"An Intensely Hostile Minority can Generate a Disproportionate Number of Incidents Against a Particular Community"

"[Hate crime counts show how] an intensely hostile minority can generate a disproportionate number of incidents against a particular community even when attitudes toward that community are less negative."

"[Half of Canadians express a negative opinion of Islam] but more than half of that group place themselves in the most negative category."

"[Suggesting attitudes are] not merely characterized by uncertainty or discomfort but are fairly entrenched for more than one in four."

"The biggest change is in views toward Judaism." 

Jack Jedwab, president, Association for Canadian Studies 

Statistics Canada recorded 788 hate crimes targeting Jewish people in 2025, down 16 per cent from 943 a year earlier, but still 71 per cent of all religion-motivated incidents. Photo by Ashley Fraser/Postmedia

 

The results of a new opinion poll, commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies, in a Leger survey, leaves the message that Islam is the most negatively viewed faith in Canada. Even so, public opinion of Judaism was seen to have fallen furthest over a 15-month period, summed up by Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies that "the biggest change is in views toward Judaism."

 

The opinion of twenty-six percent of Canadians was positive for Islam, while 50 percent gave their opinion as negative; more people were negatively disposed toward Islam which in the poll stood out as the only faith tested where  more people expressed negative opinions than positive.  A year earlier the same question saw the split at 30 percent positive, and 49 percent negative for Islam. 

 

On every survey measure, Judaism shifted, with forty percent saying they had a positive (down from 49 percent) and 32 percent claiming a negative opinion (increased from 25 percent). Nine percent noted their opinion of Judaism as very positive, a decrease from 15 percent, while 12 percent called their Judaism opinion very negative, increased from its former eight percent position. For Islam, on the other hand, 28 percent gave their opinion as very negative increased from 24 percent in March of 2025.

 

According to Leger’s latest survey on perceptions of Israel, only 22% of Canadians say they have a favourable impression of Israel. That is down from 33% in 2023. At the same time, unfavourable views have risen sharply, reaching 61%. The findings point to a major deterioration in public sentiment, even as Canadians continue to hold more balanced views on certain underlying principles tied to security, statehood, and coexistence.  Leger

 

788 hate crimes were recorded by Statistics Canada targeting Jewish people in 2025, a decrease of 15 percent from 943 a year earlier. Which still left the position of 71 percent of all religion-motivated incidents targeting people of Jewish extraction. While religion-motivated hate crime fell 18 percent overall to 1,115 incidents and Muslims were targets in 204, a decease of 11 percent. 

"Christianity] is more familiar and elicits a response from a larger share of Canadians."

"[It] consequently has the higher positive rating across the complete sample, but not among respondents who actually express a view."

Jack Jedwab  

In 2023, incidents targeting Jewish people peaked at 959, last year's 788 events being 60 percent above the 492 incidents recorded in 2021. The survey questions posed separately on Jews and Arabs as groups, resulted in 50 percent positive for Jews, 20 points higher than for Judaism, and 44 percent claimed positive for Arabs, as opposed to the 25 percent for Islam. Negative views of Arabs rose to 33 percent from 25 percent in 2025, with negative views of Jews rising two percentage points to 15 percent.

 

Fifty-seven percent of respondents were positive on Christianity, a reduction from the previous 58, while the portion calling for very positive fell six points to 20 percent. On the survey for the first time, Atheism was treated positive by fifty percent, and 29 percent had no opinion. Among Canadians aged 18 to 24, 41 percent were positive for Islam, as opposed to 22 to 25  percent in every other age group. 

 

Among francophone respondents, 15 percent were positive on Islam and 25 percent on Judaism. representing the lowest on both, of any language group. Francophones were the sole group to rate Atheism above Christianity. Judaism sat at 27 percent positive in Quebec, 13 percentage points below the national figure. The online survey reached 1,428 people from June 19 to 21 through an online panel. Sikhism,Hinduism and Buddhism were not among the tested categories. 

 

50% of Canadians Hold a Negative View of Islam. Muslim Network TV

 

"[Antisemitism is producing] an exceptionally high and disproportionate share of religion-motivated criminal incidents."

"[But that] shouldn't diminish the importance of addressing hostility toward all faith communities."

Jack Jedwab, President Association for Canadian Studies 

Sovereign Israel

"The Temple Mount is open to everyone and if Hamas thinks that if it threatens me, it will deter me, let them understand that times have changed."

"No Israeli government that I'm a member of is going to bow to a despicable and murderous terror organization... and if Hamas thinks that I'll be deterred by its threats, it needs to accept that times have changed and that there's a government in Jerusalem."

"The Temple Mount is open to everyone."  

National Security Minister Ben Gvir, Israel

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (left) visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Jan. 3, 2023. Source: Facebook.

Israel has a newly-elected government. Yet another newly-elected government. Headed, once again by its most seasoned politician, a man who has withstood much in the greater interests of promoting Israel's security. This is the third government he will have led. A former military man, he knows that Israel must appear to its neighbours as an invincible, formidable adversary that will respond with the ferocity of existential imperative to their violent incursions in efforts to destroy the tiny geographic parcel representing a tiny proportion of its historical ancestral landmass.

Never again will Jews be trapped by a hostile world without a country, a slice of geography of their own, with their own effective, self-protective military and intelligence services to warn beforehand and to secure its presence against malign usurpation. An ancient people, an ancient land, an ancient culture and its religious devotion to a singular spiritual guide that inspired two other great religions that took from Judaism their guiding principles and values.

Both of which, Christianity and Islam, felt entitled to pick from the sacred scriptures of Judaism, what suited them from their perspectives and in the process spite the source, insisting theirs are the final words of the unifying divinity of humanity. Both institutions reverenced the monotheistic revelation of the Supreme Spirit, while denying the authentic originality of its introduction. And both institutions have traditionally persecuted the original source.

 

Jews refuse to remain a pathetic, friendless ethnic group imploring others to come to their defense, knowing from past experience there will be no saving response. Israel is the response of the global Jewish community to a world indifferent to the plight of Jews when the most barbaric extermination of human life was methodically undertaken to destroy Jewish life, culture, society, memory. A government best positioned to do just that is now viewed by the international community as 'right-wing', an epithet of rejection.

No other national government on the planet is held to the standards that Israel's is. In the General Assembly of the United Nations, the general consensus is that Israel although a legally constituted country returned to claim its ancestral geography, is itself illegal, because the land is contested by those calling themselves indigenous, and taking the identification of nomenclature along with attestations of originality attached to Judaism's ancient cultural, religious, political and socially significant sites.

An Israeli Minister, duly democratically elected, is held to have transgressed by setting foot on Judaism's most sacred site located in the ancient capital of Judean ancestry, within a legally constituted nation. Another religion, one that based itself on Judaism, claims virtual ownership rights to the site located in the Jewish capital. A capital that a group of migrated Arabs who settled from Egypt, Jordan and Syria to call themselves Palestinians, taking that designation too from the original Palestinian Jews as their own.

When Islam was brought to Bedouin Arabs in the 7th Century, its founder Mohammad's armies invaded the Arab Peninsula to force disparate populations of pagans to accept Islam. In the process, in Medina, he approached three Jewish tribes indigenous to the ancient city; the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qainuqa, and the Banu Qurayza. All three refused Mohammad's overtures to reject Judaism and adopt Islam. These indigenous Jewish tribes were punished with violent conflict that massacred their members and exiled others.

Now it is seen as outrageous that Jews, living in Israel, and Jews visiting from abroad, might wish to approach their own most sacred religious site, to pray there. They cannot. When Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan it allowed Jordan to oversee the contested site, the Temple Mount, where the (two iterations) Temple of Solomon once stood, and which Islam names the Noble Sanctuary. There, Muslims may pray, under the Jordan Waqf, but not Jews. It is a dictate of Islam and of the surrounding Muslim-Arab nations.

Arab Muslims in the Middle East, are affronted and infuriated that Jews might mount their most sacred site, the third-most-sacred site in Islam. And because a Jew on a mission to approach his own religion's original sacred site while stating the obvious, that in Israel which is twenty percent non-Jewish, with citizens who are Christian, Muslim, Druze, and other religions no one is constrained from free movement of religious devotion. Why then, should Jews be refused entry to their very own religious site in its own capital, in its own country?

Israel, the Nation State of the Jewish People

Israelis wave Israeli flags as they parade around Jerusalem's Old City on May 24, 2017 to commemorate Jerusalem Day, marking the reunification of the city following the Six-Day War of 1967. (AFP PHOTO / Menahem KAHANA)

"The main problem with the bill is not what is in it but what is missing from it – which is that Israel is democratic and committed to the full equality for all its citizens."
"When the democratic component is missing, rather than strengthen Israel as a Jewish state, it provides ammunition to the enemies of Zionism who want to harm Israel’s right to self-determination."
"There is a real struggle over the soul of Israeli democracy. There has been major success in diluting problematic legislation."
"[The practical impact of the bill was currently merely] symbolic and educational. [It] won’t have immediate concrete implications."
IDI (Israel Democracy Institute) President Yohanan Plesner

"Building a Jewish homeland — through sovereignty, through culture, and through settlement — has always been the core purpose of the country."
"The bottom line is that Israel is the Jewish State, and this law tells us what that means, just as other Basic Laws tell us what goes into its democratic foundations."
David Hazony, founding editor, The Tower magazine

"We are enshrining this important bill into a law today to prevent even the slightest thought, let alone attempt, to transform Israel to a country of all its citizens."
"When I listened attentively to the Joint List MKs, it was impossible to miss their clear words: 'We, the Arabs, will win, we are in our homeland, we were here before you and we’ll be here after you'." "This Basic Law is the clear-cut answer to those who think that and it is clear: You were not here before us and you will not be here after us."
Avi Dichter, Likud party Knesset member, bill sponsor

"A hundred and twenty-two years after [the founder of modern Zionism Theodore] Herzl made his vision known, with this law we determined the founding principle of our existence."
"Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, and respects the rights of all of its citizens."
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu says the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state   AFP

The land of Israel, the country was established with a sound view to recognizing a return of the Jewish people from exodus imposed upon them by the inexorable forces of territorial domination in its ancient history. Banished from the land that give Judaism its presence and purpose, the following millennia were not kind to the existence of Jews who struggled over the ages in various points of the geographic compass to endure the isolation, assaults, hostility and deadly attacks hurled against them by a world unwilling to accommodate their existence.

Jews had never, over the thousands of years that distanced them from their heritage and memory of their homeland, forgotten where they came from. Return was forever in mind, its yearning a healing mindset for those who suffered humiliation, rejection and violence, the hope always there that return was possible and when achieved it would represent salvation from slander, recrimination, threats and mass murder. The price paid before return was deemed possible by the world at large was horribly steep; six million lives for the assent to return to Zion.

Even then, the supreme world body that gave its assent,  divided the land once totally dedicated to the presence of Israelites, offering a slice to be returned, after a majority portion was allotted to Hashemites whom the British Mandate mollified with TransJordan after their ouster from Arabia when it was handed over to the Saudis. The Palestinian settlers on the land, offered an even portion to Israel's refused, fused to the fixation that the entire area was theirs alone. That fixation has never deviated; their continued refusal to recognize a Jewish state in the midst of Arab and Muslim tribal majorities still speaks to their goal.

The State of Israel has a majority Jewish population, diluted with the presence of Arabs, Christians, Druze, Kurds and others all of whom share citizenship and equal rights. The Palestinian Authority has made it quite clear that not only would they never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, nor would they ever permit the presence of a single Jew living among them within a proposed sovereign Palestinian state. Yet there are elected Arab members of the Israeli Knesset who in concert act in opposition to Jewish interests in a Jewish land that offers equality rights to all.

Israel remains a nation spurned by those whose values, culture and politics it shares in Europe who, despite Palestinian terrorism inflicted on Jews throughout the past 70 years view Israel as an 'occupier' for its forced position of military defence against a neighbouring population invested in its destruction. The move by the government of Israel to finally install formally into state law the prevailing reality that Israel is a Jewish state -- was meant to be one and has always been one that accepted within its borders a pluralist presence -- alters nothing.

The reality is that Jewishness reflects the purpose of the state. Its language is Hebrew, though it gives special considerate status to Arabic spoken by close to 20% of its population. Terrorist attacks by Palestinians against Israeli Jews accompanied the original declaration of Israel's re-founding in 1948, and the focus on 'resistance' of the 'occupation' has never deviated; threats and attacks continue, from rockets fired across from Gaza, to infiltration by Arabs into Jewish settlements to murder Jews -- to the PA authorities inciting the populace to violence and rewarding them for their efforts.

Jews have been existentially challenged for thousands of years, and those challenges continue without abatement. What better way to respond than to declare themselves in final possession of their ancestral geography from which they will never more be evacuated under violent force? Despised simply because of their ethnic origins and religious devotion, customs and traditions, the world has always been an unfriendly place for Jews. Now, back in their homeland, the world, both close by and at a distance, continues to view Jews and Israel with cynical skepticism.

At home, within themselves, psychologically secure, Israelis long accustomed to their role as strangers in the outside world, are not strangers in their inner world. Israel's ethnonationalistic existence is sound and reflective of its existential need. A quote from the nation's foundational text reflecting the United Nations' General Assembly recognition of Israel "is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State".

So it is. So be it.

The opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. (photo credit: Ilan Ben Zion/Times of Israel staff)

 

"A Fire With No End In Sight"

"I call on everyone to act logically, respect the agreements they signed and behave reasonably, avoid risking world peace for domestic politics or other reasons,"
"Declaring Jerusalem a capital is disregarding history and the truths in the region, it is a big injustice/cruelty, shortsightedness, foolishness/madness, it is plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight." 
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag

"The Palestinians will walk away until it’s in their interests to come back — which is probably in a month."
"First, he [President Trump] should say rioters are never going to have veto power on American foreign policy. The threat that there will be violence cannot control what an American president decides."
"Second, Trump should say that his decision that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel does not foreclose any particular outcome in peace negotiations."
"Whatever else Jerusalem may be some day, the capital of a Palestinian state for example, it will always be the capital of Israel, so I think he should argue the merits. This decision closes no door."
"The Saudi foreign minister is not about to fly to Jerusalem and speak to the Knesset anyway, so I don’t think much is lost. Again, these governments will do what it is in their interests, the Gulf states are interested in working with Israel on military and intelligence matters, and the same is true of Egypt, especially when it comes to the situation in Sinai."
"There will be speeches, there will be demonstrations, but then they will do what they need to do. Several presidents in a row promised the same thing, and were then dissuaded by threats of violence, and arguments from the State Department about how the Arab world would react."
"State will always make those arguments [for caution]. I think this president has finally said that the rioters don’t get a veto."
Elliot Abrams, former U.S. diplomat, foreign policy expert, former deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech, Dec. 6, 2017, during a diplomatic conference organized by daily Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post focused on Israel's security and economic ties with countries globally, in Jerusalem. Getty

"This is a historic day. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years. It’s been the capital of Israel for nearly 70 years. It was here that our temples stood, our kings ruled, our prophets preached."
"Jerusalem has been the focus of our hopes, our dreams, our prayers for three millennia. From every corner of the earth, our people yearned to return to Jerusalem, to touch its golden stones, to walk its hallowed streets. So it’s rare to be able to speak of new and genuine milestones in the glorious history of this city."
"Yet today’s pronouncement by President Trump is such an occasion. We’re profoundly grateful for the president for his courageous and just decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to prepare for the opening of the U.S. embassy here. This decision reflects the president’s commitment to an ancient but enduring truth, to fulfilling his promises and to advancing peace."
"The president’s decision is an important step towards peace, for there is no peace that doesn’t include Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. I call on all countries that seek peace to join the United States in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move their embassies here."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Associated Press    Palestinians demonstrating their fond regard for U.S. President Donald Trump

That tiny, minuscule sliver of land in the Middle East, surrounded by the hostile nations of Arab and Muslim populations, enraged at the prospect of a Jewish State in their midst reasserting their historical heritage place in the region, restoring to themselves their ancient capital of Jerusalem contested over thousands of years, and finally recognized by the United States as the first in the world order of nations to 'do the right thing' and accept the reality of the presence of Israel, of its right to claim what is theirs.

Turkey, apoplectic with white-hot rage over this recognition has called an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Has the United Nations Security Council ever sat in judgement of Turkey's incursion into Greek Cyprus, claiming the island for Turkey? Or solemnly deplored that Turkey refuses to acknowledge its genocidal massacre of Armenians? Let alone brought Turkey to account for its persecution of the vast Kurdish population, languishing to achieve world recognition that its thirty million people be recognized a nation with their timeless historical geography restored as a whole?

The international community has allowed itself to fall victim to the fantasy that Palestinians, mostly Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs who conveniently appropriated the title of Palestinians from the local ancient Jewish population it had always described, are the rightful inheritors of historically geographical Jewish areas of the Middle East from which the Jews were driven into exile elsewhere in the Middle East and across the globe twice, in antiquity. Jerusalem, the eternal, undivided capital of Israel has fallen victim to claims by the Arab and Muslim world that it is theirs to dispose of.

Again, appropriation by the Palestinians that the city, the ancient city of Biblical David and Solomon is theirs by inheritance. All the ancient Biblical-era shrines to the prophets of Judea have been appropriated by the Palestinians, declaring them to be their heritage shrines. Archaeological evidence of ancient Judean presence on the land has been summarily set aside as irrelevant as the United Nations and UNESCO acclaim Jewish traditions, ancestral lands and symbols and Judaism's sacred shrines as Palestinian in origin.

Universally, the United States and its president have been cautioned, warned, criticized, that to proceed with his intention to declare recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, albeit stepping aside the issue of East Jerusalem, would be tantamount to burying the prospect of peace and an agreement to mutually, between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, recognize one another and commit to separate states living alongside one another. This is another myth conveyed to the outside world, that the Palestinians would be prepared to set aside their violent rancour and abide by a peace agreement.

Their constant incitements to violence among Palestinians, their promises that the land they claim Israel has taken from the rightful ownership of the Palestinians would be returned to Palestinian rule and Israel destroyed, alongside their culture of martyrdom and violence should have long since sufficed to demonstrate just how sincere they are about arriving at a peace agreement with Israel. One such agreement after another has been rejected by the Palestinians, more than amply proving that they are not and will never be prepared to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish State.

Claiming, now that President Trump has officially spoken on behalf of the United States, to declare recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, that he has destroyed the peace process is an exercise in blatant and typically manipulative hypocrisy; the Palestinians have themselves long since destroyed the peace process. It continues to exist as a phantom, never to be exercised much less brought to fruition. But as a handy excuse, it has its uses.

Shame on those who stand on the sidelines and continue to express their unwillingness to recognize the reality of Jerusalem as Israel's capital; from UN Secretary-General Guterres, to France's Emmanuel Macron, Pope Francis, and Jean-Claude Juncker of the EU and Canada's Trudeau. Much honour to the Czech Republic which has announced its intention to be the second nation in the world to recognize the reality of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

A capital where the world religions who have their sacred presence there will be assured of complete access and neutrality under the aegis of Israel, unlike the situation that prevailed when Jordan illegally annexed to itself the guardianship of East Jerusalem, refusing to allow Jews to enter its precincts, forcibly ejecting Jews from their homes there where they had lived for thousands of years before the creation of Islam, and where under Jordanian rule Judaism's most sacred sites became off limits to Jews.

De-Heritaging Israel

"[There should arise] a new day at the United Nations, where there is a price to pay for discrimination against Israel."
"UNESCO has become a battlefield for Israel bashing and has disregarded its true role and purpose."
Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon

"[The decision was made by the United States to remove its support for UNESCO is linked to] the unfortunate politicization of the mandate of UNESCO, where anti-Israel bias has been a major factor and something the United States has been struggling to address."
U.S. charge d'affaires and U.S. representative to UNESCO, Chris Hegadorn

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France. Photo: UNESCO

"Universality is critical to UNESCO's mission to strengthen international peace and security in the face of hatred and violence, to defend human rights and dignity."
"This is all the more true today, when the rise of violent extremism and terrorism calls for new long-term responses for peace and security, to counter racism and antisemitism, to fight ignorance and discrimination."
"UNESCO will continue to work for the universality of this Organization, for the values we share, for the objectives we hold in common, to strengthen a more effective multilateral order and a more peaceful, more just world."
UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova

The director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Lebanon, Ann Dismorr, poses with a map devoid of any trace of the State of Israel, instead presenting it as a map of "Palestine," May 2013. (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch)

While Irina Bokova expresses her profound dismay in an exercise of righteous sanctimony, she and the arm of the UN she headed were complicit in rewarding the Palestinian Authority which incites to violence against Israel and Jews by confiscating Jewish heritage and awarding it to Palestinians. The sacred heritage sites of Jews throughout ancient history have suddenly been usurped by claims made by Palestinians that those sites are unique to Arab Palestinians not Jews and Israel and those claims were honoured by UNESCO, dishonouring UNESCO.

So much for the defence of human rights and dignity; awarded to those whose presence and actions though morally indefensible, have the benefit of support in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Unaligned Bloc of nations placing their clout where it defames and delegitimizes Israel, depriving it of its heritage. So much for universality and respect, and values shared, for commonly held objectives, all of which appear to focus on lashing Israel with contempt for its very survival.

And if this is the way that UNESCO sees itself clear to supporting and defending a more peaceful, just world, it inhabits an entirely other reality than that most clear to logic and the study of history. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization whose purpose is meant to protect cultural sites and traditions through its World Heritage program has succeeded in aiding and abetting malevolent forces seeking to drive Israel out of existence; not only through physical attacks but by denying its historical heritage and ownership of its own sacred Judaic sites.

The legitimacy of the historical occurrence of the Holocaust is bandied about, and now the very reliability of that ancient document of Judaic monotheistic belief and history, the Old Testament which in its scribal testimony describes Judaic heritage, its prophets and its principle figures of authority, along with its geographic sites of sacred memory. In short, UNESCO has lent itself to the effort to destroy Jewish heritage links to Israel itself, transferring the historical impact to Arab Palestinians in one fell and false swoop of iniquity.

Welcoming "Palestine", a state which does not yet exist, as a member of UNESCO with all member rights and privileges in 2011 was but the prelude to the carnage to Israeli heritage yet to come. UNESCO itself as an arm of the United Nations has inherited the same anti-Semitic bias that runs rife through the international institution pledged to the advancement of peace and world stability, some of whose most influentially powerful members are base human-rights abusers accusing others of what they themselves practise.

On July 7, UNESCO voted for a resolution defining the Old City of Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs as Palestinian heritage sites. Before that, in 2016, two resolutions making the same type of counterfactual assertions concerning the Old City of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall were adopted. And the year before that, in 2015, UNESCO again upended history to rename two ancient biblical sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, Islamic holy sites -- even though Islam did not even exist at that time."
"The Palestinian Authority (PA), which aspires to replace Israel with itself, is behind the resolutions on Jerusalem and Hebron and plays a key role in the transformation of UNESCO. The PA has constantly advocated and supported terrorism and has never stopped wanting to destroy Israel. Allowing the PA to have entered UNESCO is now having serious consequences."
"That the Muslim world supports the transformation of UNESCO and the resolutions proposed by the Palestinian Authority is predictable. Many Muslim countries directly or indirectly finance terrorism and approve the PA's genocidal goals. A large part of the Muslim world mentally lives in a parallel reality, in which a seventh century "Muslim history" of the world replaces the factual history of the world. The Muslim world considers itself in a conflict with the Western world, and sees Israel as a Western enclave to be excised or at least suppressed."
"That Third World countries also support the transformation of UNESCO and these resolutions is also predictable. Many Third World countries are imbued with an anti-Western resentment that leads them to conclude that that they are in a conflict with the West and must therefore support decisions taken by the countries of the Muslim world."
Dr. Guy Millière, professor of French literature, University of Paris

Jerusalem, Israel's Indivisible Capital

"No way. Why is this your business? This is an area that is in dispute, the Western Wall is not Israeli territory and is located in the West Bank."
"This is Trump's show; all the rest are extras, including Prime Minister Netanyahu."
U.S. White House spokesman

"These comments, if true, were not authorized by the White House."
"They do not reflect the U.S. position, and certainly not the President's position."
White House official

"No Israeli leaders [will be permitted to accompany Trump to the Western Wall]."
"He's going to the Western Wall mainly in connection with the theme to connect three of the world's great religions ... and to highlight the theme that we all have to be united against the enemies of all civilized people."
H.R. McMaster, Trump National Security Adviser

Psalms 137:5-6, “If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy.”  Indeed, Jerusalem is mentioned 349 times by name in the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, demonstrating its centrality to Judaism

How cavalier is that? Pretty well on a par with the United Nations' UNESCO (Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), guided by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation declaring three consecutive resolutions that there is no "legal validity" to Israel's historical heritage claim to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (Western Wall/Wailing Wall), all that is left of the historical Temple(s) of Solomon dating to 957 B.C.E., the one destroyed by the Babylonians who laid sack to Jerusalem and slaughtered almost a million Jews in 586 B.C.E.

The Jewish population of ancient Israel was scattered into forced exile. In 538 B.C.E. Jews were given permission by Cyrus the Great to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in its second iteration. In the year 70 of the Christian Era, the Roman Emperor Vespasian responded to Jewish refusal to obey the edicts of Rome, sending his son Titus to sack and destroy the second Temple. And once  again the Jews were sent into exile, the great diaspora where Jews were scattered around the world, though some Jewish presence always remained in Jerusalem.

By the 7th Century Islam was founded, based by the Prophet Mohammad on the tenets and sacred writings and the prophets of the Old Testament of Judaism and on Christianity. When Muslim rule prevailed, the Muslim caliph ordered an Islamic shrine to be constructed over the ruins of the Second Temple, where the Dome of the Rock sits, since 691 C.E. The al-Aqsa Mosque dates from roughly the same period, standing in the courtyard of the ancient Temple. To deny Jewish claims on its own heritage is a sacrilege of history.

When Donald J. Trump was running for President of the United States, as unlikely then as it appeared that he would succeed, he boasted that he was prepared to recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish state, Israel reborn. Now, he is on the cusp of a visit to the Holy Land, to travel to Israel, to Saudi Arabia, and to the Vatican; touching as it were, the three major religions of the world rooted in Abrahamic memory as their founder. At the same time, purportedly focusing on the conflict with violent Islam. But violent Islam is, in fact, Islam; Muslims are enjoined by their sacred texts to engage in jihad. And they do.

In meeting with the Saudi king, even Donald J. Trump would not suggest he be permitted to visit Mecca, which by Islamist decree is forbidden entry to any but Muslims. Yet this man who understands history as little as he understands diplomacy, integrity and honesty plans to visit the ancient wall, all that is left standing of the most sacred symbol of Judaism, restraining the nation's Prime Minister from accompanying him. It is as though Prime Minister Netanyahu, visiting Washington, made an official appearance at the Lincoln Memorial, forbidding Trump to be present.

Denying History, Depriving Judaism of its Foundational Heritage

"The Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic expresses its firm opposition to a resolution approved by the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO that denies the historical link between the Jewish people and the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem."
119 of 149 Czech lawmakers protested the UNESCO resolution denying historic links between Jews and their holy sites

Jews worshipping at the Western Wall [Wailing wall] in the Old City of Jerusalem

Mexico, one of the 24 countries that voted in favour of the resolution, saw its ambassador withdraw in protest at his country's decision to vote in favour. Six nations, including the United States, Germany and Britain, voted against the resolution brought forward by Arab countries on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and another 26 abstained. Abstaining because they have no opinion on the matter of historical revisionism, denying a nation the heritage of its well-recorded sacred symbols of historical Judaism?

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and chairman of the UNESCO Executive Board Michael Worbs expressed their personal dismay at the deliberate slaughter of truth and reality in a rank political move to discredit history for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel and with it, worldwide Jewry, through this cynical move to deprive a people and a religion of its time and place in history, denying its very existence, so completely intertwined with its singular religious identity.

Irina Bokova stated unequivocally that she personally understands and recognizes the sanctity of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall to the Jewish people, and she spoke of a number of UNESCO activities whose declared and obvious purpose was to support and acknowledge the obvious; Judaism’s primary link to the land of of their forefathers in Israel. At the same time she acknowledged the further harm done to the multi-faith reality of Jerusalem in this denial of history which can only, she stressed, harm UNESCO.

Her statements have earned her vicious threats to her personal safety.

Board chairman Michael Worbs of Germany, attempted to redeem the situation by rescheduling the ratification of the declaration to be voted upon at a later date, while expressing his own opposition to the wording of the document, expunging descriptive identification of the most sacred sites to Judaism in favour of linking the areas solely with Palestinians who did not even exist when historical Jerusalem and the Temples of Solomon occupied the site of the Temple Mount.

Denial by Arab Muslims that the site of the Temple Mount ever held a Judaic temple of huge renown and historical documentation, stressing that the site only ever had a Muslim connection in a religion that also did not exist until it was constructed into existence by the Prophet Mohammad in the seventh century, is simply typical of the Islamic way of denying any religion other than Islam, and scornfully building their own sites of worship over the ruins of other religions' sites, or transforming them into Islamic mosques as though another focus relating to an earlier religion never existed.

Unfortunately for Israel, the whipping goat of the United Nations and all of its various world body arms including UNESCO, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is always alert to ensure that Muslim initiatives, Islamic 'honour' always be upheld against any other entities or groups who might imagine themselves to be entitled to equal consideration in any matter of public uncertainty or dispute. The influence of the Islamic clique on the Non-Aligned Nations in the UN has moved the world body from its original purpose to a single-purpose body to advance Islamic interests against all others, and particularly Israel.

When the Arab nations backing the motion understood that Chairman Worbs meant to intervene on behalf of truth and fairness and in a bid to rescue UNESCO from complete and utter discreditation, unbearable pressure was placed on the Board chairman who then felt he had no option but to recuse himself, suspending himself from chairing the meeting, as would normally occur. His replacement will be by Swedish ambassador Annika Markovic, a nation that seems to see no reason at any time not to betray the reality of Israeli existence.

And so it was that a UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization whose purpose is to promote "humanity's moral and intellectual solidarity" encompassing universal education for children along with "intercultural understanding" and the support of "world heritage" sites of universal value, chose, when it welcomed the Palestinian Authority into observer status as a semi-member, to circumvent its own purpose and reason for existence.

As far as UNESCO is concerned, through this complete abdication of their purpose and the acknowledgement of historical connections relating to heritage and pride, Judaism's most sacred sites have been coopted by the Palestinians whose leadership also claims Christ to have been a Palestinian, though the Palestinians never existed at that critical time that gave birth to Christianity. The Jewish sites that Judaism holds sacred to the memory of their forebears are henceforth recognized by UNESCO as Palestinian.

This is, of course, in complete accord to Islamic precepts, a religion which recognizes no religion other than Islam, which holds that any ground once consecrated to Islam may never surrender to the claims of any other religion, even if that religion vastly predated Islam. That UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon upheld the Temple Mount as "the holiest place in Judaism", represents an effort on his part to retain some vestige of honour for himself personally, even as another UN body, like the infamous Human Rights Council, surrenders its purpose to abusive corruption.


Jewish men, draped in prayer shawls, take part in the Cohanim prayer during Passover at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, Israel, April 25, 2016.   Menahem Kahana, AFP

Human Frailty and Orthodoxy

"I understand that I am sick and needy, and I don’t want to continue to be a burden on you."
"Don’t make much effort for the ceremony, something modest with a lot of flowers, and remember that this is what I chose as best for me, and also if you say that I am selfish, I accept and understand your lack of understanding."
Esti Weinstein, 50, mother of seven, former Hasidic community member

Esti Weinstein, a formerly ultra-Orthodox woman who committed suicide in June 2016 -- Times of Israel

That she married at 17 is not such a big deal, that it was an arranged marriage, a ritual of an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect whose members are not free to act on impulse as human beings are wont to do, but are instead restrained from behaving as individuals with free will, is something else again. The rigid hierarchy and permitted customs of fundamentalists is inimical to satisfaction with life. Following such a rigid pattern is a kind of pathology where people are reduced to robotic status.

The restraints that the ultra-religious orthodoxy places on its members represent a mass psychosis, a denial of humanity, a collective agreement to exalt god by sacrificing one's individuality to a prescribed way of life where much is forbidden that represents normalcy to others not held in the thrall of groupthink and groupaction and groupfealty. It is in human nature to wish to be part of a social group, to be included, not excluded.

But the ultra-orthodox represent a very exclusive club indeed. Roman and Eastern Orthodox Catholicism is that to a degree, whose sacred texts obligate the faithful to specific doctrine and precepts. Much relaxed in rigidity, however, over the centuries. Islam has become infinitely more doctrinal and rigid rather than the opposite over the past century, breeding a debased humanity that views martyrdom and death as representing the highest pinnacle of faith.

And there are others like Seventh Day Adventists and Doukhobors and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Taliban, Wahhabism and Boko Haram, to name a few, who represent religious fundamentalism. What they all have in common, it seems, is the degradation of women who are viewed as inferior and totally dependent on the whims of men who use and abuse them, while insisting through church law that they be unassuming, virginal and suppress their sexuality.

The woman quoted above left her marriage because as a female who had grown up in one of Israel's largest Hasidic sects, she found it wanting, too draining of her humanity. Her unhappy marriage and her seven children aside, she yearned for liberty. But even while establishing a loving relationship with another man, her abandonment of her marriage resulting in an absolute estrangement from six of her children though a seventh followed her out of the orthodox fold, caused her so much pain she took her life.

Before she did, she wrote a manuscript detailing many of the closed community's practices and customs. Her sect, the Gur community, restrained sex between married partners to once or twice monthly to dampen sexual cravings in favour of reaching a higher spiritual plane. On all occasions sensuality was to be avoided, and so physical contact took place only on those several monthly occasions, and nor, evidently was verbal intimacy contemplated.

The ultra-Orthodox religious groups in Israel view biblical contemplation, prayer and pious manners, not physical labour to earn a living as imperatives. While they typically have large broods, they also typically live at or below the poverty line, requiring the state intervention of welfare. Their intention is to remain separate from the rest of society, not to defile themselves by contact with the impure. Military service in Israel, compulsory for all, is rejected by them.

They represent a growing community; at present they are over ten percent of the Jewish population of Israel, and will reach 200 percent in an estimated dozen years. This is a far stretch from the secular majority of Israel, particularly far from its founding and its spirit of pioneer egalitarianism. The changing face of Israel appears, in some measure, to reflect the changing face of religion in the Middle East where fundamentalism has gained ground even as human rights' obligations have diminished.

What does distinguish Israel from all of its neighbours, however, is its dedication to human rights even within an uneasy and fraught geography where the nation lives within a history of violent military and religious attacks upon its right of existence. It cannot afford to be intolerant of the Hasidim living within its embrace; its purpose of existence, the very security and care of all Jews of all beliefs and origins mitigates against it.

Freinds and family attend the funeral of Esti Weinstein at the Yarkon cemetery in Tel Aviv, June 28, 

2016. (Avi Dishi/Flash90)

Mohammed's Synagogue

"The story I knew was that the Jews were happy to leave the Arab countries the moment they were given the opportunity to do so. We were not told anything about the Jews’ deep connection with Arab culture, for example. It was only later that I learned that Jewish writers were the foundation of Iraqi literature. And that in mid-19th-century Egypt, the man who invented the nationalist slogan ‘Egypt for the Egyptians,’ and was known as ‘the Egyptian Molière,’ was a Jew named Jacob Sanua."
"In the course of my research I found out that the story we had been told – that the Jews left the Arab countries because they were Zionists – was for the most part wrong. True, they had an affinity for the Land of Israel – that is certainly correct – but the organized Zionist movement was very weak in the Arab countries. The great mass of Jews left under duress. They were expelled. They were subjected to such enormous pressure that they had no choice but to leave."
"This is the story of a tragedy, of the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Mizrahi Jews, who were torn cruelly from their homes and homelands. Whole communities of Jews, who had always resided in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, underwent expulsion, persecution and malicious liquidations… Nevertheless, this drama remains unknown and it has been denied for a lengthy period."
Nathan Weinstock, 70, historian, Nice, France  -- author of A Very Long Presence: How the Arab World Lost Its Jews, 1947-1967

Jihad Al-Mohammed in his home in Saida. When he moved in, the centuries-old building was abandoned, but it used to be a Jewish synagogue. Credit: Rebecca Collard

"But it was filled with rats and garbage [when he first moved into his house]. So I cleaned it up."
"And then tourists started coming by and asking to see my home. That's when I realized what this was."
"They came [from the U.S., Canada and Europe] and prayed here."
Jihad Al-Mohammed, Sidon, Lebanon

He was looking for a place to live and  he found an old abandoned building located in south Lebanon, in the old city of Sidon. This was in 1990, when the Lebanese civil war had ended and the Palestinian refugees who had taken shelter in the venerable structure had departed. The garbage and rats that Mohammed discovered the building full of, resulted from the shelter use that had been made of the structure by the Palestinian squatters.

Jihad Al-Mohammed came to Lebanon from Syria, looking for employment, searching for a place to live. When he saw the building he wasn't impressed. There were many other buildings in the old city that looked similar to this one, with high domed ceilings and arches and marble floors. But he moved in, he cleaned it up, and he apparently didn't focus on the Jewish stars on the walls. Someone had evidently painted over the Hebrew letters.

The marble floors are now covered with carpets, but above them on the walls, high up, are those Stars of David. "This used to be a place of Jewish worship", Mr. Mohammed tells a visitor. He lived in the building for ten years before he came to the tardy realization that he was living in a synagogue. Some residents living nearby spoke of the area as "Haret al-Yahud", the Jewish Quarter. But it wasn't until tourists started showing up, looking to see the building, that it occurred to him it was a synagogue.

Jihad Al-Mohammed in his kitchen. He has a flat screen TV and a WiFi router where the synagogue used keep its Torah scrolls.  Photo: Rebecca Collard

 

The building has been divided by him into different chambers resulting in bedrooms for his children, another for him and his wife, and a kitchen and living room where once faithful congregants gathered to worship in what was for them the main area of the synagogue. Now, a flat-screen television and Wi-Fi router sits where the Torah scrolls were kept, once. Cables cross the arches, in a pattern. Paint covers the wall's Hebrew lettering.

A Jewish school was located a few streets away from Mohammed's home. A man by the name of Nagi Georges Zeidan researched the history of the Jews of Lebanon and is in the process of writing a book detailing that history where Sidon once had a thriving Jewish community for over two thousand years. "In 1974, there were still 1,500 Jews living in Saida [Sidon], said Mr. Zeidan.

The synagogue of Saida, circa 1970. The city used to have a thriving Jewish population.

Courtesy of Nagi Georges Zeidan

When the civil war broke out and violence ensued, the last of the remaining Jewish families fled. Mr. Zeidan points to a two-story stone building, on the edge of the old city, nearby the sea. "That was the Levy house", he said, where the Levy family, the last Jewish family in Sidon had lived. They left the only land they knew early in 1980 and it was then that the synagogue was abandoned, after millennia of Jewish history.

People still often knock on the door of Mohammed's synagogue, his home. The ancient house of worship is in the process of decay. Bits of the walls and ceiling detach and fall continually; the blue paint hiding the Hebrew characters on the walls is peeling. But Mohammed doesn't think of leaving. His plans are to remain as long as he is permitted to. And while he's there, inhabiting his synagogue, visitors are welcome to come around, he says.

Two rabbis visited Jihad al-Mohammed's home in 2012, and prayed there.

Courtesy of Jihad al-Mohammed

One parting thought: parse that name: Jihad al-Mohammed

The Legitimacy Debate on Israel's Right of Existence

"As Arabs, we are very adept at demanding that our human rights be respected, at least when we live in liberal democracies such as in North America, Europe, and Israel. But what about when it comes to our respecting the human rights of others, particularly Jews?"
"When we examine our attitude towards Jews, both historically and at present, we realize that it is centered on denying Jews the most fundamental human right, the right without which no other human right is relevant: the right to exist."
"Anti-Zionists often repeat the claim that before modern Israel, Jews were able to live in peace in the Middle East, and that it is the establishment of the State of Israel that created Arab hostility towards Jews. That is a lie."
"Before modern Israel, as the historian Martin Gilbert wrote, "Jews held the inferior status of dhimmi, which, despite giving them protection to worship according to their own faith, subjected them to many vexatious and humiliating restrictions in their daily lives." As another historian, G.E. von Grunebaum, wrote, Jews in the Middle East faced "a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms."
"Anti-Zionists claim that Jews are imperialists in the Middle East, as were the British and the French, and like them, they should leave and go back to where they belong. This analogy is of course not true: Jews have an even longer history in the Middle East than do Muslims or Arabs."
"Do Jews belong in Europe, which tried only a few decades ago to kill every Jew, man, woman, or child? Do Jews belong in North America where until a few hundred years ago, there were no Europeans, only Indians?"
"Saying that Jews "belong" in such places is not reality; it is just a convenient claim for anti-Zionists to make."
Fred Maroun, The Gatestone Institute

In May 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion expelled all of the approximately 2000 Jews who lived in the Old City of Jerusalem, and then turned the Jewish Quarter into rubble.

The pernicious lies and the slanders characterizing the Jewish presence in the Middle East as a recent phenomenon with the Jews as interlopers intent on destroying the hopes and aspirations of Arab Palestinians to secure their own futures where a Jewish historical presence has always existed have succeeded in persuading the international community for whom no slander is too unbelievable as long as it is directed against Jews, that Zionism is evil, a form of unforgivable apartheid.

Islam is a worldwide religion whose progenitor borrowed heavily from Judaism to define, a religion that was meant to appeal to the tribal and cultural heritage of Bedouin peoples in the Middle East. And it was spread primarily not by the force of its spiritual appeal, but by force itself, through the violent conquest of the scimitar. The Prophet Mohammad himself, a middle-aged businessman, had a vision of religion as a unifying force of the Arab Bedouin.

The appeal of monotheism drew him, as did many of the prophets of a much earlier age than his own, and the sacred principles attributed to the Jewish god's demands of the faithful also appealed to him; in essence a partially-ready-made religion with alterations reflecting tribal, clan honour, convincing the faithful drawn from opposing tribes that they would do better to direct their spleen against outsiders while welcoming the brotherhood of Islam.

But Muhammad's plan was one of total usurpation, to convince Judeans that their faith had been upgraded not by the divine messenger that Muhammad claimed to be as the servant of god, but by direct orders of that supreme being who had personally chosen him to deliver the final message of the monotheistic religion having attained its completed state. As such Muhammad demanded what he expected, that the Jewish tribes would capitulate to his superior rendition and submit, relegating Judaism to the ephemera of history.

Jewish tribes lived in what is now the second-most sacred place recognized in Islam. The Qurayza tribes were Jews known to inhabit Medina, their homeland. Judaism had been well established for thousands of years at that point. When the Qurayza Jews refused Mohammad's invitation to set aside their 'practise-rehearsal-temporary' form of monotheism and embrace Islam, the response was deadly. The men were slaughtered, along with Jewish boys, while Jewish women were taken as slaves.

Nothing much has changed since. Traditionally, since the 7th Century when Islam was introduced and the faithful were induced to submit to their obligation to jihad (which was what Mohammad's army had inflicted upon the recalcitrant Jews) as the primary method of prosetylization, there were three ways that Muslims could view their obligation to jihad; permit non-Muslims to continue practising their 'Abrahamic' religion, Judaism or Christianity as long as they paid the taxes involved (jizya), or obligingly hear out supplicants to life state "There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger", thereby converting to Islam, or to kill the non-believers.

For Jews, throughout history, survival has been fraught with one episode after another of attempts to destroy the tribes constituting an ethnicity and a religion with a common tradition and heritage. Jews were long established in the Middle East, not only in lands considered to be Judean, but in other areas as well, geographic places like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, among others. Although living for the most part on 'tolerance' as a people held to be inferior, life persisted. The diaspora, with the destruction of the Temple(s) of Solomon first by the Babylonians (Iraq), then by the Romans, led to the dispersal of Jews globally.

Throughout Europe Jews settled, and there they continued to be persecuted. Life was one series after another of humiliations, attacks, truncated entitlements, pogroms. Little wonder that Jews mourned after their exile from the Middle East, and yearned for their return, while singing the praises of Jerusalem, the centre of their existence and the worship of Judaism that persisted against all odds through the millennia, the dream of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon sustaining them in their times of travail.

When the Holocaust occurred, demolishing the hope of continued complete integration into Europe, little wonder that Zionism developed, when Jews foresaw no future for themselves anywhere in the world, living under the constant threat of persecution and eventual annihilation. A return to the Holy Land where Judaism first was established and Jews lived on land not only consecrated to Judaism, but historically their own was seen as the absolute and required response to intolerance elsewhere. Existentialism led to Zionism.

Israel is where Jews were meant to be sheltered from the incessant storms of revile and hatred, slander and attack. Where the nation would be safe, and capable of defending itself from future catastrophes. And where, when the aspiring nation declared itself in existence, the hateful wrath of the surrounding Arab states descended in an effort to complete what the Third Reich had left unfinished. Although Israel succeeded in fending off one destructive attack after another, its right to exist has never been affirmed by the outside world.

The physical state militias have abated, but their place has been taken by the non-state militias whose terrorist tactics reflect what the Koran mandates in its faithful. And where the physical attacks of the terrorists have failed to exact maximum damage on a scale satisfying to their intentions, the ongoing game of slander and efforts to convince merely conventional anti-Semitism that seeps out of every dark corner have succeeded to a degree through de-legitimizing Israel in the United Nations.

The world of Islam has invaded the world of the West. There are now multitudes of Muslims from every corner of Earth -- where majority Muslim states exist to torment their own and send them for protection from the state elsewhere as haven-seekers and refugees -- inhabiting Europe and North America. And they have brought with them their detestation of Jews, as Muslims holding Jews accountable for all the ills of their own societies' failings. Jews are pilloried in Europe, led by the plaints of Muslims characterizing Palestinians as victims and Jews as occupiers of their own land.

The power and influence of Arab and Muslim groups in the international community and particularly in the United Nations, against the existence of one tiny state dedicated to the continued existence on Earth of a small minority of people, is enormous. That influence has led to a situation where power espouses the view that Jews do not belong in the Middle East. Muslims have exported their virulent hatred and spite to non-Muslim geographies with that same message. Extended somewhat to the point where Jews can no longer find safe haven even in the countries of Europe where they have lived for hundreds of years?

No place for Jews to be safe and secure anywhere in the world? It's beginning to look increasingly that way. And the United Nations, the very international forum priding itself on upholding human rights and striving for world peace, is sanguine.

Mr. Maroun, a righteous Arab of Lebanese descent can have the last word:
"Everyone, however, despite the treacherous UNESCO's rewriting of history, knows that before that piece of land was called the West Bank, it was called Judea and Samaria for more than two thousand years."
"Everyone knows that Hebron contains the traditional burial site of the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs, within the Cave of the Patriarchs, and it is considered the second-holiest site in Judaism. Every reasonable person knows that Jews should unquestionably have the right to exist on that land, even if it is under Arab or Muslim jurisdiction. Yet everyone also knows that no Arab regime is capable or even willing to protect the safety of Jews living under its jurisdiction from the anti-Semitic hatred that emanates from the Arab world."
"East Jerusalem, which was carved away by the Kingdom of Jordan from the rest of Jerusalem during the war of independence, is part of Jerusalem, and contains the Temple Mount, the Jews' holiest site. The Old City in East Jerusalem was inhabited by Jews up until they were ethnically cleansed by Jordan in the war of 1948-1949."

The Nobility of Purpose in Deceitful Slander

"What BDS wants is to make life in Israel intolerable so the Jewish nation will not be able to have a normal existence. BDS does not only want to change the government's policy, it wants to empty the country of Jews."
"Most of us [Friends of Israel Initiative] are not Jewish, but we share the vision. When defending Israel we are defending the West. We are defending our way of life and values, and also our interests."
"It is unfair and unthinkable for Israel to sign an agreement with a [nascent] state [Palestinian Authority] that refuses to acknowledge the Jewish state's right to exist."
former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar

"The following students and faculty at UC Santa Barbara have allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus."
"Jew haters on other campuses are going to wake up some morning soon and see their pictures on posters holding them responsible for their anti-Semitic thoughts and deeds."
David Horowitz, Horowitz Freedom Center

Anti-BDS Movement conference in Jerusalem photo information Photographer Abir Sultan

"Administrators hypocritically invoke free speech in defence of faculty members who provide an ostensibly 'academic' rationale for opposition to Israel. By now, entire disciplines use their academic conferences to attack the Jewish state."
"Where are the campus rallies for women's rights in Islam, relief efforts for Syrian refugees, vigils for Christian victims of Islamic State [or Iraq and the Levant]? Where is the outrage of historians and archaeologists at the destruction by radical Muslims of ancient monuments?"
"[Anti-Israel campaigns flourish] because onlookers who think they have no stake in the conflict choose not to face down the belligerents."
Ruth Wisse, professor, McGill/Harvard Universities

Recalling the Holocaust in her observation of disaffected onlookers recognizing the moral imperatives, but choosing non-involvement because they feel the situation has no impact on them, is a reflection of non-interference by the world at large when Nazi Germany was busy operating its efficient machinery of genocide perpetration, to rid the world of Europe's Jews. There are certainly direct parallels to the launching of the Holocaust, and that of the BDS movement, both working to isolate Jews and portray them as enemies less than human, to make their destruction more universally palatable.

The political left has gone into overdrive to send its message, that it is not of course, suffused with hatred of Jews, simply seeking justice for the Palestinian 'cause', and if Israel is being vilified as an oppressor and a threat to peace in the Middle East and beyond, the nation has earned that status by not submitting to world opinion. World opinion in the 1940s managed to overlook the plight of Jews targeted for annihilation. World opinion in the 21st Century seems satisfied with the destruction slated by defenders of the 'underdog' Palestinians of the State of Israel.

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign that gave equal rise to its offshoot Israel Apartheid Week, to slander and deprive Israel of legitimacy has certainly had its successes. Forcing a nation that has, since its birth been compelled to defend itself against one violent wave after another of combined Arab military attacks, and of non-state militias intent on destroying it as well, to defend itself against a coordinated onslaught of accusations that its ultimate goal is to demolish the aspirations of worthy Palestinians.

Yet the smear campaigns have also resulted in unforeseen consequences that have done great harm to Palestinians. Palestinians, for example, who were employed in well-remunerated construction jobs helping to build West Bank settlements, when the Palestinian Authority failed to produce jobs for its vast army of unemployed. When a campaign targeting SodaStream operating in the West Bank forced it to relocate its production to Israel proper there were consequences. In the process of silencing the BDS accusers hundreds of Palestinians lost their employment.

In the growing relevance to the modern world of science and technology Israel has shown itself to be an innovation powerhouse. Of the 300 projects approved by the European Research Council, fully 11 percent were directed to young Israeli scientists, placing it behind only Germany and the United Kingdom in its productivity and enterprise potential and capabilities. Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar is striving to have Israel accepted into the European Union; their values parallel each other's.

University students have taken up the challenge to demonstrate how engaged they are with social media favourites, and as a favourite target, Israel and Jews have few serious challengers. Universities breed idealism and the ideology of slamming Israel for its very existence and accusing it of oppressing a people who claim prior and everlasting entitlement to a land that was historically and remained through the ages a heritage of Judaism, has huge popular appeal.

Israel's existence as an aberration, a lone Jewish state surrounded by Arab states, a democracy encircled by dictators, monarchs, theocracies and oil sheikdoms, is one of those errors in the perceived natural order of things; a square peg in a landscape designed for round ones, and so that square peg must be hammered incessantly until it no longer resembles its authentic form, squeezing the Jew out of the Jewish state, so it becomes yet another Arab-majority state to the satisfaction of Jew haters.

The anti-Israel movement is supported and celebrated for all the presumed harm it can do to Jews and to Israel. By creating yet another forum by which both can be declared illegal, immoral and indefensible by their very existence.