PA Officials Call Youth Soccer Match With Israel "Crime Against Humanity"

The Peres Center for Peace sponsored an interfaith soccer match between young Palestinian and Israeli kids. Great, right?  However, the effort to promote coexistence on a kibbutz in southern Israel was met with anger by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials who called it "a crime against humanity."

And these are the folk who are supposed to be moderates.

Jibril Rajoub, the deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and the head of the Palestinian Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, said the match represented “an Israeli attempt to cover up their crimes against [Palestinian] athletes,” according to a Palestinian Media Watch report released Monday.

“Any activity of normalization in sports with the Zionist enemy is a crime against humanity,” Rajoub said in a September 6 Facebook post.

The match, the first of a planned series, was hosted by the Peres Center for Peace on September 1 as an effort to build bridges between Israeli and Palestinian youths after a fraught summer of war with Gaza and West Bank tensions.

Not only that, Abd al-Salam Haniyeh, who is a member of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, wants the Palestinians involved with the effort to help Palestinian and Israeli kids to get along punished.

“The [Palestinian] organizers of this match betrayed the blood of the children of Gaza and of the martyrs, which has yet to dry a week after the end of the barbaric Israeli aggression."

 “Immediately interrogate the organizers of the match, settle the account with them and prosecute them on charges of serious treason against the blood of the martyrs [who died in the Gaza conflict] and violating the decisions made by the Palestinian sports community’s leadership."

Over 600 Israeli and Palestinian kids are scheduled to take part in these interfaith soccer matches.

More than 600 children from Israel and the Palestinian territories will take part throughout the year in the Twinned Peace Soccer Schools events. The program creates “twinned” relationships between Israeli and Palestinian cities. Sderot and the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, both down south close to the border with Gaza, are twinned with the Palestinian town of Yatta, which is located south of Hebron in the West Bank.

The tragic thing is that the children are open and willing.

“I love it when we play together like this. I hope that one day there will be peace between Arabs and Jews and that there will be no more wars and death,” a Palestinian boy told AFP after the first event.

They have their parents to thank for the lack of peace in that region.

Hamas Shot Fatah Members In The Legs During Gaza War

Not surprising, but according to Adnan Al-Damiri- spokesman for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces- Hamas shot Fatah members during the recent Gaza War.

 "Regarding our brothers from Fatah who were placed under house arrest during the battles and aggression [in the Gaza Strip], some of them are wounded and hospitalized in the West Bank and refuse to speak, because they’re scared and want to return to their homes. Their legs were wounded by Hamas. Yes. They violated their house arrest and so were shot in the legs."

Palwatch Video here.

Fatah Official Says To "Liberate" Jerusalem Soak The Land With Blood Of Palestinians

On December 19, 2013, broadcast on offical PA TV at a World Teachers' Day event in Bethlehem, Fatah member Tawfiq Tirawi told the audience:

 "I say, from a position of responsibility, not a centimeter of Jerusalem will be liberated unless every grain of Palestinian soil is soaked in the blood of its brave people. For Jerusalem doesn't need negotiations, because negotiations will not bring Jerusalem back to us. What will bring back Jerusalem are the struggle and the resolve... We have conducted negotiations, while not laying down the rifle. It [the rifle] may be resting but we will not neglect our principles. We will rest the fighter's rest, but each period has its method of struggle. From fighting to Intifada, to popular resistance, to negotiations -- but we will not abandon [our principles] -- not in negotiations and not in any other way. I say, from a position of responsibility, the negotiations resulted in nothing except for the [release of the] prisoners."

"Bring Jerusalem back to us." I think someone needs to give the Palestinians a history lesson. The Jews and Christians were there before the Muslims.

And Fatah members are supposedly the moderate faction of the Palestinian people.

Can you see why there will never be peace in that region. At least in my lifetime.

Video here.

Palestinian Kiddies Singing Jews Are Barbaric and Evil

From Palestinian Media Watch.

On Fatah's official Palestinian Authority TV- the ones who are supposed to be moderate.

PA TV reporter: "Let's meet these girls who want to recite a short poem."
Girl 1: "I do not fear the rifle because your throngs are in delusion and ignorant herds.
Jerusalem is my land, Jerusalem is my honor
Jerusalem is my days and my wildest dreams.
Oh, you who murdered Allah's pious prophets (i.e., Jews in Islamic tradition)
Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood
You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship.
Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations
Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs
Girl 2: Jerusalem is not your den
Jerusalem opposes your throngs
Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity
Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate
And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure.
I do not fear barbarity.
As long as my heart is my Quran and my city
As long as I have my arm and my stones
As long as I am free and do not barter my cause
I will not fear your throngs
I will not fear the rifle."
[Official Palestinian Authority TV (Fatah), July 3, 2013]

Barbaric? Evil? Can we say pot-kettle-black.

Mahmoud Abbas: Hamas Has Same Policies As the PA So Remove Them From Terrorist Lists

On 'Russia Today' Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas claims there is no difference between the policies of the PA and those of Hamas, so why should they be labeled as terrorists. This was in response to the possibility of the EU removing Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations.

"In my opinion, (the EU) can remove Hamas (from the list), why not?"

The interviewer then asks:

"But do you not fire missiles at Israel?"

And this is where it gets interesting. Mahmoud replies:

"Neither we nor Hamas fire missiles. [snip] ..we have no intention or desire to violate, or rather to engage in an armed Intifada with Israel. [snip] Hamas declared (the same), but then there were skirmishes once or twice. Hopefully that was the end of it."

Well, not quite Mahmoud. Several rockets from Gaza made their way into Israel to greet President Barack Obama as he was leaving Jerusalem for Ramallah in the West Bank.

Hamas doesn't fire missiles? Does he think we're stupid?

Gatestone Institute's Khaled Abu Toameh's has an interesting take on Hamas' bid to be removed from the U.S. and E.U.'s terrorist list:

Hamas wants to be dropped from the list not because it has changed. Rather, Hamas wants to be removed from the list because it feels that the world has changed, and that many naïve Westerners are now willing to tolerate its radical ideology and terrorism.

Anyone who supports Hamas's bid should also vote in favor of removing Al-Qaeda from the same list.

And if the PA has the same policies as those of Hamas, then perhaps the PA should be added to the list of terrorist organizations.

Palestinians No Longer Heart Obama- Vandalize Banners With Swastikas

During Barack Obama's first Middle East tour as President- which happened to exclude Israel- the Arabs loved him. Not so much now in Palestine. Like George W. Bush, Obama has now been "shoed"-  well, a banner with his photo was, right before it was vandalized and destroyed.

Apparently, Obama was the target of protesting West Bank Palestinians because they are pissed off that Israel isn't allowing them 3G cell phone service (Israel apparently controls all the cell networks), and it must be Obama's fault because the U.S. favors Israel.

In anticipation of his visit on Thursday, banners were plastered around Bethlehem informing the Prez Palestinians have no 3G. One of those was vandalized with swastika signs, had shoes thrown at it, cars drive over it (including an official from the Palestinian Authority) and was finally torched.

Obama is scheduled to visit there during his sojourn in Israel, where he hopes to mend his strained relationship with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He will also try to reignite peace talks between Palestine and Israel by trying to bring the leaders together. He has no actual plan, though, and it's highly unlikely that anything will happen.

Source: Times Of Israel

Norwegian Politicians- No More Aid To Palestine Until They Stop Demonizing Jews

Norway has been funding the Palestinian Authority (PA) since 2008. Over 300 million krone ($52 plus million) per year.  After Palestinian Media Watch put together a report documenting the demonization, vilification and hatred of Jews on PA television and handed it over to Norwegian media, some politicians in Norway are rethinking this financial aid.  After airing an 11 minute investigative report on state-owned NRK TV, the Progress Party and the Christian Democratic Party are now calling on  Norway to stop all aid to the PA until Palestinians stop fostering hate and glorifying terror in TV broadcasts.

The PA of course, denies any wrongdoing,

PA Ambassador:

"They used rumors and exaggerations.They exaggerated all kinds of news items to foster a negative attitude among Norwegians against the Palestinian issue and the Palestinian leadership..."



PA TV News:

TV report is "part of an incitement campaign started by the Israeli Foreign Ministry on a global level to affect the positions of countries that support Palestine."

Here's the transcript of the report on the PMW website.

Muslim Arab Writer Gets Facebook Account Closed For Post Critical of Palestine

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Muslim who writes for the Jerusalem Post, posted on his Facebook page an article he wrote entitled : The Palestinian Authority's Inconvenient Truths that was published on The Gatestone Institute website.  We're talking about the Palestinian Authority (PA) of so-called 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas, friend of the West.

In the article, Toameh accuses the PA of a plethora of corruption and embarrassments that it's hiding from the West. Here are a few snippets, or "inconvenient truths" as he puts it:

- Over 100 senior PLO and Fatah officials hold Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges denied to most Palestinians. Among these privileges is the freedom to enter Israel and travel abroad at any time they wish. This privileging has existed since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993.

- Out of the 600 Christians from the Gaza Strip who arrived in the West Bank in the past two weeks to celebrate Christmas, dozens have asked to move to Israel because they no longer feel comfortable living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

[snip]

- Tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority civil servants in the Gaza Strip receive salaries to stay at home and not work. The practice has been in effect since Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. According to Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf, the Palestinian Authority, which is funded mostly by American and European taxpayer money, spends around $120 million each month on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

- Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction has allocated more than one million dollars for celebrations marking the 48th anniversary of the "launching of the revolution" -- a reference to the first armed attack carried out by Fatah against Israel.

Those are just a few mentioned in his commentary.

As you can well imagine, that did not sit well with some individuals who read that post (along with several other ones critical of  Middle Eastern regimes including Jordan), so Facebook closed his account, as FB is apt to do when faced with complaints that are justified or not.  Toameh then contacted Committee For Accuracy in  Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) telling them about his ordeal.

"In the past few days I have been bombarded with dozens of hate and threat messages because of the these postings and articles. Some anti-Israel folks in the UK are now publishing my photo with a Star of David on my forehead."

Not surprising at all.

CAMERA updated their report claiming his Facebook account has been reactivated, sans the PA corruption post. According to Toameh, Hamas and other terrorist groups have FB accounts.  The difference is, they probably don't have a bunch of haters flagging their accounts.

So much for freedom of speech.

Hamas Rips Palestinian Official For Visiting Auschwitz

For those of you who are still unwilling to believe that it's the Palestinians who have no desire for peace with Israel, or at least the Gazan half, read on.

Last month Pali President Mahmoud Abbas sent his adviser Ziad al-Bandak to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. They were invited there by a Polish group to lay a wreath as a gesture of respect. Surprising, considering the animosity and hatred the Palestinians generally have for Israel and the Jews, but somewhat commendable. What's not surprising, however, was the response by Hamas to the trip.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum slammed Bandak's visit claiming, “It was an unjustified and unhelpful visit that served only the Zionist occupation” calling the Holocaust and Auschwitz “a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy.”

Right, these Jewish survivors at Ebensee were photoshopped to look that emaciated.

1.5 million people were killed in Auschwitz, the majority Jews. The Palestinian 'refugee' camps might not be pleasant to live in, but they aren't 'death' camps. The people over there aren't being starved or worked to death, or flat out massacred with the goal of genocide. There's absolutely no comparison.

Hamas will never accept Israel's right to exist, it's in their charter. That's not going to change any time soon.

Palestinian Mufti Uses 'Kill The Jews' Islamic Hadith At Moderate Fatah Celebration

People are under the false impression that Fatah - PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' political party-  is a moderate one, and I suppose in comparison to Hamas (Palestine's other major party) it is.  But we must never forget that no matter how moderate Fatah might seem on the surface, most Palestinians want Israel out of the picture, Hamas and its supporters are just more obvious about their intentions.  Yes, in 2010 Fatah removed from its charter the paragraph referencing its desire to wipe Israel off the map, whereas Hamas has not, but that doesn't necessarily mean Fatah wants to coexist with Israelis. Far from it.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)  just posted a recent video that aired on PA TV (see below) of the head Mufti Muhammad Hussein speaking at a celebration of the 47th anniversary of Fatah where he urged Muslims to kill the Jews by quoting from a popular Sahih Muslim Hadith 6985:

"The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.
The Jew will hide behind stones or trees.
Then the stones or trees will call:
'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'"

According to PMW, during the 2000-2006 Intifada this particular Hadith was commonly used on PA TV as a motivating tool for generating more violence, but not so much in recent years.  The last time was in 2010, but it's obviously still very relevant in Islamic teachings today with 73% of the Palestinian population believing it, as per a 2011 Israel Project poll. 

Apparently not all Hadiths are accepted:

There are numerous collections of Hadith, some of which are not accepted as reliable. However, the Mufti stressed that the Islamic belief that Jews will be killed by Muslims as a precursor to Resurrection, is an authentic Islamic belief because it appears in "the reliable" and trusted Hadith collections of Al-Bukhari and Muslim.

This Islamic tradition asserts that as the killing of Jews will progress, Jews will hide behind stones and trees, but even they will expose the Jews and call out: "Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." One tree however, called the Gharqad, will hide the Jews from the Muslims. The Mufti in his talk at the Fatah event claimed that in response to this Islamic belief, Israelis have been planting Gharqad trees around their cities and towns, in order to have a place to hide from the Muslims who will be coming to kill them.

And it's not as if Abbas is unaware of Sheikh Hussein's preachings, since Abbas is the one who appointed Hussein.

It's quite obvious that regardless of what they say to the contrary, it's not just about Israel and ant-Zionism, it's about the Jews.  And the promotion of this Hadith proves it without a doubt.

Transcript:

Moderator at Fatah ceremony:
"Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews)
is a war of religion and faith.
Long Live Fatah! [I invite you,] our honorable Sheikh."


PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein comes to the podium and says:
"47 years ago the [Fatah] revolution started. Which revolution? The modern revolution of the Palestinian people's history. In fact, Palestine in its entirety is a revolution, since [Caliph] Umar came [to conquer Jerusalem, 637 CE], and continuing today, and until the End of Days. The reliable Hadith (tradition attributed to Muhammad), [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says:
"The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.
The Jew will hide behind stones or trees.
Then the stones or trees will call:
'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'
Except the Gharqad tree [which will keep silent]."
Therefore it is no wonder that you see Gharqad [trees]
surrounding the [Israeli] settlements and colonies.."

Article Praising Hitler Prompts Defunding of Palestinian Youth Magazine By UNESCO

UNESCO, the educational, scientific and cultural arm of the U.N., hoisted the Palestinian flag for the first time ever at its Paris headquarters on December 13, 2011. This week the flag is still billowing, however, the organization announced there would be no more funding of the Palestinian youth magazine Zayzafuna after it discovered the February edition contained a Hitler-loving article by a young girl whose four role models included Adolf.

Of course, UNESCO would have never pulled the plug on funding had it not been for the diligent translation work of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which keeps tabs on all things in that region, coupled with the lobbying efforts of the Wiesenthal Center. Not that losing UNESCO's purse strings will make much difference since the magazine is funded by the Palestinian Authority and others.

The Director-General of UNESCO had this to say about the whole situation:

UNESCO is shocked and dismayed by the content of the February issue, and has requested more detailed information and clarification from the editors of the magazine and to Palestinian Authority. UNESCO strongly deplores and condemns the reproduction of such inflammatory statements in a magazine associated with UNESCO's name and mission and will not provide any further support to the publication in question."

And well they should be. But what about the Palestinian people? No-one had any problem with a young teen writing about Hitler in such a positive manner?  No, because they abhor the Jews and they still cleave to the hope that some day Israel will be wiped off the map, though they're not the only ones.

According to the PMW book Deception: Betraying the Peace Process that exposed the article:

The Zayzafuna magazine chose to publish an essay written by a girl in 10th grade in which Hitler is admired because he killed the Jews - an act that is presented as a positive accomplishment for the benefit of humanity. The girl describes a dream in which she meets four historical figures, all of whom are presented as admired role models, and each one's special accomplishment is the topic of a short conversation with the girl. Three of them are the ninth-century Muslim mathematician Al-Khwarizmi; Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz; and Saladin, the Muslim leader who defeated the Christian Crusaders and conquered Jerusalem in the 12th century. The fourth and only non-Muslim role model in the dream is Adolf Hitler.

All four are presented as positive figures and each one offers advice to the young girl, which she accepts. Hitler is admired because he killed the Jews "so you would all know that they are a nation which spreads destruction all over the world." Hitler advises the girl to "be resilient and patient" in facing the suffering the Jews are causing. The girl thanks Hitler for his advice.

Not that this is the first time a Palestinian has praised Hitler. To many in the Arab and Muslim world he is a hero, and what the Nazis did to the Jews is something they aspire to.  What PMW found most troubling was the fact that the rest of the magazine is actually very positive- encouraging a democratic society, family values, and  unity & coexistence between everyone in Palestine except the Israelis and the Jews.

As expected, the director of the magazine, Shareef Samhan, claimed she wasn't actually praising Hitler, but rather "accusing" him, and then launched into the whole free speech thing:

"We depend in the content of our magazine on the participation of school students, and it's not our job to prohibit the freedom of speech."

Freedom of speech when it suits them. In response, Ghassan Khatib of the Palestinian Authority said,

"We educate young people in our textbooks about the Holocaust and the massacres of Hitler against Jews and against others, and we refer to these massacres as crimes against humanity. This instance is exceptional, and the editor will try to be more careful in the future."

I'd like to see those books.

Radical Jewish Settlers Allegedly Set Fire to Mosque In West Bank

Although the majority of religious extremists happen to be Muslim, most every other religion has its own coterie of religious fanatics. Be they Jewish, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, extremist acts in any form should be condemned.

Most acts of vandalism are perpetrated by Muslims against the religious institutions of other faiths-Google 'Muslims burn down Christian churches' and you get 1,170,000 pages. On the other hand, Google the inverse and you get about half as many pages.  Christians in most Muslim-majority countries are often persecuted, discriminated against and in some cases subject to having their churches burned down. It's not often you hear about Mosques being burned down or vandalized in the West. For the most part, they live long lives in non-Muslim nations. But they haven't fared so well, however, in the Palestinian West Bank.  Over there, Israelis are dealing with their own kind of extremism in the  guise of radical Jewish settlers. They allegedly have been burning down mosques in what is coined 'price tag' retaliatory violence against the Israeli government's policy of razing illegal settlements. 

The recent spate of mosque burnings has Israeli officials exasperated, and with good reason. Many in the world (especially in that region) already despise Israel, and those kinds of actions are further fanning the flames of anger and hatred towards Israel, as President Shimon Peres put it.

“What these guys are doing is very serious,” he said. “Israel has always been proud of protecting all of the holy sites. Today, when the Muslim world is where it is, to give them justification to attack Israel is a disaster, it’s crazy and it must stopped.”

The latest mosque burning on Thursday in Burqa, a village near Ramallah, occurred in spite of a crackdown by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over escalating violence the past few days. And they're not just attacking mosques, Jewish militants also targeted an Israeli army base located in the West Bank. The 3 days of violence has been condemned by most, and Netanyahu has vowed to "eradicate this evil plague".

The steps announced Wednesday include detention without trial and prosecution in military courts, measures normally applied to Palestinians in the West Bank but not to Jewish settlers there.

Other measures include banning suspected militants from the West Bank and authorizing soldiers in the West Bank to arrest Israelis.

The Israeli government has been criticized for not doing enough to stem the violence, and the Palestinian Authority had the gall to ask the 'international community to hold the Israeli government responsible for the attacks". Right, then Israel should ask the same of the Palestinian government.  And every other country that has been subjected to acts of violence by extremists from a different land should hold their governments responsible.  Israel has as little control over their extremists as Palestine has over theirs.  One major difference, however, is that the Israeli government doesn't encourage the extremism, whereas the Palestinian government does.