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Palestinian Blackmail: US Is Our Enemy

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Via:  buzz-of-the-orient  •  6 years ago  •  14 comments

Palestinian Blackmail: US Is Our Enemy

Palestinian Blackmail: US Is Our Enemy

by Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute, January 30, 2018

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A Palestinian woman holds an assault rifle to the head of an effigy of US President Donald Trump in Gaza, December 9, 2017. (Image source: Ruptly video screenshot)

Palestinian incitement against the US has reached new heights. While the Palestinians have never been fans of the US, the past few weeks have revealed the extent to which they truly loathe Americans. The US, it is worth noting, funds the Palestinians to the tune of nearly $800 million every year -- $368 million every year to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); and $400 million every year to the Palestinian Authority (PA), with $363 million from USAID and $36 million every year for security.

This is how the Palestinian incitement machine works: PA leaders and officials set the tone, while ordinary Palestinians take to the streets to express their hatred of the US.

Hardly a day passes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip without a photo or effigy of President Donald Trump and US flags being burned before local and foreign journalists and camera crews.

Such scenes have become commonplace since Trump's December announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Until recently, such scenes of rage were reserved for Israeli leaders and the Israeli flag. The Palestinians, however, have now added the US to their list of enemies -- they do not like Trump's announcement on Jerusalem and see him as being "biased" in favor of Israel.

Most recently, US Vice President Mike Pence was placed on the Palestinian list of the condemned. Pence's visit to Israel and his speech before the Knesset turned him, too, into an enemy of the Palestinians.

How dare Pence voice his support for Trump's Jerusalem announcement and deliver a pro-Israel speech before the Israeli parliament? After eight years of being spoiled beyond their dreams by the Obama administration, this is nothing short of anathema to the Palestinian people.

Last weekend, the Palestinians' anti-American campaign reached a peak, when activists in a refugee camp near Bethlehem held a mock trial for Trump and Pence.

Initiated by the "Popular Resistance," a coalition of various Palestinian factions, Trump and Pence were "tried" before a Palestinian "peoples' court" in the Al-Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.

The "court" found Trump and Pence "guilty" of endorsing a "racist" and "biased" policy, and they were sentenced to death by hanging. The court also ruled that the bodies of Trump and Pence would be burned after their "execution."

It is also worth noting that nothing here was hidden. The "trial" and "execution" were put on public display, and journalists and photographers were invited to document the "historic" event. The Palestinian activists burned US flags and carried placards that read: "Zionism = Nazism = Fascism" and "USA = ISIS = Terror."

Strikingly, this event took place inside a refugee camp that is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). More precisely, the execution took place outside a school run by UNRWA. Trump and Pence were "hanged" with the UNRWA flag flying atop the school in the background.

More interesting still is that members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction participated in the mock trial and "execution" of the US president and vice president.

Mohammed Al-Masri, Secretary-General of Fatah in Bethlehem, praised the activists for displaying their deep hatred for the US and its leaders. "This is a popular trial," Al-Masri explained . "The Palestinian people are entitled to bring to trial anyone who extorts them or denies their rights." He also accused the US administration of seeking to get rid of the current Palestinian Authority leadership.

Another senior Fatah official who attended the "trial" and "execution" was Mohammed Lutfi. He said that the mock trial was aimed at sending a message "to all the people of the world that they should support the Palestinians and defend the Palestinians' rights against the US administration's violation of all agreements [signed between Israel and the Palestinians]."

Never mind that it was PA President Mahmoud Abbas himself, now in the 13 th year of his four-year term in office, whose calls for blood have been violating the Oslo Accords for years, or that just a few days earlier had said that the Oslo Accords, signed by his predecessor, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, were "dead."

Mohammed Al-Lahham, member of the Fatah "Revolutionary Council," a body dominated by Abbas loyalists, said the event was organized to express Palestinian outrage with the US administration's policies. He pointed out that in addition to Al-Aida, residents of two other UNRWA-run refugee camps, Dheisheh and El-Azza, also participated in the mock trial and "execution" of Trump and Pence.

Such an unprecedented display of hatred and encouragement of violence against American leaders could never have taken place without the approval of Abbas, who is also the chairman of Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah. Once again, Palestinians are being taught by their "leaders" that, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars they receive annually from the US, they are meant to disgorge murderous venom at America. In fact, the mock trial and "execution" of Trump and Pence gives a green light to Palestinians physically to target Americans.

This incitement against the US should come as a surprise to no one. The activists -- who are burning photos and effigies of Trump and Pence and American flags -- listen with rapt attention to the anti-American rhetoric coming from Palestinian Authority leaders. Trump and Pence are vilified on a daily basis by Palestinian leaders and media outlets.

Palestinian leaders have managed to turn the US into an enemy in the eyes of the Palestinians. By stating that the US can no longer be trusted to play any role in a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, Palestinian leaders have turned Trump and the entire US administration into "Zionists" and enemies of Arabs and Muslims.

Most importantly, this is not only a show of disrespect towards the US and its leaders: it is in fact a call for terrorism against American citizens. In the world of the Palestinians, any world leader who does not hate Israel or dares to challenge the Palestinian narrative is defined as the enemy. How will any of Trump's Middle East envoys ever be able to visit Ramallah or Bethlehem after this wave of incitement?

The US and other Western countries would do well to take the Palestinian campaign of threats and incitement extremely seriously -- and severely counter these threats. Submission to the intimidation will simply result in even more intimidation, more violence and more threats.

Things are going from bad to worse with respect to Palestinian intimidation. From the Palestinian Authority's point of view, if you do not support us, we will put you on trial and hang you. When will the world begin to grasp what kind of blackmail is going on here?

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim based in the Middle East.



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Buzz of the Orient
Professor Expert
1  seeder  Buzz of the Orient    6 years ago

It's about time the Taylor-Force Act was put into effect. 

Advice to American backpackers wanting to tour the West Bank or Gaza: Don't sew an American flag on your backpack.

 
 
 
zuksam
Junior Silent
1.1  zuksam  replied to  Buzz of the Orient @1    6 years ago
Don't sew an American flag on your backpack.

Why not ! As far as I'm concerned anyone who wants to go Backpacking in those areas has got to be so Stupid that the world would be better off without them. It's like those Idiots who went backpacking in Iran and got arrested, there's only two kinds of Americans who go backpacking in Iran CIA Agents and Morons.

 
 
 
JBB
Professor Principal
2  JBB    6 years ago

Those unfamiliar with The Gatestone Institute should become aware. The Gatestone Institute is:

The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate

Philanthropist Nina Rosenwald has used her millions to cement the alliance between the pro-Israel lobby and the Islamophobic fringe.

By Max Blumenthal

Besides funding a Who’s Who of anti-Muslim outfits, Rosenwald has served on the board of AIPAC, the central arm of America’s Israel lobby, and holds leadership roles in a host of mainstream pro-Israel organizations. As groups like AIPAC lead the charge for a US military strike on the Islamic Republic of Iran, threatening to turn apocalyptic visions of civilizational warfare into catastrophic reality, Rosenwald’s wealth has fueled a rapidly emerging alliance between the pro-Israel mainstream and the Islamophobic fringe. (In 2003 alone the Rosenwald Family Fund donated well over half of its $1.6 million in total contributions to pro-Israel and Islamophobic organizations.) This alliance serves to sanitize and legitimize professional anti-Muslim bigots like Wilders, allowing their ideas to mingle easily with those of neoconservative foreign policy heavyweights intent on promoting the appearance of a convergence between US and Israeli interests by invoking the specter of a common “Islamofascist” enemy. With Gatestone—which publicizes the writings of figures ranging from pro-Israel super-lawyer Alan Dershowitz to “counter-jihad” propagandist Robert Spencer, and boasts Harold Rhode, a neoconservative former Pentagon official credited, as a senior fellow, with helping to try to push the Bush administration to invade Iraq—Rosenwald has attempted to shift the alliance into overdrive.

Conspiracies, Witch Hunts and “Moderate Muslims”

Over the past decade, Rosenwald’s generosity has helped sustain the pet projects of “Islamofascism Awareness Week” organizer and Stalinist apostate David Horowitz. Her largesse has also supported former Lebanese Maronite TV anchor Brigitte Gabriel, who told an evangelical audience in 2006 that Muslims “have no souls—they are dead set on killing and destruction.” The Center for Security Policy (CSP), a Washington-based think tank directed by neoconservative former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney, has also thrived as a result of Rosenwald’s beneficence. The $437,000 in donations Gaffney reaped from the Rosenwald family enabled him to churn out conspiratorial pamphlets like his 2010 “Shariah: The Threat to America,” in which he warned that American Muslims were engaged in a “stealth jihad” to place the country under the control of Sharia, or Islamic law. At the Conservative Political Action Conference the following year, Gaffney sent his cadres to distribute fliers accusing top Republican anti-tax activists Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan of organizing a secret campaign dedicated to “the replacement of our constitutional republic…with a theocratic Islamic caliphate governing according to Shari’ah.” (David Steinmann, president of the Fund, sits on the board of Gaffney’s CSP.) Norquist is married to an Arab-American, and Khan, a former Republican Party official, is a fellow for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement. The American Conservative Union investigated Gaffney’s charges and declared them “reprehensible.”

Rosenwald has also used her money to support a seemingly sober set of self-proclaimed “dissident” Muslims who have seized the post-9/11 media spotlight to defend pro-Israel positions, Western military intervention in the Arab world and police spying on Muslim Americans. These beneficiaries include Irshad Manji, an openly gay Canadian TV personality and self-described “Muslim refusenik” who argued in her 2005 book, The Trouble With Islam Today , that “desert Arabs” and “Arab cultural imperialists” were imposing an anti-democratic, sexist and endemically anti-Semitic mindset on the rest of the world’s Muslims. In 2007 Rosenwald provided $10,000 in seed money for Manji’s new nonprofit, Project Ijtihad, which she founded to “help build the world’s most inclusive network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies.”

Read more at the link provided. This is what Wikipedia has to say on The Gatestone Institiute.

The Gatestone Institute (formerly Stonegate Institute and Hudson New York ) is a right-wing [2] [3] [4] think tank that publishes articles, particularly pertaining to Islam and the Middle East. The organization has attracted attention for publishing false articles. [5] [6] [7] Gatestone was founded in 2012 by Nina Rosenwald , who serves as its president. [8] Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton is its chairman. [9] [10]

Allegations of anti-Muslim bias

Gatestone has been criticized for affiliating itself with Geert Wilders , who says that he "hates Islam" [18] and has been described as "anti-Muslim". [10] [19] In 2012, Gatestone Institute hosted a talk by Wilders. [10] In 2016, Gatestone paid for Wilders’s flights and hotels on trips to the United States. [19] [20] The Guardian noted that Gatestone publishes the writings of Geert Wilders. [18]

Policy analyst J. Dana Stuster of the National Security Network , writing in The Hill , criticized Gatestone as "paranoid" for claiming that immigration to Europe was “civilization jihad” and a “Muslim invasion”. [21]

Gatestone's founder, Nina Rosenwald, has been accused of anti-Muslim bias by the Council on American-Islamic Relations . Muslim writers for the Gatestone Institute have defended the organization and Rosenwald against the claims by CAIR. [22] Zuhdi Jasser , founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy , said, "It goes without saying, but to those who may not know Nina, and having known her now for many years, it is clear to me that she has the highest respect for Muslims who love their faith, love God, and take seriously our Islamic responsibility to defeat the global jihad and its Islamist inspiration." [22]

Inaccurate reporting

In 2011 [23] and 2012, [6] Gatestone published articles claiming that Europe had Muslim " no-go zones ", describing them variously as "off-limits to non-Muslims" [6] and "microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law". [23] [24] The claim that there are areas in European cities governed by Sharia is false, [6] [23] although many of the areas deemed as "no-go zones" have high levels of unemployment and crime. [24] Gatestone's claims were picked up by many outlets, including FrontPageMag , [23] and Washington Times . [24] The idea of no-go zones originated from Daniel Pipes , [23] who later retracted his claims. [6]

On November 18, 2016, Gatestone published an article that said the British Press had been ordered to avoid reporting the Muslim identity of terrorists by the European Union . Snopes rated the claim "false". Snopes pointed out that the report only made a recommendation and it was issued by the Council of Europe , not the European Union . [7] Gatestone subsequently corrected the article and apologized for the error, [25] before removing it entirely from its website.

The Gatestone Institute published false articles during the German federal election of 2017 . [26] A Gatestone article, shared thousands of times on social media, including by senior German far-right politicians, claimed that vacant homes were being seized in Germany to provide housing solutions for "hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East." [5] The German fact-checker Correctiv.org found that this was false; a single house was placed in temporary trusteeship, and had nothing to do with refugees whatsoever. [5] Gatestone also cross-posted a Daily Mail article, which "grossly mischaracterized crime data" concerning crime by refugees in Germany. [27]

 
 
 
Buzz of the Orient
Professor Expert
2.1  seeder  Buzz of the Orient  replied to  JBB @2    6 years ago

Your technique of criticizing the source and ignoring the actual facts stated therein is so immature I really don't know how anyone can pay any attention to your comments. Most of the members here can see through that.  Of course, if you cannot deny the truths and the facts, then attack the source or the author, right?  By the way, do you send donations to Veterans Today and Stormfront?

 
 
 
Cerenkov
Professor Silent
2.1.1  Cerenkov  replied to  Buzz of the Orient @2.1    6 years ago

He's transparent and should be dismissed. Sounds like he's an apologist for terrorists. 

 
 
 
Jonathan P
Sophomore Silent
3  Jonathan P    6 years ago

The article has several referenced and sourced factual accounts. In an effort to stifle the truth, you have papered the seed with a diatribe from Max Blumenthal, a fervent "anti-Zionist", much like yourself. As you are unable to address the factual content of the article, you have resorted to criticizing the site.

The world has seen what a real refugee crisis looks like in the last 8 years, unlike the manufactured one of the Palestinian people.

The world is against terrorism, and finally has acknowledged the terrorism that the Palestinians have been perpetrating for decades.

The Sunni Arab world is tired of supporting this sham, and is now embarking on normalizing relations with Israel.

Move on.

You've always been on the wrong side of history.

You're receiving confirmation, but you hold on.

It's tough to unbecome and "anti-Zionist", I suppose...

 
 
 
Buzz of the Orient
Professor Expert
3.1  seeder  Buzz of the Orient  replied to  Jonathan P @3    6 years ago

@ Jonathan P

I believe you are directing this comment to jbb, so in order to not confuse anyone, perhaps you should be more careful to click the "REPLY" link at the bottom left of a comment before commenting if you are addressing it.  It might clarify your intent if post now that you agree that that is what you intended.

 
 
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