Masters of the Universe

MEMRI has a remarkable interview with Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi (above) who believes, 'The Day will come when we [Muslims] will be the masters of the world.'

The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is to to establish an Islamic caliphate from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. The goal of this caliphate would be to purge the Muslim world of the Western and Israeli 'scourge.'

The clip is from an interview with Higazi, a professor of political science, t broadcast on the Egyptian news station, Al-Kahera Wal-Nas broadcast on 14 August. With Allah’s help, says Prof Higazi, 'Israel will be annihilated' by 2013. 

He acknowledges the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans to establish a caliphate as if it were a forgone conclusion. The professor proclaims that the Muslim default is 'peace' before declaring that he has no problem engaging in all out war against Israel. Higazi, who is also a cleric, issues a fatwa mandating that Israelis should be shot and killed on the spot for being 'occupiers' of Arab land [i.e. Israel].

'We are constantly keeping the memory alive among the younger generations,' says the Prof, 'so that they will realize that the Palestinian cause is an essential one. The hope and the memory will later turn into action. By next year, Allah willing, Israel will be annihilated.'

The Egyptian interviewer asks how, if Higazi is truly a man of peace, he could issue such a fatwa. The interviewer also pushes Higazi on the Camp David accords, which brought peace and stability to Egypt and Israel. The cleric says it wasn’t Camp David but, rather, Egypt’s 'victory' in the 1973 Yom Kippur War that brought peace to the two nations. Of course, the Yom Kippur War, while resulting in roughly 2,800 Israeli casualties (not including the nearly 9,000 soldiers wounded), ended in a decisive tactical victory for the Israelis.

Rocket hits Sderot home

A Qassam rocket fired from Gaza at Israel this morning hit a house in the southern city of Sderot, causing major damage to its roof. An adjacent house was also damaged, and one woman was treated for shock.

A second rocket, fired simultaneously, landed in an open area and caused no damage or injuries. Red alert sirens sounded throughout the area ahead of the explosion.

The first rocket went through the roof of the Afflelu family’s home and penetrated through to the first floor apartment in the building next door. The second building had suffered a direct hit from a rocket in 2007, and had been rebuilt with a safety room, which was used that morning by the family. The Afflelus had also entered their safety room after hearing red alert sirens, and members of both families survived the attack uninjured.

Earlier on Friday, two rockets landed in open areas in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council, just north of Sderot. On Sunday, three Qassam rockets were fired at Sderot, two of them hitting factories in the city’s industrial zone. The blasts injured two people and structural damage was caused to one factory.

Three more bombs were fired from the Strip at southern Israel on Monday, causing no injuries or damage. On Tuesday evening two more rockets and a mortar shell were fired into the Eshkol region, in the Western Negev, all landing in open areas.

Source: Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre

The Islamo-‘Christian’ assault on Jerusalem

Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist and the author of A New Shoah, in which he  researches the personal stories of Israel's terror victims. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is currently working on a book about the Vatican and Israel. On 27 August, Arutz Sheva carried an Op-Ed article by Meotti entitled Expose: the Islamic-Christian assault on Jerusalem.

A strange alliance between Christians and Islamists is aimed at getting the Jews out of Jerusalem, says Meottis. The Temple Mount is under assault from the Islamic-Christian Committee (ICC). In the following summary of the article, most of the time I deliberately place the term ‘Christian’ in quotes.

This relatively new institution has warned that the Israeli authorities are working to impose ‘a false Jewish history’ in Jerusalem, ‘the occupied city’, especially ‘on the area known to Jews as the Temple Mount’. The ICC warned of new ‘Judaization’. Such fabrications help the Palestinians to conquer a seat in the international agencies like UNESCO and to excite Muslim feeling against the Jews.

The Vatican’s former archbishop in Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, who supports the ICC, has appealed to the European Union and United States to ‘stop the Hebraization of Jerusalem’. When the new Latin Patriarch, Fouad Twal met the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, he denounced the ‘more than 550.000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank’ and ‘the demography of Jerusalem changing rapidly with the sacred space being threatened’.

The ICC was founded by the former Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna and enjoys the participation of Catholic leaders like Claudette Habesch, Secretary General of Caritas Jerusalem, the most important Vatican humanitarian arm in the world. Hanna called for the creation of an Islamic-Christian union that would ‘release Palestine from the river to the sea’.

Archbishop Hanna also supported suicide attacks against Israeli civilians: ‘The suicide bombers who carry out their activities in the name of religion are national heroes and we’re proud of them’, said Hanna.

The ICC also enjoys the participation of Sheikh Tamimi, the most high profile Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority, a self-professed anti-Semite deported by Israel in 1980 after terrorists killed six Jewish students in Hebron. ‘Perhaps one day the world will awake and realize that these Zionist elements are the bloodletters who hang on the peoples, sucking their blood and consuming their resources,’ Tamimi has said.

The PA campaign to eradicate Jewish history at the Temple Mount , as well as in the rest of Israel, has escalated sharply in the past two years. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)  has documented statements from Palestinian Authority leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, all of whom refer to an ‘alleged [Jewish] Temple’.

Abbas has said in the official PA WAFA news agency, ‘[Israel's] purpose is to achieve its black goals: Destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque, building the 'alleged Temple,' taking over the Muslim and Christian holy sites, and destroying its [Jerusalem's] institutions in order to empty it, uproot its residents, and continue its occupation and Judaization.’

Abbas has also stated ‘that all of Israel's archaeological digs and tunnels . . . will not change the reality of the city . . . and will not create a [Jewish] right based on fantasy and legends . . . There will be no peace, security, or stability unless the occupation [Israel], its settlements and settlers will be evacuated from our holy city and the eternal capital of our state.’

Abbas has declared that ‘Palestinian’ history is 9,000 years old and, on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day last year, ‘Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history’.

Historian Bat Ye’or explains that at a 2004 conference in Amman, Jordan the Organization of the Islamic Conference recommended ‘cooperation with Churches in the fight against Israel’. Their proposals included the adoption of the Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem by mosques, churches and monasteries, and by Muslim and Christian institutions worldwide. ‘Promoting ‘al Quds’ would be done through films, television, songs, and festivals, under the supervision of a special Muslim and ‘Christian’ cell that would be working with all the appropriate means’.

23 December 1995 was the turning point for the Islamo-‘Christian’ alliance against the Jews in Jerusalem. The Greek Orthodox patriarch of the Holy Land handed over the custody of churches in Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat in the presence of the Catholic, Anglican and Greek Orthodox archbishops, declaring: ‘I am the heir of Sophronius and I am handing the keys (to Christian holy sites in Jerusalem) to the heir of Omar Ibn al-Khattab’.

To understand the significance of the archbishop’s words, it needs to be understood that in 638AD, the Muslim Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab who claimed Jerusalem from Byzantine rule, gave the Patriarch Sophronius custody of churches. The Patriarch was now returning the Christian holy places to the custody of Arafat, a Muslim, thus strengthening the Arab-Islamic claim to Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

Arafat saw himself as conquering Jerusalem a second time for the Muslims, so that any Arab reference to Omar means Jerusalem must be 'Judenrein’.

The goals of this unholy Muslim-‘Christian’ dialogue are. first, to erase any Jewish presence in the so called ‘holy basin’, an alliance of the mosques and the sepulchre which will exclude the Jews from the Temple Mount. Secondly, the new Islamo-‘Christian’ alliance will seek to convince the EU, the UN and the US to recognise Israel's capital city as ‘Al Quds’. From such a giant leap will follow the relatively small step of persuading the international community to recognise the entire region as ‘Palestine’.

With friends like Rachel Corrie's, she didn't need enemies

An Israeli court today ruled that the death of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American who was killed by a military bulldozer in 2003 was a regrettable accident for which Corrie was responsible and that there was no proof that the driver of the bulldozer acted with intent to harm her.

While focusing on the role of the IDF, the media has largely ignored the role played by International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the organisation with which Rachel Corrie was involved, with her tragic death.

Adam Levick, the Managing Editor of CiF Watch and a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism has posted a blistering attack on ISM, showing their connection to Palestinian terror groups and their cynical disregard for Rachel Corrie’s safety.

Levick shows that the ISM, a group of young, extreme Left Americans, intentionally hindered IDFanti-terror activities by serving as human shields for terrorist operatives and providing Palestinian terrorist operatives with financial, logistical and moral support, hindering the razing and sealing of houses of suicide bombers.

In a 2002 article, ISM co-founders Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf wrote:  ‘The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both non-violent and violent,’ adding that ‘[i]n actuality, nonviolence is not enough . . . Yes, people will get killed and injured.’ 

Shapiro and Arraf regard such deaths as ‘no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. And we are certain that if these men were killed during such an action, they would be considered shaheed Allah.’

In 2003, the year Rachel Corrie died, ISM activist Susan Barclay admitted in an interview http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Activist-s-death-focuses-spotlight-on-Mideast-1110154.php#page-2 that she worked with representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who murdered three people at Mike’s bar in Tel Aviv.

Rachel Corrie died in the ‘Military Installations Area,’ along the Egyptian border, at the Philadelphi Route, which was considered a hostile battlefield because of the large number of attacks carried out by terrorists. The IDF mission on the day in question, which Corrie and her fellow activists were obstructing, was not to bulldoze houses but to level terrain and clear debris near the border to remove cover for future terrorist attacks.

Corrie and the other ISM activists ignored IDF warnings and refused to leave the area, deliberately putting themselves in physical danger. Corrie’s ISM colleague Joseph Smith justified her death as a sacrifice for the cause:

The spirit that she died for is worth a life. This idea of resistance, this spirit of resisting this brutal occupying force, is worth anything. And many, many, many Palestinians give their lives for it all the time. So the life of one international, I feel, is more than worth the spirit of resisting oppression.

Apart from the falsehood of the claim that ‘many, many, many Palestinians give their lives’ resisting so-called Israeli brutality, Smith callously views Rachel Corrie’s death as a price worth paying. And of course, the ISM will never face serious critical scrutiny for their recklessness, despite their well-documented record of terror-abetting extremism, which ultimately took the life of Rachel Corrie.

Read the full article here.

‘Six Million Should Die’ to create a single Palestinian state

Stephen Sizer is promoting a new publication After Zionism, edited by Antony Lowenstein and Ahmed Moore, about the search for a one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Stephen Sizer admitted to me three years ago when we met for coffee, that a one-state solution would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

According to the publicity blurb one of the editors, Antony Loewenstein, is ‘an Australian journalist, activist and blogger. He is the author of two bestselling books, My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution. He has written for The Guardian, The Nation, Huffington Post, Haaretz and other prominent publications. He lives in Sydney, Australia.’

Lowenstein describes himself as ‘a non-practising atheist Jew’ and last Wednesday (22 August) he and Moor spoke at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London to promote the book. Richard Millett was there and on his blog reports:

Loewenstein told the audience of about 150 that Zionism actually is the issue here. Although it is probably very hard to imagine in 2012 the idea of a Middle East country called Israel that’s not a Zionist state, the truth is that it was impossible equally to imagine a South African country that wasn’t wracked with apartheid.

Both Loewenstein and Moor are big supporters of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. . .

Frank Barat, the Chairman of the meeting, is another supporter of boycott, divestment and sanctions. In an online interview, Barat and his comrades were savaged by no less than Norman Finkelstein, one of Israel’s most extreme critics. Finkelstein accused BDSers of silliness, childishness, leftist posturing, duplicity and dishonesty. According to Finkelstein, the BDS movement is a cult that does not want Israel to exist but is afraid to say so. His charge was justified when:

During the Q&A, Jonathan Hoffman asked Loewenstein how many people Loewenstein thinks should die for this one-state solution, that Loewenstein wants so much, to come into existence. The idea being that Israelis are not going to vote themselves out of existence, so presumably such a state could come about only by force involving more bloodshed.

As Loewenstein wasn’t quite answering the question he was pressed further by Hoffman as to how many people Loewenstein thinks should die. First, Frank Barat, the Chairman, answered '200,000' . Then Loewenstein answered, ‘Six million. That’s my answer. Write that down.’

Mocking the Holocaust, says Millet, seems to be becoming de rigeuer within anti-Israel activism.

A supporter of BDS, Jane Green, told Millett and Jonathan Hoffman in October 2011 that Israeli Jews were ‘total Nazis’ who were using the Holocaust to ‘kill the Palestinians’ and to ‘commit genocide against another people’.

I am firmly of the opinion that most pro-Palestinians are nothing of the sort; they are just anti-Israel and, as such, are anti-Jew.

Israel welcomes Egypt's action against terrorists

Ahram Online reports:


Israel hailed as positive a reported Egyptian military operation in northern Sinai on Wednesday aimed at tracking down militants behind a deadly weekend attack which killed 16 Egyptian soldiers.

‘The only one responsible for Sinai is Egypt, and Egypt will do everything in its power to deal with terror. Its success will prevent a bigger attack,’ Amos Gilad, a top official in Israel's defence ministry, told public radio.

Speaking just hours after Egypt's military said it launched air strikes in northern Sinai, killing 20 militants, Gilad said Cairo had grasped the nettle and begun to take action.

‘These extremist organisations can harm the entire Middle East, it is not just against Egypt,’ he said. ‘The penny has dropped in Egypt, their level of awareness has been heightened. They are moving to action,’ he said.

‘We must to keep an eye on the future and see if there is real root surgery against terror.’

Wednesday's operation launched by the Egyptian military on villages near Gaza comes three days after a deadly attack on a border post which was blamed on Islamic extremists.

In Sunday's attack, the gunmen commandeered two armoured vehicles which they crashed over the frontier into Israel. One explosives-laden truck blew up of its own accord, while the second was stopped by an Israeli air strike.

It’s not only Israel that sees action as a good thing. The story has been reported in the western media objectively. Indeed, I believe I just heard Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s media correspondent, describe the ‘militants’ as terrorists.

How would our media have treated the story if Israel had taken out the terrorists? Would the reports have been so objective? How would Egypt have reacted to the event?

I might be wrong but I suspect the reports and reactions would have been far less cool and objective.

Judge rules girl of 10 can choose to convert from Judaism to Christianity

According to The Telegraph yesterday, a 10-year-old Jewish girl has been permitted to become a Christian after a judge rejected claims by her mother that she had been ‘brainwashed’ and was too young to change faith.

The schoolgirl’s divorced parents were ‘at war’ over her desire to be baptised at the church her father, himself a convert, now attends. But at the end of an unusual case a judge has ruled that she is mature enough to choose her religion, and alongside his judgment wrote a personal letter to the girl explaining his decision:

‘Sometimes parents simply cannot agree on what is best for their child, but they can’t both be right. Your father thinks it is right for you to be baptised as a Christian now. Your mother wants you to wait until you are older, so they have asked me to decide for them. . .

‘I have decided that the best thing for you is that you are allowed to start your baptism classes as soon as they can be arranged and that you are baptised as a Christian as soon as your minister feels you are ready.’

But the judge stressed that it did not mean the girl would lose her Jewish heritage.

The father said his daughter told him on the way back from an evangelical Christian festival that she had ‘experienced an encounter with God’.

Read the full story here.