I fear there is another movement coming that will confuse people. It’s the war on incitement and here’s why it’s a problem. I fear this is turning into another version of the nonsense that was the “war on terror”. The tactic is seen as the problem, not the ideology that’s making the other side USE the tactic of terror.
Instead of talking about the WHAT, we’re all talking about the HOW.
WHAT is being used to incited young Arabs to stab Jews? That is much more important than HOW they’re hearing about it.
Algemeiner: The son of an American-Israeli stabbing victim who died last month following a Jerusalem terrorist attack said it was morally imperative that social media platforms like Facebook remove incitement to violence regardless of whether such posts are flagged or reported by users.
“Just as it is universally recognized that shouting fire in a crowded theater is dangerous and should be prohibited, so, too, must we now recognize that rampant online incitement is a danger that must be reckoned with immediately, before more innocent people end up as victims,” wrote Micah Akin Lavni in a piece for the New York Times on Tuesday.
He noted that one of his father’s killers was active on Facebook, and posted a martyr’s will the day of the attack. Additionally, nonprofit watchdogs Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) have been covering incendiary and inciting material on social media, including anatomical graphs laying out the most successful spots to stab a victim, cartoons glorifying stabbings and reenactments of previous attacks.
Oh the irony: he takes to the pages of the New York Times, one of the greatest and most insidious inciters of hate against Israel (for a western and particularly Jewish audience) in the world. Sure, Facebook and Twitter spread the articles of the NYT, but the NYT actually writes them (or publishes dubious op-eds).
But what he’s really talking about is the hate being spread across the Arabic world. And it’s hatred of Jews. Just a couple of days ago Dave published the pictures of the clothing store called “Hitler” in Gaza that puts knives in the hands of its mannequins. Those pictures were shared by the Shehab News Agency. Whose Facebook page has more than 4 million “likes”. That’s far in excess of ANY English language Facebook page focused solely on Israel.
But the problem isn’t that it’s being seen. The problem is the message.
Let’s go back to 1929 when a crowd tore into their Jewish neighbours in Hebron and slaughtered them. They didn’t need Facebook, twitter or smart phones. The message from the Mosque was clear enough.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, this was happening in Israel:
As was reported in the House of Commons in February 16, 1938, in Palestine, “Italian women were disguised as charity workers and nuns and they supplied Arabs with faked pictures of Jewish atrocities and told the Arabs that their poverty was due to British mis-management. Travelling cinema vans showed the Arabs faked pictures of Jews killing Arabs . . . The Italian broadcast from Bari was picked up in Palestine and interspersed in an attractive programme was a series of slogans like ‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs’, ‘Kill the Jews’ ‘Let Palestine Arabs re-arm’.”
They didn’t have smartphones and YouTube, but they had fake Italian Nuns and a travelling cinema van to show made up pictures of Jews killing Arabs! Can you believe that?
The bigger problem is that the Islam as preached in the mosques across Israel and especially in those controlled by the Palestinian Authority, drums a message of Jew hatred into their people day in, day out. That’s it. That’s the problem.
And you can’t blame them for doing this because their entire culture rests upon the destruction of Jews and their removal from history. People express surprise when their religious leaders put forth a version of history that is completely at odds with reality, but they shouldn’t. And you should understand that they really do all believe these lies! Recent headline:
Jerusalem mufti: Temple Mount never housed Jewish Temple
Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein says Al-Aqsa Mosque has been atop disputed holy site ‘since creation of the world’
The grand mufti of Jerusalem, the Muslim cleric in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, said Sunday that there has never been a Jewish temple atop the Temple Mount, and that the site has been home to a mosque “since the creation of the world.”
Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein said in an Arabic interview with Israel’s Channel 2 that the site, considered the third holiest in Islam and the holiest to Jews, was a mosque “3,000 years ago, and 30,000 years ago” and has been “since the creation of the world.”
“This is the Al-Aqsa Mosque that Adam, peace be upon him, or during his time, the angels built,” the mufti said of the 8th-century structure commissioned by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
Hussein has held the post of mufti since 2006; he was appointed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He has previously endorsed suicide bombings against Israelis.
This is then followed by a (from the point of view of moving Arab opinion) futile article refuting everything this man believes. But he really does believe that. And he knows he’s right with the certainty that only religious fervour can bring. I can assure one thing, this man is more of a problem than a Facebook page. And he was appointed by the guy we allow to rule the Palestinians and whom the world is desperate to see as an “angel of peace”.
From the most remarkable and long Mosaic article on what Palestinians actually believe:
Given such a negative view of Israelis and of Jews, and of the Jewish link to the land, it is hardly surprising that most ordinary Palestinians do not believe Jews have a right to a state there. In 1995, when JMCC asked whether Israel had a right to exist, 65 percent responded negatively. Similarly, in a 2015 poll commissioned for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy by David Pollock, who has conducted surveys of the Arab world for more than two decades, fieldworkers from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion asked residents of the West Bank and Gaza: “Do you think that Jews have some rights to the land along with Palestinians?” Only 12 percent agreed that “Both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land,” while more than 80 percent asserted that “This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.”
That view stems from them being told since they were born that Judaism has been completely replaced by Islam and has no rights left (except for those Jews who become Dhimmis and pay the Jizya).
So in the end, the problem is the fundamental beliefs of Islam. If a reform comes along and changes all of Islamic history and it’s triumphalist, supremacist goals to something we can live with, great. In the meantime whenever we’re forced to live near to this, we need to keep our guard well and truly up.
