FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Bosnian Muslim soldiers of the SS Khanjar Division, raised by Haj Amin al-Husseini, read a pamphlet entitled "Islam and Judaism" in 1943

In August 1929, the British-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, accused Jews who wished to establish rights to pray at the Western Wall of planning to destroy the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. What else is new?

As a result, Arabs rioted and committed pogroms against Jews in such places as Tzfat, Hevron, Yafo, etc. A total of 133 Jews were murdered, and in Hebron the ancient Jewish community was entirely driven out. Husseini’s slogan “itbach al yahud” means “butcher the Jews.”

Al-Husseini — whom Yasser Arafat (probably falsely) claimed as an uncle — had tremendous influence among Palestinian Arabs from 1920 until he fled to Iraq in 1937. The vicious pogrom in Iraq in June 1941, called the Farhud, was partly due to his incitement.

The inspiration behind the coup, and the Farhud itself, came not from Baghdad, but Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, sought refuge in Iraq in 1939 with 400 Palestinian émigrés. Together, they whipped up local anti-Jewish feeling. An illiterate populace imbibed bigotry through Nazi radio propaganda. Days before the Farhud broke out, the Nazi youth movement, the Futuwa, went around daubing Jewish homes with a red palm print. Yunis al-Sabawi, who, together with the Mufti and Rashid Ali, spent the rest of the war in Berlin, instructed the Jews to stay in their homes so that they could more easily be rounded up. — Lyn Julius, “Farhud: a slaughter in Iraq“

In November 1941 he met Hitler in Berlin, where he helped create a Waffen SS division of Bosnian Muslims to fight for the Reich in Eastern Europe. Here is an incredible video, including WWII German footage and narrated by historians Robert Wistrich and Sir Martin Gilbert, that describes al-Husseini’s service to the Nazis, and shows how the Mufti cross-pollinated Islamic and Nazi antisemitism (7m 55s):

One of Husseini’s tasks for Hitler involved Arabic propaganda broadcasts to the Middle East:

The Nazi Arabic-language broadcasts were the result of a collaboration between officials in the German foreign ministry and pro-Nazi Arab exiles who found refuge from the British in Berlin, most notably Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the most important Palestinian religious and political figure of the era, and Rashid Ali al-Kilani, leader of a pro-Axis coup in Iraq in 1941, which was quickly reversed by the British military [but not before the Farhud — ed.]. Husseini’s and Kilani’s arrival in Berlin in 1941 provided the Axis with a rare asset: Arabs who could communicate Nazi ideas in colloquial, fluent, and passionate Arabic…

Following the arrival of Husseini and Kilani in Berlin, the broadcasts more skillfully integrated the Nazi perspective on World War II with themes of Arab nationalism, as well as rhetoric that we would now call fundamentalist or radical Islamic. On July 3, 1942, as Rommel’s Afrika Korps advanced toward El ‘Alamein, about 60 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt, a station called Berlin in Arabic announced that German and Italian forces were coming to “guarantee Egypt’s independence and sovereignty,” and “to liberate the whole of the Near East from the British yoke.” Husseini, who came on the air to celebrate Rommel’s “glorious victory,” declared that “the Axis powers are fighting against the common enemy, namely the British and the Jews.” …

At 8:15 p.m. on July 7, 1942, the Voice of Free Arabism played a remarkable program titled, “Kill the Jews Before They Kill You.” The broadcast began with a lie: “A large number of Jews residing in Egypt and a number of Poles, Greeks, Armenians, and Free French have been issued with revolvers and ammunition” to fight “against the Egyptians at the last moment, when Britain is forced to evacuate Egypt.” The broadcast continued:

“In the face of this barbaric procedure by the British we think it best, if the life of the Egyptian nation is to be saved, that the Egyptians rise as one man to kill the Jews before they have a chance of betraying the Egyptian people. It is the duty of the Egyptians to annihilate the Jews and to destroy their property. … You must kill the Jews, before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews, who have appropriated your wealth and who are plotting against your security. Arabs of Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill your children and to destroy you. According to the Muslim religion, the defense of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. This is your best opportunity to get rid of this dirty race, which has usurped your rights and brought misfortune and destruction on your countries. Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores, annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.”

After the war, al-Husseini continued his work toward the extermination of the Jewish people. The British actually allowed him to return to Mandate Palestine, where he became head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jerusalem. Later he went to Cairo, where he was a key player in the ODESSA network that helped former SS war criminals escape, and in many cases find refuge in Arab countries. It’s said that his influence was partly responsible for the expulsions of Jews from Arab countries after 1948.

Husseini is still a hero to Palestinian Arabs. Of course Yasser Arafat referred to him often, and even Mahmoud Abbas praised him.

So much for the theory that Palestinian hatred and violence is caused by ‘occupation’!

Technorati Tags: Haj Amin al-Husseini, Palestinians, Nazis

The murdered Fogel family: Ruth, Udi, Yoav (11), Elad (4), Hadas (4 mo.).

The absolute vileness of the “Palestinian movement” is hard for those of us who grew up in civilized societies like the US and Israel to comprehend. As a result, many of us may be prepared to listen when they say that it is about human rights or justice.

But every once in awhile we get a window into what’s really behind it.

Even Israeli police and security personnel, who have seen some terrible things, were shocked last year by the sadistic murder of five members of the Fogel family including a 4-month-old baby whose throat was cut, committed by two Palestinian Arab teenagers, Amjad and Hakim Awad, cousins from the village of Awarta.

Captured after an intensive manhunt, the Awads were both convicted and given multiple life sentences. There was even consideration of applying the death penalty, something not done in Israel since Eichmann was hanged in 1962. Unfortunately, the court decided against it.

One might expect that the official Palestinian reaction — after all, they are preparing to petition the UN for statehood again — would have been something like “we condemn violent extremism, although we understand their frustration, etc.”

But they are past pretending even that much.The official reaction is that the butchers  are heroes!

Watch the following video, from official Palestinian TV, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch:

PA TV host: “We have a call from the family of prisoner Hakim Awad.”

Mother of Hakim Awad: “I thank you for connecting me with my son, because I and all of the family are prevented for security reasons [from visiting him].

Host: “Go ahead, sister, we can convey your voice.”

Mother of Hakim Awad: “My greetings to dear Hakim, the apple of my eye, from the village of Awarta, 17 years old, who carried out the operation in Itamar [i.e., killing of 5 Fogel family members], sentenced to 5 life sentences and another 5 years, in prison.”

Aunt of Hakim Awad: “I’m the sister of prisoner Hassan Awad and of Salah Awad; [I am] Um Habib, from the village of Awarta. My warm greetings to all the great heroic prisoners, to my brother Hassan Awad, head of the village council; to my brother Salah Awad, the heroic prisoner journalist; to the heroic, resolute prisoner, the lion, Yazid Awad, my nephew; and to my nephew Hakim Awad, the hero, the legend.”

Host:“We [PA TV], for our part, also convey our greetings to them.”

Aunt of Hakim Awad: “I dedicate this song to Hassan Awad, Yazid Awad, Hakim Awad, and Salah Awad, in prison:

‘My brother, in solitary confinement, your voice calls to me
You dare not throw down the rifle
That is what the homeland asked of me
In your eyes, we are all self-sacrificing fighters.
I convey greetings to the sound of the bullets of Ahmad Sa’adat and Hakim Awad.'”

Host: “Thank you for being with us, the family of prisoners Hassan and Salah Awad of Awarta.”
— (PA TV, Jan. 19 and 21, 2012)

This is nothing new. According to the Palestinian ethos, murdering Jewish civilians, including (especially) children, is not only legitimate, but praiseworthy.

Now I know that if any Palestinian sympathizers are reading this, right now they will be saying “well, didn’t the IDF murder children in Gaza?”

Actually, no. Pro-Arab propaganda often takes the form of inverting reality, accusing Israel of behaving like Nazis, or (more to the point) Arab terrorists. The IDF’s operation in Gaza in 2008-9, a response to the thousands of rockets that had been bombarding Israeli towns since 2002, resulted in a higher ratio of combatant to noncombatant casualties (about 3 to 1) than any instance of urban warfare in recent times (where the ratio is more like 9 to 1). This is despite the fact that Hamas deliberately operated from civilian areas in order to use the population as a shield.

On the other hand, we have Palestinian Arab ‘military’ actions like these:

The Ma’alot massacre, in which 25 Israelis were killed including 22 children, the Bus of Blood (35 dead, 13 children), the attack on the nursery at Kibbutz Misgav Am (3 dead, 2 children), the Dolphinarium bombing (21 teens dead), the Sbarro Pizza bombing (15 dead, 5 children), the shooting at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva (8 dead, 7 teens), the vicious butchering of the Fogel family (5 dead, 3 children), the antitank rocket attack on a yellow school bus (1 child) — these are just a few of a long, long list.

One of the scandals of the the conflict is that the media have helped the Arabs get away with portraying it as a dignified struggle for self-determination, when it is better described as one to eliminate the Jewish presence from the region, carried out primarily by terrorism against civilians — an attempt to make living in Israel so painful that Jews will simply give up — and only secondarily by conventional war and diplomacy.

Don’t expect to see the details of the Palestinian admiration for murderers in the NY Times, for example.

Technorati Tags: terrorism, Palestinians, Israel

From Ha’aretz:

[Marwan] Barghouti, who is likely to become the next Palestinian President, was convicted by the Israeli justice system of five counts of murder – four Israelis and a Greek monk – during the second intifada. There is no question he supported and encouraged violence.

Actually, as the head of the Fatah Tanzim during the second intifada,  he was almost certainly responsible for many other murders. But the prosecution was unable to provide sufficient evidence to convict him of more than five, for which he received five life sentences.

In a normal world it would be impossible to imagine that one country would release a convicted mass murderer so that he could become the president of a state to be established next door. In Russia (or Texas) he would be executed. Here in California, he might be sentenced to death but then remain in prison for life (while running up astronomical legal costs). But he would not be released to become, for example, Governor of Nevada.

The Ha’aretz story continues,

Barghouti’s involvement in past terror attacks does not change the fact that in light of the political developments on the Palestinian side – the possible reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and especially the lack of contenders against President Mahmoud Abbas – Barghouti remains the only Fatah member who could inherit Abbas’ place when the time comes.

In other words, since he is the one murderer that two murderous terrorist organizations find acceptable, then by all means Israel should facilitate unifying them by letting him go free. Incredible logic!

Barghouti appeared at a court hearing concerning a lawsuit filed by the family of Esther Kleiman, who was shot to death in 2002:

Esther Kleiman z"l

March 24, 2002 – Esther Kleiman, 23, of Neve Tzuf, was killed in a shooting attack northwest of Ramallah, while traveling to work in a reinforced Egged bus.

Esther was on the bus on her way to the Samaria community of Ofra where she worked as a special education kindergarten teacher for Downs Syndrome children. At least one terrorist on a ridge overlooking the Abud bypass road fired at the bus as it passed the village of Umm Safah, near Ateret. A bullet apparently penetrated an unprotected part of the bus above the bullet-proof windows, hitting her in the head…

Esther completed high school at Ulpanat Zvia and then volunteered for National Service for two years in the Neveh Sha’anan School for disturbed children in Jaffa, where she worked with both Arab and Jewish children. After completing her service, she studied special education at the Talpiot teacher’s college in Jaffa. Esther was quiet and shy, but she loved working with children, her father said, and preferred relating to the youngsters on a one-to-one basis, rather than in a classroom.

Neve Tzuf residents described Esther as a very kind and pleasant person who always had a smile on her face. She worked as a volunteer with disabled and disadvantaged children in addition to her regular job.

Kleiman’s family is suing the Palestinian Authority for several million dollars, because the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades killed her. Barghouti is supposed to testify on the connection between Fatah, the PA, and the al-Aqsa Brigades. Of course he refused to testify on the grounds that he does not recognize the authority of the court (to be precise, he does not recognize the Jewish state).

One wonders why he was brought to the courtroom in the first place, since he refused to speak at his own murder trial for the same reason. He was, however, given a platform to speak on an unrelated question:

The court hearing provided Bargouti with a rare opportunity to communicate with the Palestinian – and the Israeli public. One of the most important messages he conveyed to the many journalists surrounding him was that an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and the establishment of a Palestinian state will bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An ‘important message’ indeed! As one popular pro-Israel blogger would write, “what could go wrong?”

You might be forgiven for wondering if it would be a good idea to take the word of a mass murderer who in effect promises that if you give him half of what you possess, then he won’t try to take the rest. But the Ha’aretz reporter assures us that Barghouti has repented from his evil ways:

In the past, Barghouti spearheaded the Fatah faction that called for terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank, and from January 2002 he even supported attacks within the Green Line. Like many Palestinians, Barghouti drew inspiration from Hezbollah, which forced Israel to retreat from southern Lebanon in May 2000, and thought that adopting the Shiite group’s tactics will cause Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories.

However, in recent years Barghouti admitted that the Palestinians made a grave mistake by turning to terrorism. In countless interviews he said he supports “popular resistance” – that is, unarmed resistance.

I don’t know about that last argument. For example,

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) (Arabic: لجان المقاومة الشعبية, Lijān al-Muqāwama al-ShaÊ¿biyya) are a coalition of various armed Palestinian factions that oppose the conciliatory approach adopted by the Palestinian Authority and Fatah towards Israel…

Set up in late 2000 by former Fatah and Tanzim member Jamal Abu Samhadana, the PRC are composed primarily of ex-Fatah fighters and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades members and are alleged by Israel to be inspired and financed by Hezbollah. The PRC specializes in planting roadside bombs and vehicle explosive charges – directed against military and civilian convoys in the Gaza Strip. The PRC is described as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. — Wikipedia

Is that the way ‘popular’ means ‘nonviolent’?

According to the reporter, Israel will have no choice if he is elected ‘President of Palestine’:

…some of the people close to Barghouti have no doubt he intends to run for president, even if it means being elected while still behind bars. He also understands that after the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap – in which he was not included – his only chance of being released is to be elected president. Israel will have a hard time dealing with the international pressure to release an imprisoned president.

It’s hard to think of an analogy. Could California mass murderer Charles Manson be elected Governor of Nevada? Of course not. But then, Nevada is not an artificial entity created simply to oppose and destroy California.

Israel is still a sovereign state, which can keep its convicted murderers in prison despite the pretensions of its enemies. Releasing Barghouti because he may become ‘President of Palestine’, or even if he is elected, would be a surrender of sovereignty, and cannot be permitted.

The best solution, going forward, will be the establishment of a death penalty for terrorist murderers like Barghouti.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Marwan Barghouti

In today’s New York Times is a long article by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman entitled “Will Israel Attack Iran?” It is the best-informed article I’ve read on this subject yet. It is also rational and fair — there are no villains other than the Iranian regime. It is a must-read.

Bergman has interviewed Ehud Barak and several former Mossad heads. He includes a fascinating account of the various covert actions undertaken by the Mossad and perhaps other agencies like the CIA, to delay the Iranian weapons program.

There are voices in Israel that say that an attack on Iran would be ineffective or the Iranian reaction so damaging as to make even an effective attack a Pyrrhic victory at best. But the position of Defense Minister Barak and PM Netanyahu seems to be that a nuclear Iran is inconsistent with the continued existence of the state. They believe that there are only a few months in which to stop it, before the program has advanced to the point that an Israeli military intervention will be impossible.

They would like to see Iran stopped peacefully, perhaps a result of economic pressure. The next best option would be an American military operation. But the point of no return is farther off for the US than for Israel, due to its greater firepower and, to be honest, a lesser degree of concern. Iran is expected to hide what it is doing, to pretend to negotiate seriously, to put all the pieces of the puzzle in place except for the final assembly of a weapon. But at some point, Israel’s red line will be reached. If the US has not acted by then, Israel will be forced do so. Bergman expects that point to be reached sometime this year, before US elections.

All this makes sense to me. It is almost impossible to believe that the US will launch an attack on Iran in the next few months. I can’t see any advantage for the administration, which would be accused of pulling a “wag the dog” maneuver. The resulting oil shock, as well as possible retaliation against American troops in the region, or even terrorism against the US, would be blamed on Obama at the worst possible time.

But this makes an Israeli strike almost a certainty.

Israel’s intention seems to be to inform Washington at the last possible moment, in order to show respect for its most important ally, but not give it enough time to stop it. The US, on the other hand, will try to find out when Israel is preparing to strike. Both President Obama and Israeli officials have pointed to the high level of military cooperation between Israel and the US as a sign of a coincidence of objectives between the countries. But there may be other reasons it is advantageous for the US to be in close contact with the Israeli military. Some analysts have suggested that a joint military exercise planned for April was canceled due to Israeli reluctance to have 9,000 US personnel in the country at this time.

There is no question that the Obama Administration would like any action to be delayed until after the election. The issue is how far the US will go to prevent an Israeli attack before then. Opinions range from “not past diplomatic pressure” to “we will shoot at Israeli planes.”

I’m going to go with the first option. While I think the administration would rather avoid the political risks of doing the job itself, the goals of the US and its very influential conservative Sunni Arab allies would best be served by keeping Iran from going nuclear. It would be convenient for the administration to have Iran defanged, while Israel can be blamed for any unpleasant side effects.

Israel will probably find itself fighting Hizballah and Hamas, either preemptively or after they are unleashed by Iran in retaliation. There may even be attacks from other Palestinian elements who take advantage of the situation. At this point, we can assume that the US, UN, Europe, Russia, etc. will ratchet up the pressure on Israel in the name of ‘peace’, but actually to prevent any real change in the status quo. I hope Israel will be able to resist this pressure and finally crush the terrorist militias.

So there it is. I don’t blame my Israeli friends and relations who look ahead with trepidation toward what may become Israel’s most damaging war. In fact I understand those who say that there is no future in fighting one war after another, ad infinitum. I understand that a lasting peace would be far better than winning a series of wars, with their unavoidable human and material cost.

Of course I also understand that there is only one way to get this lasting peace, and that is by defeating the enemy soundly enough and often enough that they will understand that peace is to their advantage as well.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, Iranian nuclear weapons, war