Visegrád 24 on X - "The Italian writer, pacifist and activist Vittorio Arrigoni moved to Gaza in 2008 to bring attention to the Palestinian liberation cause. In 2011, he was kidnapped and murdered by a local Salafist group which considered Italy “an infidel state.” 🇮🇹"
Gad Saad on X - "Well Muslims in Israel serve in the Israeli military; they serve in the Knesset; they are physicians and professors; they serve as judges; they play on Israel’s national team. Not unlike how Jews are treated in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia. Oh no…"
Lee Silver on X - "This is all true. A Muslim surgeon operated on me, a Muslim soldier served along side me in the military. Israel doesn’t have anything against Muslims. The world doesn’t know this and nothing seems to get through to them. This isn’t ethnic cleansing, it’s protection from terror."
Visegrád 24 on X - "In 1992, Denmark took in 321 Palestinian refugees. By 2019, 64% of them had been convicted of a crime. 34% of their children had also been convicted of a crime. Source: Danish Ministry for Immigration and Integration"
Gad Saad on X - "In the Middle East, the "might is right" maxim is operative throughout every element of society. It is a deeply hierarchical society wherein all dyadic relationships are viewed through the prism of established dominance relationships. Hence, many of the Western values that we construe as noble are viewed as manifestations of weakness. It is truly extraordinary the extent to which Western leaders have zero understanding of these deep cultural differences. Western leaders have ZERO cultural "theory of mind.""
Genocide, apartheid? A poll Israel cannot allow itself to ignore - "According to a new poll of US Jewish voters, 25 percent consider Israel to be an apartheid state, and another 22% aren’t certain one way or another. In the same survey, taken two weeks ago and published Tuesday, 22% said “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians,” and a further 16% weren’t sure if we are or not... For all my concerns about where we may be headed if we cannot find a secure means of separating from most of the Palestinians, I find it hard to believe that anyone with genuine intellectual honesty can definitively brand Israel an apartheid state — though I know people who do. And I truly do not see how anybody who has invested the smallest modicum of effort in understanding our realities can determine that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. Yet that’s what lots of American Jews apparently now consider to be the case. A multitude of factors, some of them far beyond Israel’s control, have led to poll findings such as these. But self-evidently, Israel would help its standing if it explained itself more effectively. It’s no panacea; there are limits to even the most adept public diplomacy. But Israel appears to have given up even trying, as highlighted by its staggering ineptitude in the course of the latest conflict and its aftermath."
So much for the conspiracy theory that all American Jews support Israel
The Hamas Charter and Religious Nationalism - "This verse establishes a clear distinction between good (Palestine) and evil (Israel). By reducing the conflict to a binary struggle between the righteous and the unclean, Article 3 makes the idea of Jihad more palatable as a legitimate form of armed resistance. Article 8 of the charter directly prescribes Jihad as the primary methodology of Hamas. “Allah is its [Islamic Resistance Movement] target, the Prophet is its model, the Qur’an its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” This call to arms falls directly in line with Article 13, which dispenses with any and all notions of peaceful negotiation. “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”... Article 30 concludes with a quote by Al-Bukhari, a prominent medieval Muslim scholar: “Whosoever mobilized a fighter for the sake of Allah is himself a fighter. Whosoever supports the relatives of a fighter, he himself is a fighter.” This appeal to the diplomatic side of Jihad seems to run contradictory to Article 13, where the Charter aggressively resists any notion of a negotiated peace with the Zionist movement. If Islamic elites and intellectuals are called to engage in Jihad via the power of the pen, why are such methods excluded from the operating procedures of Hamas? This apparent contradiction between peaceful and violent Jihad is not rational—it is the result of Hamas’s deluded understanding of itself and how the world works, as illustrated in Article 31. Article 31 is, perhaps, the most fascinating Article of the entire Charter. It reveals the Islamic Resistance Movement’s twisted image of itself and its understanding of the world. Article 31 appeals to the non-Islamic world to comply with the ambitions of Islam as determined by Hamas. It reframes the Charter’s Jihadist ambitions as a humanist movement for the human rights of all parties involved. According to the Article, “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement… Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are best witnesses to that. It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.” This Article is where the Charter’s argument falls apart completely. Hamas falls victim to the same ideological oversight that plagues Zionist ideology and caused the very situation they are now resisting. The language of Article 31 can be easily tweaked to support any religious movement, including Zionism. It is a textbook framework for religious nationalism that assumes an inherent superiority over other groups. It suggests that the road to peace is obvious: simply stay out of our way, and we won’t have a problem."
Hamas is a hero for leading "resistance" and anyone who disagrees is racist and supports colonialism
Opinion: Stop supporting Palestinian terrorism - "On Sept. 28, 2001, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1373, requiring all UN member states to: “Prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist acts; Criminalize the wilful provision or collection, by any means, directly or indirectly, of funds … to carry out terrorist acts; (and) Refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups.” Despite this fact, Canada recently announced $103 million over four years in taxpayer-funded aid to UNRWA. Likewise, American taxpayers are sending more than $200 million a year to the Palestinians, despite the fact that such aid is in direct violation of the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from funding the Palestinian Authority so long as it maintains financial supports for terrorists. Palestinian terror attacks across Israel are surging this year, totalling over 3,600 attacks in the first half of 2023, which left 28 Israelis dead. Despite these horrific numbers, the West is circumventing its own laws by funnelling money ostensibly for aid through UNRWA and other UN aid vehicles. It’s been well documented that both the PA and UNRWA operate school systems and summer camps that relentlessly indoctrinate Palestinian children to hate Israelis and Jews. The schools falsely teach that Israelis are the equivalent of Nazis perpetrating a Holocaust on Palestinians, while glorifying suicide bombers as heroes of Palestinian society. The PA’s state-run newspapers and television stations convey the same messages across Palestinian society. Foreign aid also allows the PA to maintain an extensive government-run system of pensions paid both to terrorists who successfully murder Israelis, and to the families of terrorists who died while successfully murdering Israelis. The pensions increase for each additional Israeli murdered, and sometimes exceed the salary received by Palestinian civilian employees, such as teachers. In recent years, these terrorist pension payments have cost the PA in excess of $300 million a year. After each successful terrorist murder of Israelis, Palestinian communities across the West Bank and Gaza erupt in public celebrations, which often include dancing in the streets, lighting fireworks, firing weapons and handing out candy to children. These murder celebrations have been recorded on several occasions."
Progressives for jihad - "Remember when progressives were opposed to hardline religious movements that use violence to try to destroy democratic states?... Islamic Jihad is a thoroughly regressive movement. It says it will settle for nothing less than the obliteration of Israel. It wants to create an Islamic State of Palestine in which Sharia would rule and all who fall foul of it – uppity women, homosexuals, atheists – would suffer. For the right-on to sympathise with such an outfit is akin to chickens giving solidarity to KFC... ‘Might a group called Islamic Jihad be a tad problematic?’ – you’ll be searching for a long time before encountering even a question as basic as that. Instead, the same old script has been dusted down: Israel is evil, Zionism is racist, the Palestinian people have the right to resist, etc etc. The dearth of curiosity over what Islamic Jihad represents has been appalling. Islamic Jihad has been talked about in the sympathetic language of ‘resistance’. A UN special rapporteur on Palestine thrilled the online left by tweeting during the raining down of Islamic Jihad missiles on Southern Israel that ‘Palestinians’ right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people’. The BDS movement used the glowing terms of resistance, too. It shared an image of a CNN headline that said ‘Israel clashes with Islamic Jihad’, though BDS changed it to ‘Israel massacres Palestinians’. Do not dismiss ‘the resistance of a besieged and trapped population’, BDS warned the mainstream media. At a rowdy rally in New York City, protesters insisted that ‘resistance is not terrorism’. Palestinians should use ‘every means possible’ against Israel, one speaker declared. An Irish anti-war group went further, declaring ‘Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!’. Right now, that ‘resistance’ takes the form of religious violence from a group that has primarily targeted Israeli citizens. You want victory for that? Let’s be clear about what is being talked about here, what is being referred to as a rightful and maybe even inspiring form of resistance. Islamic Jihad is not a national liberation movement of the kind that existed in the 1970s and 80s. It is a violent and extremist religious organisation generously funded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It rejects the political process and aspires to ‘the annihilation of Israel’ and the ‘establishment of a sovereign Palestinian Islamic State’. To this end it has executed numerous acts of indiscriminate slaughter in Israel in recent years, massacring hundreds of Israeli citizens in restaurants, at supermarkets, on buses. ‘The Zionist entity will be annihilated’, said the leader of Islamic Jihad just this week. This isn’t resistance – it’s religious terrorism. Name me one nation on Earth that would turn a blind eye to such existential threats? If there was a well-armed group of religious fundamentalists a few miles from Britain that had sent suicide bombers to slaughter British men, women and children, we would act, no? And yet Israel is always condemned for acting... Let yourself be attacked – that is really what the ‘pro-Palestine’ activists in the Western chattering classes are saying when they tell the Jewish State, and the Jewish State alone, not to respond to those who attack it... Then there’s the fact of Islamic Jihad rockets often falling short of Israel and killing Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli officials say one-third of the Gazans who died in recent days were killed by errant rockets fired by Islamic Jihad – and, crucially, the Associated Press says this ‘appears consistent with AP reporting’. As for the Islamic State that Islamic Jihad wants to create: how would such an authoritarian regime be of benefit to Palestinians? The rise to prominence of both Islamic Jihad and Hamas speaks to the decline of the old secularist politics of national liberation, to the death of the Cold War-era dream of creating free, independent states, and that is surely a problem for the Palestinian people. Westerners’ witless attitude towards Islamic Jihad exposes their neo-colonial paternalism. If something is bad for Israel, it must be good for Palestinians – that’s their infantile mantra. Clearly, the emotional high of loathing Israel and pitying Palestinians has pushed aside all serious political thought. The failure to think about what Islamic Jihad represents, and why Israel might be justified in countering such a regressive movement, confirms how degraded anti-Israel activism has become. Hating Israel is now such a received prejudice in right-on circles that there is no need for reflection or inquiry. Indeed, such intellectual pursuits would only muddy the moral thrill these people derive from defining themselves in opposition to this apparently uniquely evil state. We end up in a situation where we have ‘Queers for Palestine’ – literally – and Progressives for Jihad. Where the right-on and radical Islamists are united in a strangely intense hostility towards one country. Where people who say ‘My pronouns are ze / zir’ are virtually lining up with jihadists who outlaw homosexuality. An unholy marriage in favour of holy war. Nothing better sums up the suicidal tendencies of modern Western progressives."
Liberals hate success and strength and love weakness and failure, after all
Israeli minister demands accountability for Berlin's Holocaust comparison - "Chikli questioned the rationale behind comparing the systematic, industrial murder of millions of innocent Jews during the Holocaust to an armed conflict between the Zionist national movement and Arab countries and Palestinian militias. He reminded readers of the role played by Amin al-Husseini, a fervent supporter of the "Final Solution" and initiator of the Palestinian struggle, who colluded with Nazi propaganda and hindered the escape of Jewish children to the land of Israel. Chikli also revealed that the event in Potsdam was not an isolated incident, but rather part of a series of events held in public institutions in Berlin over the past few months. These events included lectures with titles such as "Understanding the Pain of Others: The Holocaust and the Nakba" and "Highjacking the Memory of the Holocaust for the Benefit of Dehumanization in Palestine, and Zionism can also Motivate Antisemitism." Chikli strongly criticized the use of the Holocaust to incite against Israel and called such comparisons abhorrent and devoid of reality."
Holocaust comparisons are only bad when the left disapprove of them
Meme - "Ancient Coins from Israel
Jewish *4 coins* 2000+ years old
Palestinian *nothing*"
Barry Tigay on Twitter - "Israel is building in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish heartland, on state land, recaptured from illegal occupation by Jordan (who have since renounced it) after abandonment by British mandate forces, who had conquered it from defunct Ottoman Empire which renounced it by treaty."
GOLDSTEIN: NDP MPP Joel Harden epitomizes left's obsession with Israel | Toronto Sun - "what is anti-Semitic is holding Jews in Canada responsible for the policies of Israel’s government, because it raises the anti-Semitic canard that Jews have dual loyalties — first to Israel and only second to the country they reside in. On that issue Harden, in my view, clearly descended into anti-Semitism, by his own description. He said he canvasses the homes of Jewish constituents in his riding wearing a pro-Palestinian pin and if they react negatively: “I have asked many questions of Jewish neighbours here about, you know, how much longer we should put up with this, because if I were to name the single greatest threat, the single greatest origin of violence in the Middle East, it is unquestionably the state of Israel, and the way in which they feel absolutely no shame in defying international law doing whatever they want.” So, Harden visits the homes of his Canadian Jewish constituents hoping to provoke an argument with at least some of them — why else specifically mention wearing a pro-Palestinian pin — and if the Jewish person reacts negatively, he challenges that person to defend the actions of Israel’s government, which he describes as horrific... what’s also anti-Semitic is holding Israel up to a moral standard one does not demand of other countries."
No surprise. These views tend to come in a package
What articles on Israel's 'one-state reality' get wrong - analysis - "The premise behind it is that Israeli rule has gone on for so long that the two-state solution seems too far-fetched; “one state” is what exists now. But the argument is predicated on a basic flaw thematic of all the proposals: Those advocating “one state” claim that Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip to portray Israel as controlling millions of Palestinians who are denied rights in Israel – this completely ignores the fact that Gaza is run by Hamas and that there is little to no evidence that Palestinians, under Palestinian Authority or Hamas, want to be integrated into Israel. The bait and switch of the “one state” story are to force Israel to re-invade Gaza, control it and extend Israeli rule back into Palestinian cities, despite decades in which Palestinians governed cities in Gaza and the West Bank themselves. It’s unclear why anyone thinks this would work, considering that Israel can’t even fully control parts of Jerusalem when it comes to violence. Is there anything to the theory? In January 2021, B’Tselem published a report claiming that a “regime of Jewish supremacy” exists “from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea,” calling it “apartheid.” The report said that “more than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule.”... Amnesty International published its own report about “Israel apartheid against the Palestinians,” writing that “the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remains under Israeli military occupation, with Israel controlling the Palestinian population living there,” though it noted that “the Egyptian authorities also maintain tight Egyptian restrictions on the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.”... Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its own report in April 2021, writing that “about 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” The report claims that in regards to Gaza, “the Egyptian government often imposes restrictions along its border with Gaza, which exacerbate the impact of Israel’s policies on residents of Gaza, but Egypt’s obligations differ since it is not the occupying power and can, with some key limitations.”... The Foreign Affairs article joins many others portraying Israel as continuously controlling Gaza, writing that “even after it withdrew forces from Gaza in 2005, the Israeli government retained control over the territory’s entry and exit points.” The articles slamming Israel for “apartheid” all noted that Egypt controls access to the Gaza Strip; Egypt is not mentioned in the Foreign Affairs article. A key part of the “one state” argument hinges on this depiction of Israel controlling Gaza, as well as downplaying what Hamas has done to Gaza over nearly two decades of rule... To downplay the policies of Hamas, the article claims that “Israel’s system of structural discrimination is more severe than those of even the most illiberal states.” It is unclear how this was measured, considering the large number of illiberal states in the world – Freedom House, a DC-based political advocacy organization, says there are 57 countries in the world defined as “not free.” The article also defines the Arab minority in Israel as “Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship and reside in pre-1967 Israel have political and civil rights but confront other limits – both legal and extrajudicial – on their rights, responsibilities, and protections.” In essence, this joins with the broader Palestinian nationalist “river to the sea” concept, only through “one state” advocacy. Palestinians in Jerusalem were described as rejecting Israeli citizenship because accepting it “would be an act of disloyalty,” disloyalty to Palestinian nationalism... It is unclear how Israel can provide “equality” for everyone in Gaza, Ramallah and other areas run by the Palestinians while it is also told to end its military rule over these same areas. It is a contradiction to claim that Israel controls Gaza and must bring equality to everyone there, but not through military rule. How would Israeli civilian rule be extended to Gaza or Ramallah? According to the article, Arabs in Jerusalem don’t even accept Israeli citizenship when it is offered because they don't want to be “disloyal” to Palestinian nationalism. If Israel can’t get the people in east Jerusalem to accept more equal citizenship, how would it do this by re-invading Gaza? Israel can’t seem to control gun violence that is growing inside Israeli-controlled areas – how would it hope to control Jenin and Nablus and force those areas into “one state”? There is no evidence that Palestinians or Israelis want to live in one state, so how they would be forced to do so is unclear. Historically, trying to shoehorn different groups into one state, like in former Yugoslavia or elsewhere, has not been successful."
Meme - "So, you built this on top of this and I'm the occupier? *Dome of the Rock, Wailing Wall*"
Avi Benlolo: Israel's new coalition government would be a model of diversity. Its critics will never admit that - "As a new coalition government comes close to fruition in Israel, it threatens to derail the slanderous anti-Semitic campaigns raging worldwide accusing Israel of racism and of being an apartheid state. For the first time in history, the proposed new government — led by Yamina’s Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid — would see an Arab party playing a key role. A total of eight Arab parliamentarians would be brought in under the auspices of the Ra’am party, led by Mansour Abbas. In fact, the coalition, which would also have a record-breaking number of female cabinet ministers, and which would represent a convergence of right, left and religious parties, would be the most pluralistic and diverse in Israel’s history. This diversity is a reflection of Israel’s vibrancy and democracy. Time will tell if the coalition holds, but one thing is clear — it’s almost a mirror image of the reality of life in Israel. Yet anti-Israel activists are attempting to paint a completely different picture of the reality on the ground... a shocking if not convoluted opinion piece in the Toronto Star this week posited that the Palestinians and the Indigenous people of Canada have a shared framework regarding colonialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the natural allies to Indigenous and Black people are Jewish people themselves. The Jewish people have been “occupied” throughout their history, ethnically cleansed and displaced from their lands. They were occupied by the Romans, by the Muslims, by the Ottomans and by the Brits all in a span of some 2,500 years. Each time, the Jewish people were evicted from their homes, enslaved, murdered and dispersed to foreign lands. But the campaign against the Jews by student unions, boards of education and even a medical school seeks to rewrite history and worse, to present a different reality about the incredible strides Jewish and Arab citizens are making in Israel... Matthias Schmale, the director of the UN Palestinian refugee agency’s mission in Gaza, was recalled for “consultation” with his bosses after he described Israel’s airstrikes as being “precise” during an interview with Israeli TV. What he was saying was that Israel took great pains to not harm civilians. Schmale, who also said during the interview that there were currently no shortages of food, water and medicine in Gaza and that supply lines were open, was forced to apologize for revealing the truth."
From 2021
Israeli Jews dress as Muslims to defy Al-Aqsa prayer ban - "Morris is one of a small group of right-wing Israeli Jews who try to circumvent a ban on non-Muslims praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound by disguising themselves as Muslims and joining rows of worshippers during communal prayers... The group members go as far as taking Arabic classes, learning enough of the language and verses from the Quran to talk their way through security checkpoints without getting caught by Israeli police or Palestinian security guards at the compound gates."
Damn apartheid!
Presumably non-violent civil disobedience is bad when it's "Islamophobic"
StandWithUs - Posts | Facebook - "The real Israel: Muslim worshippers praying inside Ben Gurion Airport. Freedom of religion and coexistence is not just a dream in Israel but a reality! 🇮🇱🙏"
Facebook - "In the late 1990s, the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's decided to start operating in Egypt. Egypt is the largest grocery market in the Middle East and had no modern grocery shopping culture at the time. Sainsbury decided to bring, "the way to shop in the future, rather than going to tiny corner shops who were overcharging them." I was ten at the time and remember it clearly. Shortly after they started their operations, rumors started to spread its a Jewish business. Imams started to tell people to boycott it. In my school, pamphlets were handed out, which I volunteered to distribute, telling people the owners were Jews and the money goes to Israel. Soon after, looting and riots of the stores started. I actually participated in one of the lootings. I even helped to draw Israeli flags to burn. Egyptian intellectuals started to talk about how its part of the Zionist conspiracy of "globalization." The Egypt Left agitated against international Zionist capitalism... Doing graduate studies in Middle East international affairs and economics in one of the world's biggest IR schools, George Washington U, not a single economist ever attempted to factor this kind of market behavior in their analysis of ME economic growth and foreign direct investments. In all US academic economics literature about ME, you will find ZERO researchers trying to analyze this kind of market behavior, just that will find ZERO political scientists trying to factor in Arab antisemitism, mass expulsion of Jews, into their historical analysis of the evolution of the modern Arab tyrannical state. This is how deeply ingrained and institutionalized ambivalence to antisemitism if not to mention antisemitism itself. This post is partially about Egypt, partially about antisemitism, and partially about how untrustworthy American institutions are! Remember how much hard-working American families pay to send their kids to these schools to get them an "education." No wonder the more education one gets, the more brainwashed they are. Moreover, your foreign policy is made and informed by the works of such experts."
Clearly Arab countries are underdeveloped due to colonialism
Bill Maher on Israel and the Jews - "It’s not that complicated: Stop firing rockets into Israel and perhaps they won’t annihilate you... Obama himself said the other day: There’s just not another country in the world that would allow missiles to be rained down on them without fighting back. What I find so ironic is that after World War II, everybody said, ‘I don’t understand the Jews. How could they have just gone to their slaughter like that?’ OK, and then when they fight back: ‘I don’t understand the Jews. Why can’t they just go to their slaughter?’ It’s like, ‘You know what? We did that once. It’s not gonna happen again. You’re just gonna have to get used to the fact that Jews now defend themselves — and by the way, defend themselves better. I mean, this is a country, after all, that is surrounded by far greater numbers than their own [and] they are like two generations ahead in the military technology they have."
Meme - "IF JEWS "CONTROL THE MEDIA," THEN WHY IS THE MEDIA SIDING WITH HAMAS?"
They get around that by claiming the media is Pro-Israel
✡︎🇮🇱🏴☠️⚔️ on Twitter - "ireland greeting the israeli soccer team with palestinian flags and then losing to them is the funniest thing ive seen today"
Avi Mayer on Twitter - "A 25-year-old Palestinian man, Ahmed Abu Maria, who fled to Israel and was granted asylum two years ago due to his sexual identity, was reportedly abducted and taken back to the West Bank city of Hebron, where he was beheaded yesterday. May his memory be a blessing."
Queers for Palestine needs to visit Palestine
