between the US Administration and Israel, it is important to keep in mind the context of how our Muslim friends’ view this. Our Arab friends in the Gulf see us as abandoning our closest ally. From a Muslim point of view, all Muslims are brothers in Islam. They also see the non-Muslims as one (united) group. Israel and America (and for that matter Christian Europe) are therefore seen as one block.

If the US abandons Israel -- such a close friend, ally and in some deep way family to the US -- our Muslim allies reason that the US would surely do the same to them --who are not part of the non-Muslim world, and by definition, "not part of the non-Muslim family/brotherhood." This indicates to them that if our friends in the Gulf cannot trust the US to stand by them, outsiders will not fare better.

This means to our Arab friends and allies in the Gulf that they must look elsewhere for protection - maybe China or Russia - or even try to appease Iran, their hated/mortal enemy, to the fullest extent they can - which does NOT bode well for America.

Probably the best way to explain what the Muslims expect in this situation is to quote, a classic Muslim scholar, ibn Hazmm on the concept of friendship, enmity, and war.

(Read full post)
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Do Not Threaten Humanity

Dr. Aaidh al-Qarni
Asharq Alawsat
16 February '10

(I just couldn't let this one go by. He's not exactly beloved by the Taliban/Al-Qaida collection but his points are very sharp. Y.)

Many Muslims have an amazing ability of making the world hostile towards them and turning friends into enemies. For example, we find that political discourse in some Arab and Islamic states carries threats and menace toward other states. Yet, these same weak and lamentable Arab and Islamic states are incapable of providing bread and security to their respective peoples and to remedy their illiteracy!

I saw on the Al-Arabiya satellite television channel an Iranian reformist thinker deriding his country's regime and saying: I do not know where the death slogan list is going to take us! In fact, the regime began with the slogan 'Death to America,' and then added 'Death to Israel. Then, it had doubt over Britain and added 'Death to Britain!' And when a French newspaper reported news of demonstrations in Iran, they added 'Death to France!' Similarly, if Russia fails to use its veto to bloc any sanctions decision against Iran then they will add 'Death to Russia!' Perhaps Somalia will be the next to be added to the list, in addition to Burkina Faso and Ghana because of their good relations with the United States! In the end they will chant 'Death to the World!'

(Read full article)
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PA TV sermon: "Jews are enemies of Allah and humanity - Kill them"

PA TV Sermon: "Jews are the enemies of Allah and humanity"
"The Prophet says: 'Kill the Jews'"

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik
PMW Bulletins
01 February '10

"Even if donkeys would cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl and snakes to bite, the Jews would not cease to harbor hatred towards Muslims."

A sermon calling for the genocide of Jews was broadcast Friday by PA TV, which is under the control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The speech called the Jews the enemies of God and humanity, and compared Jews to Nazis.

In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Abbas proudly declared that there is no more incitement in the mosques:

"They [Israel] said there is a problem with incitement in speeches in mosques during Friday prayers. Today there is no more incitement at any mosque," he[Abbas] said." [Haaretz, Dec. 16, 2009]

(Click here for full transcript)
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Muslim-Jews lost in the no-man's-land of identity

Bataween
Point of No Return
21 January '10

Posted before Shabbat

A new comedy film called The Infidel is creating a sensation in the British press: it is about a British Muslim who, in a matter of minutes, discovers he was adopted and that he was born Jewish. Why is the film considered so controversial, even outrageous? In the West, Jews and Muslims are seen as polar opposites, eternal adversaries. To put them both together in the same script seems guaranteed to offend members of both religions.

In fact a Muslim who discovers he's a Jew is not as outlandish as it sounds. There is the case of the Jew from Kuwait. The Jewish girl brought up by her Muslim neighbours after her family abandoned her in their chaotic exodus from Egypt. The Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's Jewish grandmother makes him a Halachic Jew. Mixed families are known to live in Kurdistan, Egypt and Lebanon. Thousands of Muslim Yemenis are dimly aware of their Jewish roots. One Jewish convert was even President of North Yemen.

Traditionally, the two communities kept apart in the Middle East, and intermarriage has always been rare. But the mass flight Jews from Arab countries has left behind a number of Muslim-Jews in the no-man's land of identity.

(Read full article)
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The Forgotten Palestinian Refugees

Daniel Schwammenthal
Wall Street Journal
23 December 09

Even in Bethlehem, Palestinian Christians are suffering under Muslim intolerance.

(While I find no surprise in this, many still have not grasped the nature of the problem. This is another opportunity for them.)

Meet Yussuf Khoury, a 23-year old Palestinian refugee living in the West Bank. Unlike those descendents of refugees born in United Nations camps, Mr. Khoury fled his birthplace just two years ago. And he wasn't running away from Israelis, but from his Palestinian brethren in Gaza.

Mr. Khoury's crime in that Hamas-ruled territory was to be a Christian, a transgression he compounded in the Islamists' eyes by writing love poems.

"Muslims tied to Hamas tried to take me twice," says Mr. Khoury, and he didn't want to find out what they'd do to him if they ever kidnapped him. He hasn't seen his family since Christmas 2007 and is afraid even to talk to them on the phone.

Speaking to a group of foreign journalists in the Bethlehem Bible College where he is studying theology, Mr. Khoury describes a life of fear in Gaza. "My sister is under a lot of pressure to wear a headscarf. People are turning more and more to Islamic fundamentalism and the situation for Christians is very difficult," he says.

In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza's only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Mr. Khoury's Christian friends have also left Gaza.

A demonstration of power: Muslims praying in Manger Square, Aug. 7, 2009.
On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier. Yet until Palestinian terrorist groups turned Bethlehem into a safe haven for suicide bombers, Bethlehemites were free to enter Israel, just as many Israelis routinely visited Bethlehem.

The other truth usually ignored by the Western press is that the barrier helped restore calm and security not just in Israel, but also in the West Bank including Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity, which Palestinian gunmen stormed and defiled in 2002 to escape from Israeli security forces, is now filled again with tourists and pilgrims from around the world.

(Read full article)
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MacEoin - Suicide Bombing as Worship

Dimensions of Jihad

Denis MacEoin..
Middle East Quarterly..
Fall 2009, pp. 15-24..

Many motives are cited for suicide bombings, from religious sanctification to revenge for Western foreign policy to hatred of Israel, but one thing ties them together: the boast that Muslims love death, whereas their enemies love life. From killing the infidel enemy through suicide attacks, to allowing the subordinate female to participate in suicide attacks, a pattern emerges. And just as honor killings are a perversion of the most basic of human ties, so love for martyrdom takes societies into a direct relationship with the darkest side of human nature. In trying to explain this, it may be feasible to identify routes to a possible solution.

Origins

Since the 1980s, killing oneself deliberately has become the most popular method of attacking and killing one's enemies in countries including Iraq and Afghanistan, in territories such as Chechnya or the West Bank and Gaza, and even in Western countries such as the United States and Great Britain. It was a real-life Shi'i fanatic, a thirteen-year-old boy called Hossein Fahmideh, who set things moving in 1981 when he died with a grenade in his hand, throwing himself under a tank during the Iran-Iraq war. He was followed by thousands of young Iranians carrying "keys to paradise," who walked and ran across minefields, ripping their bodies apart for God and the Islamic regime.[1] Two years later, the first suicide attack occurred against a Western target when a bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the lobby of the American embassy in Beirut. Apart from himself, he killed 63 people: 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans, and 14 visitors. Iran denied all involvement in the attack, but its protégé, Hezbollah, soon claimed responsibility, and it was subsequently established that the killings had been approved and financed by senior Iranian officials. The Iranian role in many subsequent suicide bombings has been crucial, given the existence of a clerical elite that inherited a deeply-embedded Shi'i cult of martyrdom, whose traditions of flagellation, public weeping, passion plays, martyrdom sermons, and hagiographies of martyrs were pushed into overdrive after the revolution of 1979.