Jews Legally Purchased ‘Palestinian’ Land Before The Holocaust. Rashida Lied.

By Marina Medvin
https://townhall.com/columnists/marinamedvin/2019/05/15/jews-legally-purchased-palestinian-land-before-the-holocaust-rashida-lied-n2546349
May 15, 2019


Rashida Tlaib 

The history behind the rebirth of Israel is so deeply intertwined with Palestinian propaganda that it is difficult for most Americans to answer a simple question: how did Jews come to possess the land now known as Israel? Palestinian-first Rashida Tlaib has elucidated this propaganda plague through her recently publicized statements of  Jew-hatred, letting us know how calm and cozy she feels when she thinks about the Holocaust extermination of 6 million Jews. Leftists came to her defense, justifying her Jew-hatred as entitlement because her poor Palestinian predecessors allegedly helped the post-Holocaust Jews take their land, but now find themselves victims of these Jews. Rashida plainly lied and regurgitated Palestinian propaganda — she retold revisionist history. 

Jews didn’t “take” land. 

Jews Purchased The Land Before The Holocaust

In the 1800s, Jewish zionists, which are diaspora Jews who wanted to return to their biblical homeland, started buying land in the region of Palestine, which belonged to the Ottoman Empire (the Turks). The Empire made these land purchases very difficult, discriminatorily restricting Jews’ ability to purchase land in the region as much as they could through legislation. By the 1900s, land purchase became easier and Zionists accelerated their land purchases of the Turk-controlled land.

According to the Ottoman census of 1875, Jews constituted a majority of the population of Jerusalem. By 1905, they comprised two-thirds of Jerusalem. The Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910 stated Jerusalem’s population as 60,000, of which 40,000 were Jews. The population of both Jews and Christians surpassed that of Muslims in Jerusalem by the start of the twentieth century. 

After WWI, the Ottoman Empire was no more, and the British took control of the land known as Palestine. The 1917 Balfour Declaration had declared Great Britain’s support for the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, in recognition of the ancient Jewish claim and connection to the land of Israel, describing this land as the “national home for the Jewish people.” The League of Nations (predecessor the the UN) unanimously adopted the British Mandate in 1922, overturning Ottoman-era restrictions and creating a legal right for Jewish people to settle anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile in the early 1900’s in Europe, pogroms began. These were public lynchings of Jews and burnings of Jewish homes, businesses, schools, and places of worship. The Holocaust followed after WWII began in 1939. By 1945, six million Jewish people were murdered. The scale of the eradication was unprecedented. Consider a single weekend in Ukraine in 1941, in which 33,771 children, women, men, and elders were shot dead because they were born of “Jewish blood.”

The lucky European Jews who escaped or survived the brutalities had no more home in Europe. They needed to cement a Jewish nation where they can live safely, they need a permanent home. They went back to their historic homeland where many of their Jewish brethren were already established. These Zionists asked the League of Nations to formally recognize Israel as their own country, as their homeland. 

Israel was recognized as a country in 1948. The Arabs responded immediately by declaring war, vehemently opposing the establishment of a Jewish state. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia attacked Israel. The tiny, infantile country of Israel stood strong over its older, established Arab neighbors. Israel won the battle, but an Arab-world war against Israel had but begun. 

Palestinian Arabs Fought Jews Since The 1800’s

“Palestinians” are not a distinct ethnic group and are instead a collection of impoverished Arabs who lived in the Palestinian region under the Ottoman Empire. Most were not landowners but were instead laborers who rented land from wealthy Turks that owned the land in the Palestinian region. The Palestinian identity was born when the Jewish state of Israel was internationally recognized. The majority of those identifying as Palestinian today are in fact Jordanian. 

From the beginning of the Zionist migration, Palestinian Arabs hated the Jews. This stemmed from centuries of living under an Islamic empire which categorized Jews as a diminutive class of people to the Muslim ruling class. Palestinians aligned with the Nazis during WWII and planned to exterminate their Jewish neighbors. 

Palestinian Arabs have fought Jews on land and religion since the 1800’s and their descendants continue to do so today. There is nothing novel about the “Great Return March” that plagued Israel for the past year; it is but a continuation of status quo. 

Knowing their opponents well, the Israelis kept all of the land purchase records. 

Palestinian Propaganda

Rashida Tlaib, who identifies as a Palestinian first and foremost, is on a propaganda spree against Israel. This has been her primary goal after being elected into office. Her first course of action was to put a stickie over Israel on her office map with the word “Palestine” written on it. She has made it clear that she supports the eradication of Israel and replacement of the world’s only Jewish country with an Islamic Palestine. 

“There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports,” Tlaib said in an anti-Trump podcast. 

“And, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And, I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”

History is thus revised, from land purchased from Ottoman Turk landowners, to land taken from Palestinians and redistributed to the Jews. And, in the revisionist version, that this was done post WWII, not something that started in the 1800’s. 

This type of history revisionism is part of the Palestinian propaganda movement. Palestinian propaganda includes revisionist history, brainwashing children, “pallywood” distortions, manipulation of leftist politics, calls to Jihad, and manipulation of the media, amongst other similarly disturbing techniques. And of course there’s the outlandish anti-semitic Jew-blaming for anything and everything, like earth quakes. 

A staple of the Palestinian propaganda ideology, as parroted by Tlaib, is the concept that Jews took their land. Luckily, those Jews kept the receipts from the land purchases.

Astonishingly, the usually pro-Palestinian CNN has changed their tune and done their part to counteract Tlaib’s propaganda. But they appear to be in the minority on the left.

For as long as leftists and their bowing media continue to act as an echo chamber for Palestinian propaganda, Tlaib and others like her will continue to thrive and brainwash our unassuming liberal youth. 

TLAIB'S MORBID FANTASIES OF A PALESTINIAN “SAFE HAVEN” FOR JEWS

By Joseph Klein
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273766/tlaibs-morbid-fantasies-palestinian-safe-haven-joseph-klein
May 14, 2019

Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is standing by her latest hate-filled statement, which is based on a monstrous falsehood. She said that she has a "kind of calming feeling" when she thinks about the Holocaust because her Palestinian "ancestors" tried "to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time." In the same interview by hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Rep. Tlaib complained, according to her one-sided Palestinian victimhood narrative, “that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways…”

Rep. Tlaib's Palestinian "ancestors" were in fact amongst the enthusiastic boosters of the Nazi genocide machine during World War II. Palestinian leaders sought to carry on the plan to exterminate as many of the Jews as possible who had managed to escape the Holocaust and reach the Holy Land following the war. Instead of accepting the original two-state solution proposed by the United Nations more than seven decades ago under which the Palestinians could have been living in their own independent state all this time, their leadership rejected the idea of a Jewish state existing side by side in peace with a Palestinian state.

President Trump correctly admonished Rep. Tlaib, tweeting “Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust. She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.” Bernie Sanders rushed to her defense. Senator Sanders tweeted that President Trump should apologize for “taking Rep. @RashidaTlaib's comments out of context.” This is the same man who said the Boston Marathon terrorist bomber should have the “right” to vote from jail.

Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic leadership in the House are running for cover. They are allowing the recurrent trashing of the Jewish state by the newly elected Muslim members of their caucus to go unpunished. Falsifying history to serve the Palestinian propaganda narrative is yet another display of anti-Semitism. Here are some facts that Pelosi and her colleagues are choosing to ignore by their failure to act decisively against the anti-Semites in their midst.

Adolf Hitler talking to Grand Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who was considered the father of Palestinian nationalism, sought an alliance with Adolf Hitler from the time of Hitler's early days in power, and continued his collaboration after the British exiled him to Iraq in 1938.  Haj Amin al-Husseini visited Hitler and his henchmen, including Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, in Berlin in 1941. Hitler himself assured his guest that Germany wanted “the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.”  Al-Husseini spread Nazi propaganda and recruited Islamic youth to serve in the Germany military. He also sought to block the transport of Jewish children to the Holy Land. Himmler sent al-Husseini a letter in 1943 declaring that the "National-Socialist movement of greater Germany has made its fight against world Jewry a guiding principle since its very beginning." Himmler added, "For that reason it has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs—and especially in Palestine—against the Jewish invaders" and sent the Palestinian leader his "warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the big victory."

In his memoir, Haj Amin al-Husseini noted how the Nazis during the latter stages of the war “had put at our disposal four light, four-engine airplanes for the transportation of war materiel to Palestine, to be stored in secret shelters, for the training of Palestinian fighters and for their preparation for the battles to follow.” The “war materiel” included “tens of thousands of rifles, machine guns and light weapons and great quantities of equipment and ammunition.”

After the end of World War II, there was no Palestinian offer of “safe haven for Jews” in the Holy Land as Rep. Tlaib falsely claimed. The British authorities, while they were still in charge of the “Mandate for Palestine,” sided with Arab demands and placed significant restrictions on Jewish emigration from post-War Europe to the Holy Land. Refugee ships were turned back. Some Jews trying to enter the historic Jewish homeland were placed in internment camps. Haj Amin al-Husseini was anointed by the Arab League as the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, although he remained outside of the territory to avoid capture. Al-Husseini brooked no dissent from his extreme anti-Jewish position. On November 23, 1946, Fauzi Darwish el-Husseini, a relative of Haj Amin al-Husseini but an opponent of his who had sought reconciliation with Jews in the Holy Land, was assassinated.

Meanwhile, following years spent in exile in neighboring countries after participating in armed rebellions during the 1930’s against the British in the Palestinian territory then under British control, a leading militant by the name of Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini began working to smuggle arms into the Palestinian territory. He snuck back into the territory himself in December 1947. Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini soon took command of the Army of Holy War, which launched several military operations against Jewish forces in Jerusalem. These attacks included blowing up the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem, killing 12 and injuring 86 Jewish civilians. They occurred after the United Nations General Assembly had recommended in November 1947 a partition of the land inhabited by Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Jews accepted the UN proposal. The Palestinians and their supporters in neighboring Arab nations rejected it. In April 1948, Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini was killed during a battle and was lionized as a hero by many in the Arab world. When Israel declared its independence in May 1948, Palestinians, joined by armies of their neighboring Arab countries, launched a war against the Jews. This apparently is Rep. Tlaib's perverted notion of her ancestors' efforts "to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust."

Rep. Tlaib whined that her latest words regarding the Holocaust and its aftermath were being twisted in order “to ignite vile attacks” on her and “silence” her. No, Rep. Tlaib, your words were quoted in context. Your own words show how you have inherited from your Palestinian “ancestors” the hatred for Jews living in their historic homeland that animated your ancestors’ alliance with the Nazis. With very few exceptions, your ancestors, like the Palestinian terrorists today, sought to create a graveyard for Jews before, during and after World War II, not a “safe haven.”

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Turkey Venerates Its Violent Conquest of Christian Territory with Conversion of Hagia Sophia to a Mosque

BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/turkey-venerates-its-violent-conquest-of-christian-territory-with-conversion-of-hagia-sophia-to-a-mosque/

May 8, 2019

It’s official: Turkey plans on converting the Hagia Sophia museum—for centuries, one of Christendom’s grandest basilicas—into a mosque.

Although President Erdoğan often tells Western/secular media that his decision is a sort of tit for tat—now a response to Israel’s treatment of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, now a response to European resistance to more Muslim migrants—the true significance behind his desire to transform Hagia Sophia came out in March 31, 2019.

After reporting that “Turkey's president has recited an Islamic prayer in the Hagia Sophia, a historic Istanbul landmark that has become a symbol of interfaith and diplomatic tensions,” AP added that Erdoğan also dedicated his prayer to the “souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especially Istanbul's conqueror.”

He is not alone in his desire to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque as a way of venerating its jihadi conquerors; more than 97 percent of Turks surveyed said they want to see Hagia Sophia turned into a mosque, not because there is a dearth of places to pray—as of 2010, there were 3,000 active mosques in Istanbul alone—but to revel in the glory (that is, gory) days of jihad, and honor its practitioners.

To quote Salih Turhan, head of the Anatolian Youth Association, a group that annually organizes mass demonstrations around Hagia Sophia: “As the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right.”

In what follows, we revisit exactly what Mehmet (the Turkish pronunciation of “Muhammad”) did to prompt so many modern Turks, including their president, to honor him, including by transforming Hagia Sophia into a mosque. (All quotes in the following narrative are from primary sources, mostly eyewitnesses, and are documented in my recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West).

Hagia Sophia—Greek for “Holy Wisdom”—was built around 537 AD in Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which for nearly a millennium was a stalwart symbol of defiance against an ever encroaching Islam from the east.

After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts, Mehmet sacked Constantinople on May 29, 1453, and turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque (until a then secularizing Turkey turned it into a museum in 1935).

Once inside the city, “The enraged Turkish soldiers . . . gave no quarter,” wrote an eyewitness:

When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions…  There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury…  [The Turkish jihadis] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages… Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers’ breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened. . .

Because thousands of citizens had fled to and were holed up in Hagia Sophia, it offered an excellent harvest of slaves once its doors were axed down.

“One Turk would look for the captive who seemed the wealthiest, a second would prefer a pretty face among the nuns. . . . Each rapacious Turk was eager to lead his captive to a safe place, and then return to secure a second and a third prize. . . . Then long chains of captives could be seen leaving the church and its shrines, being herded along like cattle or flocks of sheep.”

The slavers sometimes fought each other to the death over “any well-formed girl,” even as many of the latter “preferred to cast themselves into the wells and drown rather than fall into the hands of the Turks.”

Having taken possession of one of Christendom’s greatest and oldest basilicas—nearly a thousand years old at the time of its capture—the invaders “engaged in every kind of vileness within it, making of it a public brothel.” On “its holy altars” they enacted “perversions with our women, virgins, and children,” including “the Grand Duke’s daughter who was quite beautiful.” She was forced to “lie on the great altar of Hagia Sophia with a crucifix under her head and then raped.”

Next “they paraded the [Hagia Sophia’s main] Crucifix in mocking procession through their camp, beating drums before it, crucifying the Christ again with spitting and blasphemies and curses. They placed a Turkish cap . . . upon His head, and jeeringly cried, ‘Behold the god of the Christians!’” They “gouged the eyes from the [embalmed] saints” and dumped their corpses “in the middle of the streets for swine and dogs to trample on . . . and the images of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Saints were burned or hacked to pieces.”

Many other churches in the ancient city suffered the same fate. “The crosses which had been placed on the roofs or the walls of churches were torn down and trampled.” The Eucharist was hurled to the ground; holy icons were stripped of gold, “thrown to the ground and kicked.” Bibles were stripped of their gold or silver illuminations before being burned. “Icons were without exception given to the flames.” Patriarchal vestments were placed on the haunches of dogs; priestly garments were placed on horses.

“Everywhere there was misfortune, everyone was touched by pain” when Sultan Mehmet finally made his grand entry into the city. “There were lamentations and weeping in every house, screaming in the crossroads, and sorrow in all churches; the groaning of grown men and the shrieking of women accompanied looting, enslavement, separation, and rape.”

The sultan rode to Hagia Sophia, dismounted, and went in, “marveling at the sight” of the grand basilica. Like other churches that came under Muslim control—such as John the Baptist’s basilica, now the Great Mosque of Damascus—Hagia Sophia’s lot was not destruction but transformation into a mosque. After having it cleansed of its crosses, statues, and icons—the sultan himself knocked over and trampled on its altar—Mehmet ordered a muezzin to ascend the pulpit and sound “their detestable prayers. Then this son of iniquity [the sultan], this forerunner of Antichrist, mounted upon the Holy Table to utter forth his own prayers,” thereby “turning the Great Church into a heathen shrine for his god and his Mahomet.”

This, then, is what Turkey’s Muslims and president are proud of: the violent conquest of ancient Christian territory, and the atrocity-laden transformation of its greatest cathedral into a mosque; this is what they are eager to honor by turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque again. For make no mistake: if the average Westerner is clueless concerning the history of Hagia Sophia, every Turk is taught it in youth.

Openly idolizing Mehmet and doing what he did in his honor—retransforming Hagia Sophia into a mosque—as Erdoğan has decreed to the joy of many Turks, is tantamount to their saying, “We are proud of our ancestors who slaughtered, beheaded, enslaved and raped people and stole their lands simply because they were Christian infidels.”

Note: For more details on the siege and subsequent rape of Constantinople, see Chapter 7 of Sword and Scimitar.

Bibi Scores Another Big Win

BY P. DAVID HORNIK

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bibi-scores-another-big-win/

April 9, 2019

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accompanied by his wife Sara waves to his supporters after polls for Israel’s general elections closed in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, April 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Left-wing Israeli TV broadcasters had stars in their eyes last night at 10 when the initial election results came in. They told us breathlessly that former chief of staff Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party—the challenger to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s center-right coalition—had done phenomenally well and the elections and the leadership of the country were up for grabs.

But by Wednesday morning, with 97 percent of the votes counted, the same broadcasters had tired, glum faces. It turned out that Netanyahu—a providential leader who has done more than any other individual to turn 21st-century Israel into a phenomenal success story of economic growth and diplomatic and military weight on the world scene—had scored yet another dramatic win in his long, volatile, but essentially triumphant career.

True, Gantz’s Blue and White—a none-too-coherent assemblage of three smaller parties that included right-wingers, centrists, and left-wingers and tried the tack of vagueness and ambiguity in its election campaign—came through with 35 of the 120 seats in Israel’s Knesset (parliament). But Netanyahu’s Likud had tallied 35, too—up from 30 in the previous Knesset—and with the balance of the smaller parties clearly in the right's favor for a total of 65 seats, Netanyahu had come out decisively on top. And that’s despite corruption charges hanging over him and a predominantly hostile media.

Blue and White, moreover, could only reach its 35 votes by siphoning off mandates from two parties to its left, Labor and Meretz—which, according to the morning count, did miserably with 6 and 4 votes respectively. In the case of Labor—the historic party that led the country in its first decades under legendary figures like David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Dayan, and by the 1990s was engaging in a delusional “peace process” with the terrorist PLO—the depth of the defeat is unprecedented and resounding.

Another important point is that, if the right-wing bloc got 65 seats (and the total could still rise) to the left-wing bloc’s 55, even those figures are deceptive. As of the morning, 10 of the left’s 55 mandates came from two Arab parties. Those two parties, though—not because they’re Arab, but because they virulently oppose Israel’s existence as a Jewish state—are not relevant to any realistic calculation of Israeli coalitional strengths, and there was no chance that Gantz’s Blue and White would have included them in a coalition if it could have led one.

In other words, among the politically relevant voting public, the real results come out as another (like in the 2015 elections) landslide for the right. It’s made even more dramatic by the fact that Gantz, who called himself a “security hawk” and a “moderate capitalist,” tried to distance himself from the left and reassure Israelis that he was tough and realistic.

As for Netanyahu’s emergent coalition, two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, UTJ and Shas, had done well so far with 8 mandates each; the nationalist-Orthodox, strongly pro-settlement URWP had scored 5; and two secular-right parties, Israel Our Home and Kulanu, had 5 and 4 respectively. Still hanging in the balance was another pro-settlement, mixed religious-secular party, Naftali Bennett’s New Right—which, if it climbs to the required minimum of 4 seats, will make the governing coalition overwhelmingly big and stable.

What does it all mean? It means that the right-wing/religious sector of the Israeli Jewish population remains predominant and invincible. It means that the socialism of Israel’s early decades has been relegated to two none-too-relevant fringe parties. It means that with Gaza—fourteen years after Israel withdrew from it—remaining a serious security challenge of rocket fire, border riots, and incendiary balloons and kites, sane Israelis are not even contemplating withdrawals from the vastly larger West Bank that abuts Israel’s airport, capital city of Jerusalem, and heavily populated coastal plain.

And it means that a solid majority of Israelis appreciate Netanyahu’s strong and dynamic leadership and want to keep him at the helm—and that’s despite the unresolved corruption charges and an often viciously adversary media that is one of the last bastions of the old left. No doubt he faces significant challenges. A growing budget deficit needs to be tackled. Hamas and Hizballah remain security threats on Israel's borders. Most serious of all are their patron Iran's ongoing efforts to entrench itself in Syria and continued development of ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons capabilities. But given his nonpareil energy, resolve, and skill, most Israelis know that Netanyahu is the right leader to contend with the challenges and overcome them.

Meanwhile, he faces a hearing on the corruption charges in the summer. The charges look dubious, and Israel has a long history of such allegations being quashed as the result of a hearing.

What Is Behind the Opposition to Peace with Israel?

by Bassam Tawil
April 6, 2019 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14020/opposition-peace-israel

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the United Nations Security Council on February 20, 2018 in New York (AFP/Timothy A. Clary)

Peace with Israel is purportedly a form of surrender and submission that will harm the dignity of Arabs and Muslims.

This is the theme of a massive campaign being waged by Palestinians and other Arabs in preparation for the announcement of the US administration's plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the "deal of the century." The plan, according to US officials, is expected to be announced sometime after the general elections in Israel, slated for April 9.

The latest campaign is designed to thwart the "deal of the century" and terrorize Arabs and Muslims who may wish to accept the US administration's peace plan.

As part of an effort to raise awareness to the dangers of the "deal of the century," an increasing number of Palestinians and Arabs are now trying to explain to their people why peace and normalization of ties with Israel is totally unacceptable.

The latest effort came in the form of an online campaign called "The International Anti-Normalization Campaign."

The organizers of the campaign say they are worried that some Arab states and leaders may cooperate with the "deal of the century." They are concerned because they see that some Arab states and leaders are already engaged in various forms of normalization with Israel.

The campaign clearly aims to send a warning not only to ordinary Arabs and Muslims, but also to their leaders, about the "dangerous repercussions" of making peace with Israel.

According to the organizers of the anti-peace campaign, "normalization [with Israel] is the miserable outcome of a culture of surrender and submission" -- and concessions and peace are only shameful and degrading.

For them, the words peace and compromise (with Israel) seem associated with extremely negative connotations such as retreat, defeat and surrender.

Recognizing Israel's right to exist is also seen by many Arabs and Muslims as a humiliation to their values, their culture, their political power and their economic traditions. They have been educated to see Israel as an alien body and a "colonial project" planted in the Middle East by Western powers. They therefore cannot accept the presence of Jews -- in what they regard as their own sovereign state -- on lands they believe belong solely to Muslims.

Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is often described by Western media outlets and officials as a "moderate" and "pragmatic" Arab leader, shares the view that Israel is nothing but a "colonial project." In a speech before PLO delegates in Ramallah last year, Abbas quoted Egyptian intellectual Abdel-Wahab El-Messiri, saying:

"The functional nature of Israel means that it was evoked by colonialism in order to fulfill a specific function, and thus it constitutes a colonialist enterprise that has nothing to do with Judaism."

Abbas added:

"[Oliver Cromwell] came up with the idea of transferring the Jews from Europe to the Middle East... because they wanted this region to become an advanced post to protect the interests and the convoys coming from Europe to the East... He asked Holland, which owned the largest fleet in the world, to transfer the Jews, but the project was unsuccessful. This was in 1653."

In the past year, Abbas has also repeatedly announced his rejection of the unseen "deal of the century." He has referred to the plan as a "conspiracy" and the "slap of the century." How then can he turn to his people and suddenly accept it -- or any deal that might recognize Israel's right to exist?

"Normalization [with Israel] is tantamount to defeat," explained Mohammed al-Adloni, secretary-general of an anti-Israel group, "The International Coalition for Supporting Jerusalem and Palestine."

He went on to warn that making peace or normalizing ties with Israel would constitute a threat to the "consciousness" of Arabs and Muslims. Making peace with Israel, al-Adloni said, would be like "a complete occupation of the consciousness [of Arabs and Muslims]."

Al-Adloni and other anti-Israel activists in the Arab and Islamic countries appear worried that, should they make peace with the "Zionist entity," their people might be exposed to democratic values and freedom of expression. They seem concerned that Arabs and Muslims wake up one morning and start demanding free and democratic elections like the ones held every few years in Israel.

The anti-peace camp in the Arab and Islamic world appears not to want its people exposed to advanced Israeli technology, including medical care. This camp seems to want its people to continue living in misery and under dictatorships, so that it is easier to recruit people to jihad against Israel and the West. Also, if people are lifted from poverty and misery, and their living conditions are improved so they begin to enjoy the fruits of modern civilization, there is a chance that Arabs and Muslims will move away from Islam and even start endorsing the inadmissible values of the West.

This camp, extremists, seem not to care about lowering the high rate of unemployment among Arabs and Muslims, improving the living conditions of its people or offering young Arabs and Muslims hope for a better future. They seem instead to want their people to continue living in misery so that their anger, again, can be directed more easily towards Israel and the West.

The anti-Israel campaign in the Arab and Islamic world sees peace with Israel -- and not failed leadership, bad economic policies and corruption -- as the biggest threat to Arabs and Muslims. The message that the anti-peace activists are sending to their people says: "Peace with Israel is the worst thing that could happen to us Arabs and Muslims because these Jews will invade our minds and our culture."

Yasser Qadoura, who represents a Lebanon-based group called "The Popular Committee for Palestinians in the Diaspora," says that his organization is now making a big effort to educate Arabs and Muslims about the "dangers" of peace and normalization with Israel. He said that his followers and he are planning topublish a "list of shame" containing the names of Arabs and Muslims who are caught promoting peace and normalization or trying to make peace with Israel.

Anyone whose name appears on the list will immediately be denounced by Arabs and Muslims as a "traitor." Treason, in many of the Arab and Islamic countries, is a charge punishable by death. The "list of shame" would therefore be seen by Arabs and Muslims as a license to kill anyone who dared even to talk about peace with Israel.

Last month, a large group of Arab and Islamic activists who met in the Lebanese capital of Beirut ruled that "all forms of normalization with the Zionist entity are an act of treachery." According to the group, an Arab or Muslim who even engages in sports, cultural and artistic activities with the "Zionist entity" would be considered a "traitor." In the eyes of the Arab and Islamic activists, including Islamic religious leaders, anyone who plays soccer or attends a cultural event with a Jew would be condemned as a "traitor."

If and when US President Donald J. Trump's administration finally publishes its plan, it will discover that many Arabs and Muslims have already launched a campaign of intimidation to stop their leaders from making peace with Israel. If an Arab or Muslim child is prohibited from playing soccer with a Jew, how can the Trump administration expect the Arabs and Muslims to recognize Israel's right to exist?

The Trump administration will soon discover what every child in the Arab and Islamic world already knows: that the Israeli-Arab conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or a security fence, but about Israel's very right to exist in the Middle East. The Trump administration will also learn that peace with Israel is seen by many Arabs and Muslims as nothing but an unacceptable threat that must at all costs be stopped.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

Why Are These Professional War Peddlers Still Around?

Pundits like Max Boot and Bill Kristol got everything after 9/11 wrong but are still considered "experts."

By TUCKER CARLSON

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-are-these-professional-war-peddlers-still-around-tucker-carlson-max-boot-bill-kristol/

February 15, 2019

One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They’re happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there’s no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America.

Boot is a professional foreign policy expert, a job category that doesn’t exist outside of a select number of cities. Boot has degrees from Berkeley and Yale, and is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written a number of books and countless newspaper columns on foreign affairs and military history. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential British think tank, describes Boot as one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict.”

None of this, it turns out, means anything. The professional requirements for being one of the world’s Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict do not include relevant experience with armed conflict. Leading authorities on the subject don’t need a track record of wise assessments or accurate predictions. All that’s required are the circular recommendations of fellow credential holders. If other Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict induct you into their ranks, you’re in. That’s good news for Max Boot.

Boot first became famous in the weeks after 9/11 for outlining a response that the Bush administration seemed to read like a script, virtually word for word. While others were debating whether Kandahar or Kabul ought to get the first round of American bombs, Boot was thinking big. In October 2001, he published a piece in The Weekly Standard titled “The Case for American Empire.”

“The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition,” Boot wrote. “The solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation.” In order to prevent more terror attacks in American cities, Boot called for a series of U.S.-led revolutions around the world, beginning in Afghanistan and moving swiftly to Iraq.

“Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul,” Boot wrote. “To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim. Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt.”

In retrospect, Boot’s words are painful to read, like love letters from a marriage that ended in divorce. Iraq remains a smoldering mess. The Afghan war is still in progress close to 20 years in. For perspective, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France, crowned himself emperor, defeated four European coalitions against him, invaded Russia, lost, was defeated and exiled, returned, and was defeated and exiled a second time, all in less time than the United States has spent trying to turn Afghanistan into a stable country.

Things haven’t gone as planned. What’s remarkable is that despite all the failure and waste and deflated expectations, defeats that have stirred self-doubt in the heartiest of men, Boot has remained utterly convinced of the virtue of his original predictions. Certainty is a prerequisite for Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict.

In the spring of 2003, with the war in Iraq under way, Boot began to consider new countries to invade. He quickly identified Syria and Iran as plausible targets, the latter because it was “less than two years” from building a nuclear bomb. North Korea made Boot’s list as well. Then Boot became more ambitious. Saudi Arabia could use a democracy, he decided.

“If the U.S. armed forces made such short work of a hardened goon like Saddam Hussein, imagine what they could do to the soft and sybaritic Saudi royal family,” Boot wrote.

Five years later, in a piece for The Wall Street Journal, Boot advocated for the military occupation of Pakistan and Somalia. The only potential problem, he predicted, was unreasonable public opposition to new wars.

“Ragtag guerrillas have proven dismayingly successful in driving out or neutering international peacekeeping forces,” he wrote. “Think of American and French troops blown up in Beirut in 1983, or the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia in 1993. Too often, when outside states do agree to send troops, they are so fearful of casualties that they impose rules of engagement that preclude meaningful action.”

In other words, the tragedy of foreign wars isn’t that Americans die, but that too few Americans are willing to die. To solve this problem, Boot recommended recruiting foreign mercenaries. “The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. When foreigners get killed fighting for America, he noted, there’s less political backlash at home.

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American forces, documented or not, never occupied Pakistan, but by 2011 Boot had another war in mind. “Qaddafi Must Go,” Boot declared in The Weekly Standard. In Boot’s telling, the Libyan dictator had become a threat to the American homeland. “The only way this crisis will end—the only way we and our allies can achieve our objectives in Libya—is to remove Qaddafi from power. Containment won’t suffice.”

In the end, Gaddafi was removed from power, with ugly and long-lasting consequences. Boot was on to the next invasion. By late 2012, he was once again promoting attacks on Syria and Iran, as he had nine years before. In a piece for The New York Times, Boot laid out “Five Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now.”

Overthrowing the Assad regime, Boot predicted, would “diminish Iran’s influence” in the region, influence that had grown dramatically since the Bush administration took Boot’s advice and overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iran’s most powerful counterbalance. To doubters concerned about a complex new war, Boot promised the Syria intervention could be conducted “with little risk.”

Days later, Boot wrote a separate piece for Commentary magazine calling for American bombing of Iran. It was a busy week, even by the standards of a Leading Authority on Armed Conflict. Boot conceded that “it remains a matter of speculation what Iran would do in the wake of such strikes.” He didn’t seem worried.

Listed in one place, Boot’s many calls for U.S.-led war around the world come off as a parody of mindless warlike noises, something you might write if you got mad at a country while drunk. (“I’ll invade you!!!”) Republicans in Washington didn’t find any of it amusing. They were impressed. Boot became a top foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, to Mitt Romney in 2012, and to Marco Rubio in 2016.

Everything changed when Trump won the Republican nomination. Trump had never heard of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He had no idea Max Boot was a Leading Authority on Armed Conflict. Trump was running against more armed conflicts. He had no interest in invading Pakistan. Boot hated him.

As Trump found himself accused of improper ties to Vladimir Putin, Boot agitated for more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Boot demanded larger weapons shipments to Ukraine. He called for effectively expelling Russia from the global financial system, a move that might be construed as an act of war against a nuclear-armed power. The stakes were high, but with signature aplomb Boot assured readers it was “hard to imagine” the Russian government would react badly to the provocation. Those who disagreed Boot dismissed as “cheerleaders” for Putin and the mullahs in Iran.

Boot’s stock in the Washington foreign policy establishment rose. In 2018, he was hired by The Washington Post as a columnist. The paper’s announcement cited Boot’s “expertise on armed conflict.”

It is possible to isolate the precise moment that Trump permanently alienated the Republican establishment in Washington: February 13, 2016. There was a GOP primary debate that night in Greenville, South Carolina, so every Republican in Washington was watching. Seemingly out of nowhere, Trump articulated something that no party leader had ever said out loud. “We should never have been in Iraq,” Trump announced, his voice rising. “We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Many in the crowd booed, but Trump kept going: “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none.”

Pandemonium seemed to erupt in the hall, and on television. Shocked political analysts declared that the Trump presidential effort had just euthanized itself. Republican voters, they said with certainty, would never accept attacks on policies their party had espoused and carried out.

Republican voters had a different reaction. They understood that adults sometimes change their minds based on evidence. They themselves had come to understand that the Iraq war was a mistake. They appreciated hearing something verboten but true.

Rival Republicans denounced Trump as an apostate. Voters considered him brave.

Trump won the South Carolina primary, and shortly after that, the Republican nomination.

Republicans in Washington never recovered. When Trump attacked the Iraq War and questioned the integrity of the people who planned and promoted it, he was attacking them. They hated him for that.

Some of them became so angry, it distorted their judgment and character.

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Bill Kristol is probably the most influential Republican strategist of the post-Reagan era. Born in 1954, Kristol was the second child of the writer Irving Kristol, one of the founders of neoconservatism.

The neoconservatism of Irving Kristol and his friends was jarring to the ossified liberal establishment of the time, but in retrospect it was basically a centrist philosophy: pragmatic, tolerant of a limited welfare state, not rigidly ideological. By the time Bill Kristol got done with it 40 years later, neoconservatism was something else entirely.

Almost from the moment Operation Desert Storm concluded in 1991, Kristol began pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In 1997, The Weekly Standard ran a cover story titled “Saddam Must Go.” If the United States didn’t launch a ground invasion of Iraq, the lead editorial warned, the world should “get ready for the day when Saddam has biological and chemical weapons at the tips of missiles aimed at Israel and at American forces in the Gulf.”

After the September 11 attacks, Kristol found a new opening to start a war with Iraq. In November 2001, he and Robert Kagan wrote a piece in The Weekly Standard alleging that Saddam Hussein hosted a training camp for Al Qaeda fighters where terrorists had trained to hijack planes. They suggested that Mohammad Atta, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was actively collaborating with Saddam’s intelligence services. On the basis of no evidence, they accused Iraq of fomenting the anthrax attacks on American politicians and news outlets.

Under ordinary circumstances, Bill Kristol would be famous for being wrong. Kristol still goes on television regularly, but it’s not to apologize for the many demonstrably untrue things he’s said about the Middle East, or even to talk about foreign policy. Instead, Kristol goes on TV to attack Donald Trump.

Trump’s election seemed to undo Bill Kristol entirely. He lost his job at The Weekly Standard after more than 20 years, forced out by owners who were panicked about declining readership. He seemed to spend most of his time on Twitter ranting about Trump.

Before long he was ranting about the people who elected Trump. At an American Enterprise Institute panel event in February 2017, Kristol made the case for why immigrants are more impressive than native-born Americans. “Basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two, three, four generations of hard work, everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled, whatever.” Most Americans, Kristol said, “grew up as spoiled kids and so forth.”

In February 2018, Kristol tweeted that he would “take in a heartbeat a group of newly naturalized American citizens over the spoiled native-born know-nothings” who supported Trump.

By the spring of 2018, Kristol was considering a run for president himself. He was still making the case for the invasion of Iraq, as well as pushing for a new war, this time in Syria, and maybe in Lebanon and Iran, too. Like most people in Washington, he’d learned nothing at all.  

Tucker Carlson is the host of Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight and author of Ship of Fools: How A Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution (Simon & Schuster). This excerpt is taken from that book.