You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ tag.
Brian Whitaker has had many assignments during his nearly twenty-five year career at the Guardian, including a long stint as the paper’s Middle East editor.
So, the Guardian veteran’s image and moniker caught my eye in the comment section below CiF’s latest edition of Divine Dispatches by David Shariatmadari.
Whitaker was responding to Shariatmadari’s final bullet point about “speculation as to whether Mormons would have undue influence over the White House” (in the event of a Mitt Romney Presidency).
Here’s Whitaker’s reply:
Whitaker linked to an essay he wrote in 2005, while Middle East editor, titled “Fundamental Union“, which began thusly:
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is a controversial Islamic scholar who approves of wife-beating and believes in traditional family values. The Mormon church, having abandoned polygamy more than a century ago, believes in traditional families too.
With that much in common, they have joined forces to “defend the family” and fight progressive social policies at the United Nations.
Intrigued by a comparison between the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader and the Utah based Church of Latter Day Saints, to which Romney is a member, I read on.
“The Doha conference”, Whitaker informs us, “provides a striking example of growing cooperation between the Christian right (especially in the United States) and conservative Muslims.” [emphasis mine]
Further intrigued by a Guardian editor evoking the specter of a burgeoning Evangelical-Islamism Alliance – which, after all, represents something approaching apostasy at an institution which continually claims that the Christian right (and America more broadly) is immutably Islamophobic – I read further.
The debate about family values, opined Whitaker, does not “follow the usual dividing lines of international politics. The battle is between liberal secularists and conservatives…who think religion has a role in government.”
On this issue, Whitaker’s flourish concludes, “the United States now sits in the religious camp alongside the Islamic regimes: not so much a clash of civilisations, more an alliance of fundamentalisms.” [emphasis mine]
While there is, to be sure, much to criticize about the Christian right in the U.S. – such as their views on gay rights and other social issues – it takes a truly breathtaking leap to posit anything approaching a moral overlap with Islamism, particularly the brand of Islamist thought championed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Al-Qaradawi’s Islamism (which, along with the even more extreme Salafists, garnered a strong majority of the vote in Egypt’s recent elections) doesn’t merely condemn gays, but calls for their execution.
Al-Qaradawi’s Islamism approves of female genital mutilation, and believes that women who are the victims of rape arguably should be punished for their apparent sin of tempting their innocent male attacker!
Al-Qaradawi Qaradawi also supports acts of terrorism innocent American and Israeli civilians – and issued a fatwa in 2003 specifically authorizing the use of women in suicide attacks.
Finally – and strangely absent, even in passing, anywhere in Whitaker’s nearly 2,000 word essay – there’s the issue of Al-Qaradawi’s extreme, explicit and unapologetic antisemitism.
Such Jew-hatred, which Whitaker ever so curiously omitted, includes the MB spiritual leader’s citation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in “religious deliberations”, and his incitement of violence specifically against Jews.
More recently, Al-Qaradawi’s (Mormon-style?) Islamism explicitly endorsed Hitler’s genocide against the Jews, and was quoted in a Wikileaks cable literally calling on Allah to kill every last Jew on earth.
Whatever legitimate criticisms their may be regarding Mormon religious doctrine, even a cursory view of the Church (and its leadership) would disabuse those sincerely interested in such an inquiry of any suggestion that the faith is compromised by even a hint of such extremism.
Whitaker’s bizarre, tall tale of twin, morally overlapping, fundamentalisms represents a classic Guardian polemicism: preconceived, politically convenient, and ideologically driven conclusions in desperate search of anything even resembling supporting evidence.
Related articles
- The Guardian’s “democratic” Islamist leader: Kill every last Jew on earth (cifwatch.com)
- The Perils of Self-Deception on the Root Cause of Antisemitism (cifwatch.com)
- CiF’s Rachel Shabi, Israeli democracy and the rank dishonesty of the anti-Zionist Left (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian provides free PR to Interpal, a “charity” widely known as terrorist front group (cifwatch.com)
- Wadah Kanfar promotes the progressive virtues of radical Islam at ‘Comment is Free’ (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian “Moderate Islamist” Update: Tunisian constitution bans non-Muslims from Presidency (cifwatch.com)
The following Guardian headline, in a story written by Phoebe Greenwood, truly could have been written by the Hamas minister of propaganda.
Evidently, Greenwood – the Guardian Israel correspondent who makes us long for the days of Harriet Sherwood – wasn’t being in the least facetious.
She begins, reporting from Gaza City:
Hamas has confirmed that it will shift tactics away from violent attacks on Israel as part of a rapprochement with the Palestinian Authority.
A spokesman for the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, told the Guardian that the Islamic party, which has controlled Gaza for the past five years, was shifting its emphasis from armed struggle to non-violent resistance.
Greenwood admits, however, there is one caveat to the new Gandhi-style peaceful resistance of the group whose founding charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to “prove” that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world.
Violence is no longer the primary option but if Israel pushes us, we reserve the right to defend ourselves with force,”
Oh, I see.
Please, Ms. Greenwood, help contextualize this for us. What contemporary Islamic resistance movement is the Hamas leadership emulating?
The announcement on Sunday does not qualify as a full repudiation of violence, but marks a step away from violent extremism by the Hamas leadership towards the more progressive Islamism espoused by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo.
The “progressive Islamism” of the Muslim Brotherhood? She must be referring to the group whose spiritual advisor praised Adolf Hitler’s genocide and literally called for the murder of every last Jew on earth.
But, wait. It gets better.
Greenwood:
In a further concession to international legitimacy, the Hamas leadership confirmed on Sunday that it could entertain discussions regarding a peace agreement with Israel if the Quartet of peace broking powers agree to modify its preconditions. Hamas will accept the foundation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders but stands firm in its refusal to acknowledge the state of Israel.
The new Hamas: Peace, yes. Israel’s existence, no.
Then, Greenwood, in one last unintentionally comical rhetorical flourish, writes:
This softened tone on the international stage is not yet evident in Haniya’s domestic rhetoric. Speaking at a rally in Kateeba Square, Gaza City, to mark the 24th anniversary of the foundation of the movement last week, the prime minister vowed to continue the “resistance”.
“The resistance and the armed struggle are the way and the strategic choice for liberating Palestinian land from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea,” he said.
Alas, it seems that Hamas’s website similarly doesn’t reflect the new, gentler more sensitive Islamist group.
And, then there’s this communique:
Martyrs:
I’m being unfair to the Guardian, you say?
Well, let’s go back in time to a Guardian report from October 9, 2010:
Fast forward to the website of the New Hamas:
Hamas propaganda photo courtesy of the Guardian.
Hamas peace offensive propaganda communique courtesy of the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood.
Any questions?
I wrote here last year about fantasy ideology, a term employed by Lee Harris, to describe the delusions which he argued drive the political terrorism of Al Qaeda and other Islamist entities. Harris argued that Islamist terror has no rationale as we might apprehend it; rather, its essence is unpredictability and confusion and its violent aspects are deliberately promoted by Islamist leaders as a means of gaining political supremacy.
The key marker of a fantasy ideology, according to Harris, is
“… that there must first be a pre-existing collective need for this fantasy; that this need comes from a conflict between a set of collective aspirations and desires, on one hand, and the stern dictates of brutal reality, on the other — a conflict in which a lack of realism is gradually transformed into a penchant for fantasy….”
The above can also describe the essential ingredients of the reactions to the so-called “Arab Spring” by the West as well as in the Middle East.
Key among those ingredients is the lack of realism – it rapidly became plain that although the demonstrators in Tahrir Square, for example, wanted “democracy” and “freedom” they had little idea of what they wanted to bring about, much less a plan as to how to do so. Nevertheless there was and still is certainly the collective need for such a fantasy. The fantasy aspect lies in the apparent belief that freedom and democracy would somehow happen if enough students and others demonstrated in favour of it but without their having actually to do anything else to bring them about.
The riots are still going on and Egypt looks likely to descend into an abyss of Islamism which will put freedom and democracy, however they might choose to operationalise it, further out of their reach.
The fantasies that freedom and democracy could be achieved first by announcing that they wanted it, and then by rioting rather than thinking about how it could be pushed rapidly forward, also spread throughout the Middle East, no doubt again because of the collective need for the fantasy rather than because the main drivers of it could engage in reality-based means/ends analyses of to how to bring it about.
Initially in Tahrir Square, the collective aspirations and desires for “freedom” and “democracy” took little or no account of the stern dictates of brutal reality, ie that such drastic change cannot come about suddenly or quickly or without an infrastructure whereby it can be maintained.
By contrast, when Lenin returned to Russia he had an organisation in place to control and guide the revolution he wished to bring about. Years of planning and underground work had gone into his preparations. However, as I have already described above, the young bloggers and others in Tahrir Square had no organisation and no plan. The only two groups in Egypt that were organised and had a firm plan were the Muslim Brotherhood and the military leadership.
As a result of this, the post-Mubarak era presents Egyptian demonstrators with an infinitely more threatening brutal reality – that of Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood who are frighteningly adept at stepping into the vacuum left by mayhem and uncertainty and appearing to provide answers. In fact their agenda is enslavement and brutality of a far different sort in the name of Islamist supremacy. Elsewhere in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, the same stern dictates of brutal reality described by Harris have been very much in evidence as the death toll of protestors in the grip of their own fantasy ideology rises steadily at the hands of Assad’s forces.
Arguably the greatest impact on the West’s imagination, however, was made by events in Tahrir Square.
Particularly interesting was the almost immediate disconnection from reality of Western governments and their media when they reported it – it became, in effect another fantasy ideology for them (which they peddled relentlessly to their viewers and readership) as they tried to analyse those events and predict outcomes. The Tahrir Square uprisings provided a vehicle for the media to exaggerate the import of what, after all, were little more than the sort of expressions of discontent we had been witnessing in Muslim countries for decades, albeit on a very much smaller scale.
There seems little doubt that this belief in and the promotion of an “Arab Spring” (the name is borrowed directly from the Prague Spring and is a curious misnomer because that led to years of repression after Dubcek’s failed attempt to bring in democratic rule) met a pre-existing need in the West to perceive Islamic countries as being essentially “just like us” in their needs and aspirations.
The media fell almost en masse into cognitive egocentrism – and mistook, as it so easily does, what it wanted to happen (ie its own hypotheses and expectations) for reality and truth. Because of that much of the brutality of the crowds towards each other in Tahrir Square was either skated over in the Western media or not mentioned at all, perhaps because it did not fit with the story which underpinned the collective need for the fantasy. One notable example of brutality (which, so far as I know was not replicated in the demonstrations in Prague and elsewhere in Eastern Europe) was the sexual assault on CBC’s Lara Logan by a mob in Tahrir Square. Sexual assaults on other female journalists in Egypt were also reported.
In spite of repeated and verifiable reports which showed that the “Arab Spring” represented a fundamental category mistake by the West and its outcome was unlikely to be anything like that of the Velvet Revolution of Vaclav Havel, which is what most of the demonstrators and the media and western governments seemed to want, the majority of the media persisted in their optimistic portrayal of it for an unconscionably long time.
Riots spread across the Arab world, but it took Ian Black in The Guardian until 13th December 2011 to admit that the fate of the region still hung in the balance. Yet we also had an article on 16th December, again in The Guardian, – and it seemed not to be able to prevent itself from mentioning Israel in a poor light – which persisted with its cock-eyed optimism – that a “lost generation” had “found its voice!”
Whether or not that is the case, it seems to suit the Guardian and other media not to spell out that Islamism is inimical to pro-democracy protest or indeed to democracy itself as they might apprehend it. Hamas was “democratically elected” in Gaza, after all, and promptly disposed of its opposition and has held no elections since.
This should scarcely be surprising given that the essence of Islamism is submission to authoritarianism.
Old habits die hard.
Related articles
As I observed the last time I commented on a CiF piece by Wajahat Ali, the commentator plays the Islamophobia card so liberally that he even characterized the U.S. Government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) as an example of anti-Muslim racism.
Far from a racist witch hunt, the FBI prosecution of HLF for the “charity” group’s ties to terrorism resulted in five convictions - including “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization (Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood), providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering”.
The case was dubbed the “largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history”.
Ali can be seen here contributing essays to the English website of the Muslim Brotherhood. One such essay included, in the “related article” section beneath an Ali piece, an essay titled “Israel is Effecting Holocaust in Gaza“.
For those unaware of the MB, you can see the group’s spiritual leader, Sheik Yousuf al-Qaradawi, in a released WikiLeaks cable, asking Allah to kill every last Jew on earth.
Undaunted, CiF again commissioned Ali to opine on American Islamophobia, in “Lowe’s pulls TV ads – and gives a Christmas gift to Target et all“, Dec. 14, on the decision by the American retail chain to pull its advertising from TLC’s reality TV show “All-American Muslim”.
While Lowe’s decision certainly seems, on the face of it, entirely unjustifiable, it’s reasonable to question why CiF would choose someone affiliated with the MB to opine on bigotry in the U.S. – especially while not revealing the author’s Islamist sympathies.
Here’s one comment left by a reader beneath the line of Ali’s commentary.
14 December 2011 1:31PM
Wajahat
I absolutely agree that it is absurd and obnoxious to withdraw advertising from All-American Muslim: a show which follows very integrated and largely non practicing Muslims in America.
A stupider or nastier decision it would be hard to find.
HOWEVER, I’m very concerned by your own politics. Here is an article you wrote in the Guardian a couple of years ago, slamming the successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation
The HLF trial uncovered a significant network of funding, propagandising and political fronts for Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood in the USA. Those fronts were explicitly set up for two purposes:
1. To demolish the Oslo peace initiatives; and
2. The secure Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood leadership of US Muslim community politics.
One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial was this document, entitled “On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” :
The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
These Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood fronts included some organisations which I understand you’ve been involved with yourself.
Now look. Most people here will stand up against rabble rousing and bigotry towards Muslims. However, it really does not help to have the case against Muslim-bating made by somebody with your politics.
CiF moderator Isabella Mackie (who, for those unaware, is Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger’s daughter) was none too pleased, writing to the heterodox commenter:
A lot of off topic comments here. The article is about an American TV programme, an American TV channel, and an American family organisation. All the comments about the Muslim brotherhood etc will be removed.
Our commenter responded to Mackie’s warning:
14 December 2011 4:45PM
Response to IsabellaMackie, 14 December 2011 4:22PM
Bella
I really wouldn’t recommend deleting the comment in which I discuss the wisdom of commissioning an article, attacking anti-Muslim bigotry, written by a writer who appears to have been a Muslim Brotherhood activist, and who previously wrote an article attacking the US Government for prosecuting the Holy Land Foundation for terrorist fundraising.
Do you not remember the Dilpazier Aslam/Hizb ut Tahrir affair?
The Guardian commissioned a writer who was linked to Hizb ut Tahrir, but didn’t disclose his extreme politics. Eventually, the Guardian dismissed Mr Aslam, paid him compensation, and put up a correction.
Now look. It plainly is relevant to this article, that the person who has written it has a background in a Muslim Brotherhood group, and has previously attacked the prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas linked terrorist fundraising.
In fact, it is highly relevant to a very important point: namely, “are people with a background in Islamist politics best placed to campaign against anti-Muslim hatred?”
My view, and that of a lot of other opponents of bigotry and discrimination, is that they hinder the fight against anti-Muslim hatred.
Shortly after this exchange, these comments were deleted, and the commenter banned.
What this commenter was pointing out, which evidently runs afoul of ‘community standards’ at CiF, is that proponents or defenders of militant Islam (a movement whose ideology is based on hate and intolerance towards Jews and all non-believers) have absolutely no moral authority when taking a stand against racism.
A genuinely liberal newspaper would understand this painfully obvious and intuitive truth.
Related articles
November 27th saw the publication on CiF of yet another promotion of ‘moderate, democratic Islamism’, this time written by Wadah Kanfar who resigned from his eight year post as director general of Al Jazeera in September – but not before collaborating with the Guardian on the Palestine Papers affair last January.
Kanfar’s Muslim Brotherhood sympathies and affiliations are well known and indeed were the cause of the resignations of numerous journalists from Al Jazeera under his directorship.
It was also Kanfar who brought the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘spiritual leader’ Sheikh Qaradawi to Al Jazeera and gave him a regular slot where he promotes his anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic ideologies.
The Guardian’s provision of a platform for Kanfar to extol the virtues and advantages of the work-in-progress rise of Islamists to power throughout the Middle East and North Africa is therefore akin to inviting the Master of the Hunt to write an article on how absolutely spiffing fox-hunting really is.
I’m not going to deconstruct Kanfar’s arguments here myself because as it happens, the Azure magazine recently published an excellent must-read article by Dr. Uriya Shavit – a lecturer in Islamic history and theology at Tel Aviv University – which explains at length precisely why Islamist rule is inherently incompatible with democracy.
“According to the Islamist worldview, Allah has given mankind a complete and perfect doctrine of life: Islam. Democracy and individual rights follow from and are mandated by this doctrine—and are consequently subordinate to its divine injunctions.
Since Islamists believe that the legitimacy of the political order is founded on a divine decree, they utterly reject any possibility of rebellion, whether in the name of democracy or individual rights, against other religious precepts. Hence, they would not allow a parliament to pass laws that contradicted the explicit commands of Allah, as conveyed to humanity through the Koran and the example set by the prophet. As al-Qaradawi and others have explained repeatedly, human beings cannot permit what Allah has forbidden, nor can they ban what Allah permits. For example, the Koran denounces abortion and the consumption of alcohol; consequently, a human parliament has no authority to grant them legislative sanction. Similarly, for particular offenses the Koran stipulates harsh penalties—capital punishment or amputation of a hand, for example—that no human legislator may repeal, nor may the prohibition of idol worship be overturned in the name of freedom of religion.”
…….
“Western observers therefore miss the point when they wonder whether the Muslim Brotherhood supports free elections and civil liberties. To predict the character of the regime that the Islamists will establish, if and when they are given the opportunity, only one question is relevant: Will Islamic democracy take the Koran as its highest authority, with religious scholars as its sole authorized interpreters? An answer in the affirmative—whether clear or implicit—carries within it the unmistakable seeds of theological despotism.”
……..
“The challenge facing the Arab Spring can thus be summarized as follows: Democracy without the Muslim Brotherhood is impossible, but so is democracy under its leadership. There is no doubt that the Brotherhood enjoys broad support in every Arab country that has undergone democratic revolutions or uprisings in the last year. Elections in which the movement is not allowed to participate will therefore lack popular legitimacy. Moreover, the Brotherhood’s liberal and democratic rhetoric will make it difficult for the legal establishment to disqualify the movement. The inevitable result of its electoral victory, however, will be the formation of a theocracy. It will not permit the scientific and technological revolution of which Arab societies are in such dire need. Simply put, the future of Arab democracy hangs by a thread: The Muslim Brotherhood must be permitted to run in elections, but not gain power.”
However, as we are already seeing across North Africa, the Islamists are gaining power and any hope of the emergence of true democracies from the upheaval of the ‘Arab Spring’ is fast waning.
Rather than confront that fact, the Guardian elects to sell out the real liberals in the MENA regions who risked their lives in the attempt to achieve genuine democracy and to bury its editorial head in the sands of the Islamist double-speak.
As Dr. Shavit points out:
“For democracy to strike real and lasting roots in the Arab world, the United States and its allies must free themselves of the influence of multi-cultural and post-colonial theories and determine—first for themselves, and then for others—the distinction between truly enlightened regimes and their imitators.”
The Guardian remains mired in its own long tradition of failing to do precisely that, and therefore aids and abets existing and future religious tyrannies rather than being the beacon of liberalism it claims to aspire to be.
Related articles
The latest Wikileaks disclosures remind me of the sickening display by Ken Livingstone, then Mayor of London, when he embraced Youssef al-Qaradawi, supporter of the suicide murder of Israeli civilians, outside City Hall in July 2004.
Yousef al-Qaradawi embraced by Ken Livingstone
According to the BBC News Channel in 2005, Livingstone justified his decision to welcome al-Qaradawi to the UK when he said that engaging with him would help enhance relations between Islam and the West. Livingstone told a press conference:
“When you get a progressive figure who is moving that religion in the correct direction you engage and you develop it. ..” [emphasis mine].
Was this a foolish or a cynical remark? So far as Livingstone is concerned, it is difficult to tease out one from the other.
UK governments, of whatever stripe, have a woeful record of dealing with Islamists who mean UK citizens harm, and they even promoted them to positions of power within the civil service. Therefore, when al-Qaradawi applied for a visa to enter the UK again after the Islamist-perpetrated 7/7 suicide attacks, one Mockbul Ali, the Foreign Communication Office’s Islamic issues adviser argued that he should be allowed to enter:
“Exclusion … could turn Muslim opinion further against the UK and encourage some to move to violence against British targets.”
In a restricted, leaked memo, Mockbul Ali referred to al-Qaradawi as not presenting a danger to the UK, and argued that many of the accusations against al-Qaradawi “had come from the [Jewish] Board of Deputies.”
The Sunday Times later disclosed the distinctly dubious credentials of the allegedly “moderate” Mockbul Ali. The leaked memo led to a public outcry which led to al-Qaradawi indeed being banned from entry into the UK, and in spite of Ken Livingstone’s threat to sue the government, the latter for once remained unmoved.
Whether or not the government had been shamed into banning al-Qaradawi, the end result was arguably a very important one, in that it delayed, for a time at least, the inroads into the UK by radical Islamists was spearheaded by one of its chief proponents.
For Youssef al-Qaradawi himself is no moderate. On the contrary, he is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has, reportedly, substantial wealth as a result of being sharia adviser to many important Islamic banks and funds. He is also considered to be the “spiritual guide” for Hamas and is chiefly to blame for the issuing of the fatwahs in support of the suicide murder of Israeli citizens which led to the many deaths in the Second Intifada.
A Salafist, al-Qaradawi believes that the sharia should be adhered to and enacted literally (although he is adept at the mental juggling which justifies bending the rules in the furtherance of what he sees as the ends). He has written that all Jews and Muslims will fight each other in a final battle in which Muslims will emerge victorious. True to paranoid radical Islamist type, al-Qaradawi also believes, and has written, that Israel plots against the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Nina Weidl writes in the first of a two part article (the second part focuses on Tariq Ramadan’s attempts to make common cause with the European Left) about al-Qaradawi’s motivation in respect of the spreading of Islamism in the West. This is al-Qaradawi’s interpretation of helping to enhance relations between the West and the Muslim religion. Its aims are unequivocal and chilling in equal measure, and alarming because of the extent to which it can already be argued to be successful in the UK:
“For Qaradawi, Muslim settlement in the West isn’t simply religiously permissible. It is, he argues, a religious necessity and an obligation for the worldwide Islamic revival movement. The Muslim presence in the West is necessary because it enables the conduct of dawa, which in Qaradawi’s view serves multiple purposes—from proselytization to Europeans, to creating Islamic enclaves and an Islamic environment for Muslim immigrants and European converts, to influencing the the social and political climate towards Islam and the Muslim Nation (umma) within Western societies Moreover, he claims that “persuading the West of the necessity of the emergence of Islam as a guiding and leading force” will eventually mean that Western governments will bring pressure to bear on Muslim rulers to adopt more lenient policies toward the Islamic Movement in their own countries. In Qaradawi’s eyes, this will “certainly be a great benefit” for the global Islamic movement. Qaradawi ultimately believes that Islam will be established as the dominant religious and political force in Europe through dawa. As he has written, “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor after being expelled from it twice … the conquest this time will not be by the sword but by preaching and ideology.”
Weidl concludes that al-Qaradawi sees Muslims in the West as able to create a “pro-Islamist environment” to counter what he sees as Jewish influence, and she continues by arguing that al-Qaradawi’s juristic reasoning clears the way for new methods of dawa and dialogue and for influencing the society from within.
Using all forms of media for dawa purposes had already been encouraged by [Hassan al] Banna, but al-Qaradawi additionally encourages Muslims to study and strive for important positions in media, the arts, and the human sciences and social sciences in order to influence European society from “above.” Al-Qaradawi calls this process an “Islamisation” of these arts. In addition to al-Qaradawi’s call to imbue the arts and sciences with the principles of political Islam, he also attempts to Islamise the understandings of Western political concepts such as feminism, democracy and civil and human rights.
For instance, in a fatwa on the status of women in Islam, he declares that Muslim women are not inferior to Muslim men, but he adds that this is based on the Islamic comprehension of equality before Allah, but not on the Western comprehension of gender equality. Over the long-range, al-Qaradawi believes these diverse intellectual and media-based activities will ultimately create a pro-Islamist environment within Europe that will counter what he describes (citing a widespread stereotype) as the monopolization of these areas by Jews.
Weidl’s description of al-Qaradawi’s views about freedom:
The application of the fiqh (sharia law) of balances allows Qaradawi to issue fatwas that permit Muslims to participate in European society to a greater degree than classical Islamic law permits—but only under the condition that this serves the interests of the Islamic Movement. Qaradawi explains that, for example, working in a non-Islamic bank is not forbidden if the work and the knowledge gained from it substantially benefit the movement. Under the same conditions he also declares that it is permissible for Muslims to publish in non-Islamic journals, to become involved in non-Islamic governmental and civic institutions, to engage in media of all kinds, and to form alliances with non-Islamic movements, parties and other groups. Taken as a whole, he calls this participation “the divine duty of the call (dawa),” because it makes “our word [of Islam] reach them [non-Muslims].”
Qaradawi’s desire to improve the image of Islam, especially with regard to violence, women’s rights or democracy, remains considerably proscribed by his adherence to traditional frameworks, as well as to salafist revivalist ideology. For example, in a fatwa entitled “Freedom of expression from an Islamic perspective” al-Qaradawi guarantees this freedom only on condition “that religion should not be toyed with;” freedom “to such extent that it commands Muslims to struggle and fight in (the) cause (of Islam).” In other words, freedom of expression is valid only within the framework of the sharia, and reinterpreted in the context of a duty to struggle for Islam. Here, Qaradawi follows the opinion of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which issued the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” in 1990. Article 22 subordinates freedom of expression to sharia law, and the duty of “enjoining right and forbidding wrong.” It states, “Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shariah.” Needless to say, Qaradawi’s conception of Islamic freedom remains deeply antithetical to liberal conceptions of freedom—a fact that suggests that his dawa will likely continue to be a source of cultural and political friction within the West. [emphasis added]
In light of all the foregoing, and the latest disclosures by Wikileaks, look again at the embrace of Ken Livingstone by al-Qaradawi. What was al-Qaradawi’s real motive for quite literally sucking up to the then most important public figure in London? What was Ken Livingstone’s real motive for identifying with this instigator and supporter of Islamist terror attacks? Was Livingstone merely ignorant or was he cynically manipulating his electorate? Was he al-Qaradawi’s willing dupe?
It is truly alarming that Ken Livingstone was so quickly entranced by the “smoke and mirrors” of al-Qaradawi’s al-taqiyya as to ignore the dangers for democracy inherent in making common cause with such a one, and even to threaten to sue the UK government when al-Qaradawi was banned from entering the UK in 2005. Of course he did not but, showmanship apart, this illustrates very well the depths to which some politicians would sink in order to get votes.
The entrancement is still evident, too, in the UK government’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the danger to it still presented by various Islamist bodies which find shelter in the UK, among them Hizb-ut-Tahrir which Tony Blair said that he would ban immediately after the 7/7 atrocities.
What will it take, I wonder, to wake them up?
Related articles
- The Guardian’s “democratic” Islamist leader: Kill every last Jew on earth (cifwatch.com)
- Blogger, heal theyself (cifwatch.com)
There are few people who even try anymore to claim that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is a legitimate Muslim “civil rights” organization. In fact, a recent poll showed that only 11% of American Muslims believe that CAIR represents their interests.
CAIR Director Nihad Awad (lower right) delivers speech under Hezbollah flag during speech in Washington, DC in 2002 (Photo from site of ADL)
The facts about the extremism, and terrorist affiliations, of the U.S. group are simply beyond dispute, and include the following:
- U.S. Federal law enforcement believes that the CAIR is the product of a Hamas-support network in the United States.
- CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials.
- CAIR operates a Web site that makes anti-Semitic material, which includes Holocaust Denial, available for visitors interested in learning about Islam.
- In 2007, U.S. federal prosecutors described CAIR as “having conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.”
- In 2003, CAIR’s Florida chapter invited William Baker to its annual banquet. Baker, a known right-wing extremist, warned in his book, Theft of a Nation, that Jews throughout the world “can easily become agents for specific world powers in order to create unrest and disharmony.”
Yet, Alison Flood’s “9/11 children’s colouring book angers U.S. Muslims“, Aug. 31, (in the Guardian’s Children and Teen Books section) extensively quotes CAIR officials who condemned a book written to teach children the lessons of 9/11, as “disgusting”. And, even more audaciously, given CAIR’s proven ties to Islamist terrorists, Flood quotes a CAIR official as complaining that the book “characterizes all Muslims as linked to extremism, terrorism and radicalism.”
Further, Guardian moderators also deleted comments beneath the line critical of CAIR – including those which merely pointed to reputable reports on the group’s extremist agenda.
Here, for instance, was my comment from last night:
“Just so we’re all clear, CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) has been designated as an unindicted co-conspirator by the U.S. Justice Dep’t in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials, and are well-understood to be affiliated with Hamas. Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/1854/doj-cairs-unindicted-co-conspirator-status-legit“
And, then:
There were also, for instance, seven consecutive deleted comments between 9:40 and 10:02.
But, beyond their biased moderation process, the larger question is why the Guardian would legitimize, and frame as progressive, a group so unquestionably compromised by proven links to terrorist movements?
There is a word generally used which aptly describes those who sanction and approve of groups who are intolerant, misogynistic, antisemitic, and support violence: At least in political terms it’s known as being Reactionary.
Related articles
Wajahat Ali
There is not , as CiF columnist Wajahat Ali contends in “Fighting the defamation of Muslim Americans“, Aug. 27, an Islamophobia network in America.
Yes, of course there exists anti-Muslim bigotry, just as there is bigotry in every nation in the world, but there is simply, despite the frequent hyperbolic insistence of CiF commentators, no actual evidence that there’s anything resembling an organized wave of Islamophobia in the U.S.
Ali begins:
“Center for American Progress Action Fund released a 138-page report, “Fear Inc: Exposing the Islamophobia Network in America“,”which for the first time reveals that more than $42m from seven foundations over the past decade have helped empower a relatively small, but interconnected group of individuals and organisations to spread anti-Muslim fear and hate in America.”
This report, which characteristically conflates criticism of radical Islam with Islamophobic bigotry, includes in this network, as those who stoke the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry, Sean Hannity, U.S., Congressman Allen West, former U.S. Congressman Newt Gingrich, Middle East Scholar Daniel Pipes, Terrorism expert Steve Emerson, and Walid Shoebat.
The report also indicts Fox News, The National Review, and the Washington Times as purveyors of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Ali continues:
”Islamophobia as the following: an exaggerated fear, hatred and hostility towards Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination and the marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political and civic life.”
Of course, absent from Ali’s report is any empirical evidence indicating that bias, discrimination, or exclusion of Muslims is growing or represents a big problem in the lives of Muslims in America.
In fact, a new 40 page report by the Center For Security Policy not only debunks the claim that Muslim Americans are disproportionately victimized by religiously inspired bias crimes, but clearly demonstrates Jewish victims are, in fact, far more likely to be the target of such crimes – a report based partly on the FBI’s yearly Hate Crime Data from 2000-2010.
Further, a 2007 Pew Study about Muslims in America found the following:
“Muslim Americans generally mirror the U.S. public in education and income levels, with immigrant Muslims slightly more affluent and better educated than native-born Muslims. Twenty-four percent of all Muslims and 29 percent of immigrant Muslims have college degrees, compared to 25 percent for the U.S. general population. Forty-one percent of all Muslim Americans and 45 percent of immigrant Muslims report annual household income levels of $50,000 or higher. This compares to the national average of 44 percent. Immigrant Muslims are well represented among higher-income earners, with 19 percent claiming annual household incomes of $100,000 or higher (compared to 16 percent for the Muslim population as a whole and 17 percent for the U.S. average). This is likely due to the strong concentration of Muslims in professional, managerial, and technical fields, especially in information technology, education, medicine, law, and the corporate world.
So, in addition to the relatively low incidents of hate crimes against American Muslims, it also seems clear that such Muslims, by most objective measures, are doing quite well in the U.S. socially and economically, and enjoy religious and other democratic freedoms that many Muslims in the rest of the world are denied.
Ali, in past CiF essays, has demonstrated a similar tendency to engage in accusations of “Islamophobia” quite liberally.
Indeed, he leveled the charge of Islamophobia against the U.S. government in the context of the FBI prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for the “charity” group’s ties to terrorism – a prosecution which resulted in five convictions, which included “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”
Further, a little more research into the background of Wajahat Ali (who CiF benignly described as “a Muslim American of Pakistani descent, a writer and attorney, and Associate Editor of Altmuslim.com) revealed that the author holds some decidedly illiberal views about another historically oppressed minority – a record of bigotry which should put the author’s report on Islamophobia in some perspective.
Ali is a contributor to the radical anti-Zionist site, Counterpunch, where, in an essay largely commenting on Israel’s war in Gaza, he likened Israel to Apartheid in S. African, and characterized the war as an “Israeli blitzkrieg that repeatedly bombards a beleaguered Palestinian refugee population.” Ali also published, in Counterpunch, an extremely sympathetic interview with Norman Finkelstein, about “The Holocaust Industry” – a book which characterizes Israelis as “basically Nazis with beards and black hats”.
Indeed, a few searches on Ali’s own blog, Goatmilk: An intellectual playground, which is often cross posted at the English Website of the Muslim Brotherhood, demonstrates a propensity to use his “playground” for voices hostile to Jews and opposed to Israel’ existence.
On June 10, he included on his blog, as the “Essay of the week”, a cross-post of a piece by Ilan Pappe, the universally discredited radical Israeli “historian” who advocates the end of the Jewish state. Pappe, in the essay, commenting broadly about Israel in the aftermath of the May 31 Mavi Marmara incident, accused the state of practicing ethnic cleansing, and opined that “only sustained pressure by Western governments [similar to the pressure placed on S. Africa and Serbia] will drive the message home that the strategy of force and the policy of oppression are not accepted morally or politically by the world to which Israel wants to belong.”
In April of 2009, Ali posted a piece by Sasha Rabkin titled, “A Jewish American man’s defense of self-hatred” – simply exquisite example of the AsAJew recently dissected so skillfully by Geary – which characterized Zionism as an “identity centered on racism, military might, ["fascism"] and occupation,” and later characterized Jewish Zionist identity as a “Judaism devoid of soul and love and oppressing the most occupied people in the world”.
He also characterized Israel’s War of Independence as an act of “genocide” against Arabs.
Rabkin’s defense of Jewish self-hatred, which Ali endorsed, concludes with this appalling passage:
“the two main forces of the 20th century who sought to separate Jews were the Nazis and the Zionists. This is not to fully equate the two. There are obvious differences. But, both sought to single out the Jews, to show them as special and in need of segregation. They both contributed to the death of Jews. Most importantly, they both have sequestered Jewish identity in a militarized, confrontational and racist corner.
Our anti-Islamophobia crusader seems to be on a bit of a Judeophobic crusade of his own.
Who needs to demonize the Jewish state as a fascist, genocidal force – which is a moral blight on the world (and Judaism itself) – when you can get a Jew to do it for you?
More broadly, Ali’s exquisite moral hypocrisy in condemning bigotry against Muslims while promoting anti-Semitism represents another perfect illustration of the Guardian Left ideology – sensitive souls who renounce racism, real and imagined, against “the oppressed” at every opportunity, and who possess an eye for bigotry endowed with a wide and powerful lens, yet have a glaring and dangerous blind spot when it comes to Jews.
Related articles
- Haneen Zoabi defends anti-Semitic Islamist preacher: Accuses UK Zionist lobby of controlling British politics (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, Haneen Zoabi and Raed Salah – a Case Study of the Red-Green Alliance (cifwatch.com)
- Blogger, heal theyself (cifwatch.com)
- Comment is Free warns of Islamophobia, and sees no Judeophobia (cifwatch.com)
A Guest Post by AKUS
There must have been many watching the insanity in Britain last week who were suddenly reminded of William Golding’s 1954 novel, “Lord of the Flies”, later turned into an equally disturbing film. Forget 7/7 – this was Britain’s 9/11, and nothing will ever be the same again in Britain.
The premise of “Lord of the Flies” is that a group of boys marooned on a desert island during a nuclear war become brutal savages. Comfortably middle class, they rapidly lose their civilized state and become a mob that turns on one their own, Piggy. In a world long before Facebook, Twitter, or Blackberries, the boys find a conch shell which serves the same purpose of gathering the boys together.
Consider the murdered Piggy as an allegorical figure representing today’s British society, and the book is a prophetic vision of what happened in Britain last week. Given the setting of the novel, the one aspect Golding could not foresee was the way in which British adults joined what have been labeled “feral youths” in the looting and mayhem. The mask hiding the failed policies of the last decade or two has been ripped aside, revealing the some nasty truths about British society.
Those of us who have lived with terror in Israel could feel deep sympathy for the victims – the average citizens – of nights of terror in Britain. But as the riots played out in horrific comparison with the contemporaneous peaceful demonstrations for social equality in Israel there was also grim Schadenfreude directed at Britain as a society which has become the global center of organized anti-Israeli, and all too often, anti-Semitic, activity.
The looters were quickly labeled “scum”, “criminals”, “feral youths”, and so on. We saw street interviews with shocked Britains surveying the results of years of policies that, as Melanie Phillips so brilliantly summarized in her article Goodbye to the Enlightenment, were systematically put in place to destroy (“remake”, the perpetrators would claim) British society. The result she pointed to could be the premise for Golding’s book, with the societal collapse due, not to nuclear war, but deliberate removal of every norm that over millennia was found to make societies work:
… a society that embraces mass fatherlessness is a society that is going off the edge of a cliff. There are whole areas of Britain (white as well as black) where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon; ….
And the unutterably wicked thing is that this catastrophe has been deliberately willed upon Britain by left-wing politicians, well-heeled media feminists and other middle-class ideologues who wrap their utter contempt for the poor in the mantle of ‘progressive’ non-judgmentalism, witlessly prattling about poverty and social justice and hurling execrations at anyone who suggests that lone parenthood is in general a catastrophe for children (and a disaster for women) and that the state should stop subsidising family and social breakdown and start encouraging married parenthood instead.
(By the way, when it comes to fatherless families, the USA is trending in the same direction and for many of the same reasons).
Like Lords of the Flies on Golding’s Island, feral Guardianistas went on a verbal rampage to justify the destructive philosophies they espouse. The commentary ranged from the absurd to the ridiculous. The pickings are too rich to list them all here, but three columnists stood out more than most.
Following Phillips article, Jane Clare Jones, (“a doctoral student in philosophy, specialising in feminist ethics “– who knew that ethics had genders?) dodged the real issues and instead attacked Melanie Phillips and a conservative columnist, Peter Hitchens , for good measure, for “laying the responsibility for violence perpetrated mostly by young men at the door of women”. We are to believe that Phillips was blaming the issue of fatherlessness (more of a solution, apparently, in Clare Jones’ view, than a problem) on the mothers rather than the often unknown fathers, which is simply not true.
Phillips, according to Clare Jones, is a threat to the very concept of feminism, at the heart of which, we are apparently to understand, lies the single mother. Clare Jones, indeed a “well-healed media feminist”, typifies the very destructive lunacy that Phillips protests, and the people responsible for the destruction of a society that once gave the world so much.
There was the Egyptian Mona Eltahaway, one of the Guardian’s most vicious critics of Israel, who fatuously compared Cameron to Mubarak. Yes indeed – what is next for Britain? Will Cameron’s secret police reopen the torture chambers in the Tower and imprison the Moslem Brotherhood? Verbal hysteria has rarely reached this level.
So we might truly understand the dialectical underpinnings of the riots, the Guardian’s resident Bolshevik, Seamus Milne, was called in to interpret the riots as a grand “Failure of Capitalism in Britain”.
Of course, the riots represent the failures of multiculturalism and the welfare state – the antithesis, one might justifiably claim, of “Capitalism Run Wild”. CiFWatch already noted readers’ unprecedented opposition to Seamus Milne’s lunatic article. His article drew the most vehement response we have seen on CiF – currently 2,548 readers believe that Milne simply does not “get it”.
The Guardian’s responses to the riots reveal once more, if proof were needed, that there is something seriously wrong with the way Guardianistas, and not a few Britains, view the world and their society. With respect to the Guardian, this is most evident in its constant attacks on Israel. The Guardian even makes a point of running articles written for it by spokesmen of the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah whose ethos is one of murder, misogyny, intolerant religious fanaticism and terrorism aimed at the destruction of Israel. They have clearly stated their desire to bring about a second Holocaust. I imagine the Guardian would indignantly claim that it does not support that ethos and the actions it leads to. But, in fact, by its editorial policies and actions, it does.
The Guardian supports anyone and any group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, the only country in the Middle East that comes close to actually living the values, in many cases, of a liberal society that supposedly the Guardianistas hope to achieve in Britain. If the argument is one of opposition to Israel’s use of military force to protect itself, or the occupation of the disputed territories, how hypocritical does that sound when Britain is involved, for example, bombing civilians in Tripoli day and night when it has done nothing since the Lockerbie bombing to attack Britain? If Israel responded to every terrorist attack the way Britain has operated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, Gaza and the Palestinian areas of the West Bank would be empty wastelands.
Many noted that the riots drew attention to a previously acceptable event that illustrates the sickness at the heart of the attacks on Israel. One of the cheerleaders at a recent Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) conference was Jody McIntyre, now dropped like a hot potato by several newspapers that previously thought it rather fun to run his nasty anti-establishment blog. When he shrieked: “we [must] set the streets of London alight” at the PSC conference he was loudly applauded. A little later the mob actually set London alight. Hopefully McIntyre will now recede into the obscurity from whence he came
It was fun when it was politically correct to aim the taunts, protests and violence and calls at Israel. However, when the call to destroy London was aimed not as a backhanded protest at Israel, or Britain’s imagined support for Israel, but at Britain itself, this did not sit well with the great British public.
The questions I would have for the papers that have dropped McIntyre’s blog, for those supporting the PSC’s 300 member groups, and especially for the Guardian, are:
“Is the obsession with every problem Israel faces not a symptom of the rot in your own society? Which society breeds the Lords of the Flies, and which creates a vibrant, society, sustaining itself in the face of real threats that supports al l that liberals and the Left should stand for? Will you realize in time that the invective, harassment, and violence aimed at the democratic, liberal, ethnically diverse yet strongly cohesive state of Israel (and at British Jews) will, inevitably, rebound onto your own society?”
The riots gave a clear answer, in my opinion, and after the riots, nothing will ever be the same in Britain. Which way it goes remains to be seen.
Related articles
When Ruqaya Izzidien is not minimizing the threats posed by radical Islam, or decrying European Islamophobia, for the English website of the Muslim Brotherhood, blogging for the extreme anti-Israel site Mondoweiss, or contributing to Al Jazeera, she serves as the UK correspondent for Bikyamasr, an online magazine which focuses on “Egypt and the region” – a site which has, on the sidebar of their home page , a “resistance to occupation” video which contains scenes like these:
Among her more notable contributions, in the course of covering the UK for Bikyamasr, was an op-ed about the terrorist attacks on 7/7 and British Muslim terrorism more broadly, where, despite describing herself as a “justice-seeking”, “anti-violent” “hippy”, says, employing the Ben White formula of not explicitly endorsing hateful ideologies and actions, but expressing, nonetheless, an “understanding” or “empathy” towards it:
“I can…provide a valuable insight which will begin to help us understand [terrorist attacks by UK Muslims]. It is awful to feel uncontrollably out-of-place. Add to that a feeling of injustice about British involvement in the Middle East and the implementation of an apparently racist state policy of arresting anyone who has a Muslim look about them, as if it were possible to define religion according to skin color, and we have a real recipe for creating the type of alienated person who will seek control through other mediums”
She is also, naturally, given such an impressive resume of anti-Zionism and “contextualizing” Islamist terror, a contributor to the Guardian, and penned a piece, Gaza flotilla: ‘Solidarity more important than aid’, July 6 (on the Guardian’s ‘Global Development Page, a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).
The piece is notable in its frank admission that the flotilla movement was never about providing Palestinians with humanitarian aid (which, we’ve noted, is not in short supply) – and represents the reason why, according to Izzidien, ”Gazans are quick to dismiss the Israeli-Greek offer to offload and transport to Gaza the humanitarian aid aboard the flotilla.”
She further explains that the desires of those involved in the flotilla campaign are to seek “peace” and “justice”, yet, characteristically, never once , in a 800 word essay, mentions the word Hamas in the context of Palestinians desire for rights, and further cites an “activist” as alleging Israel’s blockade is “illegal” – despite the paucity of any such designation by any official institution, and a body of international law and historical precedents attesting to the legal legitimacy of Israel’s blockade of arms flowing to the hostile Hamas regime.
Izzidien’s exercise in polemical obfuscation is perhaps most evident when she quotes a member of the International Solidarity Movement - whose unambiguous malicious intent, regarding the flotilla movement, was revealed in a video by member Adam Shapiro - saying the following:
“The dirty campaign against this flotilla has informed much of the world about Israeli subversion, from coercing foreign governments to act against the express wishes of their citizens to sabotaging civilian ships in international ports under the cover of darkness” [emphasis mine]
Indeed, such a narrative, imputing in Israel’s efforts to defend themselves from an increasingly well-armed terrorist group committed to its destruction – conjuring a “dirty campaign” of “subversion” and “coercion”, by the Zionist entity – could have been written by the sponsors and organizers of the latest flotilla campaign who, it was revealed, just so happen to be Hamas operatives.
I now understand Izzidien’s curious omission of the word Hamas anywhere in her diatribe. I mean, after all, who needs the painful cognitive dissonance which would naturally arise from the understanding that no matter how much she hates the Zionist regime, the flotilla movement’s “grass roots” effort by “peaceful activists” to show solidarity with Gaza is actually an orchestrated propaganda event by a reactionary terrorist movement.
Vilifying Israel is just so much more satisfying – and much more likely to give you a platform at the Guardian.
Related articles
- Guardian quotes flotilla activist: Palestinians have been resisting occupation for “60 years” (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian and Independent coverage of second flotilla omits key facts (cifwatch.com)
- Great comment by Guardian reader in reply to Greenslade blog post about limits on journalists covering flotilla (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, Haneen Zoabi and Raed Salah – a Case Study of the Red-Green Alliance (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Update 4 – ‘Brothers’ in Arms (cifwatch.com)
- Meet Dror Feiler: Flotilla organizer and “peaceful” terrorist symathizer (cifwatch.com)
- The tangled web they weave – the eminence noir behind the “Freedom Flotilla 2″ (cifwatch.com)
- Comment is Free, Sam Bahour, Adam Shapiro and the malice of anti-Israel “activists” (cifwatch.com)
- Next Hamas-supporting stunt by Western ‘activists’: the ‘Flytilla’ (cifwatch.com)
- Mya Guarnieri laments possible demise of flotilla stunt; Quotes activist who blames “Zionist tentacles” (cifwatch.com)
- Plagues of the Flotilla (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ Publicity Stunt, Update 3: abusing the concept of ‘non-violence’ (cifwatch.com)
- Flotilla Publicity Stunt Update (cifwatch.com)
- Mondoweiss or David Duke? Raed Salah’s defenders reach a new low. (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Update 5 – Dutch journalists jump ship. (cifwatch.com)
- All Dutch reporters have now quit the flotilla. Additional terrorist affiliations of flotilla organizers revealed) (cifwatch.com)
- Blogger, heal theyself (cifwatch.com)
On June 29th 2011, hours after Sheikh Raed Salah had been arrested in London, The Guardian published an article in his defence on its ‘Comment is Free’ website by Haneen Zoabi.
There are three elements to this story and despite the fact that they may appear to come from different worlds, they in fact have more in common than may first meet the eye. Their binding factor is one: Israel.
Haneen Zoabi is an Arab-Israeli (from Nazareth) member of Israel’s parliament on behalf of ‘Balad‘ – an acronym for ‘Brit Leumit Democratit’ or National Democratic Alliance. It is a secular far-Left Arab party formed in 1995 by Azmi Bishara and others as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to bring about a two-state solution. Its members reject the concept of a Jewish State – and therefore Jewish self-determination – and seek to establish a bi-national secular one in its place to which Palestinian refugees would be given ‘the right of return’. Concurrently, it supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories captured by Israel from Egypt and Jordan during the Six Day War, including part of Jerusalem.
Raed Salah is also an Arab-Israeli – head of the radical northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel (or, as they prefer to be known, the ‘Islamic Movement in ’48 Palestine’) – and a resident and former mayor of the city of Um El Fahm. The movement’s origins can be traced back to the days of the Arab revolt in Mandate Palestine in 1936, but it gathered momentum as a result of the co-operation between Haj Amin al Husseini and its parent organisation (also that of Hamas), the Muslim Brotherhood. The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 was accepted by the movement’s more moderate southern branch –a move which created a permanent rift between it and the northern branch, which rejected the agreements. The underlying principles of the northern branch are similar to those of Hamas: the rejection of Israel’s right to exist, the establishment of an Islamic state (as part of the Caliphate) in its place and the implementation of Sharia law. It also supports the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees.
In other words, despite the fact that, according to Salah’s ideology, Haneen Zoabi would no longer have the right to be a secular, uncovered, educated female Arab politician, the ‘red’ of the far Left finds common ground with the ‘green’ of the Islamist movement on one subject: the desire to eliminate the Jewish State from the map.
Salah and Zoabi have another thing in common: both were aboard the ‘Mavi Marmara’ last May when Muslim Brotherhood-linked IHH activists viciously attacked and wounded Israeli soldiers trying to prevent the ship from breaching the naval blockade on Gaza and nine of them were killed as a result. Photographs taken aboard the ship at the time yet only recently published apparently show Zoabi in the vicinity of Turkish activists armed with guns.
Here is Salah in action after the flotilla:
And where is the Guardian in all this? Well, it frequently gives a platform to anti-Zionists and in particular those of the far-Left variety, in accordance with the ideologies and activities of some of its own staff such as Seumas Milne. It also frequently acts as a voluntary platform for members of Hamas and sympathisers of that Islamist movement. It is, in other words, the place where red and green meet in order to promote their anti-Israel message and at no time was that more obvious than during the aftermath of the 2010 flotilla which was dutifully promoted by the Guardian according to red/green dictates.
Like Salah and Zoabi, the Guardian too appears to reject the option of negotiation as the preferred manner of solving the Arab-Israeli conflict; its active participation in the ‘Palestine Papers’ affair which effectively put the lid upon the Palestinian Authority’s ability to negotiate anything indicated that Farringdon Road is definitely in the Hamas camp.
So let us now examine Zoabi’s arguments in favour of Salah, as published by the Guardian. Immediately she tries to attribute the blame for Salah’s arrest to Israel and its supporters, whilst at the same time playing the ‘Islamophobia’ card. According to British statements on the subject, Salah was arrested under Section 3 of the Immigration Act of 1971 which, to the best of my knowledge,’ Israel and its supporters’ had no part in drafting. Obviously, Zoabi cannot credit the UK authorities with possessing minds of their own.
She refuses to recognise the unpleasant fact that, like many other countries, both Britain and Israel have seen a worrying rise in the popularity of various strains of the Islamist movement in recent years and that measures to limit incitement against non-Muslims, Muslim apostates, women, homosexuals and members of other ethnic groups are part and parcel of a democratic country’s responsibility towards its citizens of all stripes. Raed Salah is not the first (and will probably not be the last) Islamist (or other) hate preacher to be denied entry to or deported from the United Kingdom and that fact has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Islamophobia’ or clandestine behind the scenes operations by a mythical ‘Zionist lobby’.
Is it surprising that the Guardian should permit Zoabi to promote such ridiculous claims on its virtual pages? Not in the least: it has frequently allowed Islamists and their supporters to sound warning bells of ‘Islamophobia’ (as opposed to the real phenomenon of anti-Muslim bigotry) on its pages as part and parcel of the campaign by British Islamists to silence debate. As for the all-powerful ‘Zionist lobby’; this, of course, is one of the favourite themes on CiF and is promoted by former Foreign Office types, Arabists and Islamists alike.
Zoabi’s falsehoods continue with the statement that:
“Because I took part in the first freedom flotilla to break the illegal and inhuman siege of Gaza, the Israeli establishment has waged a propaganda campaign against me, accusing me of “terrorism”, and demanding the withdrawal of my parliamentary immunity and citizenship. This will be difficult to implement, but it threatens my political legitimacy and defines me as a “risk”.”
Of course she conveniently forgets to mention that as a Knesset member she swore that “I pledge myself to bear allegiance to the State of Israel and faithfully to discharge my mandate in the Knesset.” Sadly for Haneen Zoabi, the right to collaborate with enemies of her country and to attempt to facilitate the increased influx of weapons from the Iranian regime she so admires into Gaza with the sole purpose of their being used to kill, injure and terrorize the civilians who pay her generous salary is not included in her job description. She also neglects to mention that the sanctions enacted against her following her flotilla escapade were at most symbolic; as she herself said in an interview with ‘electronic Intifada’ “ The three parliamentary sanctions are nothing — I mean nothing — because I can still use my civic passport”.
Zoabi then goes on to dismiss criticisms of Salah as ‘fabricated’:
“Unable to produce any legal evidence, the Israeli establishment and its supporters in Britain accuse him of antisemitism. Salah has rebutted the fabricated allegations behind these claims and instructed his lawyers to begin legal action against those repeating them.”
“It appears that the charge of antisemitism is being used as a way of suppressing criticism of Israeli policies. Since when has the struggle for equality become a form of racism? Since when have states that boast of their democratic credentials acquired the right to arrest people for their political views?”
A quick tour around Salah’s (Zoabi endorsed) ‘struggle for equality’ and ‘political views’ shows him to be a supporter of the notion that Jews were pre-warned about the 9/11 terror attacks, a condemner of America’s action against the “martyr” Osama Bin Laden and a radical homophobe. That alone would probably be enough to drastically reduce his Brownie points with the British Home Secretary but has nothing to do with Israel.
On his home turf, Salah is best known (apart from funding Hamas and having spent five months in prison for assaulting a policeman) for being a very successful inciter of violent riots. His favourite tactic is to whip up fervour by telling his listeners that Israel is attempting to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque.
“On Friday the leader of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch told followers that should Muslims have to choose between renouncing the al-Aqsa Mosque and becoming martyrs they will choose the latter.
“Should the State of Israel make us choose…we will clearly choose to be martyrs,” said Sheikh Raed Salah in the annual al-Aqsa convention in Umm al-Fahm. “We are a nation that does not give up, we will die and win; the al-Aqsa Mosque is not a matter that can be given up on, and we shall win, God willing.”
Thousands of Muslims heeded Salah’s call and made their way to Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday. Police initially restricted access to the compound – both to tourists and visitors – as a precautionary measure, after learning that residents of east Jerusalem were urged to “come to protect the Mount.” Large police forces were deployed in the Old City as well.”
At a lecture at Haifa University in 2009 he said:
“We love life, our families, our homes and our children, but if they suggest that we give up our principles and holy sites, we would rather die and we will welcome death.”
Salah claimed that the government continued constantly to dig tunnels under the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque, and that Netanyahu was planning to complete during his current term what he did not complete during his first one – “to dig additional tunnels under al-Aqsa and rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount.”
The Muslim students responded by chanting, “Allahu Akbar” (God is great).”
It is, of course, the prerogative of the British Home Secretary to decide that it is not in the public interest to allow such an obvious master in the incitement of violence to have free access to the already problematic sections of radicalised youth in her society.
No amount of crying wolf by Haneen Zoabi can transform that into ‘Islamophobia’, just as Israeli opposition to the actions of those who seek to deny Jews the right to self-determination should not be categorised as racism. The Israeli public and government have nothing against Salah and Zoabi because they are Arabs or Muslims; any objections are to their (often violence-related) actions taken as part of their red/green campaign to destroy the Jewish State.
Salah, Zoabi and the Guardian obviously cannot understand the difference. That could well be because none of them have pristine reputations themselves when it comes to anti-racism, and their repeated references to a ‘pro-Israel (ie Jewish/Zionist) lobby’ influencing policy in foreign countries, both in this article and others, are just the tip of that particular iceberg.
Of course the rich irony of it is that of all the countries in the world, Israel and the United Kingdom are members of quite a small but select club of those which would allow people such as Zoabi and Salah such a free rein to disseminate their lies and propaganda, and that especially excludes the types of country which members of the red/green alliance revere and would emulate if their wishes concerning the end of the Jewish State ever came true.
Related articles
- Conal Urquhart quotes Ben White as a source in Guardian’s second whitewash of anti-Semitic preacher (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s bias in covering Sheikh Raed Salah (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian and Independent coverage of second flotilla omits key facts (cifwatch.com)
- Azzam Tamimi’s big ‘Arab Spring’ lie. (cifwatch.com)
- The tangled web they weave – the eminence noir behind the “Freedom Flotilla 2″ (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Update 4 – ‘Brothers’ in Arms (cifwatch.com)
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
CiF Watch Special Report: Extremists & terror supporters organizing ‘Global March to Jerusalem’
February 10, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, BDS, Delegitimization, George Galloway, Ghada Karmi, Global March to Jerusalem, Guest Post, Hadar Sela, Hatem Bazian, Huweida Arraf, Kevin Ovenden, Lauren Booth, Lynn Gottlieb, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Muslim Brotherhood, Paul Larudee, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Richard Falk, Ronnie Kasrils, Susan Abulhawa, Tariq Ali, Terrorism, Zaher Birawi | by Guest/Cross Post | 37 comments
A guest post by Hadar Sela, an Anglo-Israeli freelance writer
Introduction:
As spring approaches, so the annual season for publicity stunts aimed at undermining Israel’s legitimacy begins once more. This year several high-profile events are planned and, building on the success of last year’s thwarting of the ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ by means of pre-emptive dissemination of information, this report (and those which will follow) aims to provide essential background about the aims and allegiances of the organisers which will be useful to those engaged in combatting the assault on Israel’s legitimacy, particularly in the media and social networks.
‘Global March to Jerusalem’:
The first large-scale event planned this year is a ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ scheduled for March 30th 2012 – Land Day. The concept behind it is to have a million people marching on Israel’s borders from all the surrounding countries – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The aims, according to the project’s official website, are as follows:
Obviously Israel, like any other sovereign country, cannot permit mass infiltration of its borders, especially by people who identify with terrorist organisations and enemy nations dedicated to its destruction. The results are therefore likely to be grave and perhaps similar to the consequences of attempted infiltrations of Israel’s northern borders in June 2011. The march’s organisers are undoubtedly very much aware of those facts.
They will also be aware that the current turmoil and uncertainty throughout the Middle East means that the ability of the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian or Lebanese governments to intervene in order to prevent such a dangerous scenario is now considerably reduced. Some idea of the mindset of the event’s organisers can be gleaned from statements made in the following e-mail exchange between two of them regarding a previous identical project. (All errors in the original text)
Revealingly, the following statement appears in the FAQ section of the website of the American chapter of the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ-NA):
In other words, the leaders of GMJ-NA are very much aware of the march’s links to proscribed terrorist groups, and yet its endorsers include a rather predictable list of organisations and US and other nationals, including a UN employee and a former British MP.
GMJ International Advisory Committee:
Some of the GMJ endorsers also sit on its ‘International Advisory Committee’.
Maan Bashour is the General Co-ordinator for the Muslim Brotherhood centre in Beirut, head of the preparatory committee for the ‘right of return forum’ and General Coordinator of the National Initiative Committee to Break the Blockade of Gaza (NICBBG).
Maan Bashour
Dr Ribhi Halloum joined the PLO in 1966 and was its regional underground organizer in the UAE until 1971. He was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and the PNC until resigning in 1993 over opposition to the Oslo Accords. He heads the Jordanian preparatory committee for the march and according to an interview he gave in December 2011 prior to the recent GMJ conference in that country, “[t]he protest aims to move the right of return possessed by Palestinian refugees from theory to practice”
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the ‘Free Gaza’ and ‘Free Palestine’ movements as well as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) with which he was active during the second Intifada. He took part in the 2008 and 2010 flotillas, was deported from Israel in 2006 for trying to enter the country under a false identity and allegedly volunteered as a ‘human shield’ for Hizballah during the second Lebanon war. He was also one of the organisers of last year’s ‘flytilla’. Here he is meeting Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2008 (from whom he also received an award the following year) – second from the left on the front row.
George Galloway is of course a well-known figure on the anti-Israel activism scene, his activities ranging from ‘Viva Palestina’ in its various incarnations, to working with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition and being employed by the Iranian regime’s Press TV. Galloway believes that “Hizbollah is not and has never been a terrorist organization” and that Israel is responsible for the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Here he is handing over cash to the Hamas Economy Minister at the culmination of one of his ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys.
Galloway also promoted the Global March to Jerusalem on Press TV prior to the latter being closed down by the UK authorities.
Khaled Soufiyani is a former chair of the Arab National Congress and co-ordinator of the Moroccan organization the ‘National Action Group (sometimes ‘Task Force’) for Solidarity with Palestine and Iraq’. In 2010 he called on a Moroccan Jewish advisor to the king to leave the country as a result of the former’s suggestion that the Holocaust should be part of the curriculum in Moroccan universities. He is strongly opposed to any normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco, and in particular to the establishment of the Amazigh-Israel Friendship Association, and has made several attempts to use ‘lawfare’ against Israelis visiting the country.
Khaled Soufiyani
Mohammed Kassem Sawalha is also a well-known figure on the British anti-Israel circuit and a former Hamas commander who, since his arrival in the UK in the 1990s, has been instrumental in the founding of a series of organisations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood including the Muslim Association of Britain and the British Muslim Initiative. Sawalha is involved in the organization of the various flotillas and convoys to Gaza through a variety of roles in organisations and charities linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and in collaboration with the Turkish IHH. Here he is at an IHH press conference last year (front row, far right):
Saud Abu Mahfouz is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front. He was a participant in the 2010 flotilla, along with several other Muslim Brotherhood members from Jordan, the former leader of which is on record as having stated:
Mohsen Saleh is a professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut who takes a consistently pro-Iranian line, opposes the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (accusing it of being a US-engineered attempt to destabilize Lebanon and weaken the ‘resistance’ against Israel) and defends Bashar Assad’s actions against the uprising in Syria.
Mazin Qumsiyeh is a well-known Palestinian political activist. He heads the ISM-linked ‘Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People’ (which was involved in the organization of the 2011 ‘flytilla’), is a co-ordinator for the ‘Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements’ in Beit Sahour and was a co-founder of Al Awda (the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition) in the US. Qumseiyeh spoke at the 2010 Stuttgart conference which produced the Stuttgart Declaration – a call for opposition to a negotiated two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Ghada Karmi of Exeter University in the UK is also a signatory of the Stuttgart Declaration. A member of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Karmi has called for “the end of a Jewish state in our region”.
Sheikhul Islam is an ambiguous title in that it can be given to any high-ranking Shiite religious leader, but obviously the man concerned holds some prominence within the Iranian regime. The listing may possibly refer to Hossein Sheikh-ul-Islam; Senior Advisor to the Parliament Speaker for International Affairs of Iran.
Huseyin Oruc is a member of the board of trustees of the ‘Union of Good’ linked Turkish organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), its deputy chairman and heads its public relations department. He was a participant in the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla and was involved in the planning of the failed 2011 flotilla.
Huseyin Oruc
Huweida Arraf is of course the American-born co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who also chairs the ‘Free Gaza’ movement which is behind the organization of the flotillas. She has taken part in several flotillas herself, including that of 2010.
Arraf is perhaps best remembered for her provision of support to Yasser Arafat in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 when the Israeli army sought to put an end to the campaign of suicide bombings in Israel orchestrated by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and for her part in the ISM’s collaboration with the terrorists who took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem the same year. One of the more recent publicity stunts in which Arraf took part was the so-called ‘Freedom Ride‘ in November 2011 when she, together with Mazin Qumsiyeh and four others, attempted to enter Jerusalem without permits.
Abdul Ghaffar Aziz is a member of – and spokesman for – Jamaat e Islami – the Pakistani Islamist movement which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was founded by Abul Ala Maududi.
Sandeep Pandey heads the National Alliance (sometimes ‘Association’) of People’s Movements in India. He was one of the organisers of the Asia to Gaza Caravan, in which he took part and reported on extensively. The convoy included a variety of Islamist and human rights organisations and received considerable en-route support from Iran, including an official reception with Ahmedinijad. Pandey is currently involved in promotion and organisation of the Asian chapter of the GMJ, describing it as an attempt to “counter the Judaisation of Jerusalem”.
GMJ International Executive Committee:
The ‘International Executive Committee’ for the Global March on Jerusalem also includes both familiar and lesser-known figures.
Feroze Mithiborwala was a co-organiser of the 2010 Asia to Gaza Convoy and is a member of Awami Bharat – an Indian political group which describes itself as being involved in an “international struggle against imperialism, Zionism, and Brahmanism”. He is also a member of the Muslim Intellectual Forum of India and the South Asian Solidarity Initiative and is the ‘Free Gaza’ national coordinator in India. Unsurprisingly for someone who relies upon ‘Israel Shamir‘ for information, Mithiborwala seems to be rather fond of conspiracy theories: the Moscow subway terror attacks were, according to him, deliberately timed to deflect attention from the BDS movement and Osama Bin Laden died in 2001. He is also of the opinion that:
Feroze Mithiborwala presenting Khalid Masha'al with a gift in Damascus whilst en route with the Asian convoy in 2010
Mithiborwala meeting Mahmoud al Zahar in Gaza, 2010
Mithiborwala and other GMJ organisers at a conference of the Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine in Karachi, 2-3 February 2012. Representatives from Palestinian organisations were also present.
Nabil Hallak is an Irish-Lebanese citizen who took part in the 2010 flotilla and acted or acts as co-ordinator for the National Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza. Here he is being welcomed upon his return to Lebanon after his deportation from Israel in the wake of the flotilla.
Nabil Hallak (top left, being carried)
Izzet Sahin is an employee of the IHH. He was deported from Israel in May 2010 after having been found working for that organization which has been banned in Israel since 2008 due to its ties to the Union of Good which channels funding to Hamas.
Izzet Sahin
Zaher Birawi is a well-known Hamas operative resident in the UK. He is connected to the Palestinian Return Centre which is banned by Israel, ‘Viva Palestina’, the Palestinian Forum of Britain and the ‘Union of Good’-linked charity ‘Education Aid for Palestinians’. Birawi’s connections will be further expanded upon in part two of this report. Here he is (far left) in Gaza along with Kevin Ovenden and Mohammed Sawalha receiving an award from Ahmad Bahar of Hamas.
Kevin Ovenden (pictured above, second from the left) was Parliamentary aide to the former British MP George Galloway. He is a former trustee of Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ and very active in the organization and leadership of its various projects. He was aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010 and has received repeated recognition for his services to Hamas. Here he is in Syria, addressing a welcoming party for one of the Viva Palestina convoys whilst standing under the flags of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party.
Ali Mallah is Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation which supports the removal of Hamas and Hizballah from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations and an academic boycott of Israel. He is also a leader of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and a member of the ‘Gaza Freedom March Liaison Committee’.
George Rishmawi could be either of two well-known Palestinian activists – cousins – both of whom have connections to the ISM and – like Mazin Qumseiyeh above – the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement (PCR).
Salim Ghafouri from Iran acted as spokesman for the Asia to Gaza convoy. According to him, the “war with the Zionists” is not only an “Islamic-Zionist war,” but the showdown between the “truth,” represented by “the freedom-loving people of the world,” and the “lie,” represented by Israel and its supporters. Ghafouri also appears to be involved in advancing Iranian interests in Kashmir and has represented the ‘Iranian House of Latin America’ on visits to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Shaheen Kattiparambil was another Indian participant in the Asia to Gaza Convoy, and together with Pandey and Mithiborwala, issued this statement on behalf of of the Indian chapter of GMJ following its meeting on January 23rd 2012. All three, along with the Student Islamic Organisation of India of which Kattiparambil is a member, are endorsers of the statement by the ‘India Lifeline to Gaza’ according to which:
Rami Zurayk is a Lebanese agronomist at the American University of Beirut who has taken part in ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ and is currently promoting this year’s events on Twitter, where his profile picture is of terrorist Leila Khaled, and on his blog.
Roohulla Rezvi from Iran is cited by Feroze Mithiborwala as having been instrumental (along with Salim Ghafouri) in securing Iranian support for the 2010 Asia to Gaza convoy.
Gauhar Iqbal is a functionary of the ‘Human Welfare Trust’ which is included in the social service wing of the Indian Jamat al Islami. He also took part in the Asai to Gaza Convoy and is pictured here first from the left.
Irman Abdurahman is also a graduate of the Asia to Gaza Convoy and is a member of the board of executives of the Indonesian Society for Palestine Freedom (aka the Voice of Palestine) which states on its website that “[n]ative inhabitants of historical Palestine are people that are expelled and dispossessed from their lands and houses by force. Since 100 years to date the ultra-nationalist Zionist movement with support of some colonial powers has been doing this brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” The Indonesian chapter of GMJ has a Facebook group featuring a book by Gilad Atzmon, a speech by Khamenei at the ‘Islamic Awakening and Youth’ conference and this graphic:
Part two of this report will focus on the European chapter of the Global March to Jerusalem.
Share this: