European Union and Germany plot to see Jerusalem divided

The decision by the European Union (EU) and Germany to launch the East Jerusalem Tourism Development Programme is in reality a blatant attempt by them to see Jerusalem divided by creating political facts on the ground under the guise of helping promote tourism in East Jerusalem.

The German representative—Oliver Owcza – was quite happy to create this tourism smokescreen:

 “As Germans and Europeans we value tourism that is of quality and locally owned. We therefore are confident this project will connect the tourism community and support new concepts and services. As it will contribute to more and better job and career opportunities”

European Union Representative — Sven Kühn Von Burgsdorff – however — did not seek to hide the consortium’s real objective — firing these bullets:

“Palestinians in East Jerusalem are facing daily political, economic, and social challenges. Tourism has always been one of the main income-generating activities in the city and helped maintaining the Palestinian presence and identity of the city. 

Our joint work as Europeans reflects once again the clear and united position of the EU and its Member States with regard to East Jerusalem. For us, East Jerusalem is part of the occupied Palestinian territory and the status of Jerusalem as the future capital for the two states should always be respected and protected.”  

Words do have meaning.

“Palestinians in East Jerusalem”, “Palestinian territory” and “maintaining the Palestinian presence and identity of the city” excludes any rights Jews, non-Arab Christians and non-Arab Moslems might have in East Jerusalem — according to the definition of “Palestinians” in Clause 6 of the 1964 Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Charter:

“The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian parent after this date whether in Palestine or outside is a Palestinian.”

This Arabs-only definition was repeated in article 5 of the new PLO Charter adopted in 1968. 

Jewish claims in East Jerusalem are expressly rejected by the PLO in the 1964 PLO Charter – repeated almost verbatim in article 20 of the 1968 Charter: 

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

The EU and Germany have trashed the uniquely shared Jewish, Moslem and Christian identity of East Jerusalem — evidenced by the centuries–long presence of Jews, Moslems and Christians there and the formative and normative role East Jerusalem has played in the development of these three monotheistic religions.

The EU and Germany’s support for a recently-minted Palestinian identity fabricated to erase this shared identity is disgustingly racist. 

The only time in history that Jerusalem has ever been a divided city occurred between 1950 and 1967 after East Jerusalem was conquered in 1948 and then unified with Transjordan to form a single territorial entity called Jordan.

During this period:

• The Jewish Quarter of the Old City in East Jerusalem was destroyed and its residents expelled. 
• Fifty-eight synagogues—some hundreds of years old—were destroyed, their contents looted and desecrated. 
• The 2500 years old Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was ransacked; graves desecrated; thousands of tombstones smashed and used as building material, paving stones or for latrines in Arab Legion army camps. 

Jerusalem must never be divided again. 

 Author’s note: The cartoon—commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”—one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators—whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Palestine - Continuing Jew-hatred Must Exact A Heavy Price

[Published 20 November 2014]


The slaughter of four Rabbis with axes, knives and guns whilst praying in a synagogue along with the serious wounding of six other Jews caught in this horrific blood bath — and the murder of a Druze police officer who went to their rescue — is the end result of endemic Jew-hatred:

1. Begun in the 1920 Jerusalem riots
2. Embodied in the 1964 PLO Covenant, and
3. Reinforced in the 1987 Hamas Charter

Arab Jew-hatred has continued unabated for the last 90 years since the Jewish people’s right to self- determination was unanimously endorsed by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter.

Alarm bells warning of this week’s massacre should have sounded loud and clear when American Secretary of State John Kerry visited Israel on 2 January following Israel releasing 26 long term Palestinian Arab prisoners convicted of murder and other serious criminal offences.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presciently told Kerry on that occasion:

“A few days ago in Ramallah, President Abbas embraced [these] terrorists as heroes. To glorify the murders of innocent women and men as heroes is an outrage. How can President Abbas says — how can he say that he stands against terrorism when he embraces the perpetrators of terrorism and glorifies them as heroes? He can’t stand against terrorists and stand with the terrorists. And I’m wondering what a young Palestinian would think when he sees the leader of the Palestinian people embrace people who axed innocent men and women — axed their heads or blew them up or riddled them with bullets — what’s a young Palestinian supposed to think about the future? What’s he supposed to think about what he should do vis-a-vis Israelis and vis-a-vis the state of Israel? So it’s not surprising that in recent weeks Israel has been subjected to a growing wave of terrorist attacks. President Abbas didn’t see fit to condemn these attacks even after we learned that at least in one case — I stress, at least in one case — those who served and are serving in the Palestinian security forces took part in them.”

Among those 26 prisoners released were:

1. Yakoub Muhammad Ouda Ramadan, Afana Mustafa Ahmad Muhammad, and Da’agna Nufal Mahmad Mahmoud — convicted of stabbing Sara Sharon, 37, to death in Holon on January 20, 1993.
2. Abu Mohsin Khaled Ibrahim Jamal — convicted of the ambush and murder of Shlomo Yahya, a 76-year-old gardener, in a public park in Moshav Kadima and stabbing him to death.
3. Barham Fawzi Mustafa Nasser — convicted for the murder of Morris (Moshe) Edri 65 — a former employer of Nasser who Nasser ambushed and stabbed in the back.
4. Muammar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim — convicted of murdering Menahem Stern, a history professor at Hebrew University. Stern, 64, a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize, was stabbed to death while walking to work at the university’s Givat Ram campus on June 22, 1989.
5. Abu Hadir Muhammad Yassin Yassin — convicted for the murder of Yigal Shahaf — shooting him in the head as he and his wife were walking through Jerusalem’s old city toward the Western Wall.

Netanyahu then told Kerry to his face:

“In the six months since the start of peace negotiations, the Palestinian Authority continues its unabated incitement against the state of Israel. This Palestinian Government incitement is rampant. You see it in the state-controlled media — the government-controlled media — in the schools, in textbooks, in kindergartens. You see it at every part of Palestinian society. So instead of preparing Palestinians for peace, Palestinian leaders are teaching them to hate Israel. This is not the way to achieve peace. President Abbas must lead his people away from terror and incitement, towards reconciliation and peace.”

Kerry failed to address this virulent Jew-hatred motivating Palestinian Arabs to murder Jews - ignored the adulation afforded these convicted murderers by Abbas and remained silent on the rampant incitement conducted on a daily basis against Israel.

Instead — Kerry — apparently languishing in a time warp—sought to provide some comforting reassurance for Netanyahu with these incredibly inane remarks:

“On a personal level, last month I travelled to Vietnam on my first visit there as Secretary of State. And the transformation in our relationship—I was a young soldier who fought there—the transformation in our relationship is proof that as painful as the past can be, through hard work of diplomacy history’s adversaries can actually become partners for a new day and history’s challenges can become opportunities for a new age.”

Kerry’s words have turned out to be a massive misjudgement.

It is surely time for America and the European Union especially - and for the rest of the international community generally - to take stock and make clear that:

1. no further financial aid will be given in either Gaza or the West Bank
2. Abbas and his Government will be regarded as persona non-grata

Until:

1. the insidious Jew-hating provisions in the PLO Covenant and Hamas Charter are repealed
2. Government-controlled media and schools excise all references denigrating and demeaning Jews.
3. The PLO is prepared to recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people in any peace agreement signed by Israel and the PLO.

Failure to so act can only see the Jewish-Arab conflict spiralling out of control into a crisis of catastrophic proportions.