Recently in Islamic antisemitism Category

Where there are Muslims, there is Islam. Where there is Islam, there is Sharia. Where there is Sharia, there is anti-Semitism. In Sweden, there are a lot of Muslims. Die Welt is absolutely right about the way the Swedes turn their politically correct eye away from how their immigration policy is leading to increasing Nazi-style anti-Semitism. I have written extensively about Sweden recently: "The Free Press Societies: Interview with Swedish Chairman Ingrid Carlqvist and International Chairman Lars Hedegaard", "Sweden: Launching the Swedish Free Press Society under police protection", "Swedish specialty: Pink pixellation of dark-skinned criminals and pixellated anonymization of wanted criminals", "Sweden: Violent Muslims halt mail delivery in Malmø" and "Sweden: Government will spend $620,000 on protecting Jews".

Translated from German, Welt Online, February 2: (Rosengård is Malmös biggest "Sharia colony" - more precise word than "parallel society", isn't it?): Sweden: Malmö represses its new anti-Semitism:

Anti-Semitism in the third-largest city in Sweden is increasing, especially among Muslim immigrants. But whoever dares to criticize this fact is compared with the mass murderer Breivik.

When the 15-year-old Samir Ardiwan Malmo was buried in southern Sweden last month, hundreds of people followed the coffin in a procession through the city center, in a public manifestation of grief at the violence.

Ardiwan was shot in the district Rosengård, an area just minutes away from downtown, which is considered the worst ghetto in Scandinavia. The police has not found neither the killers nor any motive, but the murder is one of two within a short time in the city. This has led to an intense debate in Sweden about violence and crime.

Malmö is Sweden's third largest city, full of creativity and energy, with an intense nightlife. But it has also become more dangerous for its residents. Serious types of crimes are sometimes more frequent in Malmö than in Stockholm (Sweden's capital), particularly when it comes to robberies.

People in Malmö are also more concerned about crime than people in Stockholm, and not only for their own safety. Already in 2009, 30 percent of residents in Stockholm had said they were afraid that their loved ones could become victims of crime -- in Malmö, it was 45 percent.

Increase in hate crimes against Jews

A few days after the funeral of Ardiwans, another much smaller procession marched through the streets of Malmö: the so-called Kippa-walk, organized by the Jewish community. After the Sabbath service on Saturday morning, the community members met and went through the city -- with kippas on their heads and visible stars of David on their jackets.

The Jews in Malmö want to show that they cannot be intimidated, despite the increase in crimes that were committed out of hatred against Jews in the recent years.

The American Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a delegation to Malmö last year, after it became aware that Jewish families were leaving the town because of the increasing anti-Semitism. Founded by the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, the Center has issued a travel warning, warning Jews against visiting the south of Sweden, telling them to exercise "extreme vigilance".

Anti-Semitism comes from Muslim immigrants

Representatives of the Jewish community in Malmö declare that hatred does not primarily come from right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis, but from immigrants from Muslim countries. It is a kind of anti-Semitism that followed them to Malmö - and this is why it is obviously difficult for Swedish politicians and journalists to express an opinion.

In this respect, the debate in Sweden is different from those in neighboring countries such as Norway or Denmark. In Sweden, questions about integration remains unanswered, since people want to remain politically correct. This is how it was before the mass murder in Oslo on 22 July, and it has remained so even after that.

The 'discussion' is often bizarre. Sweden's largest newspaper Aftonbladet recently compared critics of political correctness in the debate on integration with the mass murderer of Oslo: The critics had made Behring Breivik's idea of ​​a conspiracy of political correctness their own. Aftonbladet's article was a low point in the Swedish debate.

Integration policy of the City has failed

Individually, the recent murders in Malmö and the attacks on the city's Jews have nothing to do with each other. Both show clearly that the level of culture in the Sweden's third largest city has decreased. They are also a sign that the integration policy has failed in the city.

But while the Malmö residents are greatly concerned, politicians and journalists often lack words. Populists have benefited from this silence. The Sweden Democrats (SD), a party with roots in the Swedish neo-Nazi movement [This is a false claim -- RS], gained 10.4 percent of votes, making it the third largest party in Malmö.

In areas such as Rosengård, where the 15-year-old Ardiwan was shot, the situation is alarming. The district, whose name means "rose garden", where the apartment buildings are surrounded by green areas and soccer fields, was once a monument of the Swedish welfare state. It has become a symbol of the ghetto.

Now, the fire brigade and ambulances do not drive into Rosengård without police escorts, as employees were regularly subjected to violence and stone-throwing. Recently, I attended a Jewish funeral in the area. The men were warned when they left the cemetery to take off their skullcaps. "Do not forget that we are in Rosengård" was the simple explanation.

Catastrophic unemployment among migrants

In the district Seved the situation is similar. The majority of the population are immigrants, and less than half of adults have a job. Youth gangs control parts of the region, and drugs are openly traded. Now the employees of the Swedish Postal Service refuse to deliver letters in Seved - the threats and violence are making it too dangerous.

Official Sweden reacts in a way that is typical when it comes to questions concerning the failed integration: District Mayor Anders Malmquist said he was satisfied with the situation - they pay unemployed youths from the area to deliver the letters. In this way young adults can get insight into work as postmen.

Unemployment in Seved and Rosengård has reached catastrophic proportions. Most of the immigrants in Sweden have found shelter on humanitarian grounds, and it takes seven years on average before they find a job. For some groups, the numbers are even more dramatic: Only 35 percent of Somalis have found a job after living ten years in Sweden.

Thanks to tax cuts and deregulation of the Swedish civil government, there were created 200,000 new jobs. However, 450,000 full-time jobs are still needed, and another 100,000 immigrants receive a residence permit in Sweden each year.

Local media conceal the problems of anti-Semitism

In strongly segregated Stockholm, the problems of integration are not as visible for the members of the upper and middle classes as they are in Malmö. Whoever wants to visit an area that is characterized by unemployment and crime must take the subway to the periphery of the city. The political circles of the capital are currently talking with special contempt about provincial southern Sweden, which talks constantly about the problems of failed integration.

Frederick Sieradzki is a Jew from Malmö and one of the initiators of the kippa-walk. After a small protest march through the city, he was talking about how the local media ignores violence and threats against Jews in Malmö. "You do not write that it is Muslims who are behind it. I just think it has to do with the fact that the Jewish community is so much smaller than the Muslim," says Sieradzki.

"It's only a minority of Muslims who threaten us, but still you need to talk about it."His latest kippa-walk gathered about 20 people. Among them was only one non-Jew, a Swedish journalist who wanted to show his solidarity.

More on this story. "'Iran must attack Israel by 2014'," from the Jerusalem Post, February 9 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's strategist provided the legal and religious justification for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people, in a document published on conservative Farsi website Alef. Reports of the document began to circulate the internet this week.

The document, written by strategy specialist Alireza Forghani, outlined the reasons why, "In the name of Allah, Iran must attack Israel by 2014."

Claiming to only represent the personal opinion of its author, and not the Iranian government, the doctrine was published on a website believed to have close ties with the Ayatollah.

Forghani called the Jewish state a "cancerous tumor for the Middle East" and reminded his readers that "All our troubles are due to Israel!"

"Every Muslim is obliged to equip himself against Israel," he urged, reasoning that if the Muslim world does not attack Israel in the near future, "the opportunity could be lost and it may not be possible to stop them."

The document explained that the war against Israel must be carried out in the name of "defensive jihad" - or the protecting of Islam against aggressors "who want to gain domination over the Muslims and kill them."

It also clarified that although Israel had yet to strike Iran, its occupation of Palestinian lands already justifies an attack as Islam dictates that "the political borders [of the world] cannot divide Muslims and the earth is divided into two parts - Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries."

Forghani pointed out that Israel is the only country in the world with a Jewish majority, using the findings of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics's last consensus for veracity.

He posited that since Israel requires US and western support in order to attack Iran, the latter should take advantage of western "passiveness" to "wipe out Israel."

The document also provides a "concise description of mid- and long-range ballistic missiles that can target territories of this regional cancerous tumor" and destroy Israel in "less than nine minutes."

Once again, one may note the striking uniformity of Islamic antisemitism in places far removed from one another. So, did these guys call each other? "Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel," by Reza Khalili for World Net Daily February 5:

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues. [...]

On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it. [...]

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.

Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.

In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.”

The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles. [...]

Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants....

Not "Zionist," but "Jew." Funny how this keeps happening: that striking uniformity with which Islamic hatred of Jews is expressed in places far removed from one another. Did all those guys call each other? "Sheik Bassam Al-Kayed, Head of the Palestinian Islamic Scholars Association in Lebanon: The Jew Is a Satan in Human Form, Who Violates All International Laws, All Human Norms, and All Values," from MEMRI, February 1:

Bassam Al-Kayed: The Jew is a satan in human form. Allah inflicted the Jews upon humanity in its entirety, and especially upon the nation of Islam, including the early prophets and the Prophet Muhammad. The Jew is a satan in human form. We could almost say that the satanic jinn take lessons from them. What they do is very peculiar. It transgresses all boundaries. They attribute no sanctity to anything that is scared, to any treaty or agreement. They violate all the international laws, all the human norms, and all the Islamic and man-made laws. They violate all values. They are deterred by nothing but force.

No one can claim this one was taken out of context. This is from Iran's own English-language propaganda outlet. "'ME nations battling Zionist autocracy'," from PressTV, January 30:

Ayatollah Khamenei said the Zionists, US, and Western powers feel weak in the face of Islamic Awakening and “this feeling of weakness and defeat will grow by the day.”

The Leader said humanity is standing at a critical juncture and is on the verge of a “grand development.”

“Humanity has passed all material and ideological schools such as Marxism, Liberal Democracy and Secular Nationalism and is at the beginning of a new era,” the Leader said.

Ayatollah Khamenei further urged the revolutionary youths to vigilantly guard the fruit of their efforts and not allow arrogant powers to “hijack” and “derail” their revolutions.

The Leader stressed that despite social, historical and geographical differences, Muslim nations are “everyone is against the satanic US and Israeli dominance and cannot tolerate the cancerous tumor of Israel.”

Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks in a meeting with foreign guests participating in the "Islamic Awakening and Youth Conference" in Tehran. The two-day event kicked off on Sunday with some 15-hundred participants from 73 countries.

The conference mainly focuses on the pivotal role of the youth in the wave of Islamic Awakening that is sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa.

The West keeps trying wish into existence modern, moderate, model Islamic states in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. It keeps not working as advertised. "Iraqi bill to ban travels to Israel," by Roi Kais for YNet News, January 30:

The Iraqi parliament is planning to pass a new bill banning Iraqis from traveling to Israel, Al Jazeera online reported Monday.

The bill was proposed following a number of incidents at the Bagdad airport. A local security officer working there said the passport had caught a number of Iraqi officials carrying passports with Israeli entry visas. The officer, speaking on a condition of anonymity, reported that the passports of some nine high-profile Iraqi politicians were clearly marked with Ben-Gurion Airport stamps as well.

According to the source, the politicians made their first trips to Israel after the Iraqi elections, held on January 2010, until around October that same year. The officer claimed that during questioning of the Iraqis, it was discovered that they were operating as envoys to Israel on behalf of Iraqi politicians.

In response to the report, Iraqi Parliament Member from the National Iraqi Alliance Mohammad Redha al-Khafaji declared that some 50 parliament members have already put their John Hancock [Irony -ed.] to a bill proposing to ban such trips to Israel. Khafaji emphasized that in the past, Iraqi senior officials had visited Israel secretly.

Meanwhile, a member of the parliament's judicial committee said these signatures do not necessarily mean that such a law should be passed.

Forbidding a citizen from traveling is against the Iraqis' right to freedom, as written in the constitution. However banning travel to Israel has nothing to do with politics, she told Al Jazeera, explaining that Iraq has never had any diplomatic or political relations with Israel, nor has it acknowledged the State of Israel.

One may argue it is against the constitution's guarantees of personal freedom, but the same constitution holds that no law may contradict Sharia. The spirit of the latter provision overrules the former.

Israel classifies Iraq, as well as most Arab countries, as an "enemy state." However, over the years senior Israeli officials have hinted on numerous occasions that despite having no official diplomatic relations with such countries, many times there are economical and security ties.

But hey, now, all of these remarks have surely been "taken out of context." That's what we're always told. "Arab Spring sees rise in anti-Semitism," by Gil Shefler for the Jerusalem Post, January 22:

There has been an increase in anti-Semitism in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, according to a report set for release on Sunday.

That is the finding of the study Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein is to submit to the government.

“[While] the popular uprisings in the Arab world do not represent a general change in attitude towards Israel, Zionism and the Jews it seems the anti-Semitic discourse and incitement have become more extreme and violent,” the report, which was written by scholars at the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, says.

“Charges of an international Jewish conspiracy have been a central motif in the anti-Semitic propaganda that has accompanied the Arab Spring uprisings. This motif has been emphasized in each of the countries especially by way of pointing a blaming finger towards Israel, Zionism and Jews conspiring against Arabs and Muslims.”

The paper provides a lengthy list of anecdotal evidence. In Libya, it points at rebel claims that the mother of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi was Jewish as a way of defaming the slain dictator. In Syria, it cites insults made by the embattled government of Bashar Assad calling opposition forces “an army of donkeys in the service of the Mossad.” And in Egypt it says Muslim scholars have issued edicts forbidding believers to sign agreements with “monkeys,” referring to Jews.

See also: Qur'an 2:62-66; 5:59-60; and 7:166.

The study, however, does not contain numerical data. Eran Sidis, a spokesman for Edelstein, said figures supporting the thesis of the report will be released by the Kantor Center in April.

Edelstein said the report was a sad reminder that anti-Semitism is still alive and well in 2012....

Hazem Shuman quotes the genocidal hadith about how Muslims can hasten the coming of Judgment Day by killing Jews. He invokes Muhammad's massacre of Jews at the Khaybar oasis in Arabia. These things indicate that his genocidal hatred of the Jews is based on the texts and teachings of Islam, and must be addressed as such. Addressing this genocidal Jew-hatred with charges of "Islamophobia" against those who point out Hazen Shuman's evil words won't do the trick.

"Egyptian Cleric Hazem Shuman: These Jews Are a Cancer in the Body of Planet Earth, Getting Rid of Them Is a Must," from MEMRI, September 9, 2011 (this is the date the clip ran on Egyptian TV; MEMRI just posted it), with thanks to Wimpy:

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on September 9, 2011.

Hazem Shuman: What was our response when six Egyptians were killed by Jews on the border? Was the Jewish ambassador summoned? No. Was he expelled from Egypt? No. Was the Egyptian ambassador recalled from Israel? No. So what was the response? Brothers, this is about the honor of the people. I am talking to the Jews in the name of 85 million Egyptians, who hate them from the bottom of their hearts.

[...]

I address them on behalf of 85 million Egyptians, whose hearts beat with hatred for the Jews, and with the knowledge of what the Jews did to us and of how Allah warned us about them...

I tell them that the battle is bound to come, Allah be praised. The Prophet Muhammad, whose words are divinely inspired, said: "Judgment Day will come when the Muslims fight the Jews." That means that the Muslims will be the ones who engage [in fighting]. It's not just any battle. He said: "The Muslims will fight the Jews, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." Even the stones and the trees hate them. The battle is bound to come.

[...]

Jews will be Jews, guys. The Jews of today are the Jews of Khaybar, who tried to poison the Prophet Muhammad. They are the Jews of Banu Nadhir, who tried to kill the Prophet Muhammad. They are the Jews of Banu Qaynuqa', who tried to lift up a Muslim woman's dress. Jews will be Jews. We know what you are like, you Jews, and we know your hatred toward the religion of Allah, toward the servants of Allah, and toward the Muslims worldwide.

Qur'an 5:82 tells him that the Jews are the Muslims' worst enemies.

You will be vanquished, Allah willing, but it will not be us who will vanquish you. It will be Allah. Just like He used wind to vanquish you in the War of the Ahzab, and like He used fear to vanquish you in the Battle of Khaybar, Allah will vanquish you again.

It wasn't a "battle," it was a massacre. The Jewish farmers were going out to tend their fields when Muhammad and the Muslims showed up and started killing them.

Today, 92% of the world's film industry is in your hands, 90% of the world's famous actors are Jews, and 90% of the giant news networks, like CNN, are in Jewish hands.

[...]

Oh nation of Muhammad, Allah says to you: If you fear war with the Jews, brace yourselves for war with Allah. It is either a war with the Jews or a war with Allah. Allah says that the entire nation could be replaced if it is not prepared to sacrifice its blood for the sake of Palestine.

[...]

My message to all the Jews is that the battle is bound to come and you will be vanquished. Allah has promised that you will be vanquished and that we will prevail. I tell you that our Prophet Muhammad, whose every word we believe and whose light we follow - the moment he signed the Hudaybiyya Treaty with Mecca, the first thing he did after the battle with the Quraysh tribe, only 20 days after signing the Hudaybiyya Treaty, he took his army and attacked Khaybar.

Why, oh Messenger of Allah? Because these Jews are a cancer. These Jews are a catastrophe. There is not a catastrophe in the world that is not the handiwork of the Jews. These Jews are a cancer in the body of planet Earth, and if permitted, it will spread and infect the entire body. Getting rid of these Jews is a must.

Islamic jihadists are clamoring for a new genocide of the Jews, and the world's guardians of human rights are wringing their hands over "Islamophobia."

"Déjà Jew," by Aaron D. Rubinger in the Jerusalem Post, January 18 (thanks to Rosanne):

...80 years ago, our people were being verbally abused and brutally assaulted in public places. And now it seems to be happening all over again. Viviane Teitelbaum, a minister in the Brussels Regional Parliament, related an incident that occurred this past November involving a 13-year old Jewish girl in Brussels. The girl was brutally assaulted at her school, resulting in her hospitalization for multiple injuries including a concussion. The attackers were not members of the Third Reich’s SS, but a group of female Muslim students at the same school. The ringleader pronounced her to be a “filthy Jew!” Apparently, in the weeks prior to the attack, the girl’s father had approached the authorities and the school with complaints that there had been threats made by fellow classmates against his daughter. Upon hearing that his concerns were simply brushed aside, I immediately thought of Yogi Berra’s famous gaff: “This is like déjà vu all over again!”

2 generations ago, some Jews sought to protect themselves by masquerading as Aryans. In an interview conducted in November, a Parisian mother related how the fear of being physically attacked by Muslim extremist thugs means that it is “not rare at all today” for French Jewish students to attempt to pass themselves off as Muslim - with some even going as far as to fast on Ramadan. One case in point was a Jewish girl of North African descent who for years was successful in this deception, until finally she was “exposed” when Muslim girls caught her eating matzah in the bathroom during Pesah. After her classmates beat her viciously, they invited their male Muslim friends to their school to participate in a gang rape....

Quoting this hadith in the U.S. will swiftly get you charges of "Islamophobia" and "misunderstanding Islam," although I know of no Muslim attempt to explain away the obvious genocidal import of Muhammad's prophecy. Non-Muslims are just denounced if they notice. But in the Islamic world, this genocidal prophecy is taken very seriously: "Egyptian Child Preacher Muhammad Osama Recounts Antisemitic Hadith: Jews Hide Behind the Gharqad Tree When Muslims Come to Kill Them on Judgment Day," from MEMRI, January 14 (thanks to Wimpy):

Following are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Egyptian child preacher Muhammad Osama, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 14, 2012.

Muhammad Osama: Through the worship [of Allah], we shall gain victory over our enemies, strengthen our religion, and defeat the Jews. The Messenger of Allah said: "Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims will kill the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the trees and the stones, and then the trees and the stones will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the gharqad tree will not speak because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

How did the Mufti Muhammad Hussein escape being soundly rebuked by all the tolerance-minded peaceful "moderates" of Fatah?

"PA's highest religious authority, the Mufti, at Fatah event: Muslims' destiny is to kill Jews," by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik for Palestinian Media Watch, January 15:

Last week, the principal Palestinian Authority religious leader, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, presented the killing of Jews by Muslims as a religious Islamic goal. At an event celebrating the 47th anniversary of the founding of Fatah, he cited the Hadith (Islamic tradition attributed to Muhammad) saying that the Hour of Resurrection will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them:

"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.'"

Palestinian Media Watch reported regularly during the PA terror campaign (Intifada, 2000-2005) on the repeated use of this Hadith by PA clerics on official PA TV to motivate Palestinians to terror attacks, preaching that Muslims had an Islamic obligation to kill Jews. The fact that the Mufti quotes this now indicates that this may have remained part of the PA's religious establishment's teachings, even though it is less frequently promoted on PA TV.

The last time official PA TV broadcast a sermon during which this Hadith calling to kill Jews was quoted was in 2010.

The years of PA promotion of killing Jews and PA religious leaders' citing this Hadith to justify it, may have contributed to the high acceptance of it in PA society. A poll sponsored by the Israel Project last year found that 73% of Palestinians "believe" this Hadith. [July 2011, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.]

The moderator who introduced the Mufti at the Fatah event last week reiterated another Islamic belief; that the Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs:
"Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews)
is a war of religion and faith."

The Mufti did not distance himself from this hate statement that Islam is in a religious war with the Jews, but added to it that Islam's goal is to kill Jews....

Now, that is what Amazon would call a "Statistically Improbable Phrase." It occurs at 1:29 in the video, among many other chants about crushing and driving out the Jews (not "Zionists," but Jews), and so on. More on this story. Video clip from MEMRI.

“Who would dare go there? We see that the mob does what it wants, not fearing the police or the military.”

Now, why is that?

More evidence of the rapid re-Islamization of Egypt: "Egypt cancels Jewish festival amid security concerns," by Leila Fadel and Samuel Sockol in the Washington Post, January 11 (thanks to David):

CAIRO — Egypt on Wednesday canceled a Jewish festival held in the Nile Delta each year, citing concerns about the local response to heightened security at a time of uncertainty between Egypt and Israel.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Amr Roshdi said the decision to cancel Saturday’s event at the tomb of Jewish holy man Rabbi Yaakov Abu Hatzira had been relayed to Israeli officials and reflected a wish not to “provoke public discussion on the relationship with Israel.”

The festival, which draws hundreds of Israeli pilgrims annually, has often sparked angry reactions from local villagers objecting to the intensive security arrangements.

“The situation is not suitable to have it this year with all that’s going on in Egypt: the elections, the police trying to reassert control and the protests,” Roshdi said....

“Who would dare go there?” Rabbi Yeiel Abu Hatzira said. “We see that the mob does what it wants, not fearing the police or the military.”

The festival was allowed by Mubarak but kept low-key, with a limited number of pilgrims allowed to attend. He suspended it in 2009 because it came as Israel was conducting an offensive in Gaza. It resumed last year.

"My name is Jew...how do you do!"

For some reason, those who encountered Jew Jurian, even though they were residents of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan -- a nation dedicated to living out the peaceful and tolerant teachings of Islam -- were unable to tolerate him and his name. How did so many Misunderstanders of Islam end up there? Do the writings of greasy Islamophobes circulate widely in the Islamic Republic?

"The name ‘Jew’ lands Christian in trouble," by Asad Kharal in The Express Tribune, January 9 (thanks to Mehreen):

LAHORE: A man wrote that his name was ‘Jew Jurian’ on his national identity card form. The data entry clerk then assumed he was a Jew. Thus for the first time in the history of Computerised National Identity Cards (CNIC), a Pakistani was officially declared a Jew.

The problem was that he was a Christian.

The bigger problem for Jurian, as he told The Express Tribune, was that he was accused of being a Jew – and subsequently, through the twisted logic of twisted souls, of blasphemy.

After thorough investigations, Jurian was released by the police, along with three others, in May 2003. Almost nine years later, he and his family still face death threats.

Qaiser Azeem, one of the other three men, was stabbed to death two years later. Another, Mushtaq Ahmed, was also shot after testifying against religious extremists accused of terrorism. Despite the families of Jurian and those murdered fleeing the area, death threats still continue. An FIR obtained by The Express Tribune seems to confirm this.

According to the FIR, registered at Bakri police station by Jurian against unknown extremists, the victim (Jurian) was detained for blasphemy in 2002. Despite being declared innocent, he and his family received death threats. Through his father, Maqbool Masih, he then contacted Kamran Micheal, the provincial minister for human rights and minorities and submitted an application.

In his application he appealed to be saved from extremists. He also said that the assistant sub inspector of Baghbanpura police station is providing security to such extremists.

The contents of the FIR further stated that the victim received threatening calls continuously. Late at night on October 25, 2011, he received a call from a stranger calling him an infidel (kafir). This being a regular occurrence, Jurian and his family have now left the area. Only one Christian family lives in the area, Mohallah Green Park, situated in Shalimar Town, Lahore – and Jurian claimed that some local residents are in contact with religious extremists. He also alleged that a police official at a local station sympathises with extremists, and they have worked together to create trouble for Jurian and his family, eventually forcing them to leave. He alleged that the Baghbanpura police have continuously harassed his family and conducted various raids at his home.

Jurian, his family, and the families of those already victim to such extremists have left the city to live an underground existence. Be they Jew, Christian or unclassifiable, this is obviously an unacceptable state of affairs.

The ex-Muslim who blogs over at Liberated continues her explorations of Islamic antisemitism:

I have an Egyptian colleague who recently went on a trip to Europe with his family. During one of the train journeys, his 7-year-old daughter got friendly with a similar aged American girl on the train, and then both the parents also introduced themselves since they had a few hours more to go. After a few minutes of casual conversation, my colleague found out that they were Jewish Americans. According to his own admission, he said “Shakila, as soon as I found out that they were Jewish, I had this sudden urge to push them all out of the train”. To say that I was shocked beyond belief is an understatement. I just asked him, “Why, Ahmed? Were they not nice people?” To that he replied: “They seemed nice in the beginning before I found out their true identity, but once I did, I just could continue making idle conversation with them, nor could I let my daughter play with their girl, so I just pulled my wife and kids away from them and moved to a different compartment of the train.” So as you can see, this is the kind of hatred that many Muslims, especially the Arabs, harbor in their hearts against the Jews. Why do they despise them so much that they don’t even recognize them as human beings? Well, of course, the answer lies in the book of all evils, the Holy Quran… Here is a snapshot of what the revered & sacred book of the Muslims says about their worst enemies.

Read it all.

Glee over the plundering of those whom the Qur'an terms the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82). Those who objected were a tiny minority. And note that the Saudis who were fulminating about the Jews being "the filthiest people on earth" were reflecting what they learned in their study of Islam, and in the jihadist propaganda that demonizes Israel.

"Saudis laud credit card hacking scheme," by Roi Kais for Ynet News, January 3:

Saudi web surfers expressed glee Tuesday over the credit card scheme which exposed the account details of tens of thousands of Israelis. "If I were a hacker I would wish for 800,000 credit cards to be leaked, not just 400,000," one Saudi talkbacker wrote. "It's allowed when it concerns Jews," others said.

On Monday, it was reported that Saudi hackers claimed to have leaked credit card and personal information of over 400,000 Israelis. The hackers called the cyber attack a "gift to the world for the new year," which they hoped "would hurt the Zionist pocket." The file was removed shortly after being posted.

Saudi Arabia's official news agency, a mouthpiece for the country's rulers, did not report the affair but it was covered extensively by Saudi websites. Many electronic newspapers made the affair their leading story.

One website recorded over 10,000 hits for the story, which was also featured heavily on Facebook. The responses were mostly hostile towards Jews and Israel.

"Well done naughty boy…the Jews are the most despicable people…Hitler was right in what he said," one talkbacker wrote. "The Jews are the filthiest people on earth and the lowest among mankind. They deserve to be killed," another remarked.

There were exceptions however and some talkbacks maintained that theft was forbidden according toIslam [sic]. "This is a distortion of Islam which does not command to hurt the people of the book (the Jews) as long as they don’t hurt us. True, they are Zionists and our biggest enemies but we must not damage their property," one talkbacker wrote....

Here's the latest over at Liberated, a revealing inside look at Islamic antisemitism:

Ever since I can remember, I have always been a Zionist. To understand this, we have to go back to my childhood, in fact my school days. I have always heard an extremely negative and detrimental description about the Jewish people, that they are the most cunning, mean, ruthless, selfish, self centered, conniving, greedy and sick people. I always used to counter-question those in authority about why are they supposed to be so bad, and I always got very petty reasons, saying because they killed innocent Muslims and still are killing so many innocent Muslims in Palestine, and mainly because they killed so many prophets. I had never personally met a Jew in my life (actually I still have not met any), but from what I had seen, heard and read in the media, they seemed like pretty normal people with two hands, two feet, two eyes, two ears and a nose, and they definitely do not have horns on their heads. It was only recently that I discovered that the Jews are actually the oppressed and not the oppressor as otherwise claimed by the Arabs. To understand my point of view, it is very vital that you all know the true historical background of Israel and the Jews. This lesson in history is especially imperative for the ignorant and misinformed Muslims who are totally oblivious to the facts, so here it goes.

1. Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years, with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

9. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution, and slaughter.

There is much more. Read it all.

One of the greatest obstacles the PA and Hamas face is that the archaeological evidence does not line up with Islam's revisionist account of history, which appropriates the major figures of Judaism and Jesus himself as prophets and messengers of Islam. Islam's claim on the territory depends on that, and on Muhammad's "night journey" to what was initially an unnamed "farthest mosque." Of course, that doesn't mean they don't try to erase history to suit their purposes, even changing their own story, as this commentary notes.

We are not aware, however, that the Rabbi Abraham Cooper who authored this commentary is an "anti-" Ibrahim Hooper specially engineered by the Global Zionist Conspiracy Laboratories.

"Beyond Christmas and Hannukah -- Who Will Protect the Faithful?" by Rabbi Abraham Cooper for Fox News, December 30:

This year’s overlap of Christmas and Chanukah brought startlingly different, but ultimately connected, developments overseas. In Nigeria, word of five suicide bombs by an extremist Muslim sect murdering and maiming Christians at prayer, and wiping out whole families, cast a pall on many of the faithful. Meanwhile, archaeologists working in Ir David—the ancient neighborhood adjacent to Jerusalem’s Old City Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock, announced a discovery validating the historicity of a heritage central to Jews but also important to Christians.

Bearing two Aramaic words meaning “pure for G-d,” a rare, coin-sized clay seal was found not far from the site of the Beit Hamikdash – Holy Temple where Judaism’s holiest rituals were practiced until it was destroyed by the Romans two thousand years ago.

The seal of ritual certification was similar to the seal on a jar of untainted oil that the Maccabees--heroes of the Hanukah story--were so desperately looking for when they secured the Holy Temple from the occupying Greeks. Such seals were likely in use when Jewish pilgrims came to visit the Holy Temple. Such discoveries deepen the connection to the past for today’s religious pilgrims to Jerusalem, Christians as well as Jews.

For Jewish families, the seal’s discovery also serves as another concrete confirmation of Judaism’s near-miraculous continuity and of our people’s millennial-old link to David’s City.

Unfortunately, Palestinians loathe such discoveries. Because the seal with the words, “pure for G-d”, also debunk the lies of a global campaign of religious-and-historical Denial spawned by the Palestinian leadership. Simply put, the Palestinians insist that today’s Jews and have no authentic connection to the Holy Land dating back to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or to the biblical Prophets and Kings of Israel.

Indeed, the serial denial of the Jewish people’s legitimacy is the one core issue that Palestinian President Mohammed Abbas and the Muslim Fundamentalist Hamas can agree upon.

Even as Abbas steps up his efforts to merge his Fatah Movement with the Muslim Fundamentalist Hamas—whose founding Charter fuses traditional religious anti-Semitism with the secular, genocidal Jew hatred of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has accelerated its broader campaign to expunge Jewish history and identity from the Holy Land.

Leveraging the voting muscle of Arab and Muslim states at the UN, a committee of the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), recast as a mosque, the iconic Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem—recognized by Christians as well as Muslim for centuries as a venerable Jewish site.

The Palestinians’ historical amnesia about Jewish roots also extends to archaeological evidence of King David and King Solomon’s ties to Holy City. This is a radical break from the Islamic past when Muslim recognition of the Jews’ sacred connection to Jerusalem and its holy sites was traced back to the Caliph Omar in the seventh century and extended all the way up to 1953 when the Supreme Muslim Council’s guide to Al-Haram Al- Sharif (The Temple Mount) declared: “It’s [sic] identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”

In his ‘historic’ speech before the U.N. General Assembly seeking international recognition for a unilaterally declared Palestinian State, used the world stage to invoke the ‘Holy Land’ as the place from where the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven and where Jesus was born, but pointedly omitted any reference to Abraham, Moses, King David or Jeremiah. Not a hint of censure from the diplomats representing 192 nations.

Hand-in-hand with the historic amnesia, is the Palestinian Authority promotion of classic anti-Semitism. Evidence the recent article, published in the UNESCO-funded Palestinian youth magazine, Zayzafouna. In it, a ten-year-old Palestinian girl is purported to have had a dream in which Hitler told her, “Yes. I killed them [the Jews] so you would all know that they are a nation who spreads destruction all over the world.” Brought to international attention by Palestinian Media Watch, nothing was done about the article until a protest by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the United States ambassador, forced UNESCO to end its funding of the magazine. But the hatred remains— fuelled by a mixture of hateful secular and religious ideologies.

As events in 2011 proved, the international community’s silence over campaigns of religion-inspired hatred, won’t bring peace to Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land, or restore Christmas as a public holiday in Gaza, nor protect Copts in Egypt, Catholics in Nigeria, or Christians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Silence only fuels the spread of more toxic bigotry in the name of G-d.

We can only hope and pray that in 2012, democratic governments, international agencies and NGOs will finally find the step up and construct a firewall of truth and civility to protect the faithful and their right to a future.

Priorities: this is "under investigation." If you do your Sharia amputation homework with one of these, can you still get credit? "How did Israeli pencils reach Saudi chain?" by Ofer Petersburg for YNet News, December 29:

Saudi authorities are investigating how Israeli pencils reached one of the kingdom's biggest retail chains. The Kravitz chain, which markets the pencils in Israel, was surprised to hear about the affair stirring up the Gulf kingdom.

It turns out that Abu Rialin, a Saudi chain which offers all of its items for two riyals, is selling one of Kravitz's most popular products – a set of 12 pencils with an eraser.

The pencils are sold with the Kravitz logo in Hebrew and without any attempt to conceal the fact that they are made in Israel.

Kravitz learned about the incident following a report published by Saudi website Jazan. The reporter noted that Kravitz was the biggest manufacturer of office supplies in Israel and asked how the Saudi Ministry of Commerce could overlook such a thing.

"Where are the Saudi kingdom's supervision authorities?" the reporter asks, calling for an investigation into the apparent marketing of an Israeli product in Saudi Arabia....

The tendency to recognize so-called "Islamic democracies" even when the regimes in question are something else altogether did not begin today, with the "Arab Spring." About 15 years ago, the Bill Clinton administration recognized the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This is not paid due attention in the part of the world where I live.

For some reason, the Taliban were not considered evil. Jihadists and jihad were considered progressive forces. Leaders of many states tried to establish good relationships at the beginning of the regime, thinking that they could control Islam.

In 1996, after one of my trips to the North Caucasus, I met with the military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Georgia. The reason for this meeting was the interview that I recorded with two representatives of the Chechen jihad. They flaunted in front of the camera U.S. military ranger clothing and accessories. When I asked where the Chechen Mujahideen obtained the ranger clothing, they said that America was helping them, and not just with ranger clothing.

I chuckled when I heard this answer, but returned to Georgia and asked for a meeting with the military attaché at the U.S. Embassy. He said that the policy of the administration was moral support for the Chechen rebels.

And after some time, Secretary of State Madeleine Allbright said that the U.S. would recognize the Taliban regime.

In my view, a similar policy continues now.

The administration of President Barack Obama (a Democratic administration in the U.S.) like the Clinton administration before it, is looking for ways to establish relationships with jihadists of all kinds. This includes the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and other organizations from which terrorists come.

Many people keep asking why this is happening, but to find an answer to this question is not easy. I will try, based on personal experience and knowledge, to give an example of why this happens.

Jihadists whom I interviewed at the time were convinced that the Clinton administration supported them. Without exception, they all hated Jews, but they separated non-Muslims into two groups: Jewish Zionists and the people who supported the Zionist state of Israel and funded it, and those infidels (non-Muslims) who were opposed to the Zionists and the State of Israel.

They controlled the oil business and other businesses in Islamic countries, and tried to sell or donate their goods to support anti-Zionists, feeding their finances.

They established links with political leaders, in order to show them that the financial well-being and stability of these states was in direct proportion to their good relations with jihadists.

Earlier on Jihad Watch, I wrote that by controlling the oil prices the Islamic countries are blackmailing the rest of the world, and it's not only oil, but also other businesses.
The fact is that elections are always associated with high finance, and probably in the U.S. even more than elsewhere. So now is the time to consider why the Obama administration, liberals, and other politicians around the world recognize the "democratic Islamic regimes."

Stealth jihad becomes an open war for Islamic finance.

The three comments above are on the video of my recent appearance on Fox's "Follow the Money."

Then there was this tweet I got the other day:

You got to hand it to these Islamic supremacists: their analyses are always so keen and incisive.

Anyway, while I do not actually have the honor of being Jewish, it is noteworthy that Islamic supremacists assume that all of their opponents must be Jewish -- because the Qur'an says that the Jews will be the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82). Islamic supremacists are fantastic haters, but their hatred burns more intensely against Jews than against any other group. And this is all the more reason why it is imperative for all free people to stand with Jews and Israel against the oppressive and bloody ideology.

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum is spectacularly misunderstanding Islam on many fronts, if you believe Islamic apologists in the West who tell us that there is no jihad to spread Islam, no jizya, and no jihad against Israel (just a land dispute). How did Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum come to misunderstand the Religion of Peace™ so severely? Would any of the vaunted moderates of the Islamic establishment in the West care to explain? Honest Ibe Hooper? Boy Reza Aslan? Brave Ahmed Rehab? "Man of Peace" Imam Rauf? Anyone? Anyone?

"Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum of Jordan's Tahrir Party Discusses Jihad Against Germany, Pledges to Impose 'Jizya' Poll Tax on Non-Muslims, and Vows to Annihilate Israel," from MEMRI, December 12:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum of the Tahrir Party in Jordan, which aired on JoSat TV on December 8, 2011. [...]

Interviewer: "Should the Muslims fight the People of the Book [i.e. Jews and Christians], in order to force them to pay the jizya poll tax? Should the Muslims fight all the People of the Book worldwide?"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "This fighting is in order to remove obstacles. It is waged against countries, not against individuals. When we declare Jihad against Germany, for instance, it is declared against the German state, for refusing to allow Islam to spread to the people of Germany. We give them a choice: Either to convert to Islam, or to pay the jizya and submit to the laws of Islam. The jizya is the only tax paid by non-Muslims, whereas the Muslims pay the zakkat, the kharraj, and the rikkaz, as well as other taxes, if there is not enough money for the army…" [...]

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "We will not fight the people, we will not kill the people, but if a certain state insists on preventing the spread of Islam on its soil, we will fight that state."...

Interviewer: "So Samuel Huntington's book The Clash of Civilizations, and even before that, Fukuyama, who predicted that the next conflict would be between Islam and the West… What you are saying means that they were right…"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "There is indeed a clash of civilizations. They brought colonialism to us… If not for Jihad, Islam would not have reached us and all the other places. Within a quarter of a century, Islam reached most of the ancient world by means of Jihad.

"The common people want Islam. Anyone who doesn't can stick to his own religion. Here in the Levant, most of our forefathers were not Muslims, but they converted to Islam because of its goodness and justice. The small minority in the Muslim countries that remained…"

Interviewer: "Fine. Let me just ask you an important question. So, we are commanded to fight in order to spread the religion of Allah…"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "Yes, this is Islam's way of spreading." […]

"Jihad Should Be Declared In Order to Annihilate Israel; This Is a Monstrous Entity That Must Be Eradicated"

Interviewer: "If you come to power, will you liberate Palestine?"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "Yes, yes. Jihad should be declared in order to annihilate Israel. This is a monstrous entity that must be eradicated."

Interviewer: "Would you agree to a Christian becoming finance minister, for example?"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "No, I wouldn't. For starters, there are no ministries in Islam. There is an official who is empowered [by the imam]. This is one of the ruling positions, which are exclusively for Muslims. Anyone who is part of the rule – the head of state, who is the Caliph, the empowered official, the executive official, the wali, or the governor – must be a Muslim. Moreover, he must be a man." […]

"European Countries Live In Prehistoric, Pre-Human Times; Gay Marriage... Is That Your Secularism??!"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddim: "European countries live in prehistoric, pre-human times. Gay marriage – women with women and men with men… Is that your secularism??!"

Political activist Omar Abu Rassa: "Is that all you've seen in the West?!

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "The millions who took to Wall Street shouted: 'The people want to topple the regime.' Don't you cut me off."

Omar Abu Rassa: "The only thing you saw in the West was homosexuals? That's the West for you?

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "What else do they have?"

Omar Abu Rassa: "Scientific accomplishments, freedom of thought…"

Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum: "What scientific accomplishments?! We [Muslims] brought them there." […]

"The Future Belongs to Islam; the Islamic Caliphate Is Bound To Come"

"The future belongs to Islam. The Islamic caliphate is bound to come, as was foretold by our Prophet Muhammad. That there will be a caliphate following the path of the Prophet Muhammad." […]

This is his second appearance at mosque this year. "East London Mosque hosts speaker who has 'called for Jewish women to be enslaved and pillaged'," by Andrew Gilligan for the Telegraph, December 9 (thanks to Twostellas):

I haven’t written about that self-proclaimed haven of moderation and tolerance, the East London Mosque, for a few weeks. After having their tolerance of hatred and extremism repeatedly exposed, they’ve been keeping their heads down. But now normal service is back.

Last Friday, according to publicity material (above) and its Facebook page, the mosque was due to host that conspicuous moderate, Sheikh Saad al-Beraik, who has reportedly stated: “Muslim brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them?”

This is the second time Beraik has appeared at the mosque this year. He was due to speak at an event there in March, but after a row he appeared without speaking (the organisers said that they simply ran out of time to hear from him, and it wasn’t that he had been banned.)

Nice people, those East London Mosque folks!

So much for "underlying causes" and the various excuses du jour. "Saudi High School Textbook Preaches Hate," from the Investigative Project on Terrorism, December 8:

A twelfth-grade Saudi textbook is teaching hatred of Jews and jihad to liberate Palestine, according to MEMRI. The report illustrates that hatred and violence continue to be themes in Saudi educational materials, putting a black mark on the conservative Islamic kingdom's desire to become a "knowledge society."

"Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it," states Saudi textbook Studies from the Muslim World.

The book says that the conflict will not end unless one side vanquishes the other, because "throughout Islamic history, the Jews have striven to destroy the [Islamic] religion and spread fitna [chaos] among the Muslims." The book also repeats classic anti-Semitic lies that Jews have taken control of Western media and culture, exploited their home societies, and aligned themselves with Christians to destroy Islam.

The natural response to the Jews and the state of Israel, the textbook states, is violence. "Jihad for the sake of Allah is the only path to liberating Palestine. Only through jihad did the Muslims conquer Jerusalem, and only through jihad did the Crusaders leave Palestine," it declares.

The widespread use of Saudi textbooks, inside and outside the kingdom, spreads extremist views, despite claims by Saudi authorities that they are refining their educational system. In September, the Hudson Institute released a report that showed that Saudi authorities did not delete hatred from textbooks, but simply shifted around offensive passages or slightly reworded them.

A book filled with genocidal hate, rooted in the Qur'an, written by aspiring Islamic clerics and published by an Islamic agency. Will the Islamophobia never end?

"'How to Eliminate Israel from the Planet,' the Iranian regimes give its own book an award," by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi at PJ Media, December 4:

How to Eliminate Israel, a book written by a group seminarians in the city of Qom, was being promoted at the 13th book fair held in the north eastern Province of Khorasan Province, last week.

In an interview with RASA News, Hojjat ol’Eslam Mohammad Ebrahim-Nia, who headed up the team of writers, said: “How to Eliminate Israel won the Book of the Year award in the ‘soft war’ book category at the fair. Three thousand copies of this first edition of the 180-page book has been published by the Khorasan branch of the Ministry of Islamic culture and guidance. The book is seven chapters and it covers the Israeli mentality and weak points, the Israeli people’s crimes, warnings given to Muslims about the Jews in the Quran, and the effective methods of dealing with them. Also, other than current translations of relevant verses from the Quran, the book includes pictures of Zionists associated with the themes of the cited verses and relevant statements made by Jewish thinkers. The content and title of the book are based on religious rulings issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, who judged that the elimination of the State of Israel is a religious duty similar to other duties to which all Muslims are committed. The verses of the Quran which discuss the Jews are always applicable, and there is no other people about which the Quran warns the Muslims as much as the Jews, who continue their crimes against the Muslim nation.”...

Of course. It was the Mossad that managed to insert into the Qur'an the idea that the Jews were the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82).

And what a surprise that Barack Obama, who has never met an antisemite he didn't like, would be associated with yet another anti-Israel, pro-jihad, self-hating Jew. Obama's many antisemitic associations are detailed in The Post-American Presidency.

"Obama Ambassador Under Fire For Blaming Israel For Muslim Anti-Semitism," from Fox News, December 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Republicans are urging President Obama to reconsider his ambassador to Belgium after the ambassador told a conference in Europe that Israel is causing a new and understandable strain of anti-Semitism among Muslims in Europe, altogether separate from traditional hatred of Jews.

Speaking to the European Jewish Union and an association of Jewish lawyers in Brussels, Ambassador Howard Gutman said a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which is the purview of people who hate everyone and not just Jews, and Arab and Muslim hatred for Jews, which can be explained by an inability to reach a two-state solution in Israel.

"There is significant anger and resentment and, yes, perhaps sometimes hatred and indeed sometimes an all too growing intimidation and violence directed at Jews generally as a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbors in the Middle East," Gutman told the group, according to a transcript of his remarks published in the European Jewish Press.

Gutman, who is Jewish and described how his father survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, also shared a video of himself receiving a warm welcome at a Muslim school in Brussels, and said it showed proof that Muslims are not anti-Semitic in general....

Gutman, who was a bundler for Obama in 2008 and raised $500,000, later reportedly said he regretted that his Nov. 30 remarks were misinterpreted.

Misinterpreted. Of course. They always are. No Leftist antisemite and no Islamic supremacist has ever made a statement that has been properly interpreted, just as no non-Muslim has ever quoted the Qur'an in context.

Sheikh Nayef Hajjaj Al-Ajami hasn't received the memo that all the Islamic spokesmen in the West get -- the one that tells them that Muslims respect the "People of the Book." Instead, he misunderstands Islam by reading the Qur'an and taking it at face value. Clearly Sheikh Nayef Hajjaj Al-Ajami is yet another Islamophobe.

"Kuwaiti Preacher Sheik Nayef Hajjaj Al-Ajami: Allah Transformed the Jews, the 'Scum of Mankind,' into Apes and Pigs," from MEMRI, November 25:

Following are excerpts from a sermon delivered by Kuwaiti preacher Sheik Nayef Hajjaj Al-Ajami, which aired on Kuwait TV on November 25, 2011:

Sheik Nayef Najjaj Al-Ajami: Servants of Allah, let us be aware that our struggle with the Jews is one of faith, identity, and existence. Read the Koran, where Allah says: “Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with you until you follow their creed,” so that you may know what the Jews conceal within their hearts.

That's Qur'an 2:120.

Read what Allah says: “Strongest among men in enmity to the believers you will find the Jews and the polytheists,” so that you may know the magnitude of their enmity towards the Muslims, and their hatred towards the followers of the Prophet Muhammad. These people...

That's Qur'an 5:82.

They are ungrateful, they distort the word [of Allah], the worshippers of the golden calf, the slayers of the prophets, the enemies of the divine prophecies, the scum of mankind, who incurred the curse and wrath of Allah, and whom Allah transformed into apes and pigs and into taghut worshippers.

The apes and pigs passages are Qur'an 2:62-66; 5:59-60; and 7:166.

"The [mainstream media] is guilty in two senses for not covering the pervasiveness of this grotesque hatred. They not only reported Palestinian lethal narratives bordering on blood libels as news, they did not report the hatreds that inspired such narratives."

More on that elephant in the room: the antisemitism that the Arab Spring has helped bring to the surface, while politically correct fantasies and "the soft bigotry of low expectations" lead many to turn a blind eye to it. "Muslim anti-Semitism, Israel and the dynamics of self-destructive scapegoating," by Richard Landes for the Telegraph, December 1 (thanks to Zulu):

One of my daughters recently wrote to me: “I was speaking to a friend of mine who had been dating a very, very, anti-Israel activist for about a year. We don't usually broach the topic but she asked me if most of the Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe wasn't based on their dislike of what is going on in Israel and not so much on religion.” This is a widely held belief among not only anti-Zionists, but among liberals in general. It takes a number of forms, all of which serve to explain the explosive and virulent hatreds of the Muslim world for Israel and the Jews (who support it), as a function of the evil that Israel has done to the Palestinians. It includes the widely held assumption that suicide bombings were a response to the despair that Palestinians felt because Israel denied them independence and dignity. It is also directly related to the problem of “Islamophobia is the new Anti-Semitism,” in which speaking of Muslim anti-Semitism becomes a new form of anti-Semitism.

The argument, of course, can work inversely: Palestinian anti-Semites have produced icons of hatred that, through modern media, have spread the virus throughout the Muslim world. The violence that Israel does against the Palestinians, from targeted killings to the separation barrier, to the blockade of Gaza, responds to Palestinian attacks inspired by anti-Semitic propaganda.

Because the Western mainstream news media (MSNM) has mainstreamed some of this propaganda, many people, including my daughter’s friend – whose only data points are the TV images of terrible violence Israelis do to Palestinians, and TV images of Palestinian hatred – assume that the hatreds are at least in part justified. “No wonder French Muslims hate you,” the French would say to their Jewish co-citoyens, “look at what your brethren in Israel do to their cousins in Palestine.”

Of course such an attitude has to ignore the fact that the Israelis do a fraction of the violence to Palestinians that Arab leaders do towards their own people with far less provocation. To “grant” the Palestinians and other Muslims “permission” to hate the Jews “given what Israel does to them,” reveals unthinking racism: “I don’t really expect anything remotely rational or balanced from these folks. If you piss them off, you deserve their rage.”

The MSM is guilty in two senses for not covering the pervasiveness of this grotesque hatred. They not only reported Palestinian lethal narratives bordering on blood libels as news, they did not report the hatreds that inspired such narratives. In the summer of 2000, the PA was blasting hatred of Israel. If the MSNM were surprised by Arafat’s “no” at Camp David, it’s because they ignored what he and his friends were saying in Arabic. On the contrary, driven by a belief that peace was around the corner, they felt that dwelling on such bad news would queer the peace process.

Nor did the Oslo war make a difference. Sheikh Halabiya gave a sermon calling on Muslims to slaughter the Jews (NB: Jews, not Israelis) everywhere. William Orme wrote a piece on Palestinian incitement in which he quoted Halabiya saying: “Labor, Likud, they’re all Jews.”

As a result, the ferocious strain of anti-Semitism in Palestinian irredentism, from the Mufti – who visited Hitler in Berlin 70 years ago today, discussed his contribution to the “final solution,” and pumped the Arab world with Nazi propaganda – to the escaped Nazis who fled to Egypt and Syria to continue their work, to Arafat and his pseudo-secular patter of “national liberation,” to Hamas’ apocalyptic paranoia, has gone largely undocumented and unknown to the average observer of the Middle East conflict. Nor is this merely a quirk of journalism, but a widespread practice of the “post-colonial” field of Middle East studies in the wake of Edward Said’s masterpiece of cognitive warfare forbidding Westerners from “othering” Muslims.

And yet, what are we to make of crowds rallied by the Obama administration-designated, "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood chant, "One day we will kill all Jews"? Since 2000, Arab and Muslim news media have been awash with gory video depictions of the Elders of Zion carrying out their blood sacrifices of innocent Muslim youth. Specialists disagree over whether this is primarily an import from the worst of European hate-mongering, especially the Nazis, or an indigenous growth with roots in the Koran. European anti-Zionists may like their fantasy that their attitude is not anti-Semitic, but in the case of the Arab and Muslim world, the slide from opposing Israel to ranting about "al Yahud" everywhere is effortless.

Given the power of genocidal anti-Semitic sentiments in the Arab and Muslim world – press and TV, mosques, public officials – one might wonder why Western audiences know so little about it. It’s more than just the powerful intimidation that pervades journalism in the Palestinian territories, so visible in the Ramallah lynch affair. It’s also related to a particularly dangerous form of political correctness, in which speaking badly of Muslims is the new form of anti-Semitism. As a Parisian colleague insisted, “The experience of the Muslims in Europe today is exactly the same as the Jews a century ago.” Of course, that’s not the case at all: both in terms of the wildly different behavior of the two minorities, and in terms of how the European elites reacted to their presence. By that logic, however, any attack on Islam is immediately comparable to an attack on Jews a century ago. [...]

Anti-Semitism is everyone’s problem, especially the Muslims'. And the sooner the “progressives” who want to help them, stop feeding their anti-Semitic vulnerabilities by joining them in demonising Israel, and help them learn some self-criticism, the sooner we are likely to see a real Arab Spring, one that benevolent people the world over can sincerely cheer.

And everyone wants to pretend the imposition of Sharia that is following each revolution won't be a problem, and could even be an improvement. After all, there's promise after promise of "moderate" Islamic governance. One consistent trait that betrays the outwardly friendly face of the revolutions is the antisemitic rhetoric that has accompanied them. "Praise Arab Spring, Except for Anti-Semitism," by Jeffrey Goldberg for Bloomberg, November 29:

The bravery of the youth of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya can’t be denied. It isn’t pepper spray that they’ve been facing. Nor can the idealism of the Arab Spring be denied. The people of the Middle East are finally awakening to the promise of liberty.

A democracy is only as good as the values that inform its participants. That determines what they will use their new-found "liberty" for, including the possibility of trading one form of tyranny for another.

There is another truth, however, that shouldn’t be denied. The desire of Arabs to be free of their spiteful and pitiless dictators is sometimes expressed in grotesquely anti-Jewish terms.

On the surface this makes no sense: Arabs are rising up against Arabs, so what does this have to do with the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? There has been a tendency in the Middle East to blame the general wretchedness of life on the hidden and malevolent hand of Israel, or more generally -- and more prejudicially -- on “the Jews,” but the Arab Spring’s approach at first seemed radically different. Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians and Libyans were engaged in demonstrations against the actual causes of their day-to-day misery, rather than against Israel. In Tahrir Square, in the early days of the revolution, Israel seemed an afterthought.

It was always there.

But now in Cairo, and across the Arab Middle East, Israel and the Jews are serving once again as universal boogeymen. Once dictators used anti-Semitism to divert their citizens’ attention away from their own problems. Now expressions of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories seem to rise up organically.

This truth doesn’t conform to the generally accepted narrative of the Arab Spring, but ignoring it won’t make it disappear.

‘No Place’

Libya provides an interesting example. Its late, unlamented dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, was a terrible anti-Semite, and often argued for the elimination of Israel. At the beginning of his reign, he expelled several thousand Jews (members of a community that predated the Muslim conquest of Libya by hundreds of years). His regime confiscated Jewish property, converted synagogues into mosques and razed Jewish cemeteries. And yet some of the revolutionaries who overthrew him fomented the charge that he was at least part-Jewish, and that his regime operated on behalf of Zionism.

When a Libyan Jew in exile returned to Tripoli earlier this year, he was nearly lynched by a mob that surrounded the shuttered synagogue he was hoping to restore. “There is no place for Jews in Libya,” read demonstrators’ signs. In the Forward, Andrew Engel, who recently visited Libya and discovered endemic anti-Semitism there, described one popular rap song that went, “The anger won’t die, the one who will die is Qaddafi, his supporters and the Jews.”

The Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Assad, is also utterly hostile to Israel and to Jews. He supports Hezbollah and Hamas, each of which seeks the physical elimination of the Jewish people. And yet the Syrian opposition finds it beneficial to spread the lie that Assad is a Jewish agent.

According to a translation posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Syrian writer Osama Al-Malouhi wrote recently on an opposition website that Jews “want that sucker of Syrian blood to remain and continue to prey and suck blood. They not only want their security, but also to enjoy the sight of Syrian blood being spilled.” He went on, “Asking myself why Jewish support of Bashar increased after they saw rivers of Syrian blood this mass-murderer spilled in Syrian towns, an old image leapt to my mind, of Jews bleeding people and using their blood to prepare matzas. Logic does not accept this, but the facts prove it.”

Even in Tunisia, which is commonly thought of as the most moderate of Arab states, the leader of the powerful and putatively reasonable Islamist party, Ennahdha, recently stated that he brings “glad tidings that the Arab region will get rid of the germ of Israel,” according to the Middle East scholar Martin Kramer.

‘Betray, Conspire, Extort’

Cairo is rife with anti-Semitism. On my last visit, I met with leaders of ostensibly liberal parties who were convinced Jews were conspiring to bring about the collapse of the Egyptian economy (something that Egypt’s military rulers are accomplishing all by themselves). One suggested to me that George Soros, Benjamin Netanyahu and a certain “Dr. Rothschild” were working jointly to buy the Suez Canal from Egypt.

A BBC journalist named Thomas Dinham recently wrote of his own encounter with anti-Semitism in Cairo. Dinham, who is neither Israeli nor Jewish, told of one potentially dangerous confrontation: “Someone pushed me from behind with such force that I nearly fell over. Turning around, I found myself surrounded by five men, one of whom tried to punch me in the face. I stopped the attack by pointing out how shameful it was for a Muslim to assault a guest in his country, especially during Ramadan.” He went on, “I was appalled by the apology offered by one of my assailants. ‘Sorry,’ he said contritely, offering his hand, ‘we thought you were a Jew.’”

Expressions of anti-Semitism are common even at the higher reaches of Egyptian politics. Presidential candidate Tawfiq Okasha, speaking on the television station he owns, recently said, “Not all the Jews in the world are evil. You may ask: Tawfiq, what is the ratio? The ratio is 60-40. Sixty percent are evil to varying degrees, all the way to a level that words cannot describe, while 40 percent are not evil.” He noted that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is “one of those Jews who adhere to the Zionist ideology, which is one of the worst ideologies.”

Okasha did concede that, while even among the 40 percent of non-evil Jews there is only one in a million who is blameless, it is possible to “coexist” with this sort of Jew because they “do not betray, conspire, extort or view others as Gentiles.”

In Cairo today, this might count as a progressive idea....

We tried to tell you. Parliamentary elections start tomorrow; fasten your seatbelts. There are also more details below on the Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo, where participants vowed to "kill all the Jews."

"Muslim Brotherhood sure of election victory as Tahrir unrest lingers," by Anshel Pfeffer for Haaretz, November 26:

CAIRO - A protester was killed yesterday when he was run over by a police vehicle during mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square that called for Egypt's military leaders to step down from power.

But, in general, order was maintained in the Egyptian capital over the weekend, despite the gathering of tens of thousands of demonstrators.

Meanwhile, the army and the interim government continued to prepare for Monday's first round of parliamentary elections. The elections threaten to split the opposition: While some members of the protest movement are calling for this week's elections to be deferred until power is transferred to civilian hands, and several parties have announced that they would boycott the balloting, the Muslim Brotherhood is determined to win a large number of seats in parliament. In an effort to ensure orderly elections, the Islamic group has said it does not support the current wave of protests.

But a large number of Muslim Brotherhood members turned up in a show of support for the demonstrators nonetheless, and some of the movement's members announced they were breaking with the organization. One female university student declared that, although she was an Islamist, the Muslim Brotherhood had shown it was only out for its own interests and she would not vote for the group.

Convinced of their upcoming success in the vote, some Muslim Brotherhood supporters had concerns beyond Egypt's borders - over Israel's intentions to dismantle the temporary Mughrabi bridge leading to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. At Al-Azhar University, a stronghold of the movement, giant posters called for the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the mount, and Palestinian flags mingled with Egyptian ones. Guests of honor at prayers at the university were members of a Hamas delegation that was in Cairo for talks with Palestinian Authority officials.

One Muslim Brotherhood activist, Bayuma Tayara, said his group did not need to campaign at this point. The movement has been doing grassroots work for years, he said, and every Egyptian knows who the Muslim Brotherhood is. He denied that the group was busying itself with the Palestinian issue to distract attention from ongoing demonstrations in Cairo and said the group was sure of victory.

Conspiracy paranoia:

Sermon after sermon before and after the prayers at the university accused Israel of harming Muslim holy places and claimed that the Jews were defiling Palestine. One speaker said that all of Palestine would be liberated via Cairo's Tahrir Square - where demonstrations earlier this year brought down President Hosni Mubarak's regime.

Among the crowd was Abed Khaled, an accountant, who said the Jews would be fought until the fighters' last drop of blood. Acknowledging that such a step was not currently feasible, he said that after an election victory the army would be prepared for war against Israel.

For his part, however, another Muslim Brotherhood activist said that if Israel respects Palestinian rights, the peace treaty with Israel could be maintained, saying that he and his colleagues wanted to live in peace with Israel.

After they dictate the terms of its surrender.

The statements below make reference to Allah, Muhammad, and jihad. According to them, killing Jews is an act of Muslim worship (as is suggested by the genocidal hadith in which Muhammad says: "The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."

So does Allah really command murder of Jews? Does jihad really involve the murder of Jews? Does Muhammad exemplify such behavior? Quoting the statements below will immediately be classified as "Islamophobia," but once, just once, couldn't one of those who will cry "Islamophobia" explain how the Gaza rallyers were Misunderstanding the Religion of Peace and Tolerance?

They won't, of course. But the challenge stands: can Honest Ibe Hooper, or Boy Reza Aslan, or Man of Peace Rauf, explain why these statements are false and not Islamic? And if not, what does that tell us about Islamic antisemitism and Islam in general?

"Islamic Militants in Gaza: Allah's Teachings Are the Fire with Which 'We Harvest the Skulls of the Jews'; 'We Move Closer to Allah through Blood, Body Parts, and Martyrs,'" from MEMRI, November 3 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Following are excerpts from statements made at a rally of the Palestinian Al-Ahrar movement in Gaza, a pro-Hamas group that split from Fatah, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on November 3, 2011:

Rally organizer: Praise be to you, our Lord. You have made our killing of the Jews an act of worship, through which we come closer to you.

[…]

Allah's prayers upon you, our beloved Prophet [Muhammad]. You have made your teachings into constitutions for us – the light with which we dissipate the darkness of the occupation, and the fire with which we harvest the skulls of the Jews.

[…]

Yes, our beloved brothers, even though the entire world moves closer to Allah through fasting, through hunger, and through tears, we are a people that moves closer to Allah through blood, through body parts, and through martyrs.

[…]

Oh sons of Palestine, oh sons of the Gaza Strip, oh mujahideen – wage Jihad, wreak destruction, blow up and harvest the heads of the Zionists. Words are useless by now. The lie of peace is gone. Only weapons are of any use – the path of [recently killed] Yousuf and Ali, the path of martyrdom and Jihad. Only our wounds talk on our behalf. We speak nothing but the language of struggle, of Jihad, or rockets, of bombs, of cannons and of martyrdom-seekers. This is the language in which we talk and negotiate with the Zionist enemy....

Pat Condell on Useful Idiots for Palestine...

"We can see little three-year-olds being taught that Jews are apes and pigs, and how glorious it is to be an Islamic martyr and kill yourself to kill Jews. And that's what you support when you support the Palestinians. And you're gonna have to live with your conscience -- that is, if you can find one. Because we all know that when operating from the twisted mortal perspective of the Islamized Left, having a conscience, or a backbone, for that matter, isn't always possible."

There is much more. Watch it all.

Given pitch of the antisemitism in Islamic texts, this story is fortified with a month's supply of irony. As noted earlier, the point of this exercise is to cast anyone standing in the way of Islamic supremacism and a potentially limitless demand for accommodations (including getting rid of the Swiss flag, which has a cross on it) as Nazis: he who hath looked critically on anything having to do with Islam hath committed hate crimes in his heart.

"Anger as Muslims demonstrate with yellow Star of David," from YNet News, November 5:

Protesters wore a yellow star sticker printed with the word "Muslim" reminiscent of the one that the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Third Reich. Some protesters constructed a plastic model of a mosque with minarets, which are banned in Switzerland.

Edith Bino, president of the Jewish community in Bern, told the Basler Times that she found the use of the yellow star "so obviously wrong that it could not be taken seriously." And Yves Kugelmann, editor in chief of the Jewish newspaper Tachles, said he found the choice of symbols "simply idiotic."

"It is regrettable when legitimate concerns are raised using false comparisons," Kugelmann told the Basler Times. He said that discrimination against Muslims is a theme that must be taken seriously in Switzerland, "but not in this cheap way."

The choice of symbolism irked Muslim groups as well: Two mainstream Muslim organizations reportedly stayed away from the demonstration as a result.

Nicolas Blancho, head of the Islamic Central Council, defended his choice of symbols, telling the Tages Anzeiger newspaper that "Muslims are treated as second-class citizens and are discriminated against, for example because they wear a headscarf or because of their name when they look for an apprenticeship or are looking for an apartment."

Among the speakers were British journalist Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Booth, who has converted to Islam and wears a veil, told demonstrators she sensed that Bern citizens had glared at her as she passed them on the street.

Why? Do they possibly know something about Islam and the Islamic party that the learned analysts of the West don't know? Naaah. Couldn't be. They must just be "Islamophobes." "Tunisia's Jews 'discouraged' after Islamic party win," by Mariette le Roux for AFP, October 31:

LA GOULETTE, Tunisia — Gilles Jacob Lellouche, a member of Tunisia's small Jewish minority, shrugs as he contemplates the future under a government run by the Islamic party that swept the country's first free polls.

"We will wait and see," he said about fears that minority freedoms may be under threat.

Lellouche smokes one cigarette after the other on the front porch of the kosher restaurant he owns in Tunis' port suburb of La Goulette, where many Jews live, discouraged by the secular left's splintered election showing.

"The people have spoken, and they have chosen that (Islamist Ennahda) party," he told AFP. His left index finger still sports the mark of pride of Tunisians who voted in Sunday's historic polls -- a fading blue ink stain.

Lellouche was the sole candidate of Jewish origin out of more than 10,000 registered in Sunday's vote for a new assembly that will rewrite the constitution -- the first-ever in Tunisia not to have a pre-determined result. He stood for the Popular Republican Union, which won one seat that went to another candidate.

The businessman takes comfort in the fact that the Islamist party did not obtain an outright majority.

"Tunisians are not ready to open the doors to a new dictatorship having just left behind another. But we have to be vigilant," he said.

Asked if people in the Jewish community were positive about a future under Ennahda, he replied: "They are not negative. There is a substantial difference ..."

Tunisia has one of the Arab world's largest Jewish minorities, estimated at 1,500 people out of a total population of more than 10 million.

According to Dar el Dekra (House of Memory, in Arabic), an organisation for the preservation of the Jewish heritage in Tunisia, their presence dates back 2,000 years -- mainly on the island of Djerba in the Gulf of Gabes.

They numbered in the tens of thousands until World War II, after which many left for Israel, established as a state in 1948, and France, the colonial power until 1956.

Lellouche noted that Tunisia has a long history of "inter-community conviviality" and said he believed Islam to be a "tolerant" religion.

But in March, two months after the toppling of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben whom the West regarded as a bastion against Islamisation, a group of Muslim men assailed Jews outside the Tunis synagogue, the biggest among only a handful in the country. "Begone the Jews, the army of Mohammed is back!" they shouted.

The interim government condemned the attacks.

The following month, the Israeli government made funding available to help Tunisian Jews move to Israel, citing "the worsening of ... society's attitude toward the Jewish community" since Ben Ali's ouster....

"Even the Arabs are worried," said a 30-something kosher butcher in the capital Tunis, who declined to give his name. "There is fear that Islam will be imposed ... women forced to walk around veiled.

"If there is even the slightest danger, the Jews will leave. We all have family elsewhere, in France, in Europe," said the butcher, wearing a Jewish skullcap and a full beard, sitting outside his small shop across the street from the synagogue -- just a few hundred metres from a large mosque.

"My passport is ready, and I have set aside money for a ticket," he added....

Hypocrisy. "Palestinian envoy to Canada recalled," by Rob Gillies for the Associated Press, October 24:

TORONTO (AP) — The Palestinian Authority recalled their envoy to Canada this month for posting a link on twitter that included an anti-Semitic video.

Linda Sobeh Ali posted a tweet this month with a link to a YouTube video featuring an emotionally distressed Palestinian girl shouting a poem in Arabic titled "I am Palestinian."

The English subtitles on the video include a passage where millions are called upon "destroy the Jews."

Joseph Lavoie, a spokesman for Canada's foreign affairs minister, said Monday it was a serious enough matter for the Palestinian Authority that they recalled Sobeh Ali.

"This video is completely unacceptable and offensive as it calls for the death of Jews," Lavoie said.

Riad Malki, the Palestinian Authority's foreign minister, speaking in Ramallah, said the envoy posted the link thinking it was a "normal national poem."

"We asked her to leave Canada because we didn't want to create any problems," he said.

According to Malki, the "Jewish lobby and Jewish institutions" in Canada complained to the Canadian government. The envoy "went back to the poem and there was something wrong with the translation." The phrase translated in the English subtitles as "destroy the Jews" was actually "to kill the soul of Zionism."...

Oh, all is well, then!

But fear not. As soon as a Palestinian state is established, all this Jew-hatred will evanesce like the morning dew. Isn't that right, Mr. Obama? Conspiracy Paranoia and Islamic Antisemitism Updates: "Egyptian Researcher Muhammad Galaa Idris: The Jews Are Behind the Spread of Depravity and Sin in the World and Have Brainwashed Europe," from MEMRI, September 23 (thanks to Wimpy):

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian researcher Muhammad Galaa Idris, which aired on Al-Rahma TV, September 23, 2011:

Muhammad Galaa Idris: Another cause for the hatred of Jews is the social cause. Due to the sense of superiority of the Jews, they lived in separate quarters in all societies. These were called ghettoes in the West.

[…]

The Jews were responsible for all the depravity that has spread in society. The gangs of thieves… The stories of Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist and others – exemplify that. They show how the Jews would deal with stolen goods and so on. The Jews were behind the spread of immorality, prostitution, and licentiousness in Europe. They were behind the spread of all sins, and they are to this day. This is written in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We've discussed this. Moral corruption is part of the conspiracy. [...]

This is a part of a campaign to brainwash the world. The Jews have managed to brainwash Europe.

A remarkable intellectual journey recounted by one of those rarest of human beings: one who is committed to the truth no matter where it may take him. "From antisemite to Zionist," by Kasim Hafeez in The Jewish Chronicle, October 7 (thanks to Tom Gross):

In 2003, Pakistan's then President Pervez Musharaff [sic] sought to re-examine his country's relationship, or lack thereof, with Israel. He asked: "Do we have to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves?"

With their new "Liberation" campaign, it seems that the Union Of Jewish Students has decided to answer that question with a resounding "yes".

Rather than being a brave move forwards for UJS, it is a hollow and cynical campaign that smacks of extreme cowardice.

The reality is that there is real anti-Israel and antisemitic feeling on British university campuses. How do I know this? Because until recently I was antisemitic and anti-Israel. Until recently, I was the one doing the hating.

It wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

Growing up in a Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers. My views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies where speakers predicted Israel's demise.

My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hizbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.

There was also constant, casual antisemitism around me. My father would boast of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn't kill enough Jews. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified.

What changed? In Waterstones one day I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section. To this day I don't know why I actually pulled it off the shelf, but I picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel.

In my world view the Jews and the Americans controlled the media, so after a brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda".

But I decided to buy it, eagerly awaiting the chance to deconstruct it so I could show why Israel had no case and claim my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.

As I read Dershowitz's systematic deconstruction of the lies I had been told, I felt a real crisis of conscience. I couldn't disprove his arguments or find facts to respond to them with. I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong?

I decided to visit Israel to find the truth. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me....

Read it all.

Islamic tolerance goes binary in Afghanistan: 1 Jew, 0 churches.

There were up to 40,000 Jews in Afghanistan in 1839. There were still 5000 in 1948. What an April Fool's prank it would be to call up Kabul next April 1 and claim Afghanistan's Jewish diaspora was claiming its "right of return," and the charter flights just landed.

And say "April Fool!" very quickly before they drew their weapons. "Only One Jewish Resident Left in Afghanistan, Says State Department," by Edwin Mora for CBN News, October 11:

(CNSNews.com) – There is only “one known Jewish resident” still living in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.

That is despite the fact that Jews have lived in Afghanistan for nearly three millenia, and had a local population that was 40,000 strong as of the mid-1800s, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, a division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

By 1996, when the Islamist Taliban regime came to power, there were only 10 Jews still living in Afghanistan.

By 2005, four years after the U.S. invaded the country and overthrew the Taliban, there were only two Jews still living in Afghanistan, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

Now, the latest State Department Report on International Religious Freedom says: “There is one known Jewish Afghan” left in the country, “only one known Jewish resident.”

Afghanistan is 402,356 square miles in size and estmates of its population range from 24 to 33 million. “Reliable data on religious demography is not available because an official nationwide census has not been conducted in decades,” says the State Department report. “Observers estimated that 80 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, 19 percent Shi'a Muslim, and other religious groups comprise less than 1 percent of the population.”

“According to self-estimates by these communities, there are approximately 3,000 Sikhs, more than 400 Baha'is, and 100 Hindu believers,” reads the report. “There is a small Christian community; estimates on its size range from 500 to 8,000. In addition, there are small numbers of adherents of other religious groups.”

As CNSNews.com reported earlier today, there are no public Christian churches left in Afghanistan, according to the State Department. The last Christian church was razed in 2010.

The last Jew in Afghanistan is known by name. Also, there is only one synagogue left in that country.

But the State Department report says that synagogue is no longer “in use for a lack of Jewish community.”

According to media reports, by the end of 2004 there were only two known Afghan Jews left in Afghanistan. But one died in 2005, leaving just one survivor.

According to the State Department, “in the 20th century, small communities of Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, and Sikhs lived in the country, although most members of these communities emigrated during the years of civil war and Taliban rule.”

“By the end of Taliban rule, non-Muslim populations had been virtually eliminated except for a small population of native Hindus and Sikhs,” reads the report. “Since the fall of the Taliban, some members of religious minorities have returned, many settling in Kabul.”

Israel and the United States were the primary destinations for Jews emigrating from Afghanistan.

"More than 10,000 Jews of Afghan descent now live in Israel," says the Jewish Virtual Library. "The second largest population of Afghan Jews is New York, with 200 families. [...]

According to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a Jewish presence in Afghanistan goes back around 2,700 years. While there were possibly 80,000 Jews in the region in the 12th century, the number was about 40,000 in 1839.

40,000 to 5,000 in just over 100 years:

“The decline came in 1870 after Afghan Muslim authorities enacted anti-Jewish measures, triggering a mass exodus to Central Asia, Persia and Palestine,” states the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. “The 1933 assassination of King Nadit Shah triggered another anti-Jewish campaign. Jews were banished from most Afghan cities, limiting them to Kabul, Balkh or Herat. In addition, Jews were forbidden to leave town without a permit and forced to pay special taxes.

Jizya, that is.

“By the time Israel was created in 1948, approximately 5,000 Jews remained in Afghanistan, but they could not legally immigrate. Once the restriction was lifted in 1951, most Afghan Jews made their way to Israel. By 1969, only 300 Jews lived in Afghanistan, most of whom left in 1979 after the Soviet invasion. In 1996, 10 Jews remained in Afghanistan, nearly all in Kabul. In 2005, there were two Jews in Afghanistan.”

And now there is only one.

More glories of the Arab Spring

David Gerbi believed the news stories about a flowering of Western values in Libya. He took the mainstream media at its word, and people like Barack Obama at their word, that what was happening in Libya was a wonderful throwing-off of oppression and reaffirmation of human rights. But when he got there, he discovered the brutal truth behind all the fog of political correctness: "There is no place for Jews in Libya."

More on this story. "Following calls for deportation, Gerbi to return to Rome," by Lisa Palmieri-Billig for the Jerusalem Post, October 10 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A few hundred angry protesters gathered in central Tripoli on the eve of Yom Kippur on Friday, calling for the deportation of a Libyan Jew who has been trying to reopen a synagogue sealed since ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi expelled the country’s Jewish community in 1967.

The protesters carried signs reading, “There is no place for the Jews in Libya,” and “We don’t have a place for Zionism.”

The crowds tried to storm Italian Libyan Jewish psychoanalyst David Gerbi’s Corinthia Hotel in central Tripoli. There was also a demonstration in Benghazi in the east of the country.

According to Gerbi, the crowd wanted to forcibly remove him from the hotel.

“They were impeded by hotel and Libyan security and government officials,” he said.

Gerbi said that National Security Adviser Abdel Karim Bazama, rebel leader Mustafa Saghezli, Interior Minister Ahmed Dharat and Justice Minister Muhammad Allaghi were among the government officials present at the hotel.

“The Tripoli crowd dispersed after Allaghi warned that any use of force on the part of the protesters would immediately result in strong international condemnation,” Gerbi said.

“He [Allaghi] reassured them the ‘problem’ would be resolved within 48 hours.”

The demonstrations were ignited by an attempt by Dr.Gerbi to clean the debris and pray in Tripoli’s abandoned Dar Bishi Synagogue. Dr. Gerbi had joined the National Transitional Council (NTC) rebel group last spring, first as a volunteer at the Benghazi Psychiatric Hospital and then joining and helping the rebels themselves.

“This incident has served to expose the dangerous reality simmering beneath the surface,” he said.

“I want to contribute to, not obstruct, the building of a new democratic and pluralistic Libya. It is sad and absurd that my mere presence in Libya, should set off so much hostility and I regret this,” Gerbi said.

“However,” he continued, “what happened reveals the extent of Gaddafi’s anti-Semitic conditioning of an entire generation, those in their forties and fifties. Forty-two years of lies, of hate propaganda falsely accusing Jews of having been paid off to abandon the country in 1967, of having robbed Palestinians of their homes and of planning to colonize Libya.”

“Fortunately, the older generation still recalls warm friendships with former Jewish neighbors,” Gerbi said, “and I will continue to work to restore a 2,300-year-old coexistence and advocate active roles in the NTC for Libyan Jews, for the Libyan Amazigh population, for women and all ethnic and religious minorities.”...

It's not Gaddafi, Gerbi, it's Islam. The "warm friendships" of which you speak were forged when Libya was under strong Western influence. Now that is long gone.

Al-Azhar University is the most prestigious institution in all of Sunni Islam. Not long after 9/11, the New York Times hailed it as moderate.

In Islamic theology, jihad warfare is fard kifaya, an obligation of the community as a whole but not of every individual believer. Jihad becomes fard ayn, obligatory on every individual Muslim to aid in some way, when a Muslim land is attacked.

"Deputy Rector of Al-Azhar University, Sheik Muhammad Ashur: Our Enemies Support the Offspring of Pigs and Apes," from MEMRITV, September 30 (thanks to Wimpy):

Following are excerpts from an address by Sheik Muhammad Ashur, deputy rector of Al-Azhar University, which aired on Al-Alam TV on September 30, 2011:

Muhammad Ashur: I say to all my brothers and sisters: Jihad has become an individual duty incumbent upon each and every one of us, because our enemies have grown arrogant and have persisted in their great tyranny. In an even uglier display, they publicly declare their support and defense of injustice, even though they boast that they denounce any injustice and that they are the ones who legislate human rights.

But the rights of what human are they defending and supporting? They support the unjust oppressors, the offspring of pigs and apes.

The Qur'an says that Allah cursed the disobedient Jews and transformed them into apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166).