Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday asked 10,000 worshipers in Gaza to note Nakba Day by asking that Palestinians ”mark the occasion this year with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine.”
Meanwhile, Tareq Baconi, writing in CiF today, (Hamas and Fatah can work together) lauded Hamas’s unity government with Fatah as an indication that President Obama should “seek out potential moderation from within Hamas”, and characterizing the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood which repeatedly calls for Israel’s destruction and routinely engages in chilling anti-Semitism, as increasingly “pragmatic”.
The capacity of commentators such as Baconi two sanitize reactionary terrorist movements who openly seek the murder of Jews is one of the defining features of the Guardian Left.
That Hamas states continually in English and Arabic that they will never accept the existence of Israel within any borders is a fact that can only be ignored by the most extreme anti-Israel ideologues.
For those who need reminding, here are but a few of the explicitly anti-Semitic remarks recently made in a sermon delivered by ‘Atallah Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas minister of culture, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV, April 8, 2011, translation by MEMRI):
“The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah.
“Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world.
“The Jews kill anyone who believes in Allah. They do not want to see any peace whatsoever on Earth.”
And, Hamas cleric Yunis Al-Astal, who is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, argued, on May 11, that:
‘The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honour of annihilating the evil of this gang.’
‘In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.’
I honestly don’t know how anyone can contextualize such explicit hate, nor reconcile such statements with a narrative suggesting that the group has moderated and could be a partner for peace.
As anyone who reads the site, MEMRI, would surely know, the Judeophobic vitriol noted above represents a tiny sample of the anti-Semitism routinely peddled in the Hamas controlled media, in Mosques, and within popular culture.
It is tempting to describe such CiF commentary which whitewashes radical Islamist movements as merely “willfully ignorant”, but I think the truth is somewhere closer to “willful anti-Israel malice” – a malevolence consistently granted license at the Guardian.
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23 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 17, 2011 at 1:51 pm
HairShirt
I don’t know where they dredge these people up from. Is there a Central Casting/temp agency for pro-Islamist wannabe writers?
“The capacity of commentators such as Baconi two sanitize reactionary terrorist movements who openly seek the murder of Jews is one of the defining features of the Guardian Left.”
You are correct, but it’s also delusional in the extreme as are the ideas expressed in this twerp’s article.
Unison, from a people which don’t know the meaning of compromise, who would sell their children into slavery if they were ordered to do so and who give them up willingly to be taught hatred?
Compromise??? There is no Arabic word for compromise. Intelligent people know that discourse informs perception. “Compromise” to the Islamist mentality is “half-way solution” and unless these numbskulls win outright it will seem to them that they have lost.
I give this hellish “marriage” less than three months. It will not be long before they are slinging each other from the top of tall buildings again and bleating that the world owes them.
CiF is malicious, one-eyed and hate-filled but never “wilfully ignorant.”
Some of its writers are (notably Hattie the Hen Sherwood), but the majority of them are attracted to the CiF/Guardian world view like flies are to sh*t.
May 17, 2011 at 2:37 pm
sencar
Historically Zionism was a (largely) European colonialist enterprise aimed at taking land from Palestinians and establishing a Jewish state on that land. It succeeded. It is perfectly reasonable for any Palestinian organisation, such as Hamas, to aim at returning the position to the status quo ante (i.e. replacing Israel and the occupied territories with a Palestinian state). If Israel were to be conquered by Egypt (unlikely I know) there would be many Israelis who who would resist in exactly the same way that Hamas tries to do.
Whether such resistance is realistic depends on ‘facts on the ground’. The parallel with the defeat of native American Indians is very close. Geronimo and his friends didn’t resist European colonisation because they were ant-white or anti-Christian, they resisted because the Europeans were taking their lands and driving them into poverty and starvation. When sheer weight of European numbers and superior military force made it inevitable, they accepted their place in reservations. Similarly Fatah accepts that pre-1967 Israel isn’t going to fade away and confines its debate to Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas retains the long-term goal of a Palestinan state in the whole of pre-1948 Palestine but, pragmatically, accepts that for the next few decades they can only hope for a ceasefire and peaceful coexistence.
What would any of you Zionists do if faced with the Palestinian predicament?
May 17, 2011 at 3:22 pm
ziontruth
Historically, Zionism or Jewish nationalism goes back to Biblical times; and though its renewal in the 19th century was inspired by the renewal of nationalism in general in Europe, this grain of truth does not cover the lie of painting Zionism as a White European Colonial Settler Enterprise. Such a picture is as revisionist of history as is Holocaust Denial–more so, considering it denies 3000 and not just 70 years of history.
Islamic anti-Zionism started in the 1890s before Arab nationalism formed in response to Western domination after WWI, let alone the fabrication of the non-Jewish “Palestinian” nation. It stemmed from the Islamic tenet that a land once under Islamic rule can never be allowed to go back to non-Muslim rule.
Whether in the name of Islam or pan-Arabism, over the years the Arab imperialists realized they had a public relations problem: For some odd reason, the world refused to sympathize with the goal of robbing the tiny patch of land from the Jews to give to already existing 20 Arab or 50 Muslim states. Therefore, in order to turn the truth of the Jewish David vs. Arab/Muslim Goliath on its head, the Arab imperialists invented the non-Jewish “Palestinian nation” from scratch, although if you pick any news article, history book or atlas from around 1960 you find no usage of the term “Palestinian” to denote a non-Jewish nation indigenous to Palestine.
Aided and abetted by their allies on the Marxist Left, the Arab imperialists managed to distribute their propaganda and have it sink it. Today the lies are all but entrenched, and it is the truth that needs to be fought for: That the Jewish nation is the one and only true indigenous nation of Palestine; and that the Jewish nation has the right to repulse all the Arab settlers from its indigenous land, and to inhabit the land without deference to any other nation.
Anti-Zionism is an inherently unjust movement that wishes to rob a nation of its one and only piece of land in the world. Anti-Zionists are on the side of imperialists, invaders, settlers, colonists, oppressors and land-thieves. Zionism is just, and whatever the Jews do to secure their exclusive national sovereignty on the Land of Israel is self-evidently just and needs no apology. Zionism is not under trial; but anti-Zionism is guilty of being a cause of injustice. The unjust will meet their reward.
May 17, 2011 at 3:24 pm
ziontruth
“and have it sink it” should be “and have it sink in”
May 17, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Thank God I'm An Infidel
sencar, It ain’t the Israelis, Zionists, who are
- hijacking planes and flying them into buildings
- bombing buses and the underground in London
- using poison gas and murdering 5,000 Kurds in Halabja Iraq
- destroying two 1,500 year old Buddahs in Bamiyan Afghanistan
- bombing embassies in Africa killing passersby
- placing a bomb on civilian airlines like Pan Am 103
- kidnapping and beheading journalists like Daniel Pearl
- killing 20,000 people in Hama Syria
- killing Coptic Christians in Egypt
- hanging gay teens from construction cranes
sencar, it is YOUR buddies, YOUR islamofascists who are at war with people all over the world.
You try to blame Zionists while your islamfascist buddies are killing people all over the world.
May 17, 2011 at 4:03 pm
SarahLeah
“What would any of you Zionists do if faced with the Palestinian predicament?”
Speaking for myself, sencar:
- not being deluded or one step away from insanity;
- not being paranoid or routinely projecting all my diseased fears onto others;
- having control of myself so that I don’t jump to four corners of the compass or take offence at the slightest thing or even a change in wind direction;
– not being so mired in the past that I cannot look to a future without hatred;
– being capable of ENVISAGING a future without hatred;
– being capable of THINKING rather than emoting, and being self-aware and aware of the consequences of my actions;
– being prepared to accept responsibility for those actions, particularly if they go wrong or cause harm, rather than blame everyone but myself for them;
– being capable of the intellectual maturity which appreciates that compromise may be the best way forward for all the peoples in the area, in that both sides have the potential to get most of what they need;
– being prepared to tolerate the sort of emotional discomfort which comes from not being able to realise my strongly-held ambitions immediately;
– being far sighted enough to realise that war without end does not ensure the best future for the children that I love, rather than want to use as propaganda objects;
– being intelligent enough to realise that deliberately allowing the sacrifice of the next generation to hatred will mean that my society will never raise itself from the gutter;
I would look around me at what my neighbours had managed to accomplish, think to myself that if I behaved peaceably towards them I might one day share in that prosperity which would ensure a vastly higher standard and quality of life for my family than they have at present, and:
I WOULD BLOODY WELL MAKE A LASTING PEACE!
May 17, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Adam Levick
Actually sencar, 900,000 Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands faced the “Palestinian predicament”, and you know what they did? They moved on with their lives and settled in the West or in Israel.
May 17, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Arabella Meller
What’s the predicament? Having leaders who are like a dog with a bone about conflict with Israel? I’d detach myself from them. I would build a useful life for myself and my family and attempt to persuade those around me not to waste their lives hating people
Jews had a similar ‘predicament’ for two thousand years without people throwing money at them and crying about their being underdogs. Have some pride and do some good in the world as the Jews did. Educate your children. Build a future for them. Stop hating.
May 17, 2011 at 2:54 pm
peterthehungarian
Sencar
You must be a real expert on the history of Zionism and Israel. Did you learn all of the above from the Pravda, from Ilan Pappe or from the Electronic Intifada?
I guess all of the above…
May 18, 2011 at 5:26 pm
SerJew
You must be a real expert on the history of Zionism and Israel.”peterthehungarian
No, he´s only a “truth/logic” seeker, by his own definition, of course. Finkelstein, Faurrison, Chomsky, Pappé also think that of themselves, which just shows that self-aggrandizing delusion is the disease of the millenium.
May 17, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Thank God I'm An Infidel
HAPPY NAKBA sencar and may you CONTINUE to enjoy your well deserved NAKBA!
May 17, 2011 at 5:30 pm
zeitgoose
Sencar
“It is perfectly reasonable for any Palestinian organisation, such as Hamas, to aim at returning the position to the status quo ante (i.e. replacing Israel and the occupied territories with a Palestinian state).”
There never was a Palestinian state before Israel. And no, it is entirely unreasonble for Hamas or anyone else to fail to accept the reality, “the facts on the ground” as you put it, of the Israeli State. You only need to look at the colossal suffering of the palestinian so-called refugees, let alone the blighted lives of israelis, gazans and west bank palestinians, to appreciate the extent of the moral failure you hold to be “reasonable”.
“If Israel were to be conquered by Egypt (unlikely I know) there would be many Israelis who who would resist in exactly the same way that Hamas tries to do.”
Apart from showing that you view life in the same dead-end way as Hamas this reveals a cultural and political naivety which is truly staggering. The attempt to draw any kind of equivalence between the motives and morals of Hamas and the israelis is peurile. Any other country with israel’s power would squash Hamas like a flea and beggar the consequences.
“Whether such resistance is realistic depends on ‘facts on the ground’. The parallel with the defeat of native American Indians is very close. Geronimo and his friends didn’t resist European colonisation because they were ant-white or anti-Christian, they resisted because the Europeans were taking their lands and driving them into poverty and starvation.”
No, the parallel is not close at all. The israelis inherited the “reservation” and alleviated the poverty on it. The arabs with 1000 times the liebensraum decided, in character, to stab their fellow arabs in the back. The povert of the arabs is their own fault and has nothing to do with the founding of the state of israel in palestine. Although it is surely the case that their for the jews does make their misery, poverty, oppression and humiliation a great deal deeper.
“Similarly Fatah accepts that pre-1967 Israel isn’t going to fade away and confines its debate to Gaza and the West Bank.”
This shows that you are not all complete fuckwits.
“Hamas retains the long-term goal of a Palestinan state in the whole of pre-1948 Palestine but, pragmatically, accepts that for the next few decades they can only hope for a ceasefire and peaceful coexistence.”
Pragmatically? What sort of fools do you take the israelis for? Do you suppose that they are going to be taken in by a Hamas ‘truce’? True pragmatism would be to accept the facts on the ground and accept the opportunities for nation building. But the fact is that these people are interested only in victimhood. They just can’t get over their humiliation and move on. That is what the jews would do.
None of this makes any sense to you, does it? For you it’s all about revenge and getting ‘even’ isn’t it? In the process you are throwing away the lives of countless people other than you sorry self. Where’s the justice in wasting lives for nothing?
May 17, 2011 at 5:33 pm
zeitgoose
missed out the word ‘hatred’ in this #
No, the parallel is not close at all. The israelis inherited the “reservation” and alleviated the poverty on it. The arabs with 1000 times the liebensraum decided, in character, to stab their fellow arabs in the back. The povert of the arabs is their own fault and has nothing to do with the founding of the state of israel in palestine. Although it is surely the case that their hatred for the jews does make their misery, poverty, oppression and humiliation a great deal deeper.
May 18, 2011 at 1:26 am
benorr
Hard to believe but the Guardian actually managed scrape off this Tareq Baconi
from somewhere to write this silly article for them.
Looks like the Guardian is the vanguard of Hamas
May 18, 2011 at 10:55 am
Ariadne
Baconi? Trodden on and scraped off of the sole of someone’s shoe. And it seems a strange Muslim name.
May 18, 2011 at 3:27 pm
sencar
zeitgoose
Of course there “never was a Palestinian state before Israel”. From 1922 until 1948 Palestine was under the British Mandate. Before that it was part of the Ottoman Empire. That doesn’t mean that Palestinians aren’t entiltled to a state. India was a part of the British Empire until 1947. Before that it was carved up between various moguls and nawabs. Independence from colonialism (in Palestine as in India) means that the indigenous people rule themselves. The indigenous people in Palestine in 1948 were overwhelmingly Arab; that is until the great majority of Arabs were ethnically cleansed.
Yes there has been “colossal suffering”, but who has been responsible for most of it? Certainly not the Palestinians if you look at the balance of death and destruction.
The idea that Israel ‘inherited’ Palestine by some sort of birthright is so ridiculous as to be scarcely worth arguing about. Are you seriously taking the ‘chosen people by God’ line? Who do you think occupied these lands before Moses (assuming there was such a person)? If historical tenure is the criterion you’d have to go back to cavemen to establish who the land belongs to. Most of the territory in the world has changed hands many times over the last two or three thousand years. Only Israelis lay claim to their territory on the basis of who occupied the land several millennia ago.
There is one final point. Israeli claims to Palestinian land rests on the myth that Jews were driven out by the Romans and their descendants are reclaiming the land. There is serious doubt amongst academics as to whether the Jews who were driven out by the Romans and those who colonised Palestine over the lasr century or so have any connection, other than religious belief. See Schlomo Sand’s book for the details.
May 18, 2011 at 3:54 pm
ziontruth
“The indigenous people in Palestine in 1948 were overwhelmingly Arab”
No. “Arab” and “indigenous to Palestine” are a contradiction. Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula. The indigenous of Palestine are the Jews, seeing as they are the oldest Palestine-connected nation still in existence. The Arab settler-colonists in Palestine have nothing uniquely tying them to this land.
“The idea that Israel ‘inherited’ Palestine by some sort of birthright is so ridiculous as to be scarcely worth arguing about.”
So go tell the Greeks they ought to let all the Turkish refugees of 1922 return to Hellas; tell the Greeks their ancient connection to Greece matters nothing, see what kind of a response you get.
“…whether the Jews who were driven out by the Romans and those who [returned to] Palestine over the lasr century or so have any connection, other than religious belief.”
The religion provides the definition of what it means to be a Jew: Either born to a Jewish mother or having undergone halachic conversion. If a person fulfills one of these two criteria, he or she is connected to all Jews all the way up to Jacob. Neither you nor I get to define what makes a Jew.
“See Schlomo Sand’s book for the details.”
What next from you? The Khazaria Hypothesis?
May 18, 2011 at 9:00 pm
SerJew
“There is one final point. Israeli claims to Palestinian land rests on the myth that Jews were driven out by the Romans and their descendants are reclaiming the land” sencar
And this spoke prof. of semi-truth and fuzzy-logic. Listen, every country is based in some kind of myth, but there´s no greater myth than the palestinian
peoplehood one.
Now, you can whine and rant as much as you want about what´s right or wrong or what should have been or not.
Fact is that Israel exists, was created with full support of the international community, and has a legitimacy rarely found in any of the 140 or so countries around the globe, most of which were created by untold massacre, rape and wholesale extermination.
So, again, ziontruth was to the point: neither you nor that fraudster shlomo-sand-head have any credibility to impinge your absurd, dishonest and, frankly pathetic, double-standards on Israel.
Again, once more you show you have an obsession about indicting Israel at each and every opportunity. That´s your whole point.
May 18, 2011 at 10:11 pm
Thank God I'm An Infidel
sencar the disingenuous moron said:
“Yes there has been “colossal suffering”, but who has been responsible for most of it? Certainly not the Palestinians if you look at the balance of death and destruction.”
So according to your values, the US, UK and SU are guilty of aggression destroying peace loving nazi Germany.
sencar, you must also believe that Islam existed before Judaism.
The Jews were in Israel BEFORE muhammed created Islam 1,400 years ago.
May 18, 2011 at 3:59 pm
peterthehungarian
The indigenous people in Palestine in 1948 were overwhelmingly Arab
Rubbish. There was a huge Arab immigration to Palestine after the Jews started to modernise the agriculture and started the industrialization. Were you a bit less ignorant on the subject you would know that about a half of today’s Israeli Arab family names originate from the Maghreb, Egypt, Irak etc. (Mugrabi, Masry, Naji). More than half of Jerusalem’s population were Jewish at the beginning of the past century.
See Schlomo Sand’s book for the details.
This book has been debunked as a pseudoscientific falsification of history by every real expert historians. Sand is supposed to be lecturer on French cinema and culture or something like that and never researched or studied Jewish history. (And his name is Shlomo not Schlomo btw.)
May 18, 2011 at 5:27 pm
SerJew
Schlomo Sand, surely yet another self-styled “truth/logic” seeker.
May 19, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Sanity
Hi everyone, take a look at this link from a commenter (Ziontruth) on this very site, CiF Watch: http://cifwatch.com/2011/05/19/in-defense-of-geoffrey-alderman/#comment-47736.
Let me excerpt from it: ‘it so happens that the Arabs covet what rightfully belongs to the Jews, so we hate them‘.
Let’s be clear: that is racism pure and simple.
May 19, 2011 at 2:52 pm
ziontruth
Alright. You have a bag o’ $2000 with you. I demand it from you, even using force to take it away from you. For my actions, you hate me. Therefore, you’re prejudiced, bigoted etc. toward me.
Right?