Netanyahu on Mufti & Hitler

Noted Middle East Forum scholar Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz responds to criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schwanitz, a leading expert on ties between Nazis and Islamists, says al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini was instrumental in the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Mufti Did Advise Hitler on Holocaust 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn criticism for comments about the role of al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in conceiving and perpetrating the Holocaust. Indeed, leading Nazi aides testified that al-Husaini was one of the instigators of the genocide. In his 1999 autobiography, a senior Nazi official admitted how he advised Hitler and other leading Nazis, and that he acquired full knowledge of the ongoing mass murder.

Middle East Forum scholar, historian, and author Wolfgang G. Schwanitz added, "It is a historical fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini was an accomplice whose collaboration with Adolf Hitler played an important role in the Holocaust. He was the foremost extra-European adviser in the process to destroy the Jews of Europe."

Although Schwanitz hadn't previously heard the dialogue between Hitler and al-Husaini as told by Netanyahu, he says it is absurd to ignore the role played by al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini, a war criminal, in encouraging and urging Hitler and other leading Nazis to exterminate European Jewry.

According to the foremost expert on the ties between Nazis and Islamists, there is much evidence that al-Husaini's primary goal was blocking all of the ways out of Europe. He pushed Hitler to slam the last doors of a burning house shut.

According to the foremost expert on the ties between Nazis and Islamists, there is much evidence that al-Husaini's primary goal was blocking all of the ways out of Europe. He pushed Hitler to slam the last doors of a burning house shut.
In their 2014 book Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, published by Yale University Press, Schwanitz and co-author Barry Rubin delve into the deep ties between Hitler and the Grand Mufti:

At their meeting [on November 28, 1941, Hitler and al-Husaini] concluded the pact of Jewish genocide in Europe and the Middle East, and immediately afterward, Hitler gave the order to prepare for the Holocaust. The next day invitations went out to thirteen Nazis for the Wannsee Conference to begin organizing the logistics of this mass murder.

The highly acclaimed book also examined the Grand Mufti's efforts to prevent Europe's Jews from finding refuge in the land that would become Israel:

And since any European Jews let out of Europe might later go to Palestine, al-Husaini made it clear that if Hitler wanted Muslims and Arabs as allies he must close Europe's exits to Jews. At the same time, al-Husaini and Arab rulers also told Britain that if it wanted to keep Arabs and Muslims from being enemies, it must close entrance to Palestine to all Jews. By succeeding on both fronts, al-Husaini contributed to the Holocaust doubly, directly, and from the start.

[Middle East Forum]

 

Netanyahu: The Mufti and the Nazi Final Solution

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, is still a revered figure in Palestinian society, he appears in textbooks, and it is taught that he is one of the founding fathers of the nation. Eichmann's deputy at the Nuremberg trials said, "The Mufti repeatedly proposed to the authorities, primarily Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, to exterminate the Jews of Europe....The Mufti was one of the instigators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser to Eichmann and Hitler for carrying out this plan.

"The forefathers of the Palestinian nation, without a country and without the so-called "occupation," without land and without settlements, even then aspired to systematic incitement to exterminate the Jews. 
(Prime Minister's Office)


White House warns Netanyahu - Michael Wilner

Comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the week, which implicated the former grand mufti of Jerusalem in the decision to proceed with the Holocaust, amount to inflammatory rhetoric stoking tensions on the ground between Israel and the Palestinians, the White House said.
[Jerusalem Post]
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Netanyahu and the Historians - Jeffrey Herf

The Prime Minister has erred in his understanding of the timing of Hitler's decision-making but he is right about Husseini's disastrous impact on Palestinian political culture.

I hope that the discussion his comments have generated will draw more attention to the now abundant scholarship on Husseini's role in collaborating with the Nazis in their failed efforts to murder the Jews of North African and the Middle East during World War II.

We need more public discussion about the atrocious legacy he left behind that has been playing itself out, yet again, in the knife attacks on the streets of Israel's cities. That legacy of a political culture that venerates violence and anti-Semitism is a huge barrier to successful diplomacy and resolution of the old conflict. The more decision-makers in Washington cast a harsh glare on the enduring impact of Husseini's legacy, the more likely they will enhance the now dim chances for diplomatic success. If they can't find the words to speak clearly about it, diplomacy will stand little chance of success.
[The Times of Israel]
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UPDATE:

Crazy like a fox - Caroline Glick

Netanyahu's assertion that the founder of the Palestinian people, Haj Amin al-Husseini, convinced Adolf Hitler to eradicate rather than expel the Jews of Europe was an overstatement of Husseini's role. But Netanyahu's claim that Husseini made it impossible for Hitler to suffice with expelling the Jews from Europe is true.

Husseini has been erased from history. His role in the Holocaust has been deleted. The fact that the goal of the Palestinian national movement from its inception has been to annihilate the Jewish state and that the annihilation of Israel remains its goal still today has similarly been washed out of the history books and the news pages.

Netanyahu recognizes that the media have sided with the Palestinians in their war to destroy Israel through a mix of terror and propaganda. He knows that the only stories they will report on are stories with an anti-Israel angle. It is reasonable then to assume that he decided to use their embrace of every possible angle of attack as a means to get the truth out about the nature of the war.

By exaggerating Husseini's importance in the Holocaust, Netanyahu gave the media a means of attacking him. But by doing so, he forced the [NY] Times to report on the Palestinians' founding father's role in destroying European Jewry and his desire to carry out the Final Solution in the Middle East. They would have ignored the issue if Netanyahu had not exaggerated his actual role.

Due to his "gaffe," every Western media outlet reported on Husseini's actions.

Some even mentioned that in his PhD dissertation, current Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the Holocaust was both a myth and a joint Zionist-Nazi project. For most Westerners, this is the first they've heard of the fact that the Palestinian's George Washington was a Nazi war criminal.

Like I said, crazy as a fox.
[Jerusalem Post via JWR]

Media Screws Israel

The pretty boy of Israeli politics, Yair Lapid, hits the international media

Media Bias in Reporting on Terror Attacks in Israel - Yair Lapid
(Jewish News-UK)

• In the past two weeks terrorists have been chasing Israeli civilians across the country armed with knives, axes and guns. Jihadists are murdering and maiming, stabbing and burning. They no longer pretend this is about foreign policy, or even about settlements. It is religious fanaticism which knows no limits. In their own words, they want to murder Jews because they are Jews.
• Those in the media covering this wave of violence have created the impression that the victim is the aggressor, that the ones protecting themselves are the murderers, that Israel has no right to defend itself. Here are a few examples:
  • BBC headline - "Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two"
    The Palestinian who was shot wasn't a passerby; he was a terrorist who stabbed two Jews who walked past him.
  • CNN headline - "Joseph's Tomb Catches Fire"
    The tomb, a Jewish holy site under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction, didn't "catch fire." It was set on fire, it was arson.
  • Los Angeles Times headline - "4 Palestinian teens killed in Israeli violence"
    There is no mention that the four Palestinians were on a murder spree when they were killed.
  • NBC headline - "Man shot after rushing past police"
    The man tried to stab a police officer in the neck at Lion's Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.
• Before I was a politician I worked in the media for 31 years. I covered wars, international conflicts and countless clashes. I can say, with total responsibility, that this is an incomprehensible number of incorrect reports, misleading headlines, distortions of fact and total falsifications of the truth.
• It doesn't happen anywhere else in the world where democratic countries fight Islamic fundamentalism. When Israel isn't involved, the world understands that murderers can't wander free on the streets with guns and knives.
  
  The writer, a former Israeli finance minister, is the leader of the Yesh Atid party.

Reflections on Stabbing Intifada

Must Both Sides Exercise Restraint? - Ben-Dror Yemini

The young man approached a group of police officers, pulled out an axe and managed to hurt two of them before he was immediately shot in the head by other cops in the area. It didn't happen in east Jerusalem. It happened in October 2014 in the borough of Queens in New York. The terrorist was Zale Thompson, 32, an American who had converted to Islam.

No one thought for a minute that the police officers hadn't done the right thing. No one said that "both sides are required to exercise restraint." But that's exactly what the American administration's spokespeople, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, have been saying in the past week.

The use of a knife is not random. Slaughtering has become trendy. As far as the American administration is concerned, these are poor people acting out of distress. That is complete nonsense. Africa's poor don't turn to terror. It has nothing to do with poverty. It has to do with incitement and brainwashing.
(Ynet News)


With Attacks, Palestinians Proclaim: We Don't Want to Live Alongside You
- David Horovitz

As was the case at the start of the 2000s, when Hamas and Fatah terrorists were training, arming and dispatching suicide bombers to target our buses, malls, and restaurants, we set out each day knowing that people around us want to kill us. For now, they are generally using less devastating methods than back then. But potentially, there are more of them. And they are right here among us. The brainwashing has been so effective that they come at us ready and willing to die in the act of killing a Jew.

In bloody, unmistakable capital letters, the perpetrators of this new round of evil mayhem proclaim to Israelis: We don't want to live alongside you. We want to kill you and force you out of here.
(Times of Israel)


If Israel disappears - Mudar Zahran

Mudar Zahran

Since 1948, we Arabs have been taught that all we need to do is get rid of the Jewish state, and ‎everything else will go well after that. But that day did not come, nor does ‎it seem to be coming, as Jordanian opposition figure Emad Tarifi once told me: "It seems the fish in ‎the sea are not betting on us feeding them Jews."

In addition, we Arabs have given our dictators carte blanche to impoverish, terrorize, oppress and ‎destroy us all in the name of "the great Arab struggle to end the Zionist entity." The outcome of this has ‎been clear: While Israel made 10 new breakthroughs in cancer and cardiac treatments in the last two years ‎alone, we Arabs developed new execution methods. The latest is death by drowning in a cage, as ‎shown in an Islamic State group video two weeks ago.‎

We Arabs have wasted seven decades of our existence awaiting Israel's demise. It is time to think of the future, and whether Israel's "disappearance" should be our ‎ultimate wish.

What would happen if, one day, Israel were to disappear? While it does not seem feasible, it is the day around which entire Arab political, social and economic systems revolve.

If these Israel-haters got their wish to see Israel disappear, what would ‎happen?

 

Israel is the only reason Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons. Iran could buy the ‎technology to produce them, or could learn it quickly the way Pakistan did. Why has Iran been slow in ‎doing so? Because it learned a lesson from the experience of Saddam's Osirak reactor, which Israeli jets reduced to rubble in 1981.

Iran is not the only evil power in the Middle East: We also have Islamic State, which has now spread across ‎Iraq, Syria, Sinai and Libya, with clear ambitions to enter Jordan. Islamic State has not entered Jordan yet, and this is not ‎because of any fear of the Jordanian army. After all, the Global Firepower website ranks Jordan's army at ‎the same level as the Iraqi army, which Islamic State has defeated many times. Islamic State does not dare enter Jordan for one reason only -- its fear that Israeli jets would catch up with it 15 minutes later.

To those Arabs, Muslims, Westerners and others insisting that Israel must be erased from face of the ‎planet, I say: Don't bet on it, as Israel is becoming stronger every day through its democracy and ‎innovation, while Arab countries are getting weaker through dictatorship and chaos. And be careful ‎what you wish for, because if you were to get it, you too would most likely disappear, unless you ‎yearn to be ruled by Iran or Islamic State.‎

 In short, if the day were to come when Israel falls, Jordan, Egypt and many others would fall, too, and ‎Westerners would be begging Iran for oil.‎

We can hate Israel as much as we like, but we must realize that without it, we too would be ‎gone.‎

Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian-Palestinian who resides in the U.K.

[Israel HaYom][Hat tip: MW]
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UPDATES:

A Soundtrack for Palestinian Violence - Jodi Rudoren & Rami Nazzal

Music CDs sold in the West Bank feature songs like "Stab, Stab."
     
"Stab the Zionist and say God is great," declares one song. "Let the knives stab your enemy," says another. A third song urges, "Say hello to being a martyr."
     
Then there is "Run Over, Run Over the Settler."        
(New York Times)
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Ya'alon: Israel Is Surrounded by Jihadists - Bridget Johnson 

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, speaking at the U.S. National Defense University said:

"Those who claim that the problem is settlements - they murdered Jews before the construction of any settlements in the West Bank....Western like-minded people are ready to be deceived, manipulated by this kind of propaganda, forgetting the most important distinction between good and evil, going to relativism and other distinctions of victims and victimhood." Ya'alon said a cooperative strategy with the U.S. to tackle the violence must be "based on moral clarity."
(PJ Media)

"Stabbing Intifada"

SHOCKING VIDEO: Last night in Gaza. A hate mob, waving knives, chanting hate, crying out for Jewish blood. The media won't show the ugly hate behind Palestinian terror. So it's up to us.Fight the terror. Share the truth.----> Israel is Under Attack. But the world is silent. Demand action against Palestinian terror. Add your name at IsraelIsUnderAttack.com
Posted by The Israel Project on Sunday, October 18, 2015

Above is the Israel Project's video of a Gaza rally a few days ago, celebrating stabbing attacks against Jews.  

The Roots of the Stabbing Intifada - Jeffrey Goldberg

In September 1928, a group of Jewish residents of Jerusalem placed a bench in front of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount for the comfort of elderly worshipers.

Jerusalem's Muslim leaders treated this as a provocation, part of a Jewish conspiracy to take control of the Temple Mount. The spiritual leader of Palestine's Muslims, the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, incited Arabs in Palestine against their Jewish neighbors by arguing that Islam itself was under threat. By next summer, violence by Arab rioters took the lives of 133 Jews.

The current quasi-uprising in which young Palestinians have been trying, and occasionally succeeding, to kill Jews with knives is prompted in good part by the same set of manipulated emotions that sparked the anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s.

Many of today's Palestinian leaders actively market rumors that the Israeli government is seeking to establish a permanent Jewish presence atop the Temple Mount. The comments of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas - by general consensus the most moderate leader in the brief history of the Palestinian national movement - have been particularly harsh and his rhetoric has inflamed tensions.

The actual root cause of the Middle East conflict may be the unwillingness of many Muslim Palestinians to accept the notion that Jews are a people who are indigenous to the land Palestinians believe to be exclusively their own, and that the third-holiest site in Islam is also the holiest site of another religion.  
(Atlantic)


No Country for Jews? - Rabbi Daniel Gordis 

When Secretary of State John Kerry said that he would not "point fingers from afar" at who was responsible for the violence, and called the latest attacks part of a "revolving cycle that damages the future for everybody," he convinced Israelis once again that the present American administration has abandoned any ability to distinguish right from wrong, just from unjust, wise from destructive.
(New York Daily News)
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Palestinian Jihad: The Week in Review

The 1 minute video above is a review of this week's Arab terror against Jews

Child Sacrifice Brings No Honor to the Palestinian Cause
- Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie
 
The Palestinian national movement is one of the most stupid, murderous and bloodthirsty in all of human history. 

Rabbi Eric Yoffie

I said this in June 2001 when I expressed my profound regret that Palestinian voices of reason and moderation had not appeared in response to the peacemaking efforts of Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001. Those words came back to me this week as I watched videos of Palestinians racing through the streets of Jerusalem, looking for Jews to kill. Once again, the leaders of Palestinian nationalism have led their people down the long, cruel path of violence, suffering and death.
     
Palestinian diplomats and politicians have proclaimed that Israeli security forces are to blame when they shoot at Palestinian killers and would-be assassins. The events of recent weeks cannot be justified or explained away. To excuse Palestinians from normal standards of moral judgment is to patronize them. Palestinians marauding through the streets of Jerusalem with knife and gun in hand is not acceptable, now or ever.

I know that more force will probably be necessary to bring quiet. That is unfortunate, but there is no alternative. Israelis will not tolerate such a situation: the whole point of the Jewish state was to create a place on this earth where Jews do not have to fear attacks from hoodlums and killers when they walk down the street. The terror must end, and Israel must do what is necessary to end it. 
The writer is a former president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
(Ha'aretz)


The Knives of Jerusalem - Editorial 

In the past two weeks Palestinian assailants have attacked more than 50 Jews, killing eight. Among the wounded: a 2-year-old toddler, a 13-year-old boy riding his bike, a 70-year-old woman boarding a bus. This is terrorism in its most exact and repulsive form.

The taste for violence emerges from a deep-seated culture of hate, nurtured by Palestinian leaders over many years in mosques, schools, newspapers, TV channels and social media.
     
There isn't an endless supply of Palestinians willing to meet a quick death in order to stab Israelis, and most Arab residents or citizens of Israel would rather live in a 21st-century startup nation run by Israelis than a 12th-century theocracy run by Hamas. The sooner Israelis impress on Palestinians that they will never bow to knives or bend to terror, the sooner the stabbings will end.
(Wall Street Journal)


Palestinians Torch Jewish Holy Site - Khaled Abu Toameh & Tovah Lazaroff

Yisrael Beytenu party head Avigdor Liberman held the Palestinian Authority responsible for the flames at Joseph’s Tomb and said it showed that the PA’s “occupation is no different than that of Islamic State.”

The Tomb is located near what was once the Biblical city of Shechem and has a history of Jewish, Christian and Muslim worship. It is fully under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Jewish worship has been severely limited at the tomb since the start of the second intifada in October 2000, after an Israeli border policeman was killed there during clashes with Palestinians.

Under the Olso Accords, Jews were allowed regular access to the site and a yeshiva was located there. Now Jewish worshipers can access the tomb only once a month in the middle of the night, when the IDF secures the roads in the city that lead to the tomb.

Pictures of flames jutting out from the Tomb were published by the Samaria Regional Council. Portions of the religious site were severely damaged in the fire. There were no reports of injuries.

Settlers and right wing politicians reacted to the arson attack by calling for the Tomb to be placed under Israeli control, in spite of its location on the edge of Nablus.

“Once again its been proven that there is no alternative to Israeli sovereignty when it comes to preserving Jewish holy sites,” said Avi Ro’eh, who heads the Council of Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria. He called on the government to allow Jewish worshipers regular access to the site.
[Jerusalem Post]
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The Separation Delusion - Caroline Glick

If we learn nothing else from the current violence, we must learn that the idea we can separate from the Palestinians is a delusion.

The current round of Palestinian terrorism, like last year’s offensive, has been largely undertaken by Arabs who live in Israel – either Israeli citizens from the Galilee or permanent residents from Jerusalem. The natural response that many Israelis have had to the fact that it is our fellow citizens and residents of our capital city that are perpetrating the violence has been to hope that a way can be found to finally separate from them.

While understandable, this visceral response to Arab-Israeli terrorism is based on a misunderstanding of reality.

Israelis who preach separation from the Palestinians as a strategic goal claim that the reason the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem – like the Palestinians of Gaza and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon before them – oppose Israel is because Israel controls the territory they live in. Accordingly, they argue, if Israel quits these areas – as it withdrew from Gaza and south Lebanon in the past – the Palestinians will stop their attacks.

They are wrong.

Arab Israelis and Jerusalem residents aren’t attacking Jews because Israel exercises sovereignty over the areas they live in. They are attacking Israel because like the Palestinians in Judea, and Samaria, they watch Palestinian and pan-Arab television, and like the Palestinians they use Facebook.

The reason that the Arab Israelis who have been moved to murder Jews do so with knives and pistols rather than missiles and suicide vests is that Israel controls Jerusalem and the Galilee. Israel’s sole security control over its territory enables the security cabinet to decide to deploy security forces throughout the country and to place roadblocks at the entrances to all the major Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem without fear of armed opposition.

Likewise, the reason the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria haven’t renewed their mass casualty bombings from a decade ago despite the Palestinian and pan-Arab incitement is that beginning in Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, the IDF retook control over the Palestinian population centers from the PA.

Today Palestinian terrorist cells operating in the areas know that if they turn their guns on Israelis again, the IDF will immediately take their guns and arrest or kill them. Had Israel implemented then-prime minister Ehud Olmert’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from Judea and Samaria in 2007, Israel would be facing a catastrophic situation today.
[Jerusalem Post via Jewish World Review]
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The Root Cause of MidEast Violence

Newspaper headlines from seminal 1929 Arab riots

Jews Are Being Killed Simply for Being Jews - Eitan Na'eh

Arab rioters burned my great-great grandparents' house in Hebron in 1929. In 1936, the house of my great-grandparents in Jaffa was burned down by Arab rioters. In 1939, my father's cousin, Zalman Na'eh, was murdered at age 8, shot in the stomach by Arab terrorists while travelling on a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

What prompted all these acts of terror? Was it the Israeli "occupation" - which did not exist at the time? Was it frustration about the peace process?

The very presence of Jews in the Land of Israel appears to be the root cause of terrorist violence against them. We have heard the lie that "Al Aqsa is in danger" since the 1920s. What we are seeing is not about religious rights or land. The reality is that, be it 1929 or 2015, Jews are being murdered simply for being Jews. 
The writer is Israel's Acting Ambassador to Great Britain.
(Telegraph-UK)
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UPDATE:

Excessive Force? - Eli E. Hertz

Rather than condemn Palestinian Arab terrorist tactics, the U.S. State Department condemned Israel's "excessive use of force" when it retaliates against the terror attacks.
How did the British deal with Palestinian Arab violence under the British Mandate during the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939?
 
According to Oxford historian Glen Rangwala, the British killed 5,032 Palestinians, wounded 14,760, detained 50,000, hanged 146, sentenced 2,000 to life prison terms, and demolished 5,000 houses in reprisals.
(Myths and Facts)
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Intifada déjà vu

Palestinian cleric Muhammad Salah, brandishes knife encouraging attacks against Jews
Al-Abrar Mosque, Rafah, October 9, 2015
For video of sermon click HERE

Palestine: The Psychotic Stage - Bret Stephens

If you've been following the news from Israel, you might have the impression that "violence" is killing a lot of people. Such was the Western media's way of describing two weeks of Palestinian assaults.

Left out of most of these stories is some sense of what Palestinian leaders have to say. As in the speech Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave last month: "Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet." And: "We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah."

Why have so many Palestinians been seized by their present blood lust - by a communal psychosis in which plunging knives into the necks of Jewish women, children, soldiers and civilians is seen as a religious and patriotic duty, a moral fulfillment? Despair at the state of the peace process, or the economy? Please. It's time to stop furnishing the Palestinians with excuses.

Today in Israel, Palestinians are in the midst of a campaign to knife Jews to death, one at a time. This is psychotic. It is evil. To call it anything less is to serve as an apologist, and an accomplice.
(Wall Street Journal)


PA Rewards Palestinian Terrorists - Editorial

Israel Radio has reported how the PA pays convicted Palestinian terrorists substantial monthly stipends while they do time, using money handed over monthly by Israel as well as contributions the PA solicits from international donors. The message to indoctrinated and inflamed PA youth is that slaughtering Jews has unstinting societal sanction and official gratitude for spilling Jewish blood.

The greater the crime, the higher the remuneration. For example, Hamas bombmaker Abdullah Barghouti, responsible for killing 66 people and wounding 500 others, has already amassed more than six figures in PA "salaries." The latest crop of homegrown killers likewise expects to be officially celebrated as idols instead of castigated as villains. 
(Jerusalem Post)


Palestinian Bar Association Honors Terrorist - Eli Leon 

The Palestinian Bar Association - which receives major funding from the UN and EU - has decided to award an honorary law degree to Muhannad Halabi, the Palestinian law student who stabbed two Israelis to death in Jerusalem's Old City on Oct. 3, describing him as a "martyred hero."
(Israel Hayom)


Intifada déjà vu - David Brinn

The last Palestinian war against Israel resulted in walls, barriers and fences being erected to keep out the suicide bombers – a new reality that has shaped the last decade of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

This time, there's talk of  all kinds of measures - a closure for east Jerusalem residents, a military campaign, and we're already witnessing a huge uptick in security presence throughout the country.
[Jerusalem Post]
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Abbas' Barely Hidden Jihad

Abbas: “We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem. This is clean and pure blood, blood that was spilled for God. It is Allah’s will that every martyr will go to heaven and every wounded [terrorist] will receive God’s reward.” -quoted in Jerusalem Post

PA Waging Unprecedented Campaign of Incitement - Khaled Abu Toameh

Although Abbas has repeatedly stated during the past few years that he does not want another intifada against Israel, his statements and actions show that he is doing his utmost to spark another wave of violence in order to draw the world's attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and invite international pressure on Israel.
(Gatestone Institute)


A Rising Tide of Terror - David Horovitz

When Palestinian political leaders, spiritual leaders, mainstream media and social media constantly warn that the emotive Al-Aqsa holy site is in danger, as they have done relentlessly, violence is an almost inevitable consequence. 
(Times of Israel)


Fatah Leaders "Salute" Rioters Defending Al-Aqsa Mosque
- Khaled Abu Toameh    

At a meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday, the Fatah Central Council, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas, "saluted" the Palestinians for "rising to defend their al-Aqsa Mosque." 
(Jerusalem Post)


Israeli Escapes Lynching by Palestinian Mob - Roi Yanovsky

Rivi Lev Ohayon, 38, was injured south of Jerusalem after Palestinian attackers smashed her windows with rocks and attempted to physically remove her from the vehicle. "I managed to miraculously escape a lynching attempt," she said. "I noticed a line of about 10 people forming a human barrier. They were all holding rocks, and there were another 10 20-something-year-olds behind them....Ten of them jumped on my car and broke my windshield, while one of them opened my door. I saw my death. He started kicking me, but I managed to lock the door and drive away." Seven Israeli cars were damaged in the attack.
(Ynet News)


U.S. Jewish Leaders: Hold PA Accountable

Abbas and the PA "must be held to account for their direct and indirect roles in inciting the populace, especially the frequent references to Al-Aqsa being 'under siege' when they know that not to be the case....In fact, Israel restricts Jewish worshipers while allowing far greater freedom to Palestinians to pray at this holy site....Urging Palestinians to rise up to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque leads to the inevitable consequence of confrontation and violence." 
(Times of Israel)


Abbas' UN Speech and the Unrest in Jerusalem
- Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi 

Abbas' speech revealed his basic stance, which includes unequivocal support for terror, a racist attitude toward the Jewish people, an entrenched hatred for Israel, and a will to destroy it.

"Palestine is the land of holiness and peace, the birthplace of Jesus the emissary of love and the place of Muhammad's ascent to heaven," Abbas said. He pointedly refrained from mentioning that the land is also holy to the Jewish people whose history has been entwined with it for millennia.

Abbas stated that "Israeli governments have passed...orders to fire live bullets and to arrest and abuse peaceful Palestinian demonstrators." "Peaceful" is how he portrays hurling rocks at passing Israeli vehicles, throwing firebombs at Jews' houses, stabbing Jewish civilians, or running them over with vehicles.

Abbas did not express sorrow or regret over the mounting Palestinian terror against Jews. He did not protest the repressive rule and terror of Hamas in Palestinian Gaza, nor Hamas' aim of violently overthrowing his regime in the West Bank. Nor did he mention that it is only Israel's presence in the main parts of the West Bank that keeps his government in existence.
The writer is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center.
(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
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UPDATES:


The Recent Wave of Terrorism: Myths, Facts, and Wishful Thinking
- Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror

There is no real proof that "diplomatic initiatives" can quell terrorism. It was when the Oslo Accords were signed and the government was pursuing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in earnest that explosive devices and suicide bombers exploded nationwide.

We, the Jews, are the stronger party in this fight, and no wave of terrorism, horrific as it may be, will change that. Israel must use its force prudently, only when its results have proven benefits, and only as a last resort.
The writer is a former national security advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel. 
(Israel Hayom)


Nazareth Mayor Slams Arab Leadership for "Destroying Coexistence"
- Raoul Wootliff

Nazareth Mayor Ali Salem

Nazareth Mayor Ali Salem, the Muslim mayor of Israel's largest Arab city, criticized Arab Knesset members for their role in recent violent demonstrations, saying, "I blame the leaders; they are destroying our future, they are destroying coexistence."

"We need to find a way to live together. We cannot fight like this. We are damaging ourselves." 

Salem told Army Radio that he saw Joint (Arab) List chair Ayman Odeh at a violent protest in Nazareth on Thursday night, and told him to leave.
(Times of Israel)
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A Stabbing War - David Horovitz

Nobody knows whether this unprecedented spate of Palestinian "suicide stabbings" constitutes the start of another protracted round of conflict. This is a stabbing war born of insistent, hysterical intolerance. Impressionable young Palestinians have been persuaded that their God requires them to kill, and if necessary be killed, to "protect Al-Aqsa."

The false claim that Israel is about to permit Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, or otherwise change the policies that Israel has maintained at the holy site, has been assiduously spread by Hamas, Fatah, and the extremist Northern Branch of Israel's Islamic Movement, widely peddled in mosques and on social media, and bolstered by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel dare not entrust sovereign legitimacy to a Palestinian nation that is not truly prepared to live alongside what it acknowledges is a rooted, legitimate, revived Jewish state. Until the Palestinians internalize Israel's right to be here, their quest for independence is doomed.

This phase of violence suggests to Israelis that the Palestinians have a knife-wielding, even suicidal, intolerance for the Jewish state's connection to Judaism's holiest place, and that Moshe Dayan's historic decision in 1967 not to fully realize renewed Jewish sovereignty at the Temple Mount - and therefore not to risk a religious confrontation with the Muslim world - has hardened intransigence rather than encouraged the reciprocal imperative for understanding and compromise.
(Times of Israel)
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VideoBite: Hamas Video Encourages The Murder of Jews

 

A new Hamas propaganda video calling for the murder of Jews

VideoBite: US State Department Holds Double Standard

 

This 7 minute video is well worth watching.  The State Department spokesman struggles to explain their wartime double standard.  Clearly, they hold a different standard for themselves. 

 

 

Israel Bashing Haunts State Department

 

Memo to the State Department: It’s time to think twice about knee-jerk criticism of Israel. You never know when it might turn around and bite you.

Just that happened when Associated Press reporter Matt Lee caught deputy State spokesman Mark Toner by surprise at a briefing this week.

[NY Post Editorial]

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Russian Chess

Russian Airstrikes Defend Assad Stronghold - Sam Dagher
 
Russia's first airstrikes in Syria showed a meticulously planned effort to eliminate any rebel threat to the coastal Alawite stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, analysts said. The Russian raids hew closely to an arc running on the fringes of this strategic core.

The airstrikes highlighted a tightening military and strategic alliance among Russia and other pro-regime parties, such as Iran and Hizbullah. 
(Wall Street Journal)


Iran Troops to Join Syria War - Laila Bassam & Andrew Osborn
 
Hundreds of Iranian troops had reached Syria in the past 10 days with weapons to mount a major ground offensive, two Lebanese sources told Reuters on Thursday. "The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria - soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisers...we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more," one source said.
(Reuters)


Master the strategy - Caroline Glick

[T]he Obama administration was caught off guard by Russia's rapid rise in Syria.

As the Russians began bombing a US-supported militia along the Damascus-Homs highway, Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with his Russia counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at the UN. Just hours before their meeting Kerry was insisting that Russia's presence in Syria would likely be a positive development.

Reacting to the administration's humiliation, Republican Sen. John McCain said, "This administration has confused our friends, encouraged our enemies, mistaken an excess of caution for prudence and replaced the risks of action with the perils of inaction."

McCain added that Russian President Vladimir Putin had stepped "into the wreckage of this administration's Middle East policy." While directed at the administration, McCain's general point is universally applicable. Today is no time for an overabundance of caution.

The system of centralized regimes that held sway in the Arab world since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago has unraveled. The shape of the new order has yet to be determined.

The war in Syria and the chaos and instability engulfing the region are part and parcel of the birth pangs of a new regional governing architecture now taking form. Actions taken by regional and global actors today will likely well influence power relations for generations. Putin understands the opportunity of the moment. He views the decomposition of Syria as an opportunity to rebuild Russia's power and influence in the Middle East — at America's expense.

Russia isn't the only strategic player seeking to exploit the war in Syria and the regional chaos. Turkey and Iran are also working assiduously to take advantage of the current absence of order to advance their long term interests.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exploiting the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to fight the Kurds in both countries. Erdogan's goal is twofold: to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdistan and to disenfranchise the Kurds in Turkey.

As for Iran, Syria is Iran's bulwark against Sunni power in the Arab world and the logistical base for Tehran's Shi'ite foreign legion Hezbollah. Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei is willing to fight to the bitter end to hold as much of Syrian territory as possible. Broadly speaking, Iran views the breakup of the Arab state system as both a threat and an opportunity. The chaos threatens Iran, because it has radicalized the Sunni world. If Sunni forces unite, their numeric advantage against Shi'ite Iran will imperil it.

The power of Sunni numbers is the reason Bashar Assad now controls a mere sixth of Syrian territory. To prevent his fate from befalling them, the Iranians seek to destabilize neighboring regimes and where possible install proxy governments in their stead.

Iran's cultivation of alliances and proxy relationships with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida, and its phony war against Islamic State all point to an overarching goal of keeping Sunni forces separated and dependent on Tehran.
[Jerusalem Post via Jewish World Review]
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Obama's Syria Debacle - Charles Krauthammer, MD

If it had the wit, the Obama administration would be not angered, but appropriately humiliated. President Obama has, once again, been totally outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin.

Two days earlier at the United Nations, Obama had welcomed the return, in force, of the Russian military to the Middle East — for the first time in decades — in order to help fight the Islamic State.

The ruse was transparent from the beginning. Russia is not in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The Kremlin was sending fighter planes, air-to-air missiles and SA-22 anti-aircraft batteries. Against an Islamic State that has no air force, no planes, no helicopters?

Russia then sent reconnaissance drones over Western Idlib and Hama, where there are no Islamic State fighters. Followed by bombing attacks on Homs and other opposition strongholds that had nothing to do with the Islamic State.

Indeed, some of these bombed fighters were U.S. trained and equipped. Asked if we didn't have an obligation to support our own allies on the ground, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter bumbled that Russia's actions exposed its policy as self-contradictory. Carter made it sound as if the Russian offense was to have perpetrated an oxymoron, rather than a provocation — and a direct challenge to what's left of the U.S. policy of supporting a moderate opposition.

The whole point of Russian intervention is to maintain Assad in power. Putin has no interest in fighting the Islamic State. Indeed, the second round of Russian air attacks was on rival insurgents opposed to the Islamic State.

The Islamic State is nothing but a pretense for Russian intervention. And Obama fell for it.

Just three weeks ago, Obama chided Russia for its military buildup, wagging his finger that it was "doomed to failure." Yet by Monday he was publicly welcoming Russia to join the fight against the Islamic State. He not only acquiesced to the Russian buildup, he held an ostentatious meeting with Putin on the subject, thereby marking the ignominious collapse of Obama's vaunted campaign to isolate Putin diplomatically over Crimea.

Putin then showed his utter contempt for Obama by launching his air campaign against our erstwhile anti-Assad allies not 48 hours after meeting Obama. Which the U.S. found out about when a Russian general knocked on the door of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and delivered a brusque demarche announcing that the attack would begin within an hour and warning the U.S. to get out of the way.

In his subsequent news conference, Carter averred that he found such Russian behavior "unprofessional."

Good grief. Russia, with its inferior military and hemorrhaging economy, had just eaten Carter's lunch, seizing the initiative and exposing American powerlessness — and the secretary of defense deplores what? Russia's lack of professional etiquette.

Makes you want to weep.
[Washington Post via Jewish World Review]
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Abbas' "Empty Bombshell"

BBC photo

Abbas: No Longer Bound by Oslo Accords - Zeina Karam

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the UN General Assembly that he is no longer bound by agreements signed with Israel, though he stopped short of dissolving the Palestinian Authority. Abbas also called upon the UN "to provide international protection for the Palestinian people." 

Abbas' tough talk could be an attempt to mask his political weakness as hopes of setting up a Palestinian state have been derailed. 
(AP-MSNBC)


Palestinians Raise Flag at UN - Hugh Bronstein

Palestinian officials cheered as their national flag flew for the first time at UN headquarters in New York. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas officiated at the ceremony, saying: "The day for raising this flag will come soon in Jerusalem, the capital of our Palestinian state." The General Assembly approved a Palestinian resolution this month saying flags of non-member states "shall be raised at (UN) Headquarters." The U.S. and Israel voted against the resolution, saying that symbolic moves like raising flags do nothing to move the peace process forward.
(Reuters)


Abbas' Empty Bombshell - Khaled Abu Toameh

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not announce his resignation or the dismantlement of the PA. Instead, he repeated his old threat to abandon signed accords with Israel. This is another conditional threat by Abbas and not a straightforward announcement abrogating the Oslo Accords and other agreements with Israel.

In his speech, Abbas did not abandon the peace process with Israel. He did not even suspend security coordination with Israel - without which the PA would not be able to survive. Abbas' speech is not going to change anything on the ground.
(Jerusalem Post)


Will Abbas' Speech Have Much Impact? - Ken Bredemeier & Cecily Hilleary

Analysts questioned whether Abbas' UN speech will have much impact at a time when the Middle East peace process is far down the international community's agenda. "Mahmoud Abbas has a major strategic dilemma on his hands," said Josef Olmert, adjunct professor of political science at the University of South Carolina, "and that is how to make the Palestinian question in general, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, relevant again, at a time when the burning issues in the Middle East are Syria, Iraq, refugees and ISIS." 
(VOA News)


Will There Be a Third Intifada? - Shlomi Eldar

Will a third intifada erupt on the Temple Mount and spread like wildfire across the West Bank? A senior Palestinian official explained that without a prominent body like Fatah coaxing the street, there will be no intifada on the scale of the two previous ones, which began in 1987 and 2000. But Fatah's senior members are preoccupied with who will succeed Abbas. 

By all indications, an all-out conflict with Israel is not really seething below the surface. Yunes Aida of Hebron said, "I was 14 when the second intifada broke out. There were many fatalities and casualties. It was a big mess. It didn't bring us a solution. People know that another intifada and more fatalities will only make their lives harder. They don't have the energy for that. It's not just my own personal opinion. I'm telling you what all the people here are saying."

The Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority leaders are not interested in a return to total chaos and the destruction of PA institutions, which were painstakingly built and are now considered by West Bank residents to be their legitimate political and civilian establishment.
(Al-Monitor)
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