Let’s see what Miftah, the group that planned the trip to Israel/Palestine for Tlaib and Omar, left out of their itinerary, and why. No visit, apparently, was to have been made to Yad Vashem, which would have been an easy propaganda win for Omar and Tlaib. Feigned sympathy, a ready tear, some lines written in the guestbook. “How antisemitic can we be, if we went to Yad Vashem and declared our sorrow?” But so implacable were the Palestinian organizers that they would not permit any reminders of Jewish suffering to intrude, even if such a visit would have redounded to the credit of the two Congresswomen.
No visit to the Knesset, to see how Israeli democracy works. That visit would have included the twelve Arab members of the Knesset, and the less the world knows about them, and their complete freedom of expression, the better. Nor would there have been a visit to Israel’s Supreme Court, where one might learn about the Arabs who have served as judges on the Court. Neither visit would serve the apartheid narrative.
No visit to the venerable Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was planned for Tlaib and Omar. Such a visit to that vast and venerable cemetery would only provide evidence of the long Jewish presence in the land, and there must be no reminders of that. Still worse, a visit to the cemetery might lead others to find out that 38,000 Jewish headstones had been pulled up and used by the Jordanian army to line the floors of their latrines, or crushed into bits to use as gravel at building sites.
Another place in Jerusalem that Tlaib and Omar would not have been visiting is the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. For the newness of the stones in the Jewish Quarter is evidence of the destruction wrought there by the Jordanians from 1949 to 1967. It was during those years that the Arabs destroyed all 58 of the Jewish Quarter’s synagogues, and many other ancient structures besides. If the horde of Western journalists accompanying Omar and Tlaib were to see the “new” Jewish Quarter, they might begin to ask disturbing questions. Why does the Jewish Quarter look so much newer than the rest of the Old City? Tlaib and Omar would have stayed well away from the Jewish Quarter.
Haifa is another place the congresswomen would not have visited. Bustling, high-tech, entrepreneurial Haifa, home to the Technion, shouldn’t be visited, because it is a city that is half-Jewish and half-Arab, where Arabs and Jews play, go to school, receive medical care, obtain higher education, and work together, in peace – a standing reproach to those who describe Israel as an “apartheid state.” It is the very existence of Haifa as a mixed city, and a success in every regard, that must be kept from view.
In Hebron, Miftah had arranged for left-wing Israelis to serve as guides. Much better that the preposterous narrative of Arab victimhood come from Jews. In their telling, the Jewish enclave of Kiryat Arba on the edge of Hebron, by existing at all has only created ill-will among the much more populous Arabs of Hebron. It’s the Jews who should be blamed, in this topsy-turvy moral universe, for any Arab aggression, including terrorism, against the Jews living in Kiryat Arba.
Had the trip to that city been allowed, one hopes that Israeli commentators would have made sure that the horde of journalists received more information about Hebron than Tlaib and Omar’s guides would have wanted them to receive. How many people know that Hebron is the second holiest city in Judaism? And how many people know that there was a continuous Jewish presence in Hebron for thousands of years, until 1929, when the Arabs of Hebron, having heard rumors that the Jews were about to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, rose up and massacred, or drove out, all the Jews in the city? A few returned in 1931, but left again in 1936 because of the Arab Revolt. Wouldn’t knowing how important Hebron is to Jews, and about the 1929 massacre that brought their continuous presence in the city to an end, put a different slant on the Jewish desire to reestablish that presence, at the urban settlement of Kiryat Arba, right on the city’s outskirts?
There was no provision made for having Tlaib and Omar visit the Israel Museum, where they might have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from 150 B.C. to 70 A.D. The Scrolls would have reminded the journalists accompanying them of the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel at least 600 years before Muslim Arabs arrived. No need to draw attention to that.
Skip the museum.
And certainly Tlaib and Omar would not under any conditions have been taken to the L. A. Mayer Museum in Jerusalem, built by Israelis to show the splendors of Islamic art. What kind of “oppressors” of Muslim Arabs would build such a museum? Best not even to mention it.
It is clear from the published itinerary for their trip to “Palestine” that Tlaib and Omar were to have avoided visiting any site that might in any way have helped the Israelis. No visit to Yad Vashem; it generates too much sympathy for the Jews. No visit to Haifa, where Jews and Arabs live, study, work together in complete security, for that gives the lie to the “apartheid state” business. For the same reason, no visits to the Knesset, where Arabs serve as members, or to the Israeli Supreme Court, on which Arab judges have sat. No visits to the “new” Jewish Quarter in the Old City, or to the Mount of Olives Cemetery, where the effects of the Arab destruction of Jewish sites can be seen. On a visit to Hebron, no mention of why that city matters to Jews, and what makes Kiryat Arba, as a consequence, so important to them. No visit to the Israel Museum, where the Dead Sea Scrolls remind us that Jews lived long ago in the Land of Israel 600 years before there were any Muslims. No visits to that Museum of Islamic Art, whose existence shows an Israeli openness, curiosity, and generosity of spirit toward other cultures that Tlaib and Omar, and their backers, would prefer you never learn about.
Trick_or_Treat says
….OR, for that matter, any corner or quarter that might raise the confronting spectre of the REALITY and the DIVINITY of JESUS CHRIST. You rather thoughtlessly omitted any mention of that from the above
Amen
Wellington says
Oh, c’mon. Hugh Fitzgerald’s excellent article was intent on focusing on the panoply of Muslim/Jewish history and interaction which would have put many assertions that Tlaib and Omar have maintained to shame. In this particular instance, dealing with aspects of Christianity would have been quite peripheral. This in no way is to aver that Christianity is itself peripheral, indeed it surely is not, but here it would not have been germane to bring up the historical and theological matters you mentioned.
mortimer says
Response to ToT: I agree with Wellington. Please don’t use this forum as your personal soapbox for promoting ideas that are not JIHAD-RELATED. We are here to discuss JIHAD.
This forum is called JIHAD WATCH. It is not ‘EVANGELISM UNLIMITED’. I think it is inconsiderate to do what you are doing here. It is not the right forum for you. We are trying to inform and enlighten people about JIHAD.
Have you even studied the JIHAD DOCTRINE per se? I have the impression that your approach to jihad is to ignore the intellectual ideas involved in it. This is not an intelligent approach.
Your pseudonym is rather childish, isn’t it?
Trick_or_Treat says
In the end….you will find that Christ has a lot to with ALL of it.
I say exactly what I believe, and exactly what I want to say.
Thank you, and have a nice day/night.
Wellington says
Trick_or_Treat: Stating exactly what you believe means very little, if anything, if you avoid the matter du jour.
As you did.
And you won’t get this, not at all, but for the record I wanted to state again why your 10:16 A.M. comment was off topic and thus irrelevant. And please don’t reply, if you reply at all, by saying something to the effect that the religion you believe in is the true faith and is never irrelevant—because if you do you will only unwittingly prove my point about your ungracious comment all the more.
Let me put it another way: Even assuming Christianity is the true faith, you still missed the bus by a mile.
mortimer says
Tlaib and Omar are shovelling hot, steaming piles of malodorous propaganda as justification for their genocidal ideation. According to the Koran, Jews are commanded to live in Israel and it is the land assigned to the Jews by Allah himself. Sheikh Abdul Palazzi says that these commandments have never been abrogated.
mortimer says
Propaganda is simply the selling of disinformation to gullible people. Tlaib and Omar use a hit-and-run tactic: they blurt out their slanders and then run away so that no debate ever occurs.
Clearly, Tlaib and Omar would lose any debate where they were forced to stand and defend their views. They know that, hence their hit-and-run methods.
They will continue this tactic until the lame, fake-news media call their bluff and ask pointed, difficult questions.
The Dem Party must have a lot of tragically gullible people who are unable to think without guidance from CNN or NYT … two of the worst propaganda sellers in the world.
James Lincoln says
mortimer, you are correct.
There are lots of gullible people and Tlaib / Omar are taking advantage of the opportunity.
Yes, they hit-and-run-but they also change topics quickly on an almost daily basis.
I have little hope that the fake news media will attempt to ask them pointed, difficult questions. Even if they did, they would deflect, play the victim, accuse the interviewer of racism, Islamophobia, etc. And let’s not forget the fact that they are triple protected: female, Muslim, Nonwhite.
Yes, the Democratic Party is loaded with tragically gullible people that continue to sip the Kool-Aid from CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, etc…But a few of them actually walk away.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
One wonders what the “bandwidth” is for distribution of this side of the story as told here. Bandwidth is defined here as the media outlets as a share of the minds of the population here in the States manifested primarily in TV stations, newspapers and radio. Users of the Internet self-select heavily, so this medium probably holds little sway over public opinion.
TV has told this side of the Tlaib story well on two stations: Fox News and Fox Business. The others have carried water for Tlaib as a putative victim of Jewish manipulation and discrimination. That’s a low percentage of the overall mind bandwidth, even with their high ratings. As for newspapers, there is only the WSJ and low circulation newer (and good) papers like the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner and the New York Sun.
Most radio listeners hear news distributed by leftist services like the AP and Reuters.
A low percentage bandwidth on all three media platforms. I’m afraid Tlaib’s phony plight will be sold to most Americans by the opinion programming industry.
elee says
“Muslims want to exterminate the Jews” stopped being “news” in 632. I suppose it needs to keep being said……then again telling the world about the Nazis wasn’t particularly effective in the 1930’s, was it? In Israel they fight this because they know they can’t rely on the rest of the world. In America we elect the descendants of Hitler’s Muslim Brotherhood. Was WW II just a temporary setback in the ongoing Big Pogrom?
Angemon says
“It is clear from the published itinerary for their trip to “Palestine” that Tlaib and Omar were to have avoided visiting any site that might in any way have helped the Israelis.”
Indeed.
gravenimage says
Rashida Tlaib and That Visit/Non-Visit to Israel (Part 2)
…………….
Yes–it would all have been propaganda and enabling of Jihad.
Kesselman says
They are as they are unapologizing and resentful. Without any second thoughts they both embrace what they once learned: to be hateful to the kuffars.