Senators Manchin and Sinema show the courage of their convictions - Andrea Widburg

 

​ by Andrea Widburg

I'm happily eating crow because I didn't think they would show backbone in the face of demands that they yield on the filibuster.

In January, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) entered into a power-sharing agreement with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Beijing) that was predicated on his receiving a promise from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) that they would not join with their fellow Democrat senators to end the filibuster.  This was an overwhelmingly important promise because the filibuster is the only thing that stands between America as it has existed for 230 years and a Democrat-run, socialist, despotic future.  I must admit that I had no faith whatsoever that Manchin and Sinema would keep their promise, but, happily, I seem to be wrong.

The reason the filibuster matters so much is that the Senate is split 50-50.  Technically, Kamala Harris is the tie-breaking vote, but if the Republicans invoke the filibuster (which dates back to 1806), it takes three fifths of the Senate to override a filibuster.  It is the filibuster that stands between America and the Democrat plans to pack the Supreme Court (turning it into a Democrat super-Legislature), pass the Equality Act (opening the way to men in women's restrooms, locker rooms, sports, and prisons), give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens (reshaping the American electorate forever), and enshrine fraud as an integral part of American elections (need I say more?).

Almost six months into the Biden era, as the Democrats get ever more aggressive in dividing the nation along racial lines, destroying the economy, supporting Iran, enshrining the mental illness that is so-called "transgenderism," etc., it was nerve-wracking to think the only thing between us and turning America into a racially riven, sexually obsessed version of China was a promise from Joe Manchin, who rather consistently takes stands and then abandons them, and Sinema, who started out in the Green Party and Code Pink.

But Manchin and Sinema have held firm.  Indeed, they've held so firm that Biden, during his disgraceful race-baiting speech in Tulsa, was forced to lie about them in order to pressure them into yielding on the same filibuster Biden once declared practically sacred.  To that end, he accused them of voting with the enemy (i.e., the GOP):

Biden did not name the Democratic senators that could stand in the way of passing bills like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, although he was likely referring to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Both senators are moderates who have come under heavy criticism this year over perceptions that they are obstructing elements of the Democratic agenda, particularly due to their refusal to support eliminating the Senate's filibuster rule.

"I hear all the folks on TV say, 'why doesn't Biden get this done?'" said Biden. "Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate — with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends. But we're not giving up."

In fact, since Biden entered office, both Manchin and Sinema have voted 100% of the time with the Democrats:

 

FACT CHECK: Biden inaccurately said Manchin and Sinema "vote more" with Republicans. That's some hyperbole, folks. They may be holding up faster action on things like infrastructure, but, so far, they LITERALLY have 100% voting rating with Biden https://t.co/mAim5HzViK

— Domenico Montanaro (@DomenicoNPR) June 1, 2021

Apparently, neither Manchin nor Sinema enjoys being bullied (which is what Thomas Lifson predicted).  On Wednesday, when reporters again pushed him on the filibuster question, Manchin reiterated that he will not harm the filibuster:

"I'm not separating our country, OK?" Manchin said in response to yet another question about eliminating the filibuster. "I don't know what you all don't understand about this. You ask the same question every day. It's wrong."

Sinema has been every put as stubborn:

 

Q: "So you're not going to budge on the filibuster?"

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, standing next to GOP Sen. John Cornyn: "No." pic.twitter.com/GlDJzyYoD1

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) June 2, 2021

It's comforting to know that, when they're on the receiving end of Joe Biden's defamatory statements (because he meant his lies as a tremendous insult), both these senators stiffened their spines.  They're also wise.  Although Biden is issuing radical executive orders as if he had a mandate, the Democrats do not.  Congress is poised on the razor's edge between the two competing value systems in America.  If Democrats pull too far to the left, a beleaguered population, struggling with inflation, rising crime, deliberately stoked racial hatred, gender madness, and more, may not respond well.

Still, it's early days yet, so keep those two in your thoughts because you can bet that Biden's lies were just the tip of the iceberg in the war against their principles.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Andrea Widburg

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/senators_manchin_and_sinema_show_the_courage_of_their_convictions.html

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The Middle East: An Alarm Bell to the Biden Administration - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

[A]ll these leaders are continuing their incitement against Israel.... That is what is driving all these terrorists to go out and carry out all these attacks

• If you want to look at the positive aspect of this whole thing...many [Palestinian lists] had very young people... reformists -- people who want democracy, who want regime change, who are saying, "We are fed up with corruption. We want new, young leaders. It is time to get rid of the old guard represented by Abbas."

• The Biden Administration was quick to announce the resumption of financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, unconditionally... which I think was a mistake.... If you are rewarding the Palestinian Authority without demanding anything in return, you will have no leverage with the Palestinian Authority anymore. You have already given them what they wanted, so why should they do what you ask them in the future?

• If the Biden Administration thinks that President Abbas will return to the negotiating table with Israel and resume the peace process because they have resumed the financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, that is not going to happen. If it happens, President Abbas will not be serious about the peace process....

• President Abbas is also now under attack by many Palestinians.... He will not be able to make any concessions to Israel because people will say, "You are an unelected leader. You are a dictator. You have been in power for more than 15 years without elections. Who voted for you?" This will all have a negative impact on any future peace process.

• What worries me is not that Fatah and Hamas are at each other's necks and killing each other. They have been doing that for years. What worries me is that... all these leaders are continuing their incitement against Israel.... That is what is driving all these terrorists to go out and carry out all these attacks.... [and] emboldening the radicals. It is promoting terrorism.

• You delegitimize Israel in the eyes of your people, the Palestinians, to a point where your people will never accept any kind of an agreement or compromise with Israel.

• This incitement has to stop.... I would have liked to see the Biden Administration tell the Palestinian Authority, "Listen. We will resume financial aid to the Palestinians, but before we do that, on Palestine TV, can you please stop calling for jihad? Can you please stop publishing or broadcasting all these messages that encourage violence?" But the Biden did not demand any of these things....

• If you want to rejoin the [Iranian nuclear] agreement, at least make sure that they abide by it.... that they are not hiding things. You cannot just walk back into an agreement without verifying it. A nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran is not only a threat to Israel.

• Listen to what the Arabs are saying: "We are also worried. These mullahs in Iran will not hesitate to use any type of weapon... who is going to prevent them in the future from using nuclear bombs against moderate Arabs, moderate Muslims, or any other Arab or Muslim?"

• When we talk about a solution [to the Arab-Israeli conflict], I can think of 10,000 solutions. Everyone here has a solution.... If you ask Hamas, they will tell you... replace Israel with an Islamic state. If there are some Jews who would like to live as a minority, they are welcome. Otherwise, get out of here or I will destroy all of you.

• President Abbas has a solution. He is saying Israel must give me 100% of what I am demanding, which is all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and all of East Jerusalem. On top of that, I want the right of return... to bring millions of Palestinian refugees into Israel itself.... I want the Palestinian state next to Israel. Then I want to turn Israel into another Palestinian state by flooding it with millions of refugees. These are unrealistic solutions. No one takes them seriously.

• I think that at present, all Israel can do is work with any Palestinian who wants to work with you and shoot back at any Palestinian who shoots at you.... Maybe, right now, there is no solution that will satisfy the needs or the demands of the Palestinians.

• Unfortunately, any Palestinian state you have in the near future will be the same. We have reached a situation... where people in the West Bank, even in Gaza, tell me, "We hope one day, we will have a democracy like the one the Jews have in Israel." Do you know how many times I hear in Ramallah people telling me, "We wish one day that we will have our own Knesset"?

• Any Palestinian leader under the current circumstances who tells Israel, "Okay, Israel, I will sign an agreement with you that will give me 90% percent," will be shot.... executed in a public square and condemned as a traitor. President Abbas knows that.... Because Palestinian leaders keep telling their people that anyone who makes concessions to Israel is a traitor.

• If you are going to give us a Palestinian state that is going to look like Sudan in the past, or Syria, or Lebanon, and all those other failed states, no thank you. Just leave us alone.... We do not want another failed Muslim, Iranian‑backed dictatorship in the Middle East. It is bad for the Arabs before it is bad for Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (pictured) is also now under attack by many Palestinians.... He will not be able to make any concessions to Israel because people will say, "You are an unelected leader. You are a dictator. You have been in power for more than 15 years without elections. Who voted for you?" This will all have a negative impact on any future peace process. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Many journalists in the mainstream media appear not to be interested in certain stories here, particularly ones that reflect negatively on Arabs or Palestinians. Most are only searching for stories that reflect negatively on Israel, that have an anti‑Israel angle.

That leaves the rest of us opportunities for publishing stories that the mainstream media in the West do not want.

In addition to Palestinian affairs, I also follow the Arab world -- where it is important to discuss Iran.

In the last few weeks, many people in the Arab world, especially in the Gulf countries -- Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates -- are extremely worried about the way the Biden Administration and the Western powers are dealing with Islamic Republic.

Every day in dozens of articles and op‑ed pieces – in newspapers, websites, radio, television broadcasts out of these Arab countries -- it is amazing to see how concerned they are, the Arabs over there, about the possibility that the Biden Administration might return to the nuclear deal with Iran.

Even today, an Egyptian journalist wrote how the Arabs were worried about the possibility of returning to the nuclear deal because they don't trust Iran. The Arabs are saying that the Iranians are liars. They are saying that Iran is trying to advance its own agenda. Iran is trying to export the Islamic revolution to the Arab world and destabilize the Arab countries. Iran is already interfering in the internal affairs of the Arab countries. And they are sponsoring terrorism.

When you look at the Arab reactions to what the US is engaged in, you can see that they are less worried about the nuclear bomb than about what Iran is already doing. "Look," they are saying, "Iran is already in Yemen through the Houthi militia; in Lebanon through Hezbollah; in Gaza through Hamas; in Syria through Hezbollah, in the Assad regime. Iran is also meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq, and Iran is sponsoring this wave of terrorism in Gaza." They are deeply worried by what they perceive as a policy of appeasement towards Iran.

This is why now, we see that many people in the Arab world, all these commentators and political analysts and columnists, are sounding an alarm bell directed to the Biden Administration.

If I can quote Egyptian writer in Asharq Al‑Awsat, a Saudi newspaper, he is saying, "President Trump was right when he walked out of the agreement with Iran because this agreement was very dangerous. The Iranians never abided by it anyway. They were trying to play everyone for fools." He even wrote, "Thank you, Mr. President Trump, for being aware of the Iranian ploy."

The message coming out of the Arab world to the US right now is, "Don't let the Iranians fool you. If you embolden Iran, you are facilitating Iran's mission to undermine security and stability in the Middle East. You are helping Iran threaten our regimes, our government, our economy. You are helping Iran through its proxies in the Middle East -- Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis - spread terrorism in the Arab world."

These are powerful messages.

I have never seen such concern in the Arab world towards the policies or the attitude of a US administration with regards to Iran. We cannot ignore it.

The Saudis are saying that the more America appeases Iran, the more rockets and drone attacks they are getting from Yemen through the Iranian‑backed Houthi militia. Look, also, at what is happening in Lebanon.

For the first time, you have a Lebanese Intifada against Hezbollah and Iran. For the first time, you have people demonstrating on the streets of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon saying, "We want to end the Iranian occupation." This is unprecedented. We never saw such protests in the past.

The Arab world, out of concern, is sending a message to the Biden administration: "Please, be careful in your dealings with Iran. Do not embolden Iran. Do not appease the mullahs unless they change, of course."

The prediction in the Arab world, though, is that the Iranians, under the current regime, the mullahs, are not going to change. The general feeling is that the Iranians are trying to play the Westerners, the Biden administration for fools, by pretending that they are going to abide by their agreements and all that. Perhaps that is one of the reasons people at the US State Department are now following me on Twitter to see what I am writing. It is good that they are... Whether it will change their position, I don't know, but at least they are listening to these voices. We are just putting them in their face.

That is Iran. The other issue it is important to address is the Palestinians. It's my favorite topic. As you all know, the elections have been canceled. It's like, "Oh, okay. Big surprise."

From day one, in January, when President Abbas announced that he was going to hold elections, a few of us said that we had very serious doubts that he would hold them, and would try to find an excuse to cancel or delay them indefinitely -- and that preferably this excuse had to be by putting all the blame on Israel.

Those who believed that he was keen about elections, they don't know what they're talking about. President Abbas is now in the 16th year of his four‑year term in office. There was no reason why he should suddenly wake up one morning at the age of 85 and decide to hold the elections.

The whole thing was a scam from the beginning. It was intended, mostly to appease the Europeans, who were pressuring President Abbas, "Please, go have elections. Please, do something."

Promising elections was also probably an attempt to impress the Biden administration by showing that, "Oh, you see, Mr. President, we are capable of having democracy, or Mr. President Biden, you see I am a legitimate elected leader, I, Mahmoud Abbas...." That was the real intention.

President Abbas earlier said he had no real intention of proceeding with the election unless Israel allowed the vote to take place in Jerusalem. He was sitting there waiting for an excuse. I feel sorry for all those Palestinians who registered for the parliamentary election, which was supposed to take place in a few weeks.

If you want to look at the positive aspect of this whole thing, we had 36 lists registering for the parliamentary election, and many of them had young people, ambitious people, reformists -- people who want democracy, who want regime change, who are saying, "We are fed up with corruption. We want new, young leaders. It is time to get rid of the old guard represented by Abbas."

In the end, President Abbas was searching for an excuse, and he found the issue of Jerusalem as a very good excuse to put all the blame on Israel.

Now, many people in the Western media, and many of my Western colleagues, did not pay attention to a number of facts regarding the dispute over Jerusalem. President Abbas is not telling the truth when he says, "Israel said no to holding the elections in Jerusalem."

There was never any government announcement from Israel saying anything like that. Israel said, "We are not going to interfere with the Palestinian elections. The Palestinians can do whatever they want."

President Abbas was misleading everyone by not telling the truth when he said that Israel had said no to holding elections in Jerusalem. That is number one. Number two, President Abbas is also lying when he tells everyone that under international agreement, Israel is obliged to allow elections to take place in Jerusalem, Palestinian elections.

I have read the Oslo Accords and all the interim agreements. All I found there was that Israel said that it will allow a number of East Jerusalem residents, a number of Arabs from Jerusalem, to vote through the Israeli post offices in Jerusalem.

The rest of the Arabs can vote wherever they want. If an Arab from Jerusalem wants to go to Ramallah and vote over there, Israel is not going to stop him. In the past, many Arabs from Jerusalem went to villages surrounding Jerusalem that are under the Palestinian Authority control and voted over there.

Besides, according to these agreements, something like 6,000 Arabs from Jerusalem were supposed to vote through the Israeli Post Offices in Jerusalem. If that is the case, President Abbas, why did you set the elections on a Saturday, on Shabbat? You know that the Israeli Post Offices do not work on Shabbat.

You cannot on the one hand announce that the elections will take place on Shabbat and then say, "Oh, Israel didn't allow me to..." It was very clear from the beginning that President Abbas was not very serious. If he really wanted these elections to take place, including with the participation of the Arabs in Jerusalem, they would have taken place.

There is nothing better than blaming Israel. That is what President Abbas has been doing for the last 10 or 15 years, redirecting the anger on the Palestinian's towards Israel, daily inciting hatred against Israel.

The allegation that Israel did not allow the election in Jerusalem just seems part of that ongoing campaign of incitement against Israel -- one that is aimed at delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.

President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are saying, "Oh, because Israel did not allow us to hold the elections in Jerusalem, this is the war crime, and we're going to add it to the list of war crimes that we are going to bring it before the ICC," the International Criminal Court, and all that.

It's like, "Excuse me, President Abbas, who are you fooling?" Fortunately, for us, by the way, there are many Arabs and Palestinians over here, who do not believe President Abbas. They know that he was using the issue of Jerusalem as a pretext to avoid the elections.

Why didn't President Abbas want elections? Because his ruling Fatah party is split. For the first time, he is facing a serious challenge from Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah leader who is serving multiple life sentences for murder.

For the first time, he is facing a serious challenge from Nasser Al‑Qudwa, a former Palestinian foreign minister and a nephew of Yasser Arafat. For the first time, he is facing a serious challenge from exiled Fatah leader, Mohammed Dahlan.

In the last four months, we saw that Fatah, Abbas's Fatah faction, was running under three different lists. One belonging to Abbas himself, the second belonging to Nasser Al‑Qudwa and Marwan Barghouti, and the third belonging to Mohammed Dahlan.

Abbas knew that if his faction was divided, that plays into the hands of Hamas, and Hamas will win the election again. We have been to this movie before. In 2006, Hamas won the parliamentary election because Fatah was divided. As I said, the best thing you can do is you put all the blame on Israel.

Many of my Western colleagues, unfortunately, bought this excuse. They parroted it without even checking. They did not verify with the Israelis. They did not even talk about what is really happening to Arabs in Jerusalem.

There is also another factor over here that the international media has ignored. It is, if you ask most Arabs in Jerusalem, "Are you interested in participating in a Palestinian election?" The answer you get is, "No, we do not care. We do not want to be part of the Palestinian political system. We are happy living under Israel. We want to retain our status as residents of Israel. We do not have any confidence, not in the Palestinian Authority, and not in Hamas."

In many ways, the Arabs in Jerusalem were not going to vote in the elections. In the last three Palestinian elections, in 1996, 2005, and 2006, only a minority of Arabs in Jerusalem voted. Which means that their participation or non‑participation would not have changed anything regarding the Palestinian vote. Mahmoud Abbas was looking for an excuse, and eventually, he used the whole issue of Jerusalem as an excuse.

Now, there is also another topic: relations between the Palestinian Authority and the Biden Administration.

The Biden Administration was very quick to announce the resumption of financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, unconditionally, by the way, which I think was a mistake. They announced that they are going to resume aid to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Organization for Palestine Refugees, which, I believe, was also a mistake.

If you are rewarding the Palestinian Authority without demanding anything in return, you will have no leverage with the Palestinian Authority anymore. You've already given them what they wanted, so why should they do what you ask them in the future?

If the Biden Administration thinks that President Abbas will return to the negotiating table with Israel and resume the peace process because they have resumed the financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, that is not going to happen. If it happens, President Abbas will not be serious about the peace process. The Biden Administration was too quick in making all these decisions.

They have already given a gift to President Abbas without getting anything in return. This will not help revive any peace process over here, not in the near future, let alone the fact that President Abbas is also now under attack by many Palestinians who are saying, "Oh, he is not a legitimate leader. He canceled elections. He is preventing us from having democracy. We do not trust him anymore."

I hear these voices every day from a growing number of Palestinians who are questioning his legitimacy.

When you question Abbas's legitimacy, he will not be able to make any concessions to Israel because people will say, "You are an unelected leader. You are a dictator. You have been in power for more than 15 years without elections. Who voted for you?" This will all have a negative impact on any future peace process.

Add to this the fact that the Palestinians continue to be divided. Everyone talks about a two‑state solution. I hear now that the Biden Administration is once again talking about the two‑state solution. I told some US journalists a few days ago that we already have a two‑state solution over here. They said, "What? What are you talking about? When did that happen?"

I told them, "Listen, it happened in 2007." They said, "What? What do you mean?" I said, "You guys have a short memory." In 2007, Hamas, the Iranian‑backed Islamist movement in Gaza, woke up one morning and kicked the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza. The Palestinian Authority, with Israel's help, ran away to the West Bank.

Since then, we have two states for the Palestinians. One in Gaza is run by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Muslim brotherhood. Then you have another mini‑state in the West Bank run by President Abbas. The Palestinians call them the mafia.

This is the reality on the ground that many people are ignoring. How can you talk about reviving the two‑state solution when you have these Palestinian divisions when you have this power struggle going on when you have an erosion of Palestinian confidence in Palestinian leaders?

According to all public opinion polls, more than 60 percent of the Palestinians are demanding that President Abbas step down, but who cares. No one talks about these issues. These are all the issues that we are dealing right now.

I can tell you that the more I look at the situation on the Palestinian side, I see that it continues to be a total mess. I see divisions, more corruption. What worries me is not that Fatah and Hamas are at each other's necks and killing each other. They have been doing that for years. What worries me is that Fatah, Hamas, President Abbas, Ismail Haniyeh, and all these leaders are continuing their incitement against Israel.

This is extremely serious incitement. That is what is encouraging violence. That is what is driving all these terrorists to go out and carry out all these attacks. The rhetoric coming out of Ramallah and Gaza is extremely dangerous. It is emboldening the radicals. It is promoting terrorism.

If you keep telling your people, "The Jews are killing the children, and the Jews are desecrating with their filthy feet our holy sites, and the Jews are violently invading the Al‑Aqsa Mosque, and the Jews want to destroy our holy shrines, and the Jews are cutting the trees, and the Jews are burning the children, and the Jews are...."

How can you ever talk about resuming any peace process with Israel? You delegitimize Israel in the eyes of your people, the Palestinians, to a point where your people will never accept any kind of an agreement or compromise with Israel.

This incitement has to stop. That is why I would have liked to see the Biden Administration tell the Palestinian Authority, "Listen. We will resume financial aid to the Palestinians, but before we do that, on Palestine TV, can you please stop calling for jihad? Can you please stop publishing or broadcasting all these messages that encourage violence?" but the Biden Administration did not demand any of these things, and look where we are now.

Now, President Abbas is calling for an intifada in Jerusalem. His prime minister is calling for an uprising against settlers. They are accusing Israel falsely of planning to destroy the Al‑Aqsa Mosque. These are very serious allegations that are being broadcast.

They are telling their people that violent extremist Jews are planning to undermine stability, planning to attack people in their homes, and other messages that are very, very dangerous.

It was a missed opportunity.

Question: Do you think the US should re‑enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as it is trying to do, and what effect would a nuclearized Iran have on stability in the Middle East?

Abu Toameh: When President Trump walked out of that agreement, I think he had good reason. He realized, like the Israelis before him, that the Iranians were not abiding by that agreement.

We see all these reports about Iran continuing to enrich uranium, about Iran continuing to develop its nuclear and missile programs.... The Iranians are not even trying to hide that, by the way.

If you want to rejoin the agreement, at least make sure that they abide by it. Make sure that they are not hiding things. You cannot just walk back into an agreement without verifying it.

A nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran is not only a threat to Israel. Listen to what the Arabs are saying: "We are also worried. These mullahs in Iran will not hesitate to use any type of weapon against the Arabs, against the Muslims in the region. If the Iranians are now using drones and ballistic missiles to attack Saudi Arabia from Yemen, who is going to prevent them in the future from using nuclear bombs against moderate Arabs, moderate Muslims, or any other Arab or Muslim?" This is the message that is coming out of the Arab world.

I am not in a position where I can advise the Biden Administration what to do and what not to do, but what I can tell them is do not be fooled by these people. If you want to return to that agreement, at least listen also to what the Israelis are telling you, because the Israelis have a lot of intelligence.

That is why the head of the Mossad visited the White House recently and met with US officials, and, according to some reports, even with Biden himself. I do not think that this whole Iranian threat is exaggerated. It is a real threat, and extremely serious.

If you look at Iran's behavior in the past, you see that these Mullahs have no intention of honoring any agreement.

Add to this, the rhetoric, which is very bad, of their ongoing incitement. They might agree to some of the terms set to them by the Americans and the Westerners. But they will not abide by these agreements. They have no intention of abiding.

For them, it is also a matter of dignity. In Arab and Muslim culture, these are issues of dignity. These are cultures of honor, pride, and defiance. I do not think that Iran is suddenly going to wake up in the morning and say, Okay, we are now prepared to make concessions to the big Satan or to the Zionist entity. They see any agreement with the West as a humiliation. That is why I do not trust them. Many Arabs don't trust them. That is the message that they are sending to Biden. If you want to rejoin any agreement, at least listen to what your allies are telling you. Listen to us, the Arabs, also, what we are telling you. Listen to what Israel is saying.

Question: What do you believe is best for a solution with the Palestinians? When and how might this happen?

Abu Toameh: When we talk about a solution, I can think of 10,000 solutions. Everyone here has a solution. Hamas has a solution.

If you ask Hamas, they will tell you, listen, replace Israel with an Islamic state. If there are some Jews who would like to live as a minority, they are welcome. Otherwise, get out of here or I will destroy all of you.

President Abbas has a solution. He is saying Israel must give me 100% of what I am demanding, which is all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and all of East Jerusalem. On top of that, I want the right of return. I want to bring millions of Palestinian refugees into Israel itself. President Abbas is saying, I want the Palestinian state next to Israel. Then I want to turn Israel into another Palestinian state by flooding it with millions of refugees. These are unrealistic solutions. No one takes them seriously.

I think that at present, all Israel can do is work with any Palestinian who wants to work with you and shoot back at any Palestinian who shoots at you. Let us stop talking about solutions. Maybe, right now, there is no solution that will satisfy the needs or the demands of the Palestinians.

When you have Hamas demanding 100 percent of all the land, including Israel, and then you have President Abbas coming up with all his demands, that is impractical. You cannot make solutions with people who are telling you, "Give me 100% or there is no deal." It does not work like that.

Israel is in many ways fortunate, by the way. It has one Palestinian camp that is now working with Israel, which is the Mahmoud Abbas‑led camp, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and then you have Hamas in Gaza with whom you can have ceasefires and things like that.

The situation is dangerous. We live in a dangerous neighborhood. Israel is surrounded by too many enemies. Israel cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. What do I mean by that? What worries me is that Israeli concessions are being misinterpreted as signs of weakness.

In May 2000, Israel woke up one morning and withdrew from Lebanon. We saw what happened. It emboldened Hezbollah. Hezbollah took credit for driving the Jews out of Lebanon through rockets, through suicide bombing.

In 2005, Israel repeated the same mistake with Gaza. In this part of the world, you do not wake up and run away. Even before the Israeli withdrawal or disengagement from Gaza, people were asking, "What is going to happen?" I said, "This will embolden Hamas. This will bring Hamas to power. Israel's withdrawal will be seen as a retreat, as a runaway from violence." That is why, after Israel left Gaza, we saw that Gaza continued to attack Israel. I was there in Gaza the day after Israel left Gaza. I was asked by many of my colleagues to take them on a tour of Gaza to ask Palestinians, "What do you think about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza?" We could not find one Palestinian who saw the Israeli withdrawal as a sign that maybe these Jews really want peace.

What we did find on the other hand, was that 100% of the people we talked to in Gaza, said, "Wow, this is wonderful. We have killed 1,000 Jews in four and a half years. We have carried out all these terrorist attacks against Israel. In the end, Israel runs away from Gaza, so we need to continue firing into Israel!" Why? "Because, today, they ran away from Gaza, tomorrow, Israel will run away from Ashdod, Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, and from there to the sea." Look where we are now.

If you want to make concessions, do it through agreements. Do it after you receive guarantees from the international community.

Do not just wake up in the morning and run away. It doesn't work like that when you are dealing with Arab and Muslim culture. In this part of the world, if you show any sign of weakness, it brings more violence.

Unfortunately and sadly, Israel has paid a very heavy price for mistakes they have made.

Question: Are there any Palestinians who want to work with Israel?

Abu Toameh: Yes. The Palestinian Authority's rhetoric is very anti‑Israel, but there is one good thing about them. They are conducting security coordination with Israel in the West Bank. They are helping Israel fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

They are not doing it because they love Israel or because they are Zionists. They are doing it because they are being paid by the Americans, by the Europeans to do it. They are doing it because Hamas and Islamic Jihad also threaten them -- President Abbas and company.

The Palestinian Authority is delivering on the security front, and, for me, that's fine. I even hear it from Israeli security officials. They are satisfied with the performance of the Palestinian security forces. Three days ago, we saw that the Palestinian police found the car that was used by a terrorist in a shooting attack against three settlers in the West Bank.

That is part of the security coordination I am talking about. This is bringing us some kind of stability in the West Bank. There are people who want to work with Israelis. There are also Palestinians who believe in peace with Israel.

There are also Palestinians who want to make concessions to Israel, but are afraid to speak out because you do not have democracy in Ramallah. You do not have a free media in Ramallah, and you do not have a freedom of expression under Hamas.

I can speak out because I live in Israel. I am fortunate that as an Arab Muslim, I live in Israel, so I can write in Gatestone and in the Jerusalem Post. I can express my opinions freely. It is ironic that I, as an Arab Muslim, I have to live in Israel to be able to practice some form of democracy and freedom of speech.

There are people out there but they cannot speak out. Many of my colleagues in Ramallah and Gaza, they tell me, "You know, here is a story we cannot publish. Can you please publish it? You are lucky, you write in Jewish newspapers, you write for Jewish media outlets."

This is where we are. The Palestinians are in a tragic situation because they are controlled by two dictatorships, two corrupt regimes. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and I see that as an internal Palestinian problem.

Israel should not be involved in it. Let the Palestinians vote for whomever they want. Let the Palestinians choose their own leaders. If they vote for bad leaders like Hamas, they will pay a price like they are paying in Gaza right now.

If they vote for President Abbas who is corrupt and depriving his people of international aid, that is also an internal Palestinian problem. Israel should only be worried about Israel's security.

Israel should tell these folks, "Listen. You guys want to kill each other, you want to deprive your people of the international aid, that is your problem. You want to be corrupt, that is also your problem, but do not mess with my security."

When it comes to security, it is a red line. I think this is Israel's policy in the last few years. Israel should not be meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. Let them do whatever they want when it comes to economy, things like that.

Israel can also help them by allowing more people to come and work in Israel, but Israel should only focus on its security because the internal Palestinian scene is very, very complicated. It is a messy situation over there.

Question: Please assess Mansour Abbas.

Abu Toameh: We have two Abbases: Mahmoud Abbas and Mansour Abbas. I keep asking myself, "What makes someone who is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood suddenly so pragmatic?"

Mansour Abbas belongs to the Islamic Movement in Israel, and his views are well known or have been well known for many years. Personally, I do not trust anything that comes out of the Muslim Brotherhood or anyone affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

He has not abandoned his ideology. I did not see any change in Mansour Abbas's ideology or in his party's list and the ideology of his party, but I did see some surprising developments coming out of Mansour Abbas.

Mansour Abbas today presents a new trend among Arab Israelis. He broke away from the Joint List, which used to consist of four Arab parties, and ran in the last Israeli election on a ticket that said, "Vote for me. I want integration into Israeli society. Vote for me. I want to be part of the Israeli decision‑making process."

As such, more than 150,000 Arabs in Israel voted for him, which is a good sign. It shows that the Arabs in Israel want integration. They do not want to see their representatives in the Knesset talking about Hamas and Islamic jihad or representing the Palestinian Authority.

They want to see their representatives in the Knesset dealing with the real problems facing the Arab community inside Israel, and that's where Mansour Abbas was very successful.

He told the Arab Israeli constituents, "Vote for me. I am not going to represent the PLO. I am not going to represent Hamas. I will focus on internal issues, and I, Mansour Abbas, I do not even rule out the possibility of sitting in a Netanyahu‑led government," and as such, many people voted for him.

Now, it is premature to assess policies. But if Mansour Abbas is going to be an authentic representative of the Arab Israelis and work for equality and work for better services, and for solving the problems of unemployment and poverty in the Arab sector, that's very good.

If he is going to use his list as a Trojan horse to enter any Israeli coalition and then start telling us about the Muslim Brotherhood, and then talking about spreading Islam and all that, no, thank you. That is not what the Arab Israelis want. We have to wait and see.

There are two Mansour Abbases out there. There is one who is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and has not distanced himself from it.

There is another Mansour Abbas who seems to be a pragmatic, realistic man who wants to serve his people. I suggest, we wait to see what is going to happen.

Question: How do the Palestinians feel about the Abraham Accords?

Abu Toameh: When we talk about the Palestinians, we always need to draw a distinction between the Palestinian men on the street and Palestinian leaders or Palestinian politicians and Palestinian factions.

The reaction of the Palestinian leadership, whether it's in Ramallah or in Gaza, has been extremely negative towards the peace agreements, or the Abraham Accords, between Israel and some Arab countries.

The initial reaction was, "Oh, our Arab brothers are abandoning us. They are stabbing us in the back. They do not care about us anymore. They have betrayed the Palestinians. They have betrayed Al‑Aqsa Mosque." We saw very strong reactions coming out of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza.

They were inciting, actually, against the Arab countries. They were inciting against the same Arab countries that were giving them millions and millions of dollars for many, many years.

That is why they have damaged their relations with many of the Arab countries, by attacking the Arabs and accusing them of betraying the Arab cause, betraying the Palestinian issue, betraying Al‑Aqsa. These are serious allegations, especially when they come from Arabs and Muslims.

When you accuse the rulers of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates of betraying Al‑Aqsa, betraying Islam, and betraying the Palestinian issue, you are sending a message to the Arabs and the Muslims that these are infidels. These are traitors. They deserve to be beheaded. They deserve to be hanged. We do not want to see them anymore.

Now, in the Palestinian streets, I did not see mass protests against these agreements. I meet many Palestinians every day. I do not see people walking on the street and saying, "Oh, my God. What are we going to do? It is really a tragedy. We are very worried. Israel has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates!"

You do not really get that kind of reaction. In fact, I meet many Palestinians who are very hopeful. They say, "Oh, maybe there is an opportunity for us to go and work in the United Arab Emirates? Maybe we can go and work there? Maybe we will have tourism from these countries?"

They are saying things that are actually the exact opposite of what their leaders are saying. In many ways, that is encouraging. The same is true of the Arabs in Israel, by the way.

One of the biggest mistakes that the Arab Knesset members made was to vote against the Abraham Accords. This was insane. This was like, how can a representative in the Israeli Parliament vote against the Peace Agreement between Israel and some Arab countries?

That is another reason the Arab voters punished the Joint List: because many Arab‑Israelis have been traveling to Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Many Arab Israelis are looking forward to doing business with the people in the Gulf. They saw these Abraham Accords as an opportunity for all kinds of cooperation, for all kind of hope.

There is always this gap between leadership and the man on the street, whether it is among the Arab Israelis or among the Palestinians. I think that is encouraging that, at least, the man on the street is satisfied or is very optimistic about these agreements.

Question: What would the Middle East be like with a Palestinian state the way the Palestinian Authority is now, and do you think the Palestinians should accept a smaller state than they wish, called a "Swiss cheese" state?

Abu Toameh: The answer is obvious. We already have two Palestinian states. We have two dictatorships. How are they different from the dictatorships in the Arab world? Look at Gaza. Can you show me one newspaper in Gaza that is independent?

Ten days ago, and I was one of the few people who mentioned on Twitter that a female journalist was beaten up by Hamas officers because she was not wearing the hijab. It is hard to talk about public freedoms, both under Hamas in Gaza and under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Unfortunately, any Palestinian state you have in the near future will be the same. We have reached a situation, I am not exaggerating, where people in the West Bank, even in Gaza, tell me, "We hope one day, we will have a democracy like the one the Jews have in Israel."

Do you know how many times I hear in Ramallah people telling me, "We wish one day that we will have our own Knesset"? The Palestinians have not had a parliament for the last 13 or 14 years because of the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas.

A Palestinian state would look exactly like what we already have. Now, will the Palestinians accept anything less or that? I really don't know. What I do know right now is one thing. I cannot find one Palestinian leader who has the courage to make any kind of concessions to Israel.

Any Palestinian leader under the current circumstances who tells Israel, "Okay Israel, I will sign an agreement with you that will give me 90%," will be shot. He will be executed in a public square and condemned as a traitor. President Abbas knows that. The Palestinian leaders can only blame themselves for that. Why? Because Palestinian leaders keep telling their people that anyone who makes concessions to Israel is a traitor. If that is the message you are telling your people, how can you come back to your people with anything less than 100%? That is why we are caught in a vicious cycle.

We are not moving forward because of all these bad messages from the Palestinians. The ordinary Palestinian does not really care if the Palestinian state is three miles less, or four miles... People do not really care about that. People want to live in dignity. They want public freedoms. They want a good economy. They want good leadership. They want something like what Israel does.

If you are going to give us a Palestinian state that is going to look like Sudan in the past, or Syria, or Lebanon, and all those other failed states, no thank you. Just leave us alone, and leave things as they are right now. We do not want another failed Muslim, Iranian‑backed dictatorship in the Middle East. It is bad for the Arabs before it is bad for Israel.

The above are from a briefing to Gatestone Institute on May 5, 2021.

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Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17429/biden-middle-east-alarm-bell

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Fauci's Emails and the Covid Cover-Up - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

If you like your pandemic, you can keep your pandemic.

 

Last May, Dr. Fauci offered National Geographic magazine an “exclusive” interview. It was one of the millions of exclusive interviews that he seemed to be doing for every media outlet in the country and on the planet. But there was a special twist to this particular exclusive interview.

President Trump revealed a week earlier that he had seen evidence that the coronavirus pandemic had come out of a Chinese lab. The media and its pet experts rushed to shut down what they called a “conspiracy theory” even though it was backed by secret intelligence.

And the media’s biggest pet expert was Fauci who was more than happy to oblige.

Fauci told the magazine owned by Disney, China’s big corporate partner, the evidence is “very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated” but he turned curiously evasive when asked if it could have leaked from Wuhan's Level 4 lab and dismissed the relevance of the question since the virus "was in the wild to begin with".

While Fauci pretended to be disinterested in the question of the pandemic’s origins, emails released through Freedom of Information Act requests showed he knew what was at stake.

In April, before Fauci’s interview or President Trump’s comments, Peter Daszak, whose EcoHealth Alliance had moved millions in grants from the National Institutes of Health to study bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, thanked Fauci for protecting the lab.

Daszak offered Fauci a “personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators” for backing "a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology." The entire middle part of the email was curiously redacted. It’s unclear if the collaborators would have included the Chinese scientists laboring away in Wuhan.

The EcoHealth Alliance had been working with Wuhan's top man, Shi Zhengli, and Fauci wasn’t a disinterested party. The Wuhan grant had come through NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which Fauci has headed since 1984. The lab release theory wasn’t just bad news for the EcoHealth Alliance, whose grant would be suspended by the Trump administration, but for Fauci, who wasn’t just helping the media slam Trump, but was also helping himself.

“We’ll all know the shoddy truth of how a conspiracy theory pushed by this administration led @NIHDirector to block the only US research group still working in China to analyze COVID origins,” Daszak later angrily tweeted.

“Why was it canceled? It was canceled because the NIH was told to cancel it," Fauci glibly told Congress that summer. "I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”

Not even Fauci’s biggest media fans could pretend that he didn’t know why it was cancelled.

But even while Fauci was pretending that he didn’t understand why the issue kept coming up when he was in front of the cameras, his emails show that he was well aware of the issue.

Emails show that Fauci was urgently conferring with NIAID's Principal Deputy Director Hugh Auchincloss over gain of function experiments. “She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad,” Auchincloss wrote in one email. Fauci likely already knew the answer.

Fauci closed another email to Auchincloss with a curt, "You will have tasks today that must be done." It was a curious response to the sort of thing that he would breezily dismiss as an irrelevant distraction that he was baffled to be even asked about while in public forums.

But Fauci was actually a longstanding fan of gain-of-function research despite its deadly risks. 

In 2012, he pondered the possibility that, “an important gain-of-function experiment involving a virus with serious pandemic potential is performed” and then badly replicated so that a “scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?”

What was Fauci’s response to a pandemic caused by dangerous gain-of-function research?

“Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks."

It’s entirely possible that we might all be living in that no longer hypothetical world right now.

A year later, Fauci lifted a gain-of-function moratorium on influenza viruses. In 2017, NIH lifted a pause on gain-of- function research on influenza, SARS, and MERS. The pause had been implemented by the Obama administration which offered guidance for lifting it in its final days.

Nature Magazine succinctly described the move in a headline, "The National Institutes of Health will again fund research that makes viruses more dangerous."

This year, Fauci dismissed the funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a “a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus.” 

But the very respectable lab and its scientists were, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said, “engaged in efforts connected to the People's Liberation Army” with “military activity being performed alongside what they claimed was just good old civilian research.”

Fauci insisted that the NIH was not directly backing gain-of-function research that could have produced a pandemic, but the NIH could not deny that the Chinese Military could have done so.

He admitted in a Senate hearing, “You never know” when asked about possible gain of function research being carried out anyway, but kept insisting that he trusted Chinese researchers.

Some of the researchers had to be hospitalized with an unusual illness before the pandemic. The revelation of that and other research has helped demolish Fauci’s attempt to stonewall the theory that the pandemic had come out of the very same lab funded by his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci has signaled a greater openness to the theory he once fought, but it’s much too late to salvage his reputation. The latest release of Fauci emails, heavily censored in places, once again shows that he was the man who knew too much.

As the National Geographic interview went live, a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases employee gushingly emailed him, “I am grateful to say my Director is Dr. Anthony Fauci and share with my family, friends, and church that if you said it, it’s gospel.”

But the faith in Fauci is falling into expert heresy as new revelations arrive every day. The prayer candles and t-shirts, the tide of Fauci fantasies and fan mail, is beginning to recede. Even his biggest fans are turning from the gospel of Fauci to ask some very hard questions.

The experts and the media made it a priority to suppress the China lab leak theory under President Trump. Without Trump, the media no longer has any real need to cover for Fauci and China. What was once falsely described by the media as a “conspiracy theory” is now science.

And if those Fauci emails set off alarm bells, the ones he’s sending now must be deafening.

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/new-emails-cast-light-faucis-coronavirus-cover-daniel-greenfield/

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ADL’s ‘Brief History on Anti-Semitism’ - Christine Douglass-Williams

 

​ by Christine Douglass-Williams

A shameful cover-up.

 

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) first published its “Brief History on Antisemitism” in 2013, but it is newly relevant amid the dramatic recent upswing in antisemitic attacks all over Europe and North America. The ongoing united efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state and support a Palestinian “resistance” that has sought to annihilate Israel from the day of its founding have been relentless, and have gained new impetus in recent weeks. Unfortunately, the ADL plays it safe in its history, ignoring Iran’s hatred of Jews, Arab nationalism and the alliance of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with Hitler during the Holocaust.

This is unfortunate on many levels. The ADL has been foundational in advocating for American Jewry, and its influence extends beyond American borders. According to its website, “the ADL was born at a time when American Jews—both new immigrants and generations-long members of our society—were experiencing deep-seated bigotry.”

Founded in 1913 by the Independent Order of B’nai Brith, the ADL split from B’nai Brith to become an independent organization committed to combating antisemitism. In 2018, it rebranded itself more broadly as an “anti-hate” organization, often taking up the cause of controversial groups and entering into what has become known as the culture war, eliciting criticism in the war of ideas, often from both sides of the right-left divide and anything in between.

Robert Spencer recently noted that ADL called accurate reporting of Muslim responses to coronavirus “anti-Muslim bigotry.” “Anti-hate” today is synonymous with opposition to racism. Opposition to “hate” is based on a notion of whites oppressing non-whites. Those who subscribe to this way of thinking also classify Islam as a “race,” so that when Islamic doctrines and practices are scrutinized and criticized, the offender is deemed to be “Islamophobic.” Similar brandings include “racist,” “white supremacist,” “xenophobic,” “bigoted,” “intolerant,” and the like. The two “safe” groups to criticize are Christians and Jews, who are both largely viewed by Westerners as “white.” Jews are now facing global abuse at levels reminiscent of the Nazi era, but it’s not generated by Christians; rather, it emanates from the Palestinian jihad against the Jewish state of Israel, backed by powerful Islamic powerbrokers — an “unsafe” longstanding issue that the ADL avoids –  failure of nerve that many share.

The predominantly “unsafe” groups to criticize are black and Islamic. Certainly not all Muslims are antisemitic, but Islamic antisemitism is a powerful, united global influencer leading to an increasingly violent new outbreak of antisemitism, as the Palestinian “resistance” is used and recycled as a social justice cause embraced by the anti-racism industry.

The Palestinians are backed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the mainstream media, and even “progressive” Christian and Jewish organizations. A frenzy of anti-Jewish antagonism recently exploded along with the barrage of rocket attacks, launched by Hamas against civilians in Israel. Yet Israel emerged in the international media after implementing Operation Guardian of the Walls as the aggressor for defending itself. The ADL would do itself and its followers a valuable service by amending its omission of the jihad against Israel from its history of antisemitism, and educating without bias.

Right from the start, the ADF document devotes less than three lines to the time before the Common Era (BCE). The Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses record that Jews suffered the affliction of slavery for 450 years (Genesis 12:40) in Egypt. Then came the destruction of the First Temple by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar around 586 BC, when he conquered Jerusalem. The Roman period in 70 CE marks the beginning of the commonly referenced 2000-year history of antisemitism, with the destruction of the Second Temple along with the Holy City of Jerusalem by the Roman emperor Titus. That Temple was on the site on which was centuries later built the Dome of the Rock.

Ignoring the Palestinian jihad factor

The ADL’s history of antisemitism document accurately describes “anti-Judaism after the advent of Christianity,” which after the conversion of the Roman emperors to Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire. During this period, the early Church fathers “sought to establish Christianity as the successor to Judaism,” thus planting the seeds of Replacement Theology. This flawed dogma is a complete repudiation of the New Testament, but nonetheless mutated into the delegimization of Jews, resulting in support among some Christians today for stripping Jews of rights to their historic homeland, and branding the Jewish state, a “racist,” “apartheid” entity.

Prominent Christian propagandists are plentiful today, and they have managed to rebrand Liberation Theology, which started out as a noble endeavor in South America in defense of the poor, then spread to South Africa to stand up in righteousness for blacks under white apartheid. The model of Liberation Theology became twisted into a damaging message that Israel is the image of the white South African oppressor, while the Palestinians are the new “blacks” suffering under an “apartheid” regime.

This idea culminated in an influential document in 2009 called Kairos Palestine, which was intended as a call to the world to recognize “Palestinian suffering” and “help fight Israeli occupation.”

Bethlehem Anglican Canon Rev. Naim Ateek , president of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, based in Jerusalem, was one of the first Church leaders to connect Liberation Theology with the Palestinian cause. As an aggressive anti-Israel campaigner, Ateek once stated in an Easter message: “In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.”

The Palestinian outreach to Christians has been calculated; Jesus is claimed by Palestinians as a Palestinian. The Israeli monitoring agency Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) exposed a Palestinian Authority TV interview in which author Samih Ghanadreh from Nazareth was asked about his new book Christianity and its Connection to Islam. Ghanadeh states that he personally heard Yasser Arafat several times affirm that Jesus was the first Palestinian martyr, to which the TV host replies: “Jesus was a Palestinian, no one denies that.” PMW cited the frequency of this declaration by prominent Palestinians, including the Governor of Ramallah Leila Ghannam (“We all have the right to be proud that Jesus is a Palestinian”), Senior PA leader Jibril Rajoub (“The greatest Palestinian in history since Jesus is Yasser Arafat“), and an editorial in the PA official daily — Al-Hayat Al-Jadida — referred to the “holy Trinity” as being Arafat, Abbas and Jesus.

Thus the Palestinian “Holy Trinity” consists of a man who did his Ph.D. in Holocaust denial (Abbas), along with Rahman Abdul Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (a.k.a. Yasser Arafat), who learned under the tutelage of his revered uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who worked with Hitler and Adolf Eichmann to slaughter six million Jews.

This sacrilegious message has been tailored for evangelicals, who are sometimes divided. Most are unwaveringly committed to loving Israel and the Jewish people. Many maintain this friendship because the Bible instructs it, and because Jesus is Jewish — from the House of David. Many evangelicals are limited in their understanding of the history of Palestinian antagonism against the Jewish state, making some prone to the circulating Palestinian victimhood propaganda, which for some drowns out the religious call to “bless” Israel.

Political correctness perpetuates the gang-up against Israel and Jews

The ADL report does a thorough job in surveying the Christian roots of antisemitism, but it avoids discussion of the roots of Palestinian hatred, the biggest issue driving antisemitism globally in our time. The West’s cultural tunnel vision is behind such avoidance. The anti-racism (aka “anti-hate”) industry’s us-versus-them victimhood narrative (i.e., whites versus non-whites) is rife with politically correct lines that one must not cross. It is a marketing scheme that fools people into thinking they are on the side of social justice. People can then feel good about themselves, having advocated for those who are deemed to be oppressed, notwithstanding the pervasive propaganda and revisionist history. Such propaganda creates a fertile ground for supporting revolutionaries such as those who are engaged in the Palestinian “resistance” and Black Lives Matter, which pledged unwavering support for the Palestinians during the latest conflict that was provoked by Hamas and resulting in Operation Guardian of the Walls. Reports are endless about the Palestinian suffering that is caused by Hamas and yet successfully blamed on Israel.

This is not to deny that sincere anti-racism advocates work within the anti-racism industry. The pervasive tolerance of violence and incitement, however, that has sprung from the revolutionary quarters of the Palestinian and Black Lives Matter groups, which have escaped adequate scrutiny, has led to a heightening of antisemitism, anti-white sentiment and violation of the rule of law. All this is due to the weaponization of the anti-racism industry.

Few question the reality of Western tolerance of violent Islamic antisemitism, black-on-black crime, intra-minority group racism, global Islamic supremacism, the lack of religious freedom in Muslim countries, Christian persecution by jihadists, and the influx of illegal immigrants. Inherent in the white-versus-non-white model is a soft bigotry of low expectations which conveys the message that anything a “non-white” does can be excused because he or she is a victim of white colonialism, white “occupation,” white racism, white Jewish “occupation,” and the like. The “non-white” person is never expected to move beyond victimhood. In this view, whites are indebted to non-whites, and since oppression provokes rage and retaliation, revolutionary Palestinian and Black Lives Matter groups are broadly deemed to be justified in their incitement to violence and actual violence. Disciples of these revolutionaries have been indoctrinated to believe that “apartheid Israel” is murdering and displacing innocent Palestinians, while Hamas is quietly justified as a defender of the oppressed, even among some who have a basic knowledge of what Hamas actually represents.

The past sins of non-whites, in contrast, are quickly dismissed, including 1400 years of Islamic jihad — long before the dawning of European colonialism; the Japanese oppression of the Chinese at the end of the Qing Dynasty; Iranian systemic racism against Afghans;  the persistence of colorism in India, the Caribbean and elsewhere; black-on-black crime, and the recent surge of blacks attacking Asian people in America. In fact, an article in The Conversation claimed that “white supremacy is the root of all race-related violence in the U.S.” Cases that contradict this claim are swept under the carpet, even as a genocide is today being waged against Christians in Africa by mainly black jihadist groups that are seeking to expand an Islamic caliphate.

Does anyone wonder why the abuse of Uighurs in China is tolerated while the world is obsessed about “Islamophobia” in Western countries, and about Israel being an “apartheid” state?

Obsessions with white people oppressing non-whites have become commonplace in the West as it is manipulated by revolutionary groups, while no one cares what non-white groups do to each other or to white people. Feeding this soft bigotry of low expectations is the idea that no one outside of the “white race” can be expected to overcome the discrimination and disadvantage inflicted by whites. The historic damage inflicted by whites is judged to be eternal and fixed. This results in a catastrophic reordering of societies: anything done to whites in supposed retaliation to white oppression is pre-determined and understandable, even acceptable. Although Jews have suffered antisemitism for over 3,000 years, and survived a Holocaust in the memory of many who are still alive, they are unjustly blamed and labelled “occupiers” and “racists.” The problem is that Israel is pervasively viewed as a country of white Jews oppressing brown Palestinians.

Christianity in today’s climate is also deemed to be a white religion, despite its establishment in the Middle East. So is Judaism, even though there are black African, Chinese and Indian Jews. Because they’re perceived as white, Christians and Jews are scapegoated, and cannot escape the label of “oppressor,” even in the face of Christian persecution and jihadist endeavors against the Jewish state of Israel. Within these groups, blame is also levied among one another and at each other for oppressing non-whites. All of the world’s woes are the fault of the white Jew or the white Christian. This is the new woke ethic, easily manipulated by special interest groups, and central to escalating antisemitism.

Yes, it does have to do with religion

This brings us back to the ADL, which limits its history of antisemitism to mainly white Christians, the “safe” group, while letting the worst enemies of Israel off the hook: largely non-white Islamic supremacists.

Whenever the Palestinian culture of jihad and/or the role of the Islamic religion is pointed out, many argue that the conflict is a land issue, and that the latest round of violence was perpetrated by the “extremist” Muslim Brotherhood offshoot group Hamas. But the problem isn’t only Hamas, which is funded by Iran, and whose latest actions were supported and rewarded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which influences the UN.

As noted by the Jewish Center for Public Affairs:

If we turn to the writings of key Islamists of the 20th century, we find repeated over and over again the claim that there is a global Jewish conspiracy to destroy Muslims, the Islamic faith, and Islamic culture. We also find a clear link between this belief and calls for genocide against Jews and Israelis.

In my book, “The Challenge of Modernizing Islam”, Muslim reformist Dr. Tawfik Hamid blames a Muslim “impulse to violence” on the “mainstream sources of Islamic law.” He goes on:

“I am a typical Arab Egyptian with a Muslim background. As any Arab, I was brought up on hating Israel and the Jews. When I was four years old, the de-humanization of the Jews everywhere around me led me to imagine them as green ugly people, full of evil.”

“Throughout history, the religion was based on supremacy. In the case of Israel, it hits Islamists at the core when a small country like Israel defeats them. Even with all the money they have, with all the oil they have and with some 200 million Muslims, they still can’t get rid of Israel. For them, it’s an issue of challenging their supremacy, and their feeling of supremacy is vital to their religion.”

“If I go to Israel and say I am from Egypt, I am still welcomed, but try going to a Muslim country and saying that you are from Israel, and see how they will treat you. This can tell you that the real problem is in the Arab world.”

Israeli historian Ephraim Karsh notes:

“if anything, it is the region’s tortuous relationship with modernity, most notably the stubborn adherence to its millenarian religiously based imperialist legacy, which has left physical force as the main instrument of political discourse to date. But to acknowledge this would mean abandoning the self-righteous victimization paradigm that has informed Western scholarship for so long, and treating Middle Easterners as equal free agents accountable for their actions, rather than giving them a condescending free pass for political and moral modes of behavior that are not remotely acceptable in Western societies.”

Religion is the cloak around the Middle East; religious wars have led to lands changing hands and experiencing occupation. But the Jews have an ancient historic claim to the land which includes Judea and Samaria (now known as the “West Bank”) and East Jerusalem. There is no occupation. Islamic conquests established the vastness of the Middle East as Islamic lands as Muslims occupied Middle Eastern countries, including the land of Israel after the Arab conquest. Global Islamic leaders still view Judea, Samaria and Gaza as land rightly belonging to Palestinians, who historically are really Ottoman South Syrians. Israel was attacked by the neighboring Muslim countries from the day of its birth; in the recent battle which was stirred by Hamas, the OIC and Islamic scholars of the upper ranks worldwide stood in unity with their Palestinian brothers.

Historically, Jerusalem was never holy to Muslims. It is not mentioned in the Qur’an; Muslims turn to Mecca to pray. As Morton Klein, President of the Zionist Organization of America, indicates:

In the seventh century, the Damascus-based Umayyad rulers built up Jerusalem as a counter-weight and hajj pilgrimage alternative to Mecca, where their political rivals were. This is when the important Muslim shrines, the Dome of the Rock (691 CE) and, later, the Al-Aqsa Mosque (705 CE), were intentionally built on the site of the destroyed biblical Jewish temples –– a time-honored practice to physically signal the predominance of Islam.

To this day, the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem remains, along with Hamas’ commitment to defend al-Quds for the Ummah, and the Palestinian National Charter to obliterate Israel “from the River to the Sea.”

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, states:

‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood which carries the mandate: “- “Allah is our goal, the Prophet is our leader, the Quran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, and death for Allah is our most exalted wish.”

The Muslim Brotherhood regards armed jihad as the mandatory religious duty of all Muslims. Many would argue that Muslims do not adhere to this; however, a disturbing number of Muslims and Islamic leaders subtly support it in defense of the Ummah, the global Islamic community. Despite the Muslim Brotherhood being outlawed in many Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), nevertheless, the leaders of the OIC again demonstrated their allegiance to their Palestinian brothers when Operation Guardian of the Walls was engaged in defense of Israel’s citizens against the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, Hamas, which rules Gaza.

In the face of Hamas’ bombardment of Israeli civilians, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry called his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan. The two condemned actions “undermining legitimate Palestinian rights,” and emphasized Israel’s responsibility to protect those rights. Only it wasn’t Israel that began this battle.

Jordan and Saudi Arabia then called for international efforts to protect Palestinians against Israeli attacks and violations, thus perpetrating the lie that Israel was the aggressor. The OIC went so far as to call for an immediate halt to Israel’s “barbaric attacks” on Gaza, and blamed “systematic crimes” against the Palestinians for the hostilities. The OIC emergency meeting at the high level of the foreign ministers was convened at the request of Saudi Arabia.

There has been no end to the Islamic antisemitism which led to the war against Israel upon its establishment and persists to this day, amid incessant declarations of Israel’s “apartheid occupation.” Meanwhile, exonerations of the role of normative Islam, the Hadiths and Quranic texts persist, despite the fact that all these fuel the Palestinian culture of martyrdom.

Dennis Prager writes:

The Middle East dispute has never been about land. Israel is the size of New Jersey. It is slightly larger than El Salvador. If it were the size of Manhattan, the Palestinians and many Muslim states would still seek its destruction. There are 22 Arab states in the Middle East, but there is no room for one Jewish state. There is even a state with a Palestinian majority: Jordan. The issue is not land. The issue is religion.

Al-Azhar in Cairo is the most prestigious institution of Islamic learning in the world; its Grand Sheikh, Ahmad Al-Tayeb, has justified antisemitism on Quranic grounds. He stated in an interview:

“This is an historical perspective, which has not changed to this day. See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism, whereas our peaceful coexistence with the Christians has withstood the test of history. Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. This is a cause of great distress for the Muslims.

The Koran said it and history has proven it: ‘You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.’”

The ADL’s Brief History on Antisemitism is partly right: Christians certainly bear plenty of guilt historically for antisemitism, as any reasonable person would agree. But why downplay the history of the jihad against Jews and Israel? Regrettably, given the unceasing Palestinian propaganda of victimhood (supported by the OIC), many Christian organizations have today bought into this idea. Now the ADL has essentially joined them by steering clear of the “unsafe” Islamic supremacist influence, despite its tangible presence.

Leaving out the Christian role in Jewish Statehood

It is unfortunate that the paramount role played by Christian Zionists in their support of Jews and in the founding of the Jewish state of Israel is often overlooked. The Israeli government, however, does not forget. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated:

 “And you, the supporters of Israel, the many thousands who are in that hall, and the millions, the many millions in the United States and elsewhere, Christian friends of Israel, you are always there for us…..We have no better friends on earth than you.”

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin noted:

“These are difficult and painful times for Christians in the Middle East…I am proud that Israel is the only country in our region where the Christian community is not shrinking, but in fact is growing.”

The Jabotinsky Centennial Medal for friendship to Israel, was presented to Christian preacher Jerry Falwell by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1980; and the Friends of Zion Museum, founded by Mike Evans, an American Christian evangelist, is visited by dignitaries around the world.

This friendship is nothing recent. It is instructed in the Jewish and Chrisrtian scriptures (Numbers 24:9, Genesis 12:3) and taken seriously by Christian Zionists. Reverend William Hechler was a friend and associate to the pioneering Zionist Theodor Herzl, and other Christian figures were central the story of Israel’s founding. Ten Christians were among Herzl’s Christian guests at the First Zionist Congress. It was at this Basel Congress that the Basel Program was established, which advanced the goals of the Zionist movement and adopted the “Hatikva” as its anthem. To this day, multitudes of Christian tourists travel to the Holy Land and support Israel internationally. Israel honors this timeless loyalty by holding a Christian Media Summit in recognition of the enduring friendship.

Jews have Muslim partnerships, as well, as seen in the Abraham Accords, but that is tangential to the issue of the increasing support for the Palestinian jihad globally, as it is backed by powerful Islamic influencers and justified by the UN and the mainstream media. Palestinian propaganda is winning; Jewish demonization flourishes. The ADL is not alone in singling out historic Christian antisemitism, while avoiding the growing Islamic jihad against Jews globally and Israel. But this avoidance does nothing to aid in the advance of truth, justice and sound policy in combating antisemitism. Instead, it fails to identify the most dangerous enemies of the Jewish people and Israel, leaving the threat invisible and poorly understood. In so doing, the ADL unwittingly ameliorates the virulent surge of antisemitism globally, by covering up the roots of the demonization of Israel that continues in the name of “helping” the Palestinians.

 

Christine Douglass-Williams

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/adls-brief-history-antisemitism-focuses-christians-christine-douglass-williams/

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