John Scumbag Prescott

Those acquainted with my style know that I do not shy away from bluntness; I call the spade a spade and a shmuck – a shmuck. I frown impatiently at political correctness. Nevertheless, I am not in the habit of losing my temper and almost never resort to name-calling.  But there are acts that are so abject, so utterly disgusting, so injurious to God’s truth and justice, that they deserve nothing but the most contemptuous epithets.

Like the previous ones , the latest bout of violence in Gaza has given many a Western bully an opportunity to vent ill-concealed anti-Jewish prejudices under the ‘safe’ cover of ‘humanitarian concern’.  Needless to say, none of these insufferably sanctimonious individuals and groups made a comparable level of noise during the long siege of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Al-Yarmouk, on the outskirts of Damascus.  Which siege has caused Yarmouk’s complete destruction, has included denial of food, drinking water and medical assistance and has caused God only knows how many thousands of civilian fatalities.

Yarmouk, near Damascus, Syria: Palestinian refugees queuing for food.

The ‘pro-Palestinian’ bullies’ concern about Palestinian fatalities mysteriously surfaces only when those fatalities occur in a conflict with Israel.  Otherwise, they don’t much care – certainly not enough to haul their behinds to a demonstration.

But, frankly, I am already inured to the rantings of these rather ridiculous two-quid-a-dozen anti-Semites.  They seldom elicit more than my rather bored shrug of contempt.

Portrait of a scumbag: John Prescott

That was my initial reaction also when I first saw John Prescott’s ‘contribution’ to the 'debate', an article he penned a few days ago for the Mirror. The only reason I decided to read it was, frankly, curiosity.  ‘How huge can hypocrisy get?’ I asked myself as I started to read the article, in which Prescott claims that ‘Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is a war crime’. Yes – a war crime; so says John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister in a government that bombed, invaded and occupied for 8 years (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives) a country situated 4,000 kilometres away!

However, had Prescott’s shameless hypocrisy been the only item of interest, I would have dismissed the whole thing with contempt; had it all been just the usual rantings, I would have shrugged it away as the not-worth-a-second-look antics of yet another ‘has-been’ politician with too much time on his hands.  Let him froth at the mouth as much as he bloody wishes.

But that frothing mouth has done something unforgivable: it has violated the memory of the Holocaust. About midway through his otherwise boring tirades, Prescott made the following remark:

“What happened to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis is appalling. But you would think those atrocities would give Israelis a unique sense of perspective and empathy with the victims of a ghetto”.

Got it?? Because one third of world’s Jewry was killed by the Nazis, the descendants of those Jews (rather than the descendants of those who killed them, or of those who slammed the door in their face when they tried to escape the slaughter) have incurred some sort of moral obligation above and beyond everybody else. Because my grandmother’s entire family has been exterminated at Auschwitz – partially because John Prescott's grandmother did nothing to help them – it is ME who owes HIM something or other.

In the eyes of people endowed with normal moral compass, a raped woman is entitled to understanding and sympathy; in light of her traumatic experience, she might even be expected to over-react if threatened. But on Prescott’s twisted, upside-down planet, she would actually be required to behave better than anyone else: it is from the victims – not the criminals and the indifferent bystanders – that he requires better behaviour. Rather than being entitled to some allowances, in Prescottland victims qualify for heavier loads and harsher censure.

In the insensitive mind of this louse, the memory of the Holocaust is but another cudgel with which to bludgeon Jews, in a kind of psychological pogrom.

And that is why I say, with all my soul: John Prescott – you are not just a disgusting hypocrite who points at the spec in his neighbour’s eye, while being himself responsible for nearly a million Iraqi deaths; you are actually an abominable scumbag.

War and no Peace

Quite a few readers have asked me to comment on the failure of the latest round of ‘peace talks’.  “What’s going to happen now?” you’re asking, with worried faces.  “Is there still a chance for peace?”

So far, I have abstained from commenting.  It was necessary to wait, to see whether the latest Palestinian Authority move – forming a ‘national unity government’ with Hamas – was just another exercise in brinkmanship, aimed at extracting additional concessions.  It is now clear that it wasn’t: PA President Mahmoud Abbas has now sworn in that ‘unity government’.

Two old friends, slightly dead...

Needless to say, there can be no ‘unity’ between the PA and Hamas – any more than it can be between Egypt’s ‘secular’ dictators and Muslim Brotherhood.  The trumpeted Palestinian elections will either be manipulated or ignored– if they’ll ever be held at all.  This is not about either ‘unity’ or ‘democracy’; Hamas and the Palestinian Authority care very little about such lofty concepts – but they pay them lip service, ‘unity’ for the benefit of their Palestinian audience, ‘elections’ for Western ears.  Hamas’s motivations for the ‘unity’ deal are crystal clear: hemmed in in Gaza, with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood on the run and the new dictatorship in Cairo bitterly resentful, Hamas had to ‘make nice’ with the PLO, in a desperate attempt to regain some relevancy on the larger Arab and Muslim scene.  But what does Mahmoud Abbas stand to gain from this ‘unity’?

... and the 'young' ones.

To a large proportion of their constituency (insofar as the term ‘constituency’ applies to dictators) both Abbas and Hamas are guilty of ‘fitna’ – the Qur’anic term denoting internal dissension among Muslims, which weakens Islam and emboldens the infidels.  That’s why, at least twice in the past, Abbas agreed to similar deals with Hamas.  But on both previous occasions, there was no intention of implementing the agreement; Abbas just went through the motions long enough to be able to claim that he tried – and blame Hamas for the failure.  This time, however, it’s different; this time it is not just about ‘fitna’.  Quite simply, the ‘unity’ is Abbas’s emergency exit route from the negotiations process.  Towards the end of the US-mediated indirect negotiations, both sides (Israel and the Palestinian Authority) came under immense pressure to agree – not on a final peace agreement, but on a framework for such treaty.  From the Palestinian Authority’s point of view, that meant agreeing to a formula – however vague – that would have recognised the right of Jews to their own independent state.  For Abbas and his ‘moderate’ colleagues, that is a very thick, very prominent red line – one they have no intention of crossing.  The deal with Hamas was the perfect plot, certain to present the Americans with an insoluble conundrum: on one hand, Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with an organisation calling for the extermination of Jews; on the other hand, the current US Administration is also reluctant to be seen as promoting ‘fitna’ and opposing ‘Palestinian unity’.   Abbas got ‘off the hook’, for the small price of installing a ‘government’ that is – from his point of view – only slightly different from the previous one.  With the rug so deftly pulled from under their feet, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry were left with just one option: to jump off it, trying not to look too foolish in the process.

Incitement -- from cradle to grave. Literally.

The upshot of all that is that ‘peace negotiations’ are hopeless, at least for the foreseeable future.  And the truth is – they were hopeless all along.  Because for years now, dear readers, you’ve been lied to; you’ve been taken for a ride.  Wily politicians and superficial journalists have repeatedly told you that ‘all that Palestinian want’ was ‘a state of their own’ in the West Bank and Gaza; that ‘the majority of Palestinians support a two-state solution’.  To persuade you, they’ve deployed ‘evidence’ such as politicised ‘opinion polls’, carefully selected quotes and fanciful interpretations, while dishonestly sweeping under the carpet anything that did not fit the predetermined conclusion.  Unfortunately, that’s all bull.  The truth, the only piece of irrefutable evidence, is that the only time they had something approaching free elections, a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem voted for Hamas – an organisation fundamentally opposed to the two states solution.  I know, I know: that’s an uncomfortable truth, which is why so many people would rather not hear it; but it’s still the truth.  A large majority of Palestinians don’t want ‘a Palestinian Arab state living in peace and security alongside the Jewish State’; they don’t want ‘two states’ and they don’t want ‘one state’, they want no state – no Jewish State.  And why would they want anything else?  For decades, they have been told that ‘the Jews’ have no rights whatsoever in ‘Palestine’ – they just ‘stole’ it; ‘the Jews’ are nothing but colonialists, racists, practically demons.  All this has been drummed into every Palestinian Arab incessantly, from infancy to grave, by teachers and educators, by religious and political leaders.  And that demonising seed found a ground fertilised by old religious prejudice.

But that’s not all: on top of everything, most Palestinians have been led to believe that intransigence will eventually pay off: since ‘the Jews’ are 100% in the wrong, ‘the world’ cannot fail to eventually ‘wake up’ and ‘restore justice’ by magically turning the clock of history 100 years back, to an idealised ‘past’ that never was.

Weak leaders manufacture support by inciting against some external enemy and by promising triumphs ‘sometime soon’.  Lacking any real legitimacy, the ‘Palestinian leadership’ (excuse the oxymoron) has done exactly that:  fanned the flames of hatred and promised redemption in the form of a deus-ex-machina; someone – the ‘international community’, the UN, the International Court of Justice, etc., will ‘soon’ deliver Israel’s head on a silver platter.  Meanwhile, be patient and do as you’re told.

In short, for negotiations to have a chance of success – any chance at all – something fundamental needs to first change within the Palestinian Arab society; something that would reboot the public discourse, break the taboos and question the accepted conventions.  I am positive that it will happen; but, unfortunately, it won’t be anytime soon; and I can’t see peace coming before that.

So let’s go back to the question that started this article: “What’s going to happen now?”  Well, it’s simple: the opposite of ‘peace’ is ‘war’.  It may not be an all-out type of military conflict, á la 1948, 1967 or 1973 (though in the Middle East, even that possibility should never be completely discounted); in all probability, it will ‘just’ be the by-now-usual combination of terrorism and political assault.  Which still constitutes war, of course, because the aims are the same as they were in 1948, 1967 and 1973.

Peace, needless to say, is infinitely better than war.  But when war simply cannot be avoided, it needs to be won.  Israel will win this war, just as she won the previous ones.  The terrorism will be kept down to a painful but bearable level through a combination of checkpoints, security barriers, anti-missile measures, intelligence and deterrence.  As for the political assault, that too will be contained.  I’m not saying that it will be easy – it never was.  In its current embodiment, that assault includes calls for ‘BDS’, political and economic blackmail, threats with jihad, the lot.  Israel’s enemies will continue to deploy their entire ‘arsenal’: they’ll play the victim, the ‘weaker side’, even while enjoying knee-jerk support from the entire Muslim world; they will try to re-write history, distort information or simply lie; they will attempt to exploit the hidden, obstinate and insidious anti-Jewish prejudice that so many in the world still harbour; they’ll use as many Western ‘useful idiots’ as they can get.  No, defeating all that won’t be easy.  It will require effort, it will require mobilisation of the entire Jewish people, in Israel and the Diaspora.  Ultimately, however, the Jewish people will win this battle, because of its talents and ingenuity but also, crucially, because it never walks alone: throughout its history, Jews have been cursed with lots of bitter, dishonest and often berserk enemies; but they’ve also been blessed with great friends – righteous people with big hearts and uncompromising moral compass.

Yes, it’s war – or rather ‘still war’.  But, hey, what else is new?  It’s been war – and much worse than this – all along.  Yet Israel thrives.  So stop wringing your hands – and let’s go to work.

The Bad, the Ugly and the Stupid

Bludgeoned into defensiveness, some of Israel’s advocates feel compelled to start by acknowledging that ‘Israel can be criticised like any other country’. Well, I think that she can’t. Because no other country is being criticised. And how can one criticise a country? How can one point an accusatory finger at an entire people? ‘Criticism of Israel is legitimate’, some say. No, it isn’t. One cannot legitimately criticise a country or a people – that kind of generalisation is the epitome of bigotry. One can, of course (and should) criticise dictatorial regimes – they do not represent the people; one can (and should) also scrutinise the acts of democratic governments – and subject them to criticism, if necessary. But one does not ‘criticise’ Syria; one criticises the Assad regime. One does not criticise Italy, though one can legitimately censor its current government. ‘Israel’s critics,’ however, are often exactly what the name implies: critics of a country and a people. True, the more ‘sophisticated’ among them have come to understand how this makes them look; they often talk about ‘Netanyahu’ or ‘the right-wing Israeli government’. But for them, these are just euphemisms: one does not need to dig very deep to realise that the ‘critics’ are not against this or that government, that they basically bash all Israeli governments – left, right and centre. It’s of course legitimate to criticise Mr. Netanyahu, just as it is to criticise British Prime Minister Cameron or French President Hollande. But if you bash all Israeli governments, from Ben Gurion to Shamir, from Golda Meir to Ehud Barak – then what does that make you, if not an extremist? 

Israel is the only country that ever gets criticised. And its critics fall into three categories:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign logo leaves no doubt what 'Palestine' they are talking about.

First, there are ‘the haters’ – the likes of ‘Electronic Intifada’ and Palestine Solidarity Campaign. They detest Israel so much that they are generally unwilling or unable to hide their hatred. It’s easy to peel off whatever thin layer of deceit they may be clinging on to – and expose the naked truth: they simply want Israel to disappear.

The second category’s position is more complex – they see themselves as ‘the justiciaries’. They claim not to hate Israel for what 'it' is (the State of the Jews), but for ‘what it does’. The problem (apart from the generalisation) is that, while they militate against Israel (or ‘the [generic] Israeli government’), they have very little to say against countries/governments that ‘do’ the same things – and much, much worse. For instance, they may angrily point at ‘Israeli settlements in West Bank’ and call for boycotts and sanctions against them, or against Israel as a whole. But they don’t call for similar boycotts against Chinese settlements in Tibet, Turkish settlers in Cyprus, Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara, etc. Or, indeed against the gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, the persecution of Baha’i in Iran, or the chronic violations of human rights rampant throughout the Arab world and elsewhere. Even if one takes their accusations against Israel at face value, it’s clear that ‘the justiciaries’ militate not against the offense, but against a particular offender. And that’s the difference between ‘justice’ and ‘persecution’.

The third category is arguably even more interesting. They are ‘the lovers’. They claim – and who am I to disbelieve? – that they criticise Israel ‘out of love’. In fact, they love her so much, they simply cannot bear to see her perform below utter perfection; they want her to be ‘a light unto the nations’. So what’s wrong with that? Well, nothing really – as long as it’s ‘within reason’. See, I have a son – and I really, really love him. Notwithstanding that, he often does not live up to my expectations – mostly, I think, because my expectations are so unrealistically high. I sometimes criticise him – out of love. That’s OK. But if I’d criticise him all the time; if I’d keep bashing him not for failing exams – but for not being the straight ‘A+’ student I expect him to be; if I’d always rub his face into his shortcomings and hardly ever praise his achievements; and if, on top of everything else, I’d do all this in public, to show everybody how damn imperfect he is – then that would make me an abusive parent, not a ‘loving’ one.

Whether in Israel or in the Diaspora, the vast majority of Jews – to the tune of 95% – fall into a fourth category, that of Israel’s supporters. It’s not that they don’t harshly criticise this politician, that government or that stupid decision. Indeed, they do; criticism is, after all, the Jewish national sport. But they also take pride in Israel’s achievements; they also appreciate her enormously difficult circumstances. And while their expectations are sky-high, they are willing to let the Jewish State off the hook for not being ‘a light onto the nations’ every single day of the week – and twice on Saturday. Now, that’s not criticism of the country. That IS love.

Interestingly enough, the small minority of Jewish 'critics' of Israel do not belong to one of the three categories; rather, they are represented in each of them.

Ahmedinejad: 'Who said Jews are clever? I can't believe how stupid these Neturei clowns are!'

Among the haters, one finds religious nutters such as Neturei Karta, alongside far-left extremists such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). The former look, smell and speak like 17th century; the latter portray themselves as some sort of 27th century 'progressive' vanguard. Cheese and chalk. They only agree on one thing – that the Jewish State should not exist. Neturei Karta think that God wants Jews dispersed and oppressed until such time as they all join Neturei Karta; for ICAHD, 'progress' means Jews as a minority in an Arab state – either a Palestinian-Israeli ‘one state’ or (preferably, they say) one ‘political entity’ encompassing also Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. The two organisations are joined in this infamous category by the likes of Philip Weiss (Mondoweiss), Gilad Atzmon, Richard Falk and a smattering of extreme-left Jewish-born political militants masquerading as academics.

Who's that, Fidel Castro? Nah, it's Jeff Halper from 'Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions'. And it's London, not Havana.

The second category probably includes most members of organisations such as Jews for Justice for Palestine, B’tselem, etc. But these are heterogeneous, ‘umbrella’ groups, and it is likely that parts of their membership overflow into the other two categories.

The third category includes the likes of J-Street, Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights and Yachad. They declare their ‘love’ for Israel, even while they bash her at every opportunity and help weaken her negotiating position. This is ‘tough love’, alright! If I poured such ‘love’ upon my son’s rebellious head, he would (rightly) tell me: “Know what, dad? Leave me alone – go ‘love’ somebody else!”

In future articles, I will focus on each of these categories of ‘critics’ – exposing dishonesty, lack of moral compass and oceans of hypocrisy. Watch this space!

In God's Own Image

So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Six decades after the end of the Holocaust, the United Nations finally decided to designate an International Remembrance Day, in order to commemorate the victims of history’s most blatant genocide.  After some backstage political wrangling, January 27 was chosen – the day the Soviet army reached Auschwitz-Birkenau.

However that decision was made, it’s still an opportunity to plunge our minds back in time and remember.

It all started after World War I, when an Austrian-born ex-corporal founded an extremist movement intent on exacting revenge for the humiliating conditions imposed on the defeated Germany.  By 1921, the movement had around 3,000 members and were usually dismissed as a fringe bunch of nutters.

But, adept at using the freedoms granted by a democracy he profoundly despised, by 1928 Adolf Hitler – elected Supreme Leader/Führer of the movement by the 3,000 acolytes – had succeeded in getting himself elected to the Reichstag – Germany’s parliament.  By the end of 1932, his National-Socialist (Nazi) party had become the largest in the country, winning the elections with 33% of the votes.

The rest is, of course, well known.  Hitler wasted no time in getting rid of the very democracy which put him in power.  It took him just a few years to plunge his country and the entire world into a huge conflagration.  In parallel, the Nazis led a genocide against the ‘eternal scapegoats’ – the Jews.  By the end of the war, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewry had been wiped out.  Most were not killed in anger – they were butchered deliberately, systematically, methodically, with chilling industrial efficiency.

German girls welcoming Hitler

Now, I understand that a group of extremist nutters can come up with the craziest, most berserk ideas.  Nothing really unusual in that.  But how did they manage to persuade – at the very least – one third of the German population?  In fact, more than that: very few Germans opposed the Nazis; few tried to prevent the terrible crimes perpetrated against their Jewish neighbours; few even raised their voice in protest.  Almost in its entirety, the German people were accomplices to the genocide – if not by active participation, then by silence and indifference.

Subject of adulation: Germans cheering for Hitler

How was that possible??  At the time, the Germans were one of the world’s most cultured, well-educated and – yes – liberal-minded nations.  How could they perpetrate such an enormously horrific crime?

The answer is: de-humanisation.  Had the Nazis talked about murdering 6 million people, ordinary Germans would have been horrified.  But they had not; they talked about Jews – sub-human, demonic monsters.  Taking a human being’s life is murder; but if the Jews aren’t human, then they can be ‘exterminated’ – a term one uses for vermin.

So unusual was all that, that at the end of the war the British and American governments saw fit to institute a programme of mass re-education.  The ‘de-Nazification’ (Entnazifizierung) programme was meant to teach Germans that Jews were, actually, human beings.

It seems to me that, if there is a lesson to be learned from the Holocaust, it is not just about the activity of extreme fringe groups – and how they can crawl their way into the mainstream; it is also how an entire people, however ‘civilised’, can be brainwashed into looking at people made in God’s image – and seeing monsters.

Fast forward a few decades.

Some 200 Jewish families inhabit the settlement of Itamar.  Situated in West Bank’s Area C (which the Oslo Accords placed under Israeli control), the settlement was nonetheless left outside the Security Barrier.  Instead, it was surrounded with a less sophisticated security fence.

On a spring night in 2011, Amjad Mahmad Awad (18 years old), and Hakim Mazen Awad (17) – two boys from the nearby Palestinian village of Awarta – climbed over that fence and entered the home of one of Itamar families, the Fogels.  They first found 11-year-old Yoav and slashed his throat.  Four-year-old Elad was sleeping in his room when the two intruders strangled and stabbed him in the chest.  Next, they came across  the two parents’ bedroom.  The Fogels awoke and tried to fight them off, but were stabbed to death.  The murderers were about to leave, when 3-months-old Hadas began crying in another room.  They came back to slash her throat.  Twelve-year-old Tamar, who had been out with friends, returned home an hour later and discovered the carnage.

So far, horrific.  Ghastly.  But… well, there are criminals in the world, unfortunately.  Even criminals able to murder little children.

But here comes the real shock: an opinion poll conducted one week later (by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research) revealed that one third of the Palestinians in the West Bank, E. Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip… supported the murders!

How can that be??  Palestinians are, by all accounts, one of the best educated branches of the Arab nation.  How can hundreds of thousands of civilised people, in this day and age, support the deliberate, cold-blooded slaughter of innocent children, asleep in their beds?

Summer camp activity for Palestinian girls in Gaza (photo AP)

The answer is: de-humanisation.  It is not the murder of human beings, made in God’s own image, that Palestinians support – but the ‘extermination’ of non-human monsters.  The two boys did not kill the Fogels in anger; they’ve never met them before – it wasn’t personal.  They were there to ‘exterminate’ Jews.

But how can cogent people be persuaded that sleeping children are but the spawn of demons?  Well, as the Holocaust proved, they can.  Just exploit a ground fertilised by dark medieval prejudices and intensively plough-in the seeds of hatred.

In 2006, 45% of Palestinians in the West Bank, E. Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip voted for Hamas, an organisation whose constitutive document  contains the Quranic injunction:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

No, it’s not the fault of that holy book.  There are plenty of things in the Quran; some seeming to promote violence, others compassion and kindness.  No, it’s not the old book, or the 7^th century prophet; it’s a bunch of late 20^th century men (there were no women, of course, among the authors of that document) who’d selected that quote, appealing to dark impulses of another age – to justify murder here and now.

The Jew as monster.
Published in Filastin (Gaza), May 3, 2013

Nor were those men acting instinctively, without thought.  No, they knew very well what they were doing.  In fact, they described the components of the brain-washing programme – in the very same document:

“In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instil the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.

It is necessary that scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening (the masses). It is important that basic changes be made in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region […] It is necessary to instil in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis. […]

Woman in the home of the fighting family, whether she is a mother or a sister […] has to teach them to perform the religious duties in preparation for the role of fighting awaiting them. That is why it is necessary to pay great attention to schools and the curriculum followed in educating Moslem girls, so that they would grow up to be good mothers, aware of their role in the battle of liberation. […]

The book, the article, the bulletin, the sermon, the thesis, the popular poem, the poetic ode, the song, the play and others […] are among the requirements of ideological mobilization…”

The Jew as monster.
Published in Al-Ahram (Egypt), March 12, 2013

It is not just the Hamas, unfortunately.  In the PLO-controlled West Bank, as well as in the wider Arab world, people are intensively brain-washed into de-humanising, demonising Jews.  Hamas’s programme is by no means original in this respect: the message of de-humanisation is indeed being diffused “among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels”.  The process starts with young children, whose minds are less able to question the message.

In the words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Jews as animals: shark.
Al-Rai (Jordan), May 30, 2013

“In Saudi Arabia, everything bad was the fault of the Jews. When the air conditioner broke or suddenly the tap stopped running, the Saudi women next door used to say the Jews did it. The children next door were taught to pray for the health of their parents and the destruction of the Jews. Later, when we went to school, our teachers lamented at length all the evil things Jews had done and planned to do against Muslims. When they were gossiping, the women next door used to say, ‘She's ugly, she's disobedient, she's a whore--she's sleeping with a Jew.’ Jews were like djinns, I decided. I had never met a Jew. (Neither had these Saudis.)”

Jews as animals: snake
Al-Ayyam (West Bank), February 13, 2013

But nowhere is the demonization as blatant and incessant as among Palestinian Arabs. On July 3, 2013, the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority showed, on its official TV channel, a 7-8 year-old girl, reciting the following poem:

“Jerusalem is my days and my wildest dreams.
Oh, you who murdered Allah’s pious prophets [i.e., Jews in Islamic tradition]
Oh, you who were brought up on spilling blood
You have been condemned to humiliation and hardship.
Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations
Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs…"

More monster...
Ar-Raya (Qatar), June 2, 2013

Under the delighted eyes of the reporter, a second girl then chipped in:

"Jerusalem is not your den
Jerusalem opposes your throngs
Jerusalem vomits from within it your impurity
Because Jerusalem, you impure ones, is pious, immaculate
And Jerusalem, you who are filth, is clean and pure”.

Jews as animals: wolves
Tishrin (Syria), January 29, 2013

If people could be brain-washed by a fringe group under the Weimar Republic, how much easier it is for undemocratic regimes, in control of all the instruments of education and propaganda.  The entire state apparatus – schools, universities, mosques, media, regimented ‘science’ and ‘art’ – is mobilised to the task.

Egyptian poet Hesham El-Gakh was honoured by the Palestinian Authority Minister of Culture with a special plaque, after composing and reciting the following poem:

"When I was young I was taught that Arabness is my honor...
and that our lands extend from one end to the other,
and that our wars were for the Al-Aqsa Mosque,
and that our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail
and that our nation's armies are outstanding."

Jews as demons
Al-Ittihad (UAE), January 23, 2013

On September 30, 2013, another Palestinian girl (this time, perhaps 12 years old), was shown on Palestinian Authority TV declaiming El-Gakh’s ‘Satan with a tail’ poem.  Delighted, the programme’s host asked the audience for a loud round of applause…

From pre-school day TV programmes to school textbooks, from mosque sermons to university courses, from the morning newspaper to the evening TV drama, Palestinians (and Arabs in general) are bombarded with the same mantra – albeit repeated in slightly different forms: Jews are not human beings – they are monsters, demons, “Satan with a tail”.

Rather than combating Arab de-humanisation propaganda,
some Western 'useful idiots' ape it.
Sunday Times (UK), January 27, 2013

Worse, much of this is indirectly funded by European tax-payers, whose governments are keen to financially assist in the ‘education’ of young Palestinians.  Between 1994 and 2009, the EU donated €4.26 billion to the Palestinian Authority through various channels – and that’s not counting donations by individual EU member states, nor is it taking into account funds coming from non-governmental sources.  As EU member and good ‘global citizen’ UK is, of course, among the major donors.  So we are left to wonder how many of British taxpayers’ pounds have been used to fund programmes showing young girls reciting hate ‘poetry’?

Al-Quds Al-Arabi (Arabic newspaper published in London),
May 13, 2013

There are people who think that all this will ‘naturally’ disappear once a peace agreement is signed.  But that’s stupidly putting the cart before the ox; the Holocaust started before the war did; and it was not ‘peace’, but de-Nazification that caused the Germans to once again view Jews as human beings.  How can peace be signed, let alone ‘made’, before a massive reversal of the de-humanisation message?

For one can always make peace with even the bitterest enemies – provided they are human beings, created in God’s own image.  But one does not make peace with demons – one slays demons.  One ‘exterminates’ them...