Category Archives: Anti-Semitism

Amusing, And Then Again, Not So Much

You’d think it was a Purim joke. But, no, “Operation Schtickle Pioneer” is a thing.

At least in one person’s mind.

Did you know that a Jewish cabal is planning to make “large areas of public property… [into] extension[s] of private Jewish households,” and that concerned citizens are, as a result, “under siege by members of religious groups backed by the Agudath Israel of America”?

Neither did I. But one anonymous New Jersey activist, the baal habayis of a new website, knows better. He informs us that the Agudah has “instructed its followers to start taking over areas within 1.5 hours of Manhattan in an attempt to ‘convert’ them to the Hasidic way of life.”

And that the national Orthodox organization has named its nefarious plot, yes, “Operation Schtickle [sic] Pioneer.”

A moment’s thought and a bit of imagination yield the realization that that Mr. NoEruv is referring to the scandalous practice of putting pieces of plastic piping on some utility poles to serve as lechis for eruvim. Indeed, he christened his site “NoEruv.” And he has a warning for us plotters: “We have you and know how you operate.”

Confused? Let us, as the Chinese saying goes, feing ohn fun der unfaing, or start at the beginning.

That would be Agudath Israel 93rd national convention, which took place in 2015. At one of the many sessions during the multi-day event, long-time Agudath Israel Vice President for Community Services Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz addressed the topic of the Orthodox community’s “Growing Pains” – the unaffordability of housing born of the tzibbur’s growth.

Rabbi Lefkowitz made a radical (well, to some) suggestion, namely that people who were raised in places like Borough Park, Flatbush, Manhattan or Lakewood consider living in somewhat off-the-beaten-track locales. He didn’t go quite so far as I once did when I suggested establishing Satmarer in Sioux City, moving Telshers to Tuskegee and Y.U.ers to Wyoming. More modestly, he simply asked his listeners to consider buying homes in outlying boroughs and suburbs in New York and New Jersey.

And he said, several times, without a hint of ominousness, “You can be a shtickel pioneer.”

Thus – under the direction, presumably, of the Elders of Zion – was born “Operation Schtickle Pioneer.”

Our anonymous anti-eruvite managed to mangle, if only in his heady head, an innocent endorsement of Jews’ setting their homestead horizons a bit beyond their comfort zones into a nefarious plot by scheming rabbis to “instruct their followers on how to convert townships in New Jersey.”

The would-be lechi-liquidator is understandably frustrated. Several weeks ago, the township of Mahwah, New Jersey, which had halted the building of an eruv, reached a settlement that included not only the resumption of the eruv-building but also the town’s pledge to not interfere in its maintenance and upkeep, and to provide a police escort for any such work (as vandals had previously torn down lechis).

It also agreed to pay the Bergen Rockland Eruv Association at least $10,000 in legal fees.

For its part, the Eruv Association agreed to switch the white PVC pipes it had been using for elements that better blend in with the utility poles.

The settlement was the result of a lawsuit last October by then-State Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino, charging the town with violating the rights of religious Jews. Then-Mahwah Mayor Bill Laforet and then-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie supported the suit.

All of which apparently made Mr. NoEruv unhappy. He insists that the Constitution’s First Amendment, which prohibits the establishment of an official religion for the U.S., thereby forbids the erection of eruvim on public property.

But the Mahwah eruv opponents didn’t stand a chance in court, as those supporting the ordinance forbidding the eruv clearly aimed to prevent Orthodox Jews from moving to the town – rendering the question not one of establishing a religion but rather one of preventing citizens’ free exercise thereof, the other part of the Establishment Clause.

In any event, it’s pretty clear that more important to Mr. NoEruv than any Constitutional issue is the sneaky way Jews are bent, as he sees it, on… taking over and “converting” others.

I can’t know the mind of Mr. NoEruv, so I can’t opine on its state. But I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: That a man would so dislike religious Jews that he would intentionally misrepresent an innocuous statement as something devious, or that a man might actually believe that the statement is in fact devious.

Either way, and amusing as his imagined plot may be, people like Mr. NoEruv are no joke.

© Hamodia 2018

 

Poland Isn’t Denmark

 Poland has a point.

The country’s legislature passed a controversial bill last week aimed at quashing the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” for Nazi extermination enterprises built and operated by the Third Reich across Poland. The bill, which Polish President Andrzej Duda later signed into law, also bans referring to “the Polish Nation” as “responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes,” on penalty of fines or a maximum three-year jail term.

Poland was indeed an occupied country during that dark time. In addition to murdering 3,000,000 Jews, the Germans also killed between two and three million non-Jewish Polish civilians.

More than 6,700 Poles, moreover – more than citizens of any other nationality – have been honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem for their bravery in resisting the Nazis.

So one can understand how using “Polish” as the adjective modifying “death camps” might rankle Poles today. “Nazi death camps in Poland” is a more accurate description of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.

But Poland, all said and done, was not Denmark. The Danes, whose country was also occupied by the Nazis, famously refused to give up their Jews to the Nazis. When, in 1941, Danish authorities were told by their German overlords that a roundup of the country’s Jews was imminent, they immediately informed the Jewish community and, with the help of the citizenry, hid many Jews and spirited many more to safety in Sweden.

By contrast, and with all due and richly deserved recognition of the risky heroism of thousands of Poles during World War II, Jew-hatred was no German import to their land.

Religion-based anti-Semitism was entrenched in Polish society well before the Nazis invaded Poland. There were blood libels and widespread promotion of the stereotype of Jews as disloyal and worse. By 1939, hostility towards Jews was a mainstay of the country’s popular right-wing political forces.

My father, a”h, recalled being warned by his parents in their Polish town of Ruzhan to not venture outside around Pesach-time. Church sermons, he wrote in his memoir, “spurred our Gentile neighbors to try to kill Jews.” He and his siblings would peek through the window to see angry townspeople marching with banners, looking for victims.

Polish-born historian Jan Grabowski notes that approximately 250,000 Jews fled the liquidated ghettos in 1942 and 1943, yet only 35,000 survived the war.  His conclusion: more than 200,000 Polish Jews were betrayed by their countrymen to the Germans or the Polish police beholden to them.

“We will under no circumstances,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in reaction to the new Polish law, “accept any attempt to rewrite history.”

Yad Vashem decried the legislation too, as did a U.S. Congressional taskforce on combatting anti-Semitism, which said that the law “could have a chilling effect on dialogue, scholarship, and accountability in Poland about the Holocaust.”

Polish leaders and media expressed dismay over the Israeli and American reaction. Poles, understandably, don’t like to be tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism, neither in their past nor in their present.

A 2017 survey by the Polish Center for Research on Prejudice showed that more than 55 percent of Poles were “annoyed” by talk of Polish participation in crimes against Jews.

Telling, though, were some expressions of that dismay and annoyance.

Like those on a program that aired last week on a mainstream Polish television channel, TVP2.

The program was hosted by Marcin Jerzy Wolski, and his guest was Polish commentator and author Rafal Aleksander Ziemkiewicz. Shortly before the program, Mr. Ziemkiewicz posted a thought on social media:

“For many years I have convinced my people that we must support Israel. Today, because of a few scabby or greedy people, I feel like an idiot.” “Scab” is a Polish slur for “Jew.”

The posting was later deleted, but first thoughts are often the most revealing ones.

Then, on the program itself, Mr. Ziemkiewicz offered further wisdom.

“If we look at the percentage of involvement of countries that took part,” he suggested, “Jews also were part of their own destruction.”

Mr. Wolski emphatically agreed. “Using this terminology, linguistically,” he offered, “we could say these were not German or Polish camps, but were Jewish camps. After all, who dealt with the crematoria?”

Got that? Since Jews were forced on penalty of death to burn their relatives’ remains, their prisons were “Jewish death camps.”

It has to make one think. What in the world could so pervert a human mind to equate collaborators with victims? To compare those abetting evil with those who suffered its horrible designs?

Only one answer readily comes to mind.

© 2018 Hamodia

Statement of Agudath Israel of America on Polish Holocaust Law

February 2, 2018

 

Statement of Agudath Israel of America on Polish Holocaust Law

 

The thousands of Polish citizens who courageously hid and aided Jews during the Holocaust are legend, and deserving of the deepest admiration.

But, according to eyewitnesses and historians, many thousands of Jews who fled liquidated ghettos in 1942 – 1943 were handed over by other Polish citizens to the Germans or those beholden to them.

To attempt to legislate a ban on speaking that truth is a betrayal, too, of those victims of the Nazis, and of history itself.

# # #

 

Window on the Warped

Interested in making a quick $14.88? Well, you might want to consider writing a racist or anti-Semitic article and submitting it to “The Daily Stormer,” one of the more famous neo-Nazi websites that sprout like noxious mushrooms on the internet.

The strange remittance amount the publication, run by a deceptively baby-faced man named Andrew Anglin, offers writers is intended to honor the 14 words of the far right slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”; and the initials of “Heil Hitler” – “h” being the eighth letter of the alphabet. Those neo-Nazis are just so clever.

The site takes its name from the infamous Holocaust-era “Der Stürmer” weekly tabloid published by the notorious Julius Streicher, ym”sh, who was convicted for “crimes against humanity” in the 1946 Nuremberg Trials and hanged at Nuremberg in 1946.

Streicher’s putrid product was read by millions in wartime Germany, and regularly offered up things like a close-up of the deformed face of a man wearing a Jewish cap above the legend “The Scum of Humanity: This Jew says that he is a member of G-d’s chosen people”; a cartoon of a vampire bat with a grotesquely exaggerated nose and Jewish star on its chest; and another of a Jewish butcher sneakily dropping a rat into his meat grinder. He propagated the myth that Jews killed German young people for their blood, and advocated for the annihilation of all Jews.

Streicher famously cried out “Purim Feast 1946!” before the trap door opened beneath him on that Hoshana Rabbah. Having been apprehended serendipitously by a Jewish soldier after the war ended, in his final moment he apparently sensed something deep.

The late Nazi’s new American imitator is more subtle than his predecessor, but not by much.

The Daily Stormer’s stylebook was recently made public by a reporter, and it presents a wondrous window on warped wits.

The 17-page guide starkly states the site’s ultimate goal: “to spread the message of nationalism and anti-Semitism to the masses.” No obfuscation there.

In addition to assorted grammar and spelling rules, the guide helpfully provides long lists of offensive terms to use in the place of “Jews,” “blacks,” “Muslims,” “Hispanics” and “women.”

Still, “the tone of articles on the site,” the guide advises, “should be light,” since “most people are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging, non-ironic hatred. The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not.”

Joking, though, Mr. Anglin is not. He states that, all kidding aside, he seriously would like to “gas Jews” – though he replaces that last word with a slur.

Astute observers of the modern (or, for that matter, not-so-modern) world have long suspected that a strange rule was being observed, one that The Daily Stormer guide declares outright: “Always Blame the Jews for Everything…As Hitler says, people will become confused and disheartened if they feel there are multiple enemies. As such, all enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews.”

“This is pretty much objectively true anyway,” the guide takes pains to add, “but we want to leave out any and all nuance.” Nuance, to be sure, isn’t much evident on the site.

“There should be a conscious agenda to dehumanize the enemy,” the document continues, “to the point where people are ready to laugh at their deaths.” Then, to simplify things for readers overly challenged by that sentence, the document boils it down: “Dehumanizing is extremely important.”

And the dehumanized, while they include other groups, must above all be “the Jews.”

“What should be completely avoided,” the guide cautions, “is the sometimes mentioned idea that ‘even if we got rid of the Jews we would still have all these other problems.’ The Jews should always be the beginning and the end of every problem, from poverty to poor family dynamics to war to the destruction of the rainforest.”

Didn’t know rainforest destruction was our doing? Welcome to the twisted world of The Daily Stormer.

Mr. Anglin claims that his site’s popularity is soaring, despite numerous internet domains’ refusals to host it. (He has reportedly moved it to the “dark web,” a part of the internet favored by the worst sort of criminal elements and accessible only with special software.)

We’re well accustomed to witnessing more “refined” forms of Jew-resentment, often cloaked in leftist “social activism,” anti-Israel rhetoric and United Nations votes.  It’s more rare to see the workings of entirely self-aware, unabashed anti-Semites.

But they’re out there, and their malice confirms the Torah’s predictions about Klal Yisrael’s galus and, ultimately, of our uniqueness.

© 2017 Hamodia

Agudath Israel on Today’s General Assembly Vote

Agudath Israel Statement on This Morning’s U.N. General Assembly Vote

The countries that voted this morning in the United Nations General Assembly to demand that the U.S. rescind its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and its plan to move its embassy there once again showed their true and ugly colors.

The General Assembly has long been a ludicrously anti-Israel forum, a grandiose soapbox where nations, including more than a few whose regimes routinely oppress, torture and murder their own citizens, wax righteously indignant at Israel’s audacity in defending herself against her many bloodthirsty enemies.

Today’s vote, however, forged a new low in the world body’s antipathy toward Israel.  Not only does the majority of the General Assembly seek to deprive Israel of the right to determine her own capital, but it seeks to prevent our own country from respecting that right.

In 1995, Congress passed a law explicitly establishing the position of the United States that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel,” and requiring that the American Embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem.  Earlier this month, President Trump announced the implementation of that law.

We are proud of the steadfast friendship toward Israel and recognition of reality that Congress and President Trump have demonstrated.  We applaud President Trump and Ambassador Haley for their courageous articulation of American values in the lion’s den of the United Nations.

And we remain ever hopeful that other responsible nations will come to recognize the special status of Jerusalem not only to the state of Israel but to the Jewish people throughout the millennia.

Agudath Israel Letter to Turkish Consul Condemning Erdogan’s Ugly Words

 

December 11, 2017

 

BY REGULAR MAIL & E-MAIL (consulate.newyork@mfa.gov.tr)

Honorable Ertan Yalçın

Consul General

Turkish Consulate General in New York

825 3rd Avenue

New York, NY 10022

 

Dear Mr. Consul General:

I write on behalf of Agudath Israel of America, a national Orthodox Jewish organization, to register outrage over the recent reported comments of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who ludicrously called Israel – the only true democracy and humanitarian country in the Middle East – a “terrorist state” that “kills children.”

Compounding the absurdity of that charge was Mr. Erdoğan’s ahistorical assertion that “Jerusalem was ruled by Muslims for many centuries but never closed to the believers of the other religions during that time.”  It is clearly documented that, at least from 1948 until 1967, Islamic authorities and Jordan prevented Jews and Christians from visiting their holy sites in the Old City, including the Western Wall.  And it is well known and entirely evident that Israel provides access to all religious sites within its territory.  To claim the opposite is nothing less than an attempt to create false “facts.”

Mr. Erdoğan’s further assertion that “Jerusalem is the worshipping center for mainly Muslims, Christians, and partially Jews” betrays not only further deep ignorance but even deeper prejudice.

Such baseless and incendiary rhetoric has become commonplace among barbaric enemies of peace who in fact murderously target innocents as a matter of policy.  That such language now emerges from the mouth of a head of state is utterly contemptible.

Turkey for many years represented a voice of sanity and responsibility in a region cursed with delusion and violence.  It is unfortunate, indeed tragic, that recent years have seen it influenced by the worst elements around it.

Sincerely,

                                                                  Rabbi David Zwiebel

Executive Vice President

Agudath Israel of America

 

True Jews

You may know something about the Sicarii, or Sikari’im (or Sikrikim), the radical Jewish faction at the time of the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash.

What you may not know is that their name has been adopted by a small group of Californians who are part of a somewhat larger group of African-Americans who call themselves “Hebrew Israelites.”

The contemporary “Sicarii” hold that the Jewish People are imposters, and that descendants of Africans like themselves are the “true Jews.” They aim to “uplift disenfranchised blacks, Latinos and Native Americans” by teaching that they are the “true descendants of the ancient Israelites.” The group refers to white people in general as “deceivers” or “devils.” Stating the obvious, the Anti-Defamation League calls the Sicarii “anti-Semitic and racist.”

Members of the group are wont to create sidewalk and public space demonstrations of their beliefs and, recently, at one such regular rally in San Diego, a white passerby was allegedly knocked to the ground by one of the self-described “real Jews.”

The group’s leader, one Adonis Glaude (a.k.a. “Ahlazar BanLawya” and “Guerilla Hebrew”), denied that any of his disciples assaulted the passerby, and addressed those who contended otherwise as “you so-called Jews who are not the Jews… you’re the devil.” Helpfully, he added: “This is why we say what we say.”

A number of years ago, I came across a similar group in midtown Manhattan, where its members had set up shop – a makeshift stage and an impressive speaker system – in a pedestrian plaza.

The master of ceremonies was loudly inveighing against people of non-color. He was flanked by his two assistants dressed as he was, in colorful caps and robes adorned with Jewish symbols. Together, they angrily denounced Caucasians – with particular malice for “so-called Jews.” Occasionally, the main man would nudge one of his helpers who had missed a cue to read from the Bible in his hand. The addled assistant, once (or several times) so reminded, would then find the place in his own book and, pointing at it, read a pre-designated verse, stiltedly but with great enthusiasm.

Displayed nearby was a large board inscribed with the names of the “twelve tribes of Israel.” Opposite each was a novel identification: one of twelve African or Caribbean nationalities. Their citizens, the MC shouted, were the “real Jews.”

My immediate reaction was amusement. But then I thought about how tragic it was that beings created b’tzelem Elokim, capable of meaningful accomplishments, imagine themselves worthy of dignity only by belittling others, even stooping to adopt an identity not their own.

No point, I knew, in engaging the pitiable prophets in conversation. Their beliefs were fueled by fantasy, not fact. But I indulged in a little fantasizing myself, imagining what I would tell them if only I might find some crack in the wall of their whimsy.

I would share with them a secret: Klal Yisrael’s chosenness isn’t a trophy, a bed of laurels on which to rest. In the Jewish view of things, I’d explain, being chosen is less a badge than a charge. Yes, we Jews indeed consider our forebears’ merits as extending throughout the generations to encompass their descendants. But the bottom line is that being chosen is an obligation.

What’s more, I would tell them, our special status – unlike the supremacy preached by racists of whatever hue – is available to anyone, of any race, who both recognizes that fact and is sincerely willing to join the Jewish people and undertake its mission. One can, in other words, choose to be chosen.

But admission to the Jewish People requires sincerity and commitment, not placards and loudspeakers. It’s easy to strut about with skullcaps and shout, but undertaking the endeavor of Judaism – humbly assuming the holy yoke of the Torah’s commandments and Jewish observance – is in a different realm entirely.

Then, though, something else dawned. Chazal exhort us to “learn from every man.” Even from “Hebrew Israelites.”

For they are remarkable testimony to how coveted the name “Jew” is, even at a time (have there been others?) when the real “real Jews” are hated by so many. The Sicarii may have no clue about what being a Jew really means, but their desire to assume the mantle is still striking, and worth pondering.

What it should teach us born or properly converted Jews is just how special we really are, how desired is our very identity. And what it should inspire us to do is more seriously set ourselves to the holy mission of being what true Jews are meant to be.

© 2017 Hamodia

Blood of the Right Sort

During Germany’s accursed Third Reich, the U.S. immigration system severely limited the number of German Jews admitted to the country to about 26,000 annually. But even that quota was less than a quarter filled during most of the Nazi era, because of strict requirements put in place by the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Whether FDR’s personal sentiments about Jews – he once dismissed pleas on behalf of Jewish refugees as “Jewish wailing” and “sob stuff” – had anything to do with that policy can’t be known, but that they existed can’t be denied.

Nor can Mr. Roosevelt’s conviction that immigration should be limited to those who had “blood of the right sort.”

Back in February, President Trump famously admitted that “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” For some of us, at least, no less complicated is the issue of immigration.

Last week, the president embraced a proposal to slash legal immigration to the United States in half within a decade by sharply curtailing the ability of American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country.

The plan is intended to stem the flow of newcomers to the U. S., in keeping with the president’s contention that the country has taken in too many low-skilled immigrants, to the detriment of American workers.

But there are studies that have shown that immigration does not have a negative effect on American jobs, and may even have a positive one. Some Republicans, in fact, are opposing the president’s initiative. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, for instance, asserted that “If this proposal were to become law, it would be devastating to our state’s economy, which relies on this immigrant work force.”

Many of us, mindful of the regular exhortations of Islamist fanatics that their followers infiltrate Western countries and kill “infidels,” and of the terrorist attacks we have all too often seen, may regard any restriction on immigration as something to celebrate. It isn’t 1938, after all, and Jews aren’t seeking refuge.

But we do well to bear in mind that, according to the Government Accountability Office, between September 12, 2001 and December 31, 2016, there were 23 fatal “Radical Islamist” attacks in the U.S., resulting in a total of 119 deaths (more than half, from two attacks, the San Bernardino and Orlando massacres), but fully 62 fatal “far-right violent extremist-motivated attacks” (although leading to “only” 106 deaths).

And to recognize that legal immigration to the U.S. is overwhelmingly from Mexico, China and India, not exactly hotbeds of Islamism. (Next on the list are the Philippines and Cuba.)

The president’s proposal should be of great concern to us. Under its terms, it would not even allow American citizens to sponsor their aged or infirm parents to immigrate to the United States.  And it is unclear whether it will provide any way to sponsor religious workers, who are very important to our community.

But beyond those practical concerns, and perhaps more important, it would be unseemly for a community like ours, whose recent forebears were immigrants, most largely unskilled and penniless, to publicly endorse new limits on immigration. Or even to feel comfortable about it to ourselves. Might hakaras hatov extend to intangibles like immigration policies? It’s hardly unthinkable.

Worthy of note, here, is the response given by Stephen Miller, the president’s policy adviser and long-time opponent of immigration, when a reporter asked him about some words at the base of the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Mr. Miller noted that “the poem that you’re referring to was added later… It’s not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.”

Indeed. The poem, “The New Colossus,” was written by Emma Lazarus, scion of German Jewish immigrants (long before the Nazi era), and was only later placed on a plaque at the statue.

It was referenced by rabid anti-Semite David Duke, who wrote: “As I looked into the American fight over immigration laws during the last 100 years, the driving force behind opening America’s borders became evident: It was organized Jewry, personified by the poet Emma Lazarus.”

For its part, the white nationalist website Stormfront includes an article titled “Give Me Your Huddled Masses – The Jewess who tried to destroy the U.S.!”

Jews (and Jewesses) have, of course, long been an important part of the American tapestry, as have natives of countries around the world. There is a need to ensure the safety of the citizenry, and vetting of potential immigrants is necessary – and is done.

But when considering new restrictions on legal immigration, we are wise to focus on facts, and to remember our own history in this great land.

© Hamodia 2017

In a Sane World…

Have you heard about the white family in Chicago that routinely vilifies the members of the black one across the street, calling them vile names, demanding that they move and hurling rocks through their windows? Where the black neighbors responded by putting up a fence at the edge of their property, to make it harder for the rocks to reach their house? And how the white folks, livid, called on all their friends and relatives, and white citizens everywhere, to mass at the black family’s house and voice their outrage over the despicable fence, and demand that it be removed?  And how the white mob turned into a violent riot?

No, you haven’t. Because (one hopes) it didn’t happen. But what you do likely know is that, after three Muslim terrorists killed two Israeli border policemen, members of the Druze community, at a gate to Har HaBayis, Israel placed metal detectors at the gates to the compound.

And that the Waqf, the site’s caretakers, along with the confederacy of brazen murderers known as Hamas, denounced the security measure as part of a “religious war” and a “defilement” of a holy place. The terrorist group called for a “day of rage” for Arab Muslims to vent their fury.

And vent they did, massing across Yerushalayim, screaming and shouting and attacking police officers. And a Palestinian knifed to death a 70-year-old man, his 46-year-old daughter and 26-year-old son during their Shabbos seudah in Halamish. (The murderer, shot by authorities, is being treated at Petah Tikva’s Rabin Medical Center.)

In a sane world, violent rage over metal detectors would barely pass as farce. In our world, though, it is reality.

The detectors, of course, are regular fixtures at airports, government buildings and myriad other places where tight security is called for. As Yerushalayim police commissioner Yoram Halevi pointed out, “When I go shopping on Friday I pass through a detector at the mall.”

But Azzam Khatib, the Waqf’s director, will have none of that. “We will never ever accept any changes in the mosque,” he declared, “and Israel has to put an end to this crisis by removing the metal detectors.”

Hamas’ official statement on the matter decried how Israel’s prevention of Muslims from practicing their faith “in complete freedom,” presumably by requiring them to walk through a metal detector, is “a dangerous escalation of the Zionists’ plans to divide Al-Aqsa Mosque and seize full control of it.”

The statement goes on to salute “the martyrs of Al Aqsa Mosque, [the] Al-Jabbarin family, who proudly sacrificed themselves.” Those would be the three murderers whose murderous actions were what required the metal detectors in the first place, and who were dispatched by Israeli police before they could wreak further mayhem.

For his part, the “moderate” Fatah’s Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen chimed in with the unoriginal and incendiary sentiment that “What is happening in Jerusalem today is aimed at attacking al-Aksa Mosque.”  And Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas announced that he is freezing all contacts with Israel.

The Palestinians’ bellicosity isn’t surprising. The very symbols they embrace tell us who they are. Fatah’s flag includes the image of a hand grenade and is graced with some blood-red Arabic text (probably not “give peace a chance”). Hamas’ logo is a pair of swords, not likely intended to evoke the image of filleting fish.

Over the past two years Palestinians have intentionally killed 45 Israelis, two visiting Americans and a British tourist in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks.

At this writing, Jared Kushner has reportedly met with Mr. Abbas, and was rebuffed by the Palestinian. No statement has emerged from the White House. In the previous imagined theoretical sane world, world leaders would be informing Abbas and company that metal detectors in sensitive public places is a no-insult no-brainer.

But whether the metal detectors remain or are removed [UPDATED: They have been removed], whether the Arab Muslim world will continue to howl and riot or will be brought to cheer [UPDATED: It is cheering] and put its rocks, bottles and firebombs away until it next feels affronted, its wild belligerence, tragically, will remain.

According to the police, the murderers of the Israeli Druze guards had stashed their weapons on Har HaBayis, whence they emerged and opened fire. Searching the mosques on the site afterward, police found dozens of knives, slingshots, batons, metal spikes, inciting material and ordnance.

And what, to the Palestinian mind, “defiles” a holy place? Weapons? Hateful material?

No. Metal detectors.

© 2017 Hamodia