In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty that saw Israel relinquish roughly 380 square kilometers to Jordan and set a framework for the two countries to live peacefully together side-by-side.
The treaty had a section that dealt with religious tolerance. Article 9.2 is often misquoted by Jordanian King Abdullah that he is a “custodian” of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, when it merely states that “Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem.” Abdullah never talks about clause 9.3:
The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.
Jordanian – Israeli peace treaty, article 9.3
Despite the treaty to promote religious tolerance, peace and freedom of worship, Jordan praised Palestinian Arab rioters on the Jewish Temple Mount in April 2022. Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh said “I salute every Palestinian, and all the employees of the Jordanian Islamic Waqf, who proudly stand like minarets, hurling their stones in a volley of clay at the Zionist sympathizers defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli occupation government.“
This is appalling on its own – a senior government official promoting violence against civilians – and flies in the face of the tenet of the peace treaty signed between the parties. Article 4.3B states that each country will “refrain from organizing, instigating, inciting, assisting or participating in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party,” which is exactly what the Jordanian Foreign Minister did.
It gets worse.
It was reported that Jordan is now asking the United States to pressure Israel to give complete control of the Jewish Temple Mount Compound to the Jordanian Waqf, and to forcibly ban Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.
Jordan seemingly doesn’t believe there is any price to pay for instigating violence against Israeli Jews, and should actually be rewarded with a greater role in the land Jordan illegally seized in 1949 and then formally withdrew from in 1988.
Israel might want to keep its part of the peace treaty with Jordan in acknowledging the “special role” Jordan plays narrowly at the al-Aqsa Mosque, much the way a guardian takes care of a ward with “special needs.” Make them feel important. But everyone understands that the guardian is in control and will make all substantive decisions.
An obscured view of the Jewish Temple Mount from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. al-Aqsa Mosque is the dark-domed building at right (photo: First One Through)
The willful ignorance and denial of Jewish history is systemic in virtually all countries. It very much includes the United States, and the Black community in particular.
Pew Research did a study of Holocaust knowledge in February 2019. The study showed that Black Christian Americans were woefully ignorant about the Holocaust, getting fewer than half as many responses correct as White Americans. No other group was remotely as uninformed.
It was therefore no surprise when television personality Whoopi Goldberg thought that the Holocaust of European Jewry was simply a matter of White-on-White violence, as so many Blacks know so little about the subject, and consider Jews as simply “White”.
The State of California made an attempt to improve its education for grades K-12 by instituting an ethnic studies curriculum that highlight some minority groups: Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian American. Jews, who experience the most hate crimes per capita in the Unites States every year, were described in the 2019 curriculum as “sometimes have experienced conditional whiteness and privilege.” A letter of protest from the California Jewish Caucus pushed the state to make some significant changes to the 2021 draft, but it is readily apparent as to how the liberal state prioritizes and thinks about Jews and anti-Semitism.
So as Israel commemorates Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, perhaps a more controversial approach should be considered. Use the day to deny and belittle Black slavery. Pretend it never happened, or only impacted a few Black people. Maybe describe how just as many Asians were slaves at that time, or that life wasn’t really so bad for the African workers.
It should get the attention of people most ignorant about the genocide of European Jewry, much more than the far-left crafters of today’s K-12 curricula are willing and capable of doing.
Three teenagers contemplate the Holocaust after visiting Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)
As Passover, Easter and Ramadan all converged this year, tensions ran hot in Jerusalem. In that backdrop, Reuters seemingly wanted to fan some Arab fire against the Jews.
In an article called “Jordan’s king agreed with U.S. Biden on need to defuse Jerusalem tension – state media,” Reuters acted as the Jordanian mouthpiece without fact-checking anything in its coverage. It wrote that Jordan’s King “Abdullah, whose Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of Muslim and Christian sites in the Old City, has spearheaded a diplomatic offensive to put pressure on Israel, whom he blames for the escalation at the Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.”
This is not true.
The 1994 Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, Article 9.2 stated “In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”
Jordan is not a “custodian” but has a special role, and it only relates to Muslim sites.
The deeply flawed Reuters article also noted that “The confrontations since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that have coincided with Passover have raised religious passions amid international concerns about a slide back into a wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Why did the article point out ‘the Muslim holy month’ but declined to comment about the ‘Jewish holy week’ of Passover? Why did the article fail to state that Judaism calls for Jews to visit the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem three times a year – including Passover – but there is no such specific call for Muslims to visit Jerusalem EVER.
The article failed to note that 150,000 Palestinians visited the Jewish Temple Mount/ al Aqsa Mosque on Friday – a single day total – when the entire population of Jews that ascended to the Jewish Temple Mount was a mere 4,200 people OVER AN ENTIRE WEEK.
Instead, Reuters concluded the article with this unchallenged piece of biased inanity:
“Jordan and fellow Arab states accused Israel in a meeting on Thursday in Amman of restricting the right of worship of Muslims while allowing ultra-nationalist Jews under police protection to enter the mosque compound.“
Reuters did not describe the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who visited the site as Islamic radicals, but opted to paint a handful of Jews visiting their holist location during the holiday which specifically calls for them to visit, as “ultra-nationalist Jews.” A reader is directly led to the incorrect conclusion that a handful of Jews has spurred the problem, rather than Hamas and Hezbollah which have been urging violence in the holy city.
Jews fill the Western Wall Plaza (in lower center of photograph) during Passover as they are limited in their access to their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount
The article also failed to report that the Israeli government, succumbing to threats of more Islamic radical violence, banned Jews from visiting the Mount during the remaining days of Ramadan, even while Passover was still being celebrated.
Reuters hit piece on religious Jews and elevation of the stature of the small Jordanian king was a disgraceful piece of journalism. That its smears get picked up and reprinted by media outlets around the world makes it a global Jewish blood libel.
In 1478, the rulers of Spain sought to consolidate their power and establish a society free of undesirable elements. Under the flag of the Catholic Church, the Spanish kingdom sought out “heretics,” principally Jews, as well as Muslims and Protestants. They used inquisitors who questioned people’s beliefs, giving them a choice of converting to Catholicism, expulsion or death. Over 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, tens of thousands were killed and thousands more converted from Judaism. Portugal followed a similar course in 1497, and both countries enforced the Inquisition in their colonies in the Americas well into the 19th century.
Universities are using a similar tactic against Jewish Zionists today in the Campus Inquisition.
Jews are being singled out by student groups and governments to understand their positions about Israel. At McGill University in Canada, people called for a Jewish student to resign if she traveled to Israel. A Jewish student applying to a Student Council Judicial Board at UCLA was rejected after being asked “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” The Jewish student government president at USC was harassed with a campaign to “impeach [my] Zionist a**” after people found out she was a Zionist. San Francisco State excluded the Jewish group Hillel from a school information fair.
These same schools do not ask Chinese students if they support the Chinese persecution of Uyghurs. They do not ask Iranian students if they support hanging gays. They do not ask Saudi students if they support killing minors or bombing Yemenis. They don’t even think of asking Turkish students how they feel about Turkey jailing journalists, nor do they demand that Sudanese students be expelled from groups if they don’t condemn female genital mutilation prevalent in Sudan.
But they pursue Israel, the most liberal country in the entire Middle East and North Africa region.
Campus groups only demand that Jewish students state their position about Israel, not the tens of thousands of non-Jewish Zionist students. It is blatant anti-Semitism in targeting only Jews and only the Jewish State for inquiry.
The university system has adopted an outrageous false narrative as a tenet of the new woke religion, that Israel engages in “apartheid, genocide and war crimes” (City University of New York) in promoting “white supremacy Jewry” (University of Illinois-Urbana) based on colonialism, stating “Israel in its inception is not a Jewish idea but a European one” (University of Wisconsin). This extremist progressive-socialist-BlackLivesMatter-Muslim cancel Jewish culture on campus has inverted the Jewish victims of white supremacy, to be the evil architects of racism in a re-launch of the debunked “Zionism is racism” campaign of the 1970’s. They are demanding that Jews be purged from their safe havens on campuses and in their homeland in the Middle East.
Students for Justice in Palestine march
In the Campus Inquisition, heresy is defined as believing Jews are a people, indigenous to the land of Israel, who have a natural right to live free of persecution, with self-determination in their homeland. The new inquisitors demand that Jews either denounce such belief and become “good Jews” like those in the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace, or be banned from society.
Approximately 550 years after the Catholic church ethnically cleansed the Jewish community from the Iberian Peninsula, universities are unleashing a new Inquisition to root out Jewish Zionists. And just like the anti-Semitic tormentors of yesteryear, today’s inquisitors wrap themselves in the shroud of a perceived higher calling, ridding society of the small and most persecuted ancient people.
As Passover, Easter and Ramadan all fell at the same time this year, the religious tensions and harmony in Israel came into sharper focus.
Muslims have a history of keeping sites it considers holy intact, even if holy – let alone holier – to non-Islamic faiths. In contrast, they have shown complete disregard for non-Islamic sites that are sacred and important to other faiths.
On April 10, 2022, Palestinian Arabs vandalized the Tomb of Joseph, one of the principle ancestors of the Jews. They smashed the Jewish tomb and set fires to a few rooms in what Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said was a “frenzy of destruction” as Palestinian rioters “simply vandalised a holy place for us, the Jews.”
Joseph’s Tomb vandalized by Palestinian rioters, April 2022
Meanwhile, Palestinian leadership from Fatah and Hamas were claiming that Jews were invading the Jewish Temple Mount (which they refer to as the Al Aqsa Compound) which they view as sacred. Arabs attacked Jews walking to the site, stoned Israeli buses bringing Jews to the Old City of Jerusalem, and hurled stones at Israeli worshippers at the western retaining wall of the Mount.
But the Islamists kept the site intact as they considered the site sacred.
The government of Israel had given religious control of the Jewish Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf after it reunited Jerusalem in 1967. The Waqf has banned Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest site, it blatant disregard of Jews’ basic human rights.
But the Islamists kept the site intact as they considered the site sacred.
In Hebron, Muslims appropriated the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs which houses six of the seven forebears of the Jewish people. Muslims call the site the “Ibrahami Mosque,” as they venerate Abraham as the father of Ishmael, the forefather of Arabs. When Muslims controlled the site, they banned Jews from entering the building or even climbing above the seventh step to Judaism’s second holiest site. Israel took control of the site in 1967 after Jordan attacked Israel, and has since divided the holy site into times and sections for both Islamic and Jewish prayer, to the chagrin of Arabs.
But at least the Islamists kept the site intact while they controlled it, as they considered the site sacred.
Jewish history and sacred sites in their holy land has often been destroyed if the location held no religious value to the non-Jews. Last year, the Palestinian Authority demolished part of Joshua’s alter on Mount Ebal in Area B under Palestinian Authority control. On the Jewish Temple Mount, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement conducted illegal renovations and disposed of over 9,000 tons of dirt mixed with invaluable archaeological artifacts which the Temple Mount Sifting Project has been painstakingly sorting even though the objects are no longer in situ.
The Kotel may only be in existence today because Islamists considered it the “al-Buraq Wall.”
The Jewish State has done its utmost to respect the history and sanctity of Jewish and non-Jewish locations throughout the holy land. However, Islamists destroyed and vandalized sites significant to other faiths that they do not value, while seeking exclusive control and rights of the religious sites that they appropriated from Jews.
The Islamist scars in the holy land have left Jewish sites destroyed where viewed as un-Islamic, or appropriated within their Islamic religion, and banned for Jewish prayer.
A young Abraham Lincoln wrote his first significant speech in January 1838, which has been called the Lyceum Address. In it, he bemoaned the mayhem that had taken over American society and offered thoughts on how it came to be that people had turned on each other in lynching mobs. The words ring out as true today:
“the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.“
When Lincoln penned his speech, he considered the fact that the generation of the American Revolutionary War was dying out. Those patriots which had fought against the British to obtain the nation’s freedom had almost disappeared. That multi-year war touched every family with dead or injured fathers, sons and brothers, with each carrying their scars into that present moment. But as “the silent artillery of time” was cutting down the survivors, and whittling the “forest of mighty oaks” of history, people lost their connection to that particular shared past. The new generation took the blessings of freedom lightly and asserted the desires of self over the shared responsibilities and common wounds of collective society. Passions born of a common history had served the nation well but those days have come to an end. “Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy.”
A breakdown of societal order and bond between people ensued, leading to chaos.
Lincoln’s approach to the dire situation of the infighting between Americans was to abandon passion for “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason…. and a reverence for the constitution and laws.” Without the immediate link to the past, society’s passions would run wild, and therefore required an adherence to laws under which everyone was bound to maintain the peace.
Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik admired the Lyceum Address but believed Lincoln reached the wrong conclusion. While abiding by laws is indeed required for social order, the historic connection to the past should never be abandoned, and passion, well-placed, is an important human trait and good.
The Passover Haggadah highlights the Jewish approach to maintaining the connection to the past, recognizing the birth of a nation finding freedom, and fostering a people’s passion into the future.
The Bible instructs Jews repeatedly to “tell their children and grandchildren” (Exodus 10:2, 12:26; 13:8; 13:14; Deuteronomy 11:19; Joshua 4:6; Joel 1:3) about the night of freedom, when God took the Children of Israel out of bondage on a path to the land of their inheritance.
Lord Jonathan Sachs expanded on this biblical directive and how it manifests itself in the Haggadah used at the Passover seder, that the method of recounting that story does not use the Bible as its immediate source sheet. Instead, the Haggadah is a text assembled over centuries, and includes “Hillel in the days of the Second Temple, the second-century sages at their seder in Benei Brak, the teachings of the Amora’im of the third and later centuries, poems by Yannai and Kalir from the post-Talmudic period, an addition from Ashkenaz provoked by the terrible sufferings of the First Crusade, and children’s songs from medieval Germany. Every word we say has a history.” Each generation reflected on the Passover story, giving a link through time to that midnight of disembarkation 3,300 years ago.
Time has muted the voices of a hundred generations past, but today we can imagine ourselves walking the desert sands while simultaneously instilling in our children that WE are critical links in and to that common history.
Laws of The Freedom Fighters
The story of the American Revolution is not the same as the Passover story. America’s story was forged with the vision and blood of American patriots who broke with the British monarchy to establish a democracy with new laws for its citizens to both protect it from the new government and establish a system to maintain a civil society. In contrast, on Passover, it was God who saved the Jews from the hands of the Egyptians and gave them new laws to live by.
Rabbi Shmuel Greenberg notes that the matzoh that we eat on Passover is the bread of slaves. Eating it together with bitter herbs is a reminder of being slaves to Egyptians, while eating it with the pascal lamb reminds us that the new lord is a benevolent one, the God who took people out of bondage and gave them commandments to live by.
A Modern Breakdown In Common History and Law
As in the days of Lincoln, we are living in a society that feels broken, with mobs angrily fighting each other, mass shootings, and people with whom we disagree run out of careers and society. Swaths of the country do not trust the government or the media, so bind themselves into small fiefdoms. Perhaps it is from years suffering from the human losses from COVID, the emotional tolls of lockdowns, and the evaporation of savings as inflation robs people of security.
But it may also be from the loss (abandonment?) of our common history. The ‘1619 Project’ and ‘Critical Race Theory’ advance a proposition that while “all men are created equal”, they do not share a common history. America was birthed with Black slavery with Africans dragged to the new world in chains. The makeup of society today includes immigrants and their descendants from around the world, not just the descendants from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
To account for these facts, pubic school boards have started to require new curricula to teach about various ethnicities and countries around the world. Tragically, in some cases, the remarkable birth of America is being watered down, eliminated and/or vilified as poison at inception, a product of a racist White patriarchy advancing imperialism and capitalism. Not only do some schools advance that narrative of history, but argue that those systems continue to exist today and require new laws of “restorative justice” for certain groups. Not only does this approach break with celebrating a common past, but it argues we must have different laws for different groups today, including a seizure and redistribution of wealth from old White European colonizers to newer, darker colonizers.
The efforts deliberately pit members of society against each other.
America and Judaism on History and Law
To Lincoln nearly 200 years ago, the loss of the connection and appreciation of the nation’s founding may have been the beginning of the end. Unmoored from a common past, he believed society became vulnerable as a collection of competing strangers living in close proximity. His belief that history was a story of discrete generations left nothing but law to bind a nation.
The Passover Haggadah takes a different approach. History is taught as a continuous chain that must be strengthened at least once a year. The anchor of nationhood is the birth of freedom, and the seder is for remembering that fateful night AND how our parents, grandparents and ancestors also recounted that momentous day, and how that freedom came together with common laws.
Passover seder at the home of Rabbi Mayer Hirsch, San Francisco, circa 1920. (photo from Courtesy of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life)
Freedom, law and history are both tools and criteria to connect society in peace and harmony. The Passover Haggadah is such touchstone that encapsulates each of these principles separately and collectively, as millions of people sit at tables – apart but together – around the world.
Hopefully it will bring all of us a renewed sense of brotherhood and peace.
The mass media headlines and articles describing the targeted killing of Israelis by Muslim Arabs have rightfully been condemned by civil society as giving a shameful pro-Arab perspective to terrorism.
To fully appreciate the vile nature related to the mindset of the terrorist community, read their media.
Palestinian Arabs have been forgoing their local Arab mass media publications in preference to the inflammatory rhetoric of the local terrorist groups.
According to Palestinian polls, in 2005, 72.5 percent of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza read al Arabia and al Jazeera while only 4.8 percent read al Manar (by Hezbollah) and al Aqsa (by Hamas). By the fall of 2021, the readership was almost the same.
DATE
AL ARABIA & AL JAZEERA
AL MANAR & AL AQSA
Sept 2005
72.5%
4.8%
Sept 2010
60.7%
16.8%
Sept 2015
36.2%
25.4%
Sept 2021
27.3%
25.5%
Media viewership in Gaza over time.Gazans preferences for terrorist sources has grown according to Palestinian polls
The readership trends among Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank was much the same.
Al Manar covered the slaughter of Israeli civilians in March and April 2022 in the manner you would expect of a terrorist-sponsored publication.
“Father of Tel Aviv Shooter: Palestinians Will See the Victory Soon” was the headline, followed by “Shouts of joy were heard on Friday morning around the Jenin home of Palestinian who carried out the heroic operation in Tel Aviv, Raad Fathi Hazem. People gathered near the house of Hazem to celebrate the operation which killed two Israelis and injured several others in the heart of the occupying regime.“
The rest of the article continued with chants to destroy Israel.
screenshot of al Manar website extolling murder of Israeli civilians
The article about the Arab father’s pride in killing Jewish civilians was the latest in a string of terrorism-promotional articles from the widely-read site.
Al Manar’s article “Palestinian Resistance Groups Praise Tel Aviv Operation,” led with “Palestinian Resistance groups celebrated the operation which killed two Israelis in Tel Aviv on Thursday night, stressing that all forms of resistance against Israeli occupation will continue. The Hamas Resistance movement called the operation “heroic” and vowed that resistance against the occupation ‘is continuing and escalating. The continuing terrorism of the occupation and its crimes, attempts to Judaize Jerusalem and to perform sacrifices in the Al-Aqsa Mosque to build its so-called ‘Temple’ during what they call ‘Passover’ — against it stands blood and bullets,’ the Resistance group said in a statement.“
Hezbollah also celebrated and praised the anti-Semitic shootings with “Hezbollah Hails Tel Aviv Operation: Palestinian Heroes Threw Criminal ‘Israel’ into Confusion.” The article stated “Hezbollah, meanwhile, saluted the courageous Palestinian people and Resistance ‘who humiliated the criminal regime of Israel and threw it into confusion.’ The statement called on free people across the world to stand by Palestinian people and offer them all possible forms of support…. The Palestinian people is determined to continue the path of Resistance until the liberation of entire Palestine from the sea to the river.”
Al Manar’s article right after the shooting, “Palestinian Youth, Who Carried out The Operation in “Tel Aviv”, Martyred,” described the 29-year old Arab murderer as a “youth” and the Israeli civilians who lived in Tel Aviv as “settlers” because Hezbollah believes that all of Israel is illegal.
The statements coming from Hamas media were much the same, including the article “Haniyeh: “Tel Aviv” operation redrawn the map of homeland,” after the slaughter of Israeli civilians in Bnei Brak, which stated that Haniyeh “expressed the pride of the Palestinian people and the free people of the Ummah in the heroic operation carried out by the heroic martyr Diaa Hamarsha. [the Palestinian murderer of several unarmed Jews]“
While the English mainstream media misdirects the masses to consider Palestinians as frustrated and “resorting to violence,” the media consumed by Palestinian Arabs calls for the shedding of more Jewish blood.
There were four deadly attacks by Arabs against Israeli civilians over the past few weeks. While writing about the different background and loyalties of the assailants, The New York Times inserted a Palestinian opinion “analysis” atop the dead Israeli bodies.
The New York Times on April 9, 2022 wrote about Arab terrorism from the terrorist point of view
The paper did not write that Israelis have been dealing with Arabs killing them for decades. Since the Second “Intifada” War of Terrorism, Israelis of all political stripes have internalized that the Palestinian Arabs detest the existence of Jews in their holy land. The “structural reasons behind the violence” are that 93 percent of Palestinian Arabs hate Jews and a majority support the anti-Semitic terrorist group Hamas that wants to destroy Israel.
The article did not discuss the divisions within the Palestinian Authority itself, nor the blood lust of Gazans who want to kill Israeli civilians according to polls.
No, this was an article written to consider the killer’s perspective, something that the liberal media does uniquely when Jews are killed. (I don’t recall the Times considering the terrorists’ narrative in the Ariana Grande concert bombing or when killing scores in Nice, France).
The Times wrote that “this young kid opened his eyes to Jenin in 2002 and to the utter destruction of the camp,” making the Israelis appear as terrorists and the rational for hating Jews. Absent from the jaundiced narrative was the horrific hotel bombing by a Palestinian Arab and that 23 Israeli soldiers died in the narrow alleyways of Jenin to minimize death to Palestinian civilians as the IDF sought to curb more attacks. This Palestinian propaganda also failed to mention that the Palestinian Authority indoctrinated that child to want to kill Jews when it named a soccer tournament after the Netanya Passover bomber.
As Israelis once again bury young innocent souls, The New York Times is informing its readers that Palestinians cannot be blamed – seemingly for absolutely anything.
Israelis light candles at the scene of a terror attack on Dizengoff street, central Tel Aviv, April 8, 2022. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
Due to Muslim Arab terrorism now going on in Israel during the month of Ramadan, the United States embassy has placed the Old City of Jerusalem on its restricted list.
The security alert from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem was published on March 30, 2022 and stated:
Due to recent terrorist attacks in the area and potential security issues associated with the upcoming April 2022 holidays, U.S. government employees and their family members are restricted until further notice from entering the Old City of Jerusalem after dark (dusk to dawn) and on Fridays. Damascus, Herod’s, and Lions’ Gates are off limits as well.
U.S. citizens should take this into consideration when planning their own activities.
The question is whether the imposition of a no-go zone in the holy city of Jerusalem during Passover, Easter and Ramadan was because the United States does not trust Israeli security or in deference to Muslim sensitivities. Will the US embassy impose this restriction on American Muslims at the embassy as well, or just non-Muslims?
Terrorist attacks are happening all over Israel, including in Bnei Brak, Beersheva and Tel Aviv. Will the US put those cities on the no-go list as well? That’s highly doubtful as the U.S. focuses on religious tension – not terrorism – in the city considered holy to three faiths.
The United States embassy to Israel has bowed to Islamic demands to restrict its non-Muslim personnel from visiting the holy city of Jerusalem. One can imagine the administration demanding Israeli Jews to do the same in the future.
Israeli flag at the western wall of the Jewish Temple Mount
Israelis are facing a wave of terrorism from Muslim Arabs, in which 14 people were killed in just the last few weeks. The political-terrorist group Hamas celebrated the murders in what it called a “heroic operation.” Gazans handed out sweets on the streets to celebrate the killings.
Such sentiments brought out the United Nations to call the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.
Tor Wennesland, the UN Secretary General’s special envoy to the Middle East, reached out to Haniyeh in early April. Haniyeh broadcast the action on Hamas media with “Hamas Chief Receives Call From UN Mideast Envoy.” Haniyeh got to tell Palestinian Arabs that he commands respect on the world stage and is considered a leader, fighting for his people. The article stated that Haniyeh “discussed the latest political and field developments related to the Palestinian cause,” and described at length how Haniyeh told the UN leader that the global body had to do more to clamp down on Israel.
The article concluded with “The UN envoy hailed the relationship with Hamas as ‘constructive and strategic.‘“
Just a few days later, another Palestinian killed three Israelis as they enjoyed an evening out in Tel Aviv. A senior Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, said that “resistance operations are a natural response to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people,” defending the killings of innocent civilians.
Wennesland was not pleased and decided to pen his own narrative.
Appalled by another heinous attack this evening in TelAviv. My deepest condolences to the families of the victims & wishing a speedy recovery to the injured. Deplore the welcoming of this attack by Hamas; there is no glory in terror. These acts must stop now & be condemned by all
The United Nations is partially responsible for the attacks on Israelis, as it coddles terrorist groups and refuses to hold Palestinians responsible for their actions.
FirstOneThrough 