Muslim Anti-semitism - mammon versus allah??

This blog is inspired by an article written by Salim Mansur, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute: Arab and Muslim Antisemitism: a Muslim Perspective. You can find the article in its entirety together with the references used here. While I have added to, and subtracted from, the article to fashion a more accessible perspective, the core ideas and many words in this piece remain the intellectual property of Mr Mansur.

"Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews," – Third Intifada Facebook page, 2013.

"Among the Jews, there have always been those who killed God's prophets. ... it was said that they were the source for such deadly diseases as the plague and typhus. This is because the Jews are very filthy people. For a time, people also said that they poisoned water wells belonging to the Christians and thus killed them." - former Ahmadinejad’s media advisor, Mohammad Ali Ramin, June 9, 2006.

"One should fight the Jews and vanquish them so that the conditions for the advent of the Hidden Imam will be met." - Ayatollah Nouri-Hamedani, April, 2005.

“[Muslim]Palestine is under occupation; the basic rights of the Palestinian {Muslims] are tragically violated, and they are deprived of the right of return and access to their homes, birthplace and homeland.” currrent Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, 25 September, 2013.

While those most forceful in spewing their bigotry against Jews are Palestinian Arabs and their religious, political and intellectual leaders, much of the modern antecedents to this olden hatred can be sheeted home to the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, as Hitler's collaborator in importing European anti-Semitism into the Middle East.

The Mufti's ideology of hate-mongering against the Jews and the Zionist project has been emulated by an array of other leading Arab and Muslim intellectuals, activists, and religious leaders. These include Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; Syed Qutb, the intellectual heavyweight of the Muslim Brothers; Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the late founder of Hamas; the rulers and imams of Saudi Arabia; Abul A'la Mawdudi, the Indo-Pakistani founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami; Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and, notably, the current Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.

Virulent European-style anti-semitism is also emulated by the leaders of Hizbullah in Lebanon, the leadership and ranks of other "jihadi" (holy war) organizations, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and non-clerical or secular Muslim leaders like Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia. Clearly, the front of Muslim anti-Semitism is wide and deep. But is this genocidally inspired hate sanctioned by Islam? For this we need to turn to the source.

All texts are open to many readings.

Reading the Bible was one of the triggers of the struggle Martin Luther initiated as he declared defiantly, "Here I stand." In other words, the stand he took was in reading and interpreting the Bible according to his intelligence and conscience – contrary to that of the Vatican.

Reading the Quran, it quickly becomes clear that the hate-speech of Muslim clerics and the on-going Muslim vilification of Jews has its roots in the theology of Islam.

Mohammad’s relationship with Jews was always a quarrelsome one. Born in approximately 517 C.E. in Mecca, then the leading religious centre of pagan Arabia, Mohammad was approximately forty years old when he became convinced that God had spoken to him through the angel Gabriel. 

Jews, with their monotheistic beliefs, had lived in and around Mecca, which was located on a route that linked Yemen in the south of the Arab peninsula, to Egypt and Damascus in the North, for centuries. While some historians say that Jews lived in the region even before the destruction of the first Temple, others say that Jews only settled the peninsula after the destruction of the second Temple. In any event, all agree that the Jews were the majority of the population in that area at the time of Mohammad and were organized into three tribes: Banu el nadir, Banu Kurayza and Banu Kaynuqa; the first two mentioned being descendants of the priests.

Ostracised and persecuted by his Arab brethren in Mecca for his monotheistic beliefs,  Mohammad fled to Medina, a city which had been settled by Jews centuries before his arrival.

 When the Jewish leaders of Medina first heard of the coming of a prophet preaching belief in one God in the Arabian peninsula, they were intrigued. They did not immediately accept or reject Mohammad, but they wanted to know more. Relations began to deteriorate as the Jews discovered Muhammad was not very familiar with their scriptures and traditions. The rabbis would taunt him with questions he could not answer, and in the end, they rejected his message that he was a Jewish prophet.

The Jews' rejection of Muhammad's message must have disappointed him greatly. He saw himself preaching the same monotheism to which the Jews subscribed - why then wouldn't they accept him as a prophet?

To establish his affinity with the Jews, he even borrowed some Jewish practices and prescribed them to his followers. Thus, Muslims were to meet for prayer on Friday afternoon as Jews prepare for the Sabbath, they were to face Jerusalem in prayer as Jews do, they were to observe some of the Jewish dietary laws, as well as the fast on the Day of Atonement. Muslims called this the fast of Ashura, meaning "tenth," (Asara in Hebrew) since the Day of Atonement falls on the tenth of the Jewish month of Tishri. When the Jews rejected his prophecy in spite of these practices, Muhammad changed them, and fixed the qibla (direction of prayer) to Mecca in place of Jerusalem.

According to the Quran, Muhammad is then said to have received the following revelation:

Say to those who disbelieve: "You will be vanquished and gathered to Hell, an evil resting place. You have already had a sign in the two forces which met"; i.e. the apostle's companions at Badr and the Quraysh. "One force fought in the way of God; the other, disbelievers, thought they saw double their own force with their very eyes. God strengthens with His help whom He will. Verily in that is an example for the discerning." (Qur'an, 3:12-13)

Thus, after settling in Medina, about five hundred kilometres further north of Mecca, and after his revelations by the angel Gabriel in a cave, his rejection by the Jews of Medina as a Jewish prophet, meant that as his influence in the region grew, he meted out harsh punishment for two of the three Jewish tribes of Medina whom he “subdued” and exiled.

For the destruction of the third Jewish tribe in Medina, Mohammad now received a further angelic revelation directing him to attack the Jewish Bnei Quraiza tribe of Medina:

When the Prophet returned from Al-Khandaq (i.e. Trench) and laid down his arms and took a bath, Gabriel came and said (to the Prophet ), "You have laid down your arms? By Allah, we angels have not laid them down yet. So set out for them." The Prophet said, "Where to go?" Gabriel said, "Towards this side," pointing towards Banu Quraiza. So the Prophet went out towards them.

After their defeat and capture for the transgression of not physically supporting him against the pagan Arab Meccans who were attacking him, Muhammad went to the market in Medina and dug trenches. Then the men of the Jewish Quraiza tribe were brought out in batches, and Muhammad and his followers cut off their heads. According to Ibn Ishaq (690), the number of dead ranged between 600 and 900. Afterwards Muhammad divided their property, their women, and their children among his followers.

And it is now that the following hadith (report of the teachings, deeds and sayings of Mohammad), one of the most widely quoted today to justify anti-Semitic hatred, was attributed to the man:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews. (Sahih Muslim, 41:6985; see also 41:6981-84 and Sahih Bukhari, 4:52:176,177 and 4:56:791)

Mohammad next marched on the rich Jewish settlement of Khaybar defeating them, taking their wealth and forcing them to pay jizya (tax) so that “… they might feel themselves subdued”.

Thus, Mohammad engaged in the practice of beheading his enemies, as well as forcing large-scale exile. That same Muslim tradition is verifiably followed today by some of today's Arab/Muslim terrorists who claim to follow the prophet. Today, however, there is a name for forced large-scale exile. It is called ethnic cleansing. And there is a name for the extermination of an entire tribe. Civilised societies call it genocide, not a revelation from “god”.

This tradition of violence against, and vilification of, Jews is, arguably, continued from the days of Mohammad through to today.

Sheikh Mohamed Sayyid Tantawi – the former Grand Imam and rector of al-Azhar University, who died in 2010, is an example of a contemporary Muslim anti-Semite who validated his bigotry by appealing to traditional Muslim Judeophobia based on negative references to the Jews in the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet.

Tantawi's reading of the Quran ascribes to the Jews a slew of unflattering characteristics, including wanton envy, lasciviousness, religious fanaticism, murderousness, and a tendency toward "semantic bickering." Using a phrase referring to a verse in the Quran (2:65), in a 2002 sermon, Tantawi describes Jews, collectively, as “descendants of apes and pigs” and accuses Jews of corrupting Allah's word, consuming people's wealth and murdering Allah's prophets.

This is one way in which such references to the Quran and early Muslim history facilitated the Islamization of European anti-Semitism. This could occur because Judeophobia/anti-semitism was present in early Islamic history, just as it was in early European history. Genocidal anti-Semitism, however, remained a specifically European, primarily German, disease that never existed in Islam before the twentieth century.

Together with that, it should be remembered that the modern fusion of traditional Muslim Judeophobia and fierce European anti-Semitism occurred during the years between the World Wars, when the victors of World War I were precariously positioned in the Middle East as the "Mandatory" powers, in the terminology of the League of Nations, while the former subjects of the Ottoman Empire restlessly aspired to their own independence and statehood.

With the abolition of the Caliphate by Turkish leader Kamal Atatturk, Muslims now faced the problem not only of how to acquire eventual independence from European colonial rule, but also of how to restore the Caliphate in some form or other, to create a Shariah-based, Islamic state. These questions became the distinguishing features of political Islam, or Islamism, and the ideology of political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

But more than that, the modern antecedents of Arab/Muslim antisemitism and genocidal declarations of war may be attributed to Muslim distress over the long decline of Islamic rule and the loss of lands to European powers, and, especially among Arabs, the partition of Palestine, and the birth of Israel.

The establishment of the state of Israel, in the very centre of the Arab core of the Islamic world, the inclusion of the ancient Jewish city of Jerusalem and the repeated defeats suffered by Arabs in their wars against the Jews created a sense of insufferable and deep humiliation that find expression in the vilest denunciation of the Jews as enemies of Islam and Muslims.

Most of all, the sense of outrage, as is clearly shown in the modern Arab/Muslim anti-semitism, was aroused by the identity of those who inflicted these dramatic defeats on Muslim and Arab armies and imposed their rule on Muslim Arab populations.

For the victors were not the followers of a world religion, or the armies of a mighty imperial power, by which one could be conquered without undue shame – nor the Catholic kings of Spain, not the far-flung British Empire, nor the immense and ruthless might of Russia – but the Jews - historically few, scattered, and powerless, whose previous humility made their triumphs especially humiliating.

This recent history partly explains the nature of contemporary Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism, which continues to be ratcheted up in inverse relation to the repeated failures by Arabs to defeat Israel and Israel’s continued success in all fields of human endeavour and compassion.

The current pretext of the Israeli-"Palestinian" conflict is nothing but a proxy war by the nation of Islam in retaliation against Jews for losing both an international legal decision in the 1947 Partition Plan and losing physical wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973. And those non-Muslim enablers in Europe's organisations are but modern antisemites espousing a long-held Islamic Quranic interpretation which discriminates against Jews.

Together with current seismic politico-cultural shifts in the Arab Muslim world due to a very violent unravelling of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1915, the continuing discord over the nature of Islamic society and the sectarian conflicts that have spilled over into civil war across the Middle East and into the wider Muslim world have fostered an unwillingness on the part of Muslims worldwide to examine any internal causes for their malaise.

It has created a culture of denial that by now is a part of Muslim culture and history that manifests itself by a Muslim refusal to take responsibility for their own role in history, and leads to a pathological proclivity to blame others – especially the Jews – for misfortunes that are really of their own making.

Thus, just as a few drops of lemon juice curdle a bowl of milk, Judeophobia sanctioned by the Quran and the Prophet would mean that Islam as a religion of peace/mercy is, arguably, a falsehood.

The words of Bernard Lewis in 1984 in his book The Jews of Islam remain as poignant today as when they were originally written:

“Islamists have shredded their "thin veneer of Islam" and displayed their "jihad" as a neo-pagan belief in a capricious tribal god governing a cult of violence. It was from such a pagan belief that Muhammad sought to lift the Arabs of the desert by having Islam bear the universal message of belief in one God, merciful and compassionate; but it is precisely this pagan cult of tribal violence that Islamists have resurrected or which, it might be said, they never really renounced.”

On this basis, it is easy to see why John Kerry’s “messianical” mission to bring peace to the Middle East was always going to fail and how the narrative of the bigoted Palestinian/Muslim/Arab religious, political and intellectual leadership will continue to perpetuate the cycle of violence against Jews in or out of Israel.

The Quran makes it so.

Is Australia Islamophobic, or do its politicians just know how to read….?

Thank you to @anneinpt for planting the seed of this  article….

If you could describe a people by their traits, you would not be far off the mark if you said Arabs were great at two things: melodrama and creating the “creeping factoid”.

With regards to the first characteristic, when Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandeis refused, in Parliament, to refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied”, that political chameleon in Ramallah, chief “Palestinian” negotiator, Saeb Erekat, lodged an official letter of protest with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop over the meeting of Australian Ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, with Housing Minister Uri Ariel, in the latter’s office in East Jerusalem.

In the letter, Erekat rather melodramatically called a meeting between two blokes a “violation of international law” and “an attempt to legitimize an illegal situation” and made some noises about falling Australian wheat and meat exports…… All very solemn stuff.

And that’s where the “creeping factoid” bit comes in.

Fortunately, Attorney-General Brandeis, his Prime Minister, and the country’s Foreign Minister, all read and know what the international legal community reads and knows: that Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria is legal. Moreover, when specifically challenged about the illegality of Israeli settlements on a visit to Israel in January 2014, Foreign Minister Bishop stated, “I would like to see which international law has declared them illegal.”

But what about the “factoid” I mentioned earlier?

Well, a factoid is an invented fact, believed to be true because of its appearance in print. This was the original definition coined in 1973 by Norman Mailer. He came up with the word, adding the suffix “oid” to imply something that gives the impression of being something it actually is not.

For my money, though, I went with the Oxford dictionary meaning of the term. I’m that sort of guy.
The Oxford dictionary calls a factoid “an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.”

So what is it that these Australians are seeing that neither the chief “Palestinian” negotiator and eighteen Arab and/or Muslim diplomats in Canberra who angrily lobbied Ms Bishop do not see?
The facts. And they “hide” in plain sight.

Of course, the beauty of this system of relying on facts is that anybody can go and check them out for oneself. Then it’s all about following the crumb-trail of history until you get to the logical conclusion. So, let’s see whether these Aussies know their potatoes or not……….

Today, the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict will be settled through law. This means accepting and working within an internationally agreed framework called the United Nations Charter. And it means turning to the ministrations of the International Court of Justice as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

The Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization. Its main judicial organ, should the Assembly require an advisory opinion, is the International Court of Justice, which is annexed to the UN Charter of which it is an integral part (Article 92).

This means that in and of itself, the International Court of Justice is, under the terms of the UN Charter, an Advisory body to the UNGA and the UNSC, and does not constitute res judicata …
Further, Articles 93 and 96 state that all members of the United Nations are ipso facto parties to the Statute of the International Court of Justice and that the General Assembly or the Security Council may request the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on any legal question arising within the scope of their activities.

However, much as it would like to, the ICJ cannot consider declarations and resolutions of the UN General Assembly as customary international law, nor does it have the authority under the Charter to issue a directive to Member States, a function reserved solely to the Security Council.

Not to labour the point too much, the ICJ’s powers under a) its own mandate and b) its annexation to the United Nations Charter, do not include the right to issue directives to enforce and/or adopt its advisory opinion. That is the sole prerogative of the Security Council, the only UN organ with the power under the UN Charter to ‘direct’ or ‘obligate’ Member States on how to act.

As we shall see, nothing of the sort ever took place in the case of the international legally binding contracts which partitioned Mandated Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.

And if that is the case, then which “international law” does Erekat accuse Australia of violating?
That Australian Foreign Minister might have been onto something after all.

So what of Mr Erekat’s melodramatic invocation of “violation of international law” and attempts to “legitimize an illegal situation”? Perhaps the facts will speak for themselves.

At the end of the nineteenth century, it was clear that the Ottoman Caliphate was an apple ripe for the plucking. It had ruled over Southeast Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa and vast tracts of the Mediterranean basin suppressing Arab and Caucasian alike for around 600 years.

In 1915, Sir Henry McMahon made promises on behalf of the British government, about allocation of territory to the Arab people in the region in return for their support in toppling the Ottomans.

Archive documents show that the British promise excluded Palestine, that area from the river to the sea, from territory to be given to the Arab people. It also separated the territory east of the Jordan River, namely Transjordan (since renamed Jordan), from Palestine west of the Jordan.

This land west of the Jordan was to be a Jewish homeland in line with the 1917 Balfour Declaration of intent to establish a Jewish homeland.

On the 25th April 1920, at the San Remo Conference which convened at the conclusion of World War I to determine the precise boundaries for territories captured by the Allies, it was finally resolved to incorporate the Balfour Declaration in Britain’s mandate in Palestine.

Thus, Britain was made responsible “for putting into effect the declaration made on the 8th November 1917 by the British Government and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people; it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

This determination was ratified under the auspices of the League of Nations in August 1920 at the Treaty of Sèvres.

Apart from the major powers, the Treaty was attended and signed by the Hashemite King of the Hedjaz as representative of Arab interests in the region who was a signatory to the explicit stipulation of the Treaty that there would be “a national home for the Jewish people” in British Mandated Palestine so long as he could lay claim to a British-supported Arab kingdom in Transjordan [in addition to the creation of the Arab states of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq…].

Thus, the San Remo Resolution of 1920, as well as the formal Treaty of Sevres later in the year recognized, with the acknowledgement of the representative of the Arab interests in the region, the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine.

Till this point in history, there was no mention of a “Palestinian” Arab people, nor of “Palestinian” Arab territory west of the Jordan, nor even of Jerusalem as a capital for an Arab Muslim state……………….

In fact, the term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people now extinct who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip.

In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans then applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank of the Jordan River) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name. The Roman name Palaestina and the British term Palestine have always and everywhere referred to the Jews of the Land of Israel and the people of Judea and Samaria…..

And this is where the Arab penchant for “creeping factoids” comes in.

In his Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962, John F. Kennedy famously said “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic…[enabling us to] enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

And it is this that has become the weapon of choice for the Arab Muslim narrative in the Middle East.
One can easily trace the General Assembly’s attempts to legislate changes in the status of the Territories.

How the definition of the status of the Territories was doctored is well documented on the website of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations that posts landmark pro- General Assembly resolutions.

In this regard, the wording of resolutions by sub-committees heavily influenced by the Arab voting bloc changes reference to the issue from “territories” to “occupied territories” to “Occupied Territories” and “Arab territories” to “occupied Palestinian territories” to “Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem”!!

Specifically, the following example will illustrate what I mean:

• Resolution 3236 (XXIX) 9 passed in November 1974, immediately after the Yom Kippur War, speaks of “the question of Palestine”.
There is still not a mention or record of the concept of a “Palestinian” Arab Muslim people or a “Palestinian” Arab nation, a “Palestinian” territory “stolen” and “occupied” by invading Jews.

At this stage, some twenty five years after the birth of the Jewish state, the issue remains one of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict which started with the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. And it was only after Israel had defeated its enemies against overwhelming odds in 1948, 1967 and 1973, that the Arabs realised that an approach other than a full-frontal, genocidally-inspired violence might serve them better.

Thus, starting with the flexing of Arab oil muscle in the first Gulf oil crisis in 1973 after the defeat of the Yom Kippur War which has held the rest of the world in thrall till today, the process of the de-legitimising Israel in earnest began to gather steam.

The myth of an Arab Muslim“Palestine”, the Muslim “Palestinian” people and the “occupied territories” with Jerusalem as its capital, made its way from myth to “factoid”…….

The crossover from Arab-Israeli conflict to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was complete as the Arab states exploited mainly immigrant Arabs to Mandated Palestine to fight a proxy war they lost in 1948.
The only fly in this fervent ointment of a newly-discovered “Palestinian” “heritage” of course, remained the actual legalities of what was decided in 1920 and 1922 under the auspices of the League of Nations and the United Nations which succeeded it.

But because it is further possible to illustrate that the Arab concept of the “creeping factoid” was a planned campaign of creating a “country” and a “people” out of thin air, I quote the following:
• Resolution 38/5810 in December 1983, now speaks of “Arab territories” where there were none (Jordan is Palestine…) and “occupied territories” (by whom??)

43/17611ution 43/17611 passed in December 1988 expresses sentiments
suggesting “Palestinian entitlement” – speaking of “the Palestinian people[’s] right to exercise their sovereignty over their territory occupied since 1967” ( I need hardly point out again that there was no “Palestinian People” 1948-1973 to take land from in the first place..…);

• Resolution 51/13312 passed in December 1996 adds Jerusalem in particular – speaking of “occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan”;

• Resolution 52/25013 passed in July 1998 fully “assigns title” – speaking of “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a designation that is frequently used in subsequent resolutions.

As late as December 2003, concerning a request a request made by the United Nations General Assembly, contained in Resolution ES–10/14 of 8 December 2003, the ICJ formulated a question which read as follows:
“What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem….?”[emphasis mine]

Of course, despite the overall impression it might give the casual media consumer, none of these terms have a legal foundation any more than declaring “the world is flat” makes it so. Yet, the International Court of Justice, to which Mr Erekat makes innumerable references, cites these terms as if they were legal documents, all in violation of the Court’s own Statute.

It is for this reason, under international law, that it becomes increasingly difficult to understand Mr Erekat’s objections as relayed to the Australian Foreign Minister.

Eleven successive British governments, Labour and Conservative, from David Lloyd George (1916-1922) through Clement Attlee (1945-1952) viewed themselves as duty-bound to fulfill the Mandate for Palestine placed in the hands of Great Britain by the League of Nations. Under international law.

We see now that there has never ever been a violation of international law regarding Israel’s sovereign rights to settle the land she does.

There might be a lot of steam and noise in the Arab world’s use of the factoids. But they also know that you know that it ain’t worth a pinch of rat shit.

And what of the notion of East Jerusalem as ‘sovereign’ “Palestinian” “capital” territory? That may become the subject of a further blog.

International law. Gotta love it.

I acknowledge the intellectual property of Eli Hertz and Maurice Ostroff in the writing of this blog, and I would thank @anneinpt for alerting me to Eli’s work on Twitter. Thank you all.

Are BS and Ds in BDS just manifestations of a malodorous whole?

If we leave analogies to bull and donkey excrement aside for the moment, is there any way to intellectually or morally justify the Arab- inspired BDS campaign?

Or is the BDS campaign, co-founded by Omar Barghouti, yet another example of how Muslim racist supremacism fails when interrogated by the standard trifecta of intellectual rigour, universal morality and international law?

In an article for the Los Angeles Times on May 26 2014, and placed prominently on the official bdsmovement.net website, Saree Makdisi, a professor of comparative literature, asks the question : “Does the term ‘apartheid’ fit Israel?”

And, in the time-honoured tradition of lazy journalism or arguably naïve enthusiasm, and just in case there was any chance of receiving an answer which would queer her pitch, Makdisi immediately answers herself in the affirmative: “Of course it does.”

But is that so? Is Israel an apartheid state as set out in Article II of the UNGA declaration introduced in 1973 and eventually ratified in 1976 by over 100 countries?

The UNGA declaration crafted 19 Articles which, in summary, concluded that "As such, apartheid was declared to be a crime against humanity, with a scope that went far beyond South Africa. While the crime of apartheid is most often associated with the racist policies of South Africa after 1948, the term more generally refers to racially based policies in any state."

Warming up to her task, Makdisi then states that the convention outcomes were “…ratified by most United Nations member states (Israel and the United States are exceptions, to their shame).”
In this she is mostly correct.

However, she omits to mention that in addition to Israel and the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, “to their shame”, also refused to sign on or ratify the ICSPCA. These democracies rejected the ICSPCA formulation that apartheid was declared to be a crime against humanity because crimes against humanity are considered so grave in nature that they must be meticulously elaborated and strictly construed under existing international law.

And so, in order to examine what Article II of the ICSPCA formulation said, I quote its entirety:

(a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

(b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate…denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

(d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

(e) Exploitation of the labour…of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;

(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.

For anybody who has lived in Israel, Article II, as it would be applied to the Jewish State by Israel’s detractors, is to draw a very, very long bow indeed.

Learned treatises have been written refuting every one of the apartheid allegations at every level that Israel’s detractors would bestow on her. I will not add to the painstaking and methodical work of my betters.

For those who haven’t lived in Israel, why would they believe somebody like Barghouti unless it suited them to subscribe to a prejudice and a libellous bigotry that meshed with their own personal world view? It is easy to show Barghouti for what he is.

By that I mean that labelling Israel as an apartheid state comparable with the old South Africa is the most potent weapon in the armoury of BDS promoters. It resonates well with those who live by popular media 'sound-bite analysis' of complex situations, and Barghouti has chosen his weapon well.

While well-intentioned, though not necessarily well-read, people believe the BDS movement is worthy of support because they mistakenly believe that BDS advocates a two state solution, the truth is quite different.

On the 6th January 2004, that same Omar Barghouti wrote in The Electronic Intifada: “The two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is really dead. Good riddance! But someone has to issue an official death certificate before the rotting corpse is given a proper burial… We are witnessing the rapid demise of Zionism…nothing can be done to save it…[and] I, for one, support euthanasia.”

Dem’s fighting words in anybody’s language. And the written record can never be erased.

Unfortunately, those sentiments from the horse’s mouth [apologies, Omar…] lay bare the real aim of the BDS campaign.

The intellectuals [sic] behind the BDS campaign do not support a two-state solution as most European and some Australian BDSers believe.

They support a one-state solution where 7.7 million “Palestinians” worldwide would return to present-day Israel in an act of “euthanasia” [apologies, Omar] that would spell its demise.

The barely-concealed bigotry and prejudice that drives the international BDS campaign is slowly coming under greater examination across the western civilised world which values intellectual and moral honesty. Here again, Mr Barghouti does the movement no favours.

For example, Mr Barghouti maintains that BDS follows the heroic legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement, where being anti-Israel aligns you with the romantic, heroic social justice movements of the past.

Fortunately, Dr King’s words still ring out as starkly today as they did in 1968 at a dinner he attended in Cambridge, MA : “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism.”

And it says much about the racist bigotry of the BDS campaign particularly when King is recorded as saying on March 25, 1968, less than two weeks before his assassination:
“Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvellous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews — because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all.”

As for that other icon, Nelson Mandela, and the narrative of C.R.A.P. that the BDSers would have you believe, we have only to turn to the 1990 series of interviews that Mandela gave on his invitation to the United States for a series of ticker-tape parades celebrating his achievement: With respect to Israel and the Palestinians, Mandela stressed that he unequivocally recognized Israel, not only as a de facto entity but its de jure right to exist as a state behind secure borders.

In his 1994 autobiography he states: “I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice.”

But this is not about whether Mandela gives Israel a character reference or not.

Rather, it is about his statement in Gaza with Arafat in October 1999, despite his ambivalence about Israel because of their support of the apartheid regime in South Africa that, “The Arab leaders must make an unequivocal statement that they recognize the existence of Israel with secure borders.”

Omar Barghouti and his BDS campaign are currently a popular go-to mainspring for those leisured but morally and intellectually suspect classes looking for a cause to espouse.

At his core, Barghouti is essentially dishonest; his campaign is based on a lie. Hence, BDS will go the way of other ill-conceived Arab plans since 1948 to rid the Middle East of the only Jewish state in the world.

In support of the above claim, I state that Mr. Barghouti claims that it is racist for Israelis not to condemn their army when it accidentally brings about the death of Palestinian civilians while in his view it is not racist for Palestinians publicly to applaud the purposeful murder of Jewish children or kidnapping of Jewish teenagers.

Further, Omar Barghouti does not deny the tacit assumption that while Palestinian nationalism is a legitimate expression of the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, Jewish nationalism must be racism.  For Mr Barghouti to appeal to a wider base of a readership not well versed in Middle east history, facts and figures, he must needs use the race card to justify his claim that Israel pursues a policy of apartheid.

If you have never been to Israel you would never know otherwise. Mr Barghouti banks on this.
If you had ever been to Israel or lived there, you would know that in Haifa or Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs live in the same neighborhoods, in the same blocks of flats sometimes, frequent each other's businesses, and cheer the home town football team together.

Israeli Arabs have the right to vote, serve in the Knesset, study in Israeli universities, share the same hospitals and public facilities and work alongside Israeli Jews. If you fell ill you would likely be looked after by Arab physicians and nurses in Israeli hospitals. Eleven serving members of the current Israeli Parliament in the State of Israel are Arabs, even though they don't (yet??) see the irony in their vociferous objection (Ahmed Tibi, MK, February, 2014) to living under the Palestinian Authority in any future two-state solution........

Casting Palestinians are passive 'victims', wholly innocent of any responsibility for their plight, Mr Barghouti essentially disrespects them by absolving them of any accountability for their own actions, and providing them with a framework to behave as if they can do no wrong.

"The only reason there is no Palestinian state thriving next to Israel (to which Palestinians the world over would have the right of return) is because the Palestinians do not want such a state: they would rather destroy Israel than build Palestine - and often well-meaning Europeans [and Americans] encourage them in that idee fixe" ( (Menachem Kellner, 2007).

Thus, even this brief survey highlights the questionable intellectual and moral honesty of this mainstay of rational Arab policy.

As for Ms Makdisi who lives and works at UCLA, well, I bear her no ill will.

When all is said and done, Ms Makdisi, who has never been to Israel, is a professor of literature, and the tools of her trade are, after all, mostly fiction.

BDS and the crisis of Arab flexibility

All ideas in this synthesis remain the intellectual property of their rightful owners - thank you, you beautiful things.....

The current BDS campaign is yet another example of how financial blackmail of moneyed investors trumps morality.

However, something like the Arab-backed BDS will never ultimately succeed because it is impossible to sell a lie to all of the people all of the time.

Just look at Israel’s new trading partners of India and China, as the Jewish state increasingly turns to traditional antagonists of Muslims and Islam.

India and China amount to a market of just over 2.4 billion reasons why Arab Muslim BDS will not, as Israel increasingly turns to Asia for trade, ultimately make a significant dent in its overall trade balance.

China, one of the world’s largest countries and itself the second biggest economy in the world, has invested billions of dollars in Israel in the last three years. Starting with the World Expo in 2010 in Shanghai where Israel had its own pavilion for the first time, China has shown the Arab world that it has targeted Israel and has plans for future investments as well. As a sampler, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, overall trading figures between Israel and China reached $8.4 billion in 2013, compared with $6.7 billion in 2010. There is no reason why this figure will not increase significantly as Israel slowly absorbs the full impact of Obama's abandonment of formerly close allies in the Near and Middle East, and especially because Israel sees that in building even stronger alliances in Asia, it reduces significantly the leverage that Europe has had as Israel's largest trading partner. Increased trade with Asia will reduce that one-sided, disproportionate leverage that Europe, at the mercy of Arab voting blocs and money, has traditionally enjoyed. Already, Asia is Israel's second largest trading partner having already surpassed the United States in that statistic and, if the trend continues, is likely to challenge the European Union in a few years.

And if we take India, that other Asian powerhouse a little further south, new defence and trade deals as late as April 2014 are a harbinger of the accelerating competition for Israeli technology between the two Asian powerhouses. As an example, India has just recently contracted with Israeli companies for a monumental clean-up of the water of the sacred River Ganges!!......

At a pinch, the only water flowing out of BDS eyes would be tears of confused, malevolent frustration.

It may be, that we are witnessing the development of  new anti-Muslim blocs in new configurations as Europe begins to grapple with the early signs of a coming European intifada and countries which have  traditionally dealt with aggressive Islam find new ways to neutralise a re-surgent, oft-violent Islam.

But I digress.

To add to the headaches of the BDSers, there is the ongoing discreet trade between Israel and several Arab Muslim countries in addition to the open trade of Israeli goods to the “Palestinians”.

Israeli business quietly thrives in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. Company owners on both sides do all they can to avoid harmful publicity. Contacts are made at international conferences overseas, through European and U.S. companies familiar with both sides, and directly over the Internet.

Arab entrepreneurs are interested in Israeli technologies and search them out through the Internet and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

For example, ships belonging to the Ofer Group docked in Iran. That was then. Today, trade continues covertly with Indonesia at the lowest possible profile though without diplomatic relations between the two countries. Singapore serves as a base for businessmen trying to penetrate there.
Clandestine trade is also carried out in the opposite direction. Indonesian business delegations visit Israel, too, but this is kept from the general public and Israel imports eight times as much as it exports in its trade with Indonesia.

A number of Israeli companies export products to Saudi Arabia, including technological goods. This is done through their U.S.-registered subsidiaries. As an example, Israel receives raw materials for its plastics industry - polyethylene and polypropylene deriving from petroleum production - from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. These materials are sent in a roundabout way but Israeli authorities are aware of their source. Israel's plastics industry, in turn, exports greenhouse sheeting, irrigation drippers, house and garden products, disposable utensils and food packaging back to Saudi Arabia. In addition, quite a few companies in the Gulf states rely on sophisticated Israeli technology for security purposes.

But what of Israel’s own Arabs? Can they not forge a bridgehead for Arab-world markets to circumvent the impact of both the Arab boycott and the BDS campaign?

Increasingly, indeed they do. As a result, many Israeli companies that rely on users elsewhere in the region find creative solutions to avoid being identified with Israel, such as opening branches in Ramallah or Jordan that can more easily interface with the Arab world.

Because being labelled an Israeli company does not help Israel, neither in marketing nor in promotion, if she wants to target the Middle East, Israeli entrepreneurs open branches of their companies in places like Ramallah and Amman. And as Arab entrepreneurial skills expand inside Israel, Israeli Arabs will play an increasingly important role in bridging the political impasse between Israel and the Arabs.

So, is BDS working? Yes it is. But mainly as an increasingly symbolic and fiscally irrelevant anti-semitic protest by the chattering classes who are unable/unwilling to think for themselves.

In hard financial terms however, continuing creative workarounds by Israel and her supporters around the world to counter the attempted economic strangulation of a sovereign state, ensure that Israel’s growing GDP relegates the Arab Muslim BDS campaign to yet another largely side-stepped symbolic Arab Muslim gesture of de-legitimisation; symbolic and concrete gestures which have failed since 1948.

In the meanwhile, international cultural mega-stars like Elton John, Justin Timberlake and the Rolling Stones will continue to play to packed and appreciative Israeli audiences.

In Israel.

May 5774 continue to be a successful one for all.

With truth over all else

In the last few weeks, Australia and the Arabs in the West Bank of the Jordan River have been linked in hitherto not-seen ways.

Specifically, on May 10 the Murdoch owned national broadsheet, The Australian, published a piece about South Australian senator Nick Xenophon’s visit to Hebron on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

In the article, Xenophon is quoted as saying, “What I saw in Hebron was heartbreaking — the division, the segregation, the palpable fear in the community.”

Xenophon was invited by the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (in Adelaide) to tour the West Bank of the Jordan River.

The Australian Friends of Palestine Association promotes itself as a South Australia not-for-profit organisation which has as “…its main aim the promotion of peace and justice in Palestine based on International Law and the relevant UN resolutions.”

One of the ways that the Australian Friends of Palestine Association has promoted peace and justice in “Palestine” is through a recent boycott attempt of Israel’s internationally acclaimed Bat Sheva dance company.

While I remain confident that the Australian Friends of Palestine officials will be able to muster some sort of logical explanation as to how boycotting an Israeli dance company based in Tel Aviv will promote peace in “Palestine”, I will at the same time refrain from drawing any parallels between the close connection of the Australian Friends of Palestine and the local BDS movement which also championed the boycott and which has as its published aim, the de-legitimisation of a sovereign country and its demise as the sole Jewish state.

My concern, rather, is Mr Xenophon’s statement to The Australian where he “…would urge [Australian Liberal] Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and [Australian Labor] Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to have a good look at the International Court of Justice’s statement on Israeli settlements. The ICJ statement is crystal clear — all settlements are illegal under international law.”

Those who are familiar with Australian politics, and South Australian politics in particular, will know that Mr Xenophon is a caring human being, with a well-developed sense of justice who made his name as the “no-pokies” Minister of Parliament. May 2104 was his first ever visit to the Middle East.

To that extent, as a champion of the underdog and the under-represented, Mr Xenophon is entitled to his own opinion.

However, not even Mr Xenophon is entitled to his own facts.

Fortunately, Mr. Xenophon states that he is supportive of international law as it relates to Israeli settlements in an ostensibly “Palestinian” West Bank. This is as well, because under international law, all of the West Bank of the Jordan River was designated as a homeland of the Jews.

In this context, then, it is unusual that a South Australian senator who is allegedly supportive of aboriginal rights for aboriginal peoples in Australia can, on the one hand stand up for indigenous peoples’ land rights as morally and legally justifiable, yet decry those same land rights when those indigenous peoples are Jews.

This contextualising and understanding of those land rights, and legal codification of that understanding under international law, dates back to the San Remo Conference of 1920, that same conference which eventually led to the establishment of the generally mainly sunni Arab states of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq [and the Jewish state of Israel]. 

As it was in the beginning….

 
At the San Remo Conference, the entire land mass between the Jordan River and the Sea, the so-called “Palestinian” West Bank, was assigned to the Jewish people. This is verifiable, and in writing, and was agreed to by the Hashemite King of the Hedjaz (later part of Saudi Arabia) who was party to the 1920 Sevres Treaty that explicitly stipulated that there would be “a national home for the Jewish people” in British Mandated Palestine.

In the east, the land, not including Jersualem, Judea and Samaria, was given to the Arabs as a present to the colonising Hashemites of Saudi Arabia in return for supporting Britain and France against Turkey during the breakup of the Ottoman Caliphate. It was called Transjordan, later re-named Jordan.

In the west, the land now named the “West Bank” [but legally known as Palestine prior to 1948 and designated under international law as a Jewish homeland], was given to the Jews and included Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. And Hebron.

 The ancient Jewish town of Hebron, is the home and burial place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah as mentioned in the Bible and accepted by both Christians and Muslims (in that chronological order) some 1,800 years before Islam began its conquest, occupation and subjugation of the near and middle east. 

And while it is true that these Biblical Patriarchs are also recognised by Islam as “friends of God” [in Arabic, Al-Khalil is a direct translation from the ancient Hebrew word “Haver”: friend], it is also incontrovertible that these were figures of religious importance to a Jewish nation, religion and history which had established itself and survived for one and a half millennia before even the birth of Islam.

In other words, if we are to stand by that same international law which is of importance to Mr Xenophon, then Article 6 of the Mandate, charged Britain with the duty to facilitate Jewish immigration and close settlement by Jews in the territory which then included Transjordan, as called for in the Balfour declaration, that had already been adopted by the other Allied Powers. As a trustee, Britain had a fiduciary duty to act in good faith in carrying out the duties imposed by the Mandate.

This was reiterated by the League of Nations, 1922, and incorporated into the UN Charter, Article 80, which prohibited the UN to tamper with the League of Nations decisions related to the matter discussed.

More than that, the 1920 agreement incorporated the previous 1915 McMahon-Hussein agreement between Britain and Sherif Hussein of Mecca, where Britain separated the territory east of the Jordan River namely Transjordan (since renamed Jordan) from Palestine west of the Jordan which it had designated, under internationally codified regulations as a home for the Jewish people.

And so, under international law, as the San Remo resolution has never been abrogated, it was and continues to be legally binding between the several parties who signed it.

This would make the claim of an occupied “Palestine” and an “Arab-Muslim West Bank, one of the most important public-relation put-overs by those who wish to de-legitimise and demonise the State of Israel in recent times.

To add insult to the injury of canvassing that Israel occupies “Palestine” as a brutal apartheid regime, it was Arab Muslims under the Hashemite king of Jordan who made a land grab in 1948 of the west bank of the land slated for a Jewish state under international law as I have iterated above. The Jordanians also illegally took east Jerusalem at the same time and annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1949 in a measured dis-regard of international law.

Between 1948 and 1967, the Muslim Arabs ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem and the West Bank of Jews.

This was the only time in three millennia of recorded history that Jews did not live in East Jerusalem, putting the current Arab Muslim narrative of Israeli “apartheid”, a country with 2 million voting and working Arabs, into perspective…….

As many now know, East Jerusalem was taken back by Israel in 1967. Under international law, in a defensive military action.

Therefore,  this makes the current claim of the “Palestinians” a curious one under international law, and is a major reason there is no “Palestinian” State today on the west bank of the river: Jordan is “Palestine”.

I agree with Mr Xenophon that disputes between peoples should be settled under international law.

It is now time that those who would make pronouncements on “occupation” “heartbreak”, “division” and “legal right” in Israel and the Middle East, temper their comments based on the facts.

The Muslim Arab narrative of an “occupied” “Palestine” under an apartheid Jewish regime which has “stolen” Arab land is a remarkably successful public relations coup for the Arabs.

However, it will never be able to spin or circumvent international law which designated land west of the Jordan River to be the homeland of the Jewish people, and land east of the Jordan River, to be the Arab Muslim State of Palestine.

To this end, Israel exists as a legal entity in a string of international understandings and treaties codified by international law going back as far as the 1915 McMahon-Hussein agreement between Britain and Sherif Hussein of Mecca regarding the division of the Ottoman Caliphate [see above].

This was further reinforced by the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France and supported in principle by the 1917 Balfour Declaration as a statement of intent on the creation of a Jewish state in Mandated Palestine.

To that is added the legal agreements of the April 1920 San Remo Conference which entrenched under international law the principles of the Balfour Declaration. 

Later that same year, the August 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, abolished the Ottoman Empire and obliged Turkey to renounce all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa. Apart from the major powers, the Treaty was attended and signed by the Hashemite King of the Hedjaz as representative of Arab interests in the region who was a signatory to the explicit stipulation of the Treaty that there would be “a national home for the Jewish people” in British Mandated Palestine so long as he could lay claim to a British-supported Arab kingdom in Transjordan [in addition to the creation of the Arab states of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq…].

…is now…

 
Even though history is said to be written by the victors, the importance and legal standing of the 1920 San Remo conference can never be wished away by those who wish for the demise of the Jewish state. If we allowed that to happen, it would open the floodgates of terror and violence.

That is why, in the April 2010 commemoration of the San Remo Conference which was attended by politicians and others from Europe, the U.S. and Canada in San Remo, participants felt it incumbent upon themselves to make the following statement that:

"…. the San Remo Resolution of 1920 recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine.

"Recalling that such a seminal event as the San Remo Conference of 1920 has been forgotten or ignored by the community of nations, and that the rights it conferred upon the Jewish people have been unlawfully dismissed, curtailed and denied.

"Asserting that a just and lasting peace, leading to the acceptance of secure and recognized borders between all States in the region, can only be achieved by recognizing the long established rights of the Jewish people under international law."

…and ever shall be. Truth without end. Amen
 
Mr Xenophon is a busy person, with perhaps insufficient time to devote to reading all the legal niceties of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He was invited by a special interest pro “Palestinian” group to visit a part of the world he would not normally consider visiting, and he accepted.

However, in the name of that same international law which he invokes so eloquently on behalf of the "Palestinians", it behoves Mr Xenophon to pay as much attention to those legal principles which enshrine the right of the Middle East's aboriginal/indigenous Jewish people before they were overrun, colonised and occupied by a waves of Muslim conquest in the 7th century C.E., some nearly two millenia after the Jews were already established in the Land of Israel.

In other words, if Mr Xenophon believes land rights based on principles of continuous occupation and recorded history (but not any international law) of an indigenous people were good enough for Eddie Mabo in Australia, then those same principles (with the added legitimation of international law) must also be good enough for the indigenous Jews in the State of Israel today.

It is time to stop sugar-coating this four-decade campaign with euphemisms.

It is time to recognise that much of the mainstream media support an Arab boycott of a legal entity against a people is simply because they are Jews. Israel has every legal,moral and historical right to exist.

Let us call this campaign, which hijacks well-meaning people like Mr Xenophon, by its real name: a virulent anti-semitism of the kind the world has already seen in a different time and place.