Europe’s Jihad against Israel

Salim Mansur

• Resolution 2334 was as sickening a surrender to the Arab-Muslim jihad in the name of “peace,” as was the surrender of UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Adolf Hitler at Munich in September 1938.
• The UN before 1967 did not refer to the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied” territories when they were “occupied” by Egypt and Jordan after the 1948-49 war, which the Arab states launched against Israel. The Arab states then were the “occupiers” of parts of Palestine west of Jordan until 1967, and rejected any notion of Jews having a historic connection with Palestine, which they claimed was an integral part of Arab lands.
• From the time of the Balfour Declaration and the League’s Mandate for Palestine until the UN Resolution 181 (1947), reference to Palestine meant land with historic connection to the Jewish people. It was on this basis that the Jews’ (Zionist) claim to reconstitute their national home was given legal recognition by the League, which the UN, as its successor, was legally bound to protect.
• From the Arab perspective of religion and politics there never was a “Palestinian” people, or nation, distinct and separate from Arabs as a people or nation. The jihad called by the Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini against Jews in Palestine after 1921 was in the name of “Arabs” and Islam, and it has so remained since. According to the Hamas charter, “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Trust] upon all Muslim generations till the day of Resurrection.”
• Jerusalem, its principal city, was built by King David, a Jew, some ten centuries earlier.
• For the past nine decades and more, however, Arabs and Muslims, with 56 Muslim states in the OIC, have been waging jihad to destroy the one and only state of the Jews. And Christendom, as if oblivious of its own shameful past history of anti-Semitism, has even more shamefully supported the falsification of history. Now, with Security Council Resolution 2334, the UN, with the enthusiastic the backing of Europeans and the prodding of U.S. President Barack Obama, is complicit in this jihad against Israel.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted as a result of the United States abstention, on the instructions of outgoing President Barack Obama, confirmed the historic bigotry against Jews and Israel entrenched within the United Nations, just as it was within its predecessor, the League of Nations. As previously indicated, Arab and Muslim states could not move a single anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council without the complicity of the Western powers, representing the historically Christian nations.

The collusion of the Western powers and the Islamic countries against Jews and Israel is now ostentatious, without any subterfuge. Resolution 2334 was as sickening a surrender to the Arab-Muslim jihad in the name of “peace,” as was the surrender of UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to the Adolf Hitler at Munich in September 1938.

The gathering in Paris on January 15, at the invitation of French President François Hollande, was further evidence of appeasing the Arab-Muslim world’s jihad against Israel.

The timing of the Paris gathering – five days short of the 75th anniversary of the notorious Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, held in the suburbs of Berlin, in which top-ranking Nazi officials finalized the preparation for the “Final solution to the Jewish problem” in Europe – could not have been more overtly insulting to Israel. Members of the European Union plotted shafting the Jewish state in accordance with the wishes of their Arab and Muslim friends of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – 56 Muslim states, plus “Palestine,” and the biggest bloc at the UN.

“Fake news” and writing “fake” history have long been the modus operandi of tyrants; nothing new. The “big lie,” repeatedly broadcast so that people might succumb to believing it, was an art that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister for propaganda, practiced to devastating results. The most notorious Arab ally of Hitler, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, as an admiring student of Goebbels, passed on the art of “fake” history and “big lie” to his allies.

It is grotesque and criminal that the EU and the UN, together in “ganging up,” insist that Israel comply with their resolutions – Israeli withdrawal to pre-June 1967 boundaries – without having shown any attempt to have the “Palestinians” of the so-called “occupied territories” end their jihadi terrorism.

It was not an oversight in the Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967 that there was no mention of “Palestinian” people, or “Palestinian Arabs,” or “Palestinians.”

In the decades after the passage of Res. 242, there was a systematic push by the OIC states in the UN, supported by the EU and its predecessor, the European Community (EC), to refer to disputed territories taken by Israel in a defensive war initiated by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan as “occupied” territories. The Egyptians had closed the Strait of Tiran at the mouth of the Red Sea, an act that was a casus belli, legal cause for war.

The UN, before 1967, did not refer to the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied” territories when they were “occupied” by Egypt and Jordan after the 1948-49 war, which the Arab states launched against Israel. The Arab states then were the “occupiers” of parts of Palestine west of Jordan until 1967, and rejected any notion of Jews having a historic connection with Palestine, which they claimed was an integral part of Arab lands.

The entire jihad of Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, and since, is based on the argument that Jews have no historic rights.

From the Arab perspective of religion and politics, there never was a “Palestinian” people, or nation, distinct and separate from Arabs as a people or nation. The jihad called by Husseini against Jews in Palestine after 1921 was in the name of “Arabs” and Islam, and it has so remained since. According to the Hamas charter, “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Trust] upon all Muslim generations till the day of Resurrection” (Article 11).

Hence, that there ever had been a “Palestinian people” was a “big lie,” pushed by Arab states after 1967, and that the Western nations unquestioningly swallowed.

“Palaestina” – in a still earlier effort to strip the area of its Jewish roots, this time by the ancient Romans – was the name the Emperor Hadrian gave to territory on both sides of the River Jordan – Judea and Samaria – after crushing the Jews in the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in 135 CE.

Jerusalem, its principal city, was built by King David, a Jew, some ten centuries earlier.

In the seventh century CE, Arabs seized “Palestine” from the Christian Byzantine Empire and it became part of the Arab, later Ottoman Empire.

The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, and subsequently the surrounding area, to establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. Arab armies evicted the Crusaders from Palestine at the end of the thirteenth century. For the next six centuries, in the name of Islam Arabs, then Turks under the Ottoman Empire, ruled over Palestine until 1917, when the British Expeditionary Forces arrived during World War I.

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire left its former Arab territories between Egypt and the Persian Gulf, including Palestine, under the control of the victorious Allied Powers, Britain and France. In the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, the British government committed itself to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” while noting that this should not “prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities” therein.

At the San Remo Conference of April 1920, the Allied Powers agreed that Britain, under the authority of the League of Nations, would be the Mandatory Power over Palestine. The League officially handed the Mandate for Palestine to Britain as a trust in London on 24 July 1922.

The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Palestine Mandate; the twenty-eight articles of the Mandate stipulated how Palestine would be governed until, as everyone understood, the Jews were capable of “reconstituting their [Jewish] national home” – meaning the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. There was no mention of a “Palestinian” people in the Balfour Declaration or in the Palestine Mandate, since speaking about Palestine primarily meant everyone there. Everyone born there at the time – Jews, Muslims and Christians – were Palestinians; that was what was stamped on everyone’s passport.

From the time of the Balfour Declaration and the League’s Mandate for Palestine until the UN Resolution 181 (1947), reference to “Palestine” meant land with a historic connection to the Jewish people. It was on this basis that the Jews’ (Zionist) claim to reconstitute their national home was given legal recognition by the League, which the UN, as its successor, was legally bound to protect.

Britain’s record as the Mandatory Power in Palestine between the two world wars was nothing short of shameful. British administrators of the Colonial Office, sent to Palestine, devised policies limiting Jewish immigration and favoring Arabs, as the first of a series of decisions that undermined the primary objective solemnly pledged in the Balfour Declaration and incorporated into the Mandate.

The subversion began with Sir Herbert Samuel, an English Jew, appointed the High Commissioner for Palestine in 1920, after the San Remo Conference. As the author William B. Ziff, documents in The Rape of Palestine – published in 1938 to the consternation of the British – Britain’s “stiffing” of Jews under the specious policy of treating the demands of both Jews and Arabs “equally” was in effect deliberately prejudicial against Jews.

The British historian of the Middle East, Elie Kedourie, born in Baghdad, Iraq, also documented in The Chatham House Version (1970), how Samuel’s policy, designed to conciliate Arabs, increasingly hurt Jews. Similarly, Pierre Van Paassen, a Dutch-American Unitarian minister, documented in The Forgotten Ally, (1943), the “stiffing” of Jews in Europe by the Western nations, and especially Britain as the Mandatory power in Palestine.

Britain’s perfidy over Palestine took root with the election in 1921 of a known felon, Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, a younger brother of the deceased Mufti (religious head) and known to be a rabble-rouser, as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Husseini, despite the notoriety surrounding him, was the preferred candidate of Samuel for the position. The Grand Mufti, when World War II began, enthusiastically embraced the Third Reich, Hitler and his “Final Solution” for the Jews, and found his way to Nazi Berlin.

The poisonousness of Samuel’s choice of Amin al-Husseini as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, however, was exceeded by his role in creating the Emirate of Transjordan (present-day Kingdom of Jordan) at the expense of the Palestine Mandate. This was done at the behest of the Colonial Office under Winston Churchill, reputedly the most ardent English friend and supporter of Zionists, to appease Arabs.

In 1922, the chunk of Palestine east of the River Jordan, amounting to about two-thirds of the Mandated territory, was sliced off and gifted to Abdullah, son of Sharif Hussein of Hejaz, under whose name the flag of the 1916 “Arab Revolt” against Ottoman rule was raised.

After the 1922 partition of Palestine, which gave most of the land promised to the Jews to Transjordan, the substantially reduced Mandated territory remained only west of the River Jordan. Transjordan, as an Arab state, became closed to Jewish immigration.

Consequently, the policy of allowing Jewish immigration, according to the formula of “absorptive capacity” adopted during Samuel’s tenure in Palestine, turned increasingly restrictive. Arab opposition, with incitement to violence against Jews by the Mufti and his supporters, escalated, and Britain’s appeasement of the Arabs became routine.

The sordid legacy of Britain, as the Mandatory authority in Palestine, was the restriction of Jewish immigration from Europe when it turned out to be most urgently needed. As the desperation of European Jewry mounted after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the response of the Western powers was completely to deny entrance to Jewish refugees who had started fleeing the Nazis.

Finally, a meeting of the Western nations to consider the Jewish plight was called at the initiative of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Thirty-eight countries attended this meeting in July 1938, known as the Evian Conference, held in France.

The Evian Conference was doomed even before it convened. Among the countries attending, not one – not even Canada, Argentina or Australia, with vast open spaces – was prepared to accept Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany. Even worse, the United States and Britain refused to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Hitler, while at the same time Britain also prohibited Jews from entering Palestine.

The Evian Conference was the last gasp of Western powers to lend assistance to a people threatened with extinction by their enemies. The spectacle of the Evian Conference as a charade, according to the historian Robert Wistrich, could only have firmed the resolve of Hitler to proceed with his plans for the “Final Solution.” In his book, Hitler and the Holocaust, Wistrich wrote:

“If Nazi Germany could no longer expect to export, sell, or expel its Jews to an indifferent world that plainly did not want them, then perhaps they would have to do something even more drastic.”

After the defeat of the Nazis, and after their crimes against Jews were no longer disputed or hidden, the Western powers, through the UN, could have established Israel, as justice demanded, in what was left of the Palestine Mandate on the entire territory west of the River Jordan.

But the subsequent history of Palestine, approached by the Western powers with a second partition under the UN resolution of November 1947, turned out predictably as sordid as that of the Mandate under Britain’s supervision during the period 1922-48.

The Arab states, in failing to achieve their objective of defeating Israel during the 1948-67 period, adopted the unconventional means of jihadi terrorism backed by the repeated broadcast of the “big lie” that the Western nations, or Christendom, willfully accepted. The “big lie” is that the “Palestinians,” as a people under a supposed “occupation” by Israel – to which the Arabs had agreed in the Oslo II Accord (section: Land) – deserve a state of their own.

The state for the “Palestinian” people (Muslims and Christians) in two-thirds of Palestine was created arbitrarily by Britain in creating Transjordan in 1922. The “two-state” solution in Palestine therefore has been in existence for the past ninety-five years.

For the past nine decades and more, however, Arabs and Muslims, with 56 Muslim states in the OIC, have been waging jihad to destroy the one and only state of the Jews. And Christendom, as if oblivious of its own shameful past history of anti-Semitism, has even more shamefully supported the falsification of history. The first time it was done by UNESCO, in calling ancient Biblical sites (including Jerusalem) Islamic, when Islam did not even exist at the time.

Now, with UN Security Council Resolution 2334, the UN, with the enthusiastic manipulations of U.S. President Barack Obama and the backing of most European leaders, is complicit in this jihad against Israel.

Salim Mansur is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He teaches in the department of political science at Western University in London, Ontario. He is the author of “Islam’s Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim” and “Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism.”

The Paris Conference Delivered Another Blow to Peace

This past weekend, diplomats descended on Paris with the ostensible goal of hammering out a proposal that would get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. What transpired, writes Eran Lerman, was not only an “exercise in diplomatic futility” but an obstacle to any successful resolution of the conflict:

The French didn’t manage to bring the Israelis to Paris and, to add to the absurdity, even the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who had endorsed the effort, was a no-show, [although he spent the day at a nearby hotel]. Mainstream Palestinian factions not aligned with Abbas’s West Bank government criticized the conference and, no matter how well-intentioned he may be, the French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will not get Hamas in Gaza to abandon its firm ideological commitment to violence or its total rejection of the peace process itself.

For decades, Palestinian hopes have been pinned on an imposed solution. The Paris conference certainly did not give them that—it did not have the clout to do so. However, the danger lies in the possibility that momentum from the conference will be harnessed toward convincing the international community to rewrite the terms of reference for future negotiations—and therein lies the peril. Once the conference hosts and their partners recognize their inability to get Hamas to accept the peace process, they will have no choice but to ignore their realization that before peace can even be possible, a top priority is “reuniting Palestinians under a single, democratic and legitimate Palestinian authority.” . . .

A sober look at the realities—as embodied, for example, in President Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004—would indicate that an implementable agreement must reflect some basic facts on the ground. To encourage the Palestinians to believe that much more can be achieved by means of international pressure—like pushing Israel back to indefensible lines, or carving up the living city of Jerusalem (which, following the recent terror attack there, would look like a reward for terrorism)—is to harm their long-term interests by selling them on a fantasy.

Vice President Mike Pence about Israel

   Charlotte Gutman

Zachować dziedzictwo styczeń 2007, nr 620

Kamil Bolesław Kuś

Żydzi gliwiccy, książka będąca pokłosiem konferencji pod takim samym hasłem, a wydana ostatnio przez Muzeum w Gliwicach, przedstawia historię Żydów zamieszkujących rejon tego miasta od czasów średniowiecza. We wstępie do monografii dyrektor muzeum Leszek Jodliński określa cel tej publikacji. Chodzi mianowicie o „nadzieję na trwanie pamięci o miejscu i roli, jaką Żydzi gliwiccy odegrali w historii Gliwic, oraz na nowe badania, które prowadzić będą do lepszego poznania ich historii, służąc zachowaniu dziedzictwa gliwickich Żydów, jego pomnażaniu i dawaniu świadectwa przyszłym pokoleniom”.

Taki cel wymaga pokazania różnych aspektów funkcjonowania społeczności żydowskiej na przestrzeni dziejów. Zajmuje się tym kilkunastu autorów, polskich i zagranicznych. Książkę rozpoczyna rozdział traktujący o osadnictwie Żydów i ich sytuacji prawnej, sięgającej roku 1587, kiedy to cesarz rzymsko-niemiecki Rudolf II dał miastu przywilej antyżydowski (de non tolerandis Judaeis), na mocy którego żydowscy mieszkańcy Gliwic musieli opuścić miasto, zamyka ją natomiast opowieść o losach Żydów gliwickich po zakończeniu II wojny światowej. Mamy więc tutaj szeroką panoramę czasową, w którą zostały wpisane różnorodne wątki tematyczne, poczynając od osadnictwa, poprzez architekturę sakralną, a na przedsiębiorczości znanych rodzin żydowskich kończąc.

W monografii tej znajduje się m.in. bardzo ciekawa praca prof. Ewy Chojeckiej Architektura synagogi w Gliwicach na tle XIX-wiecznej architektury synagogalnej Europy i Górnego Śląska, która pozwala nam zobaczyć, jak budynek może stać się wyznacznikiem asymilacji i prestiżu danej społeczności, będąc „wyrazem konceptów wykraczających daleko poza sferę potrzeb konfesyjnych tradycji ortodoksji”.

Mamy tutaj również rozdział poświęcony przemysłowcom pochodzenia żydowskiego na terenie Gliwic. Wpływ tych przedsiębiorców na sytuację ekonomiczną regionu był znaczny, dość że w XIX wieku w Gliwicach, mieście chrześcijan, było więcej Żydów niż ewangelików. Uboższe rodziny żydowskie w odróżnieniu od wielkich bogatych rodów, takich jak Ballestremowie, Schaffgotschowie czy Donnersmarckowie, budowały swoje firmy powoli, od małych zakładów, poprzez spółki, do powstałych z połączenia spółek dużych koncernów, oddziałujących nie tylko na same Gliwice, lecz również na cały region.

Jako że bytowania jakiejkolwiek społeczności nie można sprowadzić wyłącznie do życia religijnego i handlu, mamy w monografii kilka artykułów na temat życia kulturalnego, społecznego i szkolnictwa. Już na przełomie XVIII/XIX wieku odnotowano obecność, jak pisze Jacek Schmidt, żydowskich artystów zwanych „wesołymi figlarzami”. W latach 30. XX wieku bardzo dobrze prosperował żydowski Teatr Miejski w Gliwicach, który grał aż przez siedem i pół miesiąca w roku. Orkiestra liczyła trzydzieści siedem osób, chór dwudziestu czterech śpiewaków, ponadto teatr posiadał siedmioosobowy zespół taneczny. Sprowadzano gości z zagranicy, jak np. balet operowy z Berlina czy Teatr Hebrajski z Moskwy. Niestety, w roku 1937 tajna policja w Gliwicach zabroniła wynajmować salę teatralną gminie żydowskiej i tak zakończyła się działalność tego teatru. Wielkim sukcesem społeczności żydowskiej było również założenie przez Rushę Kohn, około 1918 roku, Szkoły Muzycznej w Gliwicach. Szkoła kształciła od elementarnych podstaw do dojrzałości koncertowej. Żydowscy mieszkańcy Gliwic byli także amatorami sportu. Na terenie miasta w latach 20. i 30. istniały dwa sportowe zrzeszenia żydowskie „Hakoah” i „Schild”. Zawody, głównie lekkoatletyczne, rozgrywane między zrzeszeniami żydowskimi odbywały się jeszcze w 1932 czyli tuż przed II wojną światową.

Do najciekawszych artykułów monografii należy praca Petycja Bernheima. Zwycięstwo Dawida nad Goliatem. Sprawa jest ciekawa z dwóch powodów. Pierwszy to aspekt prawny, a dokładniej – pokazanie na przykładzie owej Petycji, jak działa prawo międzynarodowe. Drugi powód jest czysto historyczny, uzmysławiający nam, że gdyby przed II wojną światową, zamiast stosować politykę ustępstw wobec Hitlera, stworzono realne instytucje do egzekwowania umów międzynarodowych, być może byłoby możliwe uniknięcie wielkiego nieszczęścia, jakim była wojna. Petycja Bernheima była odpowiedzią środowisk żydowskich na ustawy norymberskie, zwłaszcza na ich trzeci paragraf, mówiący o tym, iż niektóre zawody, wymienione w tekście ustawy, mogą być wykonywane wyłącznie przez Aryjczyków. W tym czasie Niemcy były związane umową międzynarodową, Polsko-Niemiecką Konwencją Górnośląską, zawartą w 1922 roku, która na takie praktyki nie zezwalała. Petycja, powołując się na tę Konwencję, stanowiła ośmiostronicowy protest, zawierający wyliczenie aktów prawa niemieckiego, które pozostawały w sprzeczności z postanowieniami tejże Konwencji, wysłany do Ligi Narodów (ówczesna nazwa: Związek Narodów) w Genewie. Protest ten został przez Ligę pozytywnie rozpatrzony i Niemcy musiały na terenie Gliwic cofnąć swoje ustawy.

Podczas lektury Żydów gliwickich uzmysławiamy sobie, że być może najlepszym sposobem na znalezienie porozumienia z Obcym jest wzajemne zbliżenie w dziedzinie kultury, estetyki, sztuki, bowiem są to obszary niemal neutralne w porównaniu z polityką i religią – najbardziej zapalnymi i konfliktogennymi dziedzinami życia. Poznając tradycję, obyczaje i historyczne uwarunkowania czy to innego narodu, czy po prostu mieszkającego za miedzą sąsiada, odkrywamy ze zdziwieniem, że nie jest on aż tak inny, jak się nam wydawało, a dzielące nas różnice stają się zrozumiałe i do zaakceptowania.

Jednocześnie mamy nieodparte poczucie, że obecnie historia zatoczyła koło. Dzisiaj bowiem wielkim problemem jest wieloetniczność państw świata zachodniego. Powstaje na przykład pytanie, jak traktować człowieka, którego ojciec jest Jamajczykiem, matka pochodzi z Indii, zaś cała rodzina mieszka w Londynie. Kim jest taki człowiek? Jamajczykiem? Hindusem? Anglikiem? Sytuacja Żydów mieszkających w Gliwicach była podobna. Żyd? Niemiec? Polak? Przemysłowcy żydowscy biegle władali niemieckim, mieszkali w Polsce i utożsamiali się ze społecznością, w której żyli, do tego stopnia, że początkowo nie rozumieli, dlaczego akurat wobec nich stosuje się represje. Dzisiaj, kiedy w Europie zwyciężają partie niechętne obcym, a nastroje społeczne nie sprzyjają otwieraniu się na innych, zamiast szukać sposobów na zasymilowanie obcych etnicznie grup ludzkich, wybiera się „pakowanie do pudeł”. Arabów do pudła z napisem „terroryści”, Romów – z napisem „brudasy”. Żydzi i Polacy nie mogą zapomnieć traumy pogromu, a to sprawia, że jedni i drudzy na słowo „Żyd” bardzo często reagują odruchowo słowem „Holokaust”. A to utrudnia bliższe poznanie. Poznanie arcyciekawej żydowskiej kultury, historii, tradycji.

Etykiety, czy to nadawane grupie etnicznej przez kogoś z zewnątrz, czy to przyjmowane przez grupę, nie służą przełamywaniu barier i porozumieniu.

Opracowanie zbiorowe, Żydzi gliwiccy, Muzeum w Gliwicach, Gliwice 2006.