Canaries In The Coalmine

"Egypt’s newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was caught on tape about three years ago urging his followers to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists. Not long after, the then-leader of the Muslim Brotherhood described Zionists as “bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians,” “warmongers,” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”

 These remarks are disgusting, but they are neither shocking nor new. As a child growing up in a Muslim family, I constantly heard my mother, other relatives, and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered our darkest enemy. Our religious tutors and the preachers in our mosques set aside extra time to pray for the destruction of Jews.

 For far too long the pervasive Middle Eastern qualification of Jews as murderers and bloodsuckers was dismissed in the West as an extreme view expressed by radical fringe groups. But it is not....

 For far too long the pervasive Middle Eastern qualification of Jews as murderers and bloodsuckers was dismissed in the West as an extreme view expressed by radical fringe groups. But it is not...."

So writes the Somali-born Dutch former politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Christian Science Monitor (hat tip: reader Shirlee).  She continues: 

Courtesy: Edgar Davidson blog

 "....  Millions of Muslims have been conditioned to regard Jews not only as the enemies of Palestine but as the enemies of all Muslims, of God, and of all humanity. Arab leaders far more prominent and influential than Morsi have been tireless in “educating” or “nursing” generations to believe that Jews are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.” (These are the words of the Saudi sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, imam at the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.)

In 2011, a Pew survey found that in Turkey, just 4 percent of those surveyed held a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” view of Jews; in Indonesia, 10 percent; in Pakistan, 2 percent. In addition, 95 percent of Jordanians, 94 percent of Egyptians, and 95 percent of Lebanese hold a “very unfavorable” view of Jews.

In recent decades Israeli and American administrations negotiated with unelected Arab despots, who played a double game. They honored the formal peace treaties by not conducting military attacks against Israel. But they condoned the Islamists’ dissemination of hatred against Israel, Zionism, and Jews....

 For too many of those who [in the recent revolutions] fought for their own liberation, one of those ideals is the end of peace with Israel. The United States must make clear to Morsi that this is not an option.

This is also a crucial opportunity for the region’s secular movements, which must speak out against the clergy’s incitement of young minds to hatred. It is time for these secular movements to start a counter-education in tolerance."

A counter-education in tolerance is also required elsewhere, as this notorious photo from Australia and this report and numerous similar ones regarding the plight of some Jewish communities in Europe indicate:

"On the third floor of the Belgian capital’s oldest Jewish school, Jacquy Wajc pauses to listen to the eerie silence that hangs in the hallways.

Established in 1947 as a testament to Belgian Jewry’s post-Holocaust revival, the Athenee Maimonides Bruxelles school once accommodated 600 students in its spacious building in downtown Brussels but now has only 150....

As anti-Semitic attacks spiked during the second Palestinian intifada in the early 2000s, parents who themselves were proud Maimonides alumni enrolled their children elsewhere, citing security concerns. With fewer students, the school went massively into debt; Maimonides now owes various government bodies a total of $8 million....

It’s not only Brussels. Across Europe, Jews have quietly abandoned long-inhabited neighborhoods in central urban areas for remote suburbs.

[I]n a number of cities, neighborhoods once teeming with Jewish life have become no-go zones for Jews -- especially if they wear a yarmulke.

The Jewish population of 80,000 in Marseille, France, has almost completely cleared out of the heavily Muslim city center it inhabited until the 1980s. Similar migrations have taken place in another French city, Lyon, as well as in Amsterdam and even Antwerp -- home to one of the last European Jewish communities to live and work almost exclusively in an urban center....

Since the second intifada began, attacks against Jews have more or less doubled in France, Spain and the Benelux, where a total of 600,000 Jews live. Between 2009 and 2011, the Belgian government agency that monitors anti-Semitism recorded an average of 82 incidents a year, double the level recorded in 2002-04. Most of the incidents occurred in Brussels....

 Such intensive measures weren’t necessary in 1945 when Seligman Bamberger, an educator who survived the Holocaust, first laid the groundwork for what would become Maimonides.

“He placed a table and a chair on the platform of the Gare du Midi train station and asked random children if they were Jewish,” Wajc recounts.

Within two years, Bamberger had attracted 100 children whom he taught in a local community center. The school was established formally in 1947 at its current address near the train station.

The area used to be “the ideal location” for a Jewish school, Wajc says, because of the approximately 100 Jewish families who lived nearby and sold produce in the commercial area. Dozens hung on until the early 1990s, but now only three Jewish families remain, he says....

Meanwhile, Arab immigrants gradually took the place of the departed Jews. Today, the area around Gare du Midi is considered unsafe, especially after dark.

“The area has an immigrant population that doesn’t have a very favorable attitude to Jews,” said Agnes Bensimon, an employee of the Israeli Embassy in Brussels and a former member of the Maimonides parents association. “On top of that, it’s just like any other poor urban area.”

During the second intifada, assailants attacked Bensimon’s son, Nethanel, in the metro station. Similar attacks were carried out against a number of other Maimonides students. The school responded by instructing students to disembark at a more distant station and walk the distance to school.

Location and language are not the only differences between Maimonides and Brussels’ other Jewish schools. Maimonides does not accept pupils who are not Jewish according to halachah, Jewish law. With Belgian Jewry’s estimated 40 percent intermarriage rate, this further diminishes the population of potential students.

“The assimilation makes me very uncertain about the future 35 years from now,” Wajc said. “But here and now it means we’re not competing with the other schools as we appeal to parents with different sensibilities. Only a few years ago there were enough of them.

"They will once again send their kids to us -- if we get out of here in time."'

Morsi Minces Two-State Solution (includes video)

"Palestine: Morsi Minces Two-State Solution" is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

(The illuminating and well-done video I've posted at the end isn't directly related to what David Singer writes, but it is not irrelevant either.)

He writes:

'Any hope of a negotiated two-state solution being achieved under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map has been blown away following the publication of statements made by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in September 2010 – which have recently surfaced and come back to haunt him in January 2013.
President Obama must rue the day he made the following reported comment in the New York Times after the Gaza ceasefire on November 21:

“Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence ... He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology."

To the contrary – Morsi's 2010 statements reveal a great deal of ideology concerning the two-state solution and Jews.

Morsi's scathing and dismissive comments were made on 23 September 2010 (as reported by MEMRI – the Middle East Media Research Institute)

"These futile [Israeli-Palestinian] negotiations are a waste of time and opportunities. The Zionists buy time and gain more opportunities, as the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Muslims lose time and opportunities, and they get nothing out of it. We can see how this dream has dissipated. This dream has always been an illusion... This [Palestinian] Authority was created by the Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will of the Palestinian people and its interests.

He added for good measure

"No reasonable person can expect any progress on this track. Either [you accept] the Zionists and everything they want, or else it is war. This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know – these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs."

This tirade had been preceded by the following statements made by Morsi on Al-Quds TV (Lebanon) March 20, 2010:

"The Zionists have no right to the land of Palestine. There is no place for them on the land of Palestine. What they took before 1947-8 constitutes plundering, and what they are doing now is a continuation of this plundering. By no means do we recognize their Green Line. The land of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not to the Zionists

We must confront this Zionist entity. All ties of all kinds must be severed with this plundering criminal entity, which is supported by America and its weapons, as well as by its own nuclear weapons, the existence of which is well known...

We want a country for the Palestinians on the entire land of Palestine, on the basis of [Palestinian] citizenship. All the talk about a two-state solution and about peace is nothing but an illusion, which the Arabs have been chasing for a long time now. They will not get from the Zionists anything but this illusion."

The publication of these remarks elicited the following mealy mouthed response from the White House

“We strongly condemn the remark that then-Muslim Brotherhood leader Morsi made in 2010. The language that we have seen is deeply offensive. We completely reject these statements, as we do any language that espouses religious hatred. This discourse–this is a broader point–this kind of discourse has been acceptable in the region for far too long and it’s counter to the goal of peace. President Morsi should make clear that he respects people of all faiths, and that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable or productive in a democratic Egypt. Since taking office President Morsi has reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to its peace treaty with Israel in both word and deed, and has proven willing to work with us towards shared objectives including a ceasefire during the crisis in Gaza last year. These commitments are essential to our bi-lateral relations with Egypt as well as for stability in the region.”

Morsi has so far not obliged the White House.

Why should he? The negotiations have failed – despite offers by Israel in 2000/2001 and 2008.

Morsi's prescription for curing such failure is a recipe for disaster.

Pursuing a proposal so vigorously opposed by Egypt seems to be the height of stupidity. It cannot and will not eventuate in the face of such opposition.

Unfazed by this development – the following statement was made last week following a meeting in Perth of AUKMIN – the Australia-UK Ministerial Consultations attended by Australia's Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr, the Australian Minister for Defence (Stephen Smith) and the UK Foreign and Defence Secretaries, William Hague and Philip Hammond.

"The Palestinian Authority and the new Israeli government must engage seriously in negotiations without preconditions. Actions by both sides must be in the interests of peace. Neither side should create obstacles to that objective"

The obstacle to engaging in such negotiations is pretty basic – the PA is dead and buried since it was decreed out of existence by Mahmoud Abbas on 3 January.

Compounding their gaffe, the ministers continued:

"We call on the Palestinian Authority to exercise restraint and avoid provocative actions at international forums."

The PA has vanished into thin air – no longer able to cause or avoid provocative actions and will no longer be seen at international forums.

This inescapable fact and the revelation of the Morsi statements seem to be of no consequence to these Ministers.

They are in good company with President Obama – whose spokesman Jay Carney had this to say on 23 January:

"We believe that what needs to take place is direct negotiations between the two parties that address the final-status issues and that result in a two-state solution that provides the sovereignty that the Palestinian people deserve and the security that the Israeli people and Israel deserves"

The expectation that Israel could give the Palestinian Arabs what they themselves were never prepared to accept between 1948-1967 – has proved impossible to achieve

The restoration of the status quo that existed at 5 June 1967 – so far as can now occur given the changed circumstances on the ground - remains the last hope.

This will involve negotiations between Israel, Jordan and Egypt to allocate sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza between their respective States and the abandonment of the two-state solution.

Given Morsi's extreme views – the time for any negotiations involving Egypt might need to be put on hold – whilst negotiations with Jordan on the return of the major part of the West Bank to its last Arab occupier are attempted.

One thing is certain – a change of course is urgently required – or we will all suffer from the ensuing shipwreck that is staring us in the face.

Flogging a dead horse is not a good idea since the stench emanating from the decomposing body will soon become too overpowering.'

Mohammed Morsi On "The Descendants Of Apes & Pigs" (video)

Here's a newly uploaded video from MEMRI, showing what the now President Morsi had to say in the not so dim and distant past about the "bloodsucking warmongers" of the Zionist Entity ...