Another Tack: Not Telling It Like It Is

 Hebron 1929: exhorting the mobs to save al-Aksa from the Jews


For hours after last week’s vehicular terror in Jerusalem (capped by an attack on passersby with a metal rod), Sky News persisted in not telling it like it is.

Its running news ticker at the bottom of the screen single-mindedly informed viewers that “Israeli police say a driver has rammed his car into pedestrians in East Jerusalem in an ‘intentional’ attack causing several injuries.”

The very inclusion of the verb say sufficed to cast doubt on Israeli communiqués. Then, to chip further away at residual Israeli credibility the word intentionally was tendentiously placed in quotation marks. This surely was overkill, considering that the reliability of the Israeli report was already challenged by the caveat of the opening phrase.

If during the first few minutes of the incident Sky could somehow make excuses for what looked like thinly-veiled antagonism, it certainly couldn’t long after the event. Nevertheless, that hardly objective news bar was still featured when any duty editor of even grudging goodwill or nominal neutrality should have known better.

In contrast, another report was cited with unadulterated acceptance. Sky’s above mentioned “breaking news” flash was accompanied throughout – for as many hours – by a bulletin that stated matter-of-factly (without any caveats this time) that “Israeli police have clashed with Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s al-Aksa Mosque compound after Jewish nationalists announced plans to visit the site.”

The subliminal nuances were unmissable and there was no qualifying vocabulary. The al-Aksa Mosque compound designation suggested exclusive Muslim connections and no Jewish ones.

Then came the unequivocal attribution of causality. The clashes occurred “after Jewish nationalists announced plans to visit,” i.e. Jews instigated the clashes. Not a word appeared about rocks and Molotov cocktails stored in the sacred spot and tossed at Jews praying below in front of the Western Wall.

Such facts may interfere with Sky’s insinuation that Jews are interlopers, trespassing in what has only ever been a Muslim shrine. The implication is that it’s Jews who disturb the peace along with their police “inside” the compound.

The injection of the term nationalists sealed the negative connotation. Nationalists are villains in the lexicon of political correctness.

The sentinels on Sky’s moral high ground know whom to distrust a priori and whom to trust inherently. Uninitiated audiences perceive the world through the broadcasters’ distorting glass. Their opinions are thereby at least partly shaped and their preexisting prejudices are subtly reinforced.

To be sure, Sky isn’t the only overseas news outlet with an attitude. Almost all its purportedly pluralist and tolerant counterparts are equally disingenuous and almost all classify Temple Mount terminology as politically incorrect.

More often than not, anchors and reporters allude to Haram al-Sharif and lest the masses out there not be fully clued in, they add by way of elucidation that “the Haram” is where al-Aksa Mosque is located.

At most, Temple Mount comes in as an aside meant to clarify what the commotion is about.  “This is also where Jews claim that their ancient temples once stood,” some correspondents throw in with a pinch of skepticism. Alternative edification is that “this is also what Jews refer to as Temple Mount.”

The undertones here are paramount. Jews invariably “claim.” Their version is hardly one that can be reasonably accorded credence. The Arab insistence that no Jewish temples or Jewish historical/religious ties to Jerusalem ever existed is thus amplified by media quibbling. Out of nowhere Jews seemingly invaded Jerusalem and out-of-the-blue they brazenly seek to overrun Muslim sanctuaries.

The resort to an adverb like “also” isn’t incidental or insignificant. It imparts the impression of precedence and rightful ownership. The Arabs are treated as legitimate proprietors. Jewish claims are ancillary and unsubstantiated.

That’s precisely is the message which the West’s prince of peace, Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas, hones relentlessly. You’ll never hear a Sky commentator dare observe that Abbas’s repeated delegitimization of the Jewish people, their religion, traditions, bonds to Zion – every crucial aspect of their nationhood and history – may perhaps belie the façade of teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

The utter expunging of Jews from the annals of Judea shocks no one in broadminded Europe or in America’s Obama Administration. Neither do Abbas’s recurrent racist slurs that portray Jews as contaminants of Jerusalem and its holy sites – both Christian and Muslim.

Inter alia Abbas has promoted himself as the protector of Christendom in a fraternal united stand against the polluting Jew. Not a whisper of protest is audible from organized Christianity and that too speaks volumes.

When Islamist barbarity stuns the entire civilized world, there might be a semblance of safety in insidiously casting aspersions on Jews. Europe had done so quite expediently for two millennia and this may not be the most opportune time to break an old habit.

The trouble is that Abbas’s anti-pollution drive inspires hate and emboldens haters.

An Israel Radio reporter recently did random street in interviews in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, where the responders echoed (in fluent Hebrew) Abbas’s characterization of Jews as contaminants.

“Things here will only improve,” argued one fellow, “after the Jews are gone. Yes we want peace but peace means no Jews.”

Another bystander likewise recommended ethnic cleansing: “Go back to where you came from. Go to Russia, Germany, Poland – anywhere – just not here.”

But there were also kinder voices:”I really don’t like to say so,” remarked a solicitous sort, “but what was done to you in Germany, will be done to you here too.”

These are our peace-partners. It’s spine-chilling to hear such sentiments from ordinary taxi-drivers and green-grocers. They ring alarmingly authentic.

Day after day, deceptively moderate Abbas hectors that the Jews are out to infest and defile al-Aksa. This is no Johnny-come-lately motif provoked by “Jewish nationalists.” Anyone not disdainful of history recognizes the latest al-Aksa hysteria as another true-to-the-original remake of the long-running Haj Amin al-Husseini Horror Show.

Before he fled to Germany in 1941 (where he spent the war years as Hitler’s personal guest), avid Nazi collaborator Husseini had already perfected the calumny of Jewish takeover attempts at the Temple Mount.

He repetitively triggered coordinated mass-murder offensives fired up by that lie. For nearly 95 years, this land shook fitfully as rounds of rampages and massacres followed each other in breathless succession allegedly to keep the Jews from razing al-Aksa.

On April 4, 1920, thousands of Arab raiders, serially inflamed by Husseini’s vitriolic harangues, poured into Jerusalem, descended upon the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and began butchering, raping, pillaging and burning – all in the name of their God.

That unprovoked killing-spree was launched before any of the excuses for Arab bloodlust – now so conveniently prevalent – had existed. There was no Jewish state to fulminate against and no Israeli occupation with which to justify any outrage against Jews.

The 1920 victims were largely members of the old-time, traditional, pre-Zionist Jewish community that had long before then constituted Jerusalem’s absolute majority. Yet this ancient community was deemed fair game. The subtext was that Jews have no rights – not even indigenous non-Zionists.

Considering their penchant for distorting history, Israel’s detractors are doubtless tempted to describe 1920’s predators as oppressed Palestinian peasants protesting against usurper Jews. It must, therefore, be a whopping downer to discover that none of this homicidal fury was unleashed on behalf of Palestine. The Arabs loathed the very name introduced to this country by its new British overlords.

Ironically, it was the Jews who became known throughout the first half of the 20th century as Palestinians and it was the Arabs who scornfully rejected the moniker.

As British rule began, Husseini evinced overnight attachment to the Western Wall. He sanctified it as the hitching post to which the prophet Muhammad tethered his winged steed Burak. Husseini abided Jewish wailing at the Wall only occasionally, after remittance of exorbitant fees for the privilege – providing Muslim sensibilities weren’t offended.

The problem was there was no telling what would give offense. In 1919 wooden benches for the old and infirm were pointed to as insufferable affronts. The British promptly removed them but Arabs then began to regularly drive cattle and laden donkeys through crowds of Jewish congregants. From 1920 the muezzin was dispatched to bellow his loudest chants precisely during Jewish services.

By 1921 the sound of the shofar, blown at the Wall on high holydays, became the next pretext for unrest. The British obligingly forbade the annoying blasts.

The shrillest Arab outcry was raised in 1928 over a flimsy partition put up to segregate male and female worshippers. The British lost no time to tear the insulting screen right at the climax of Yom Kippur prayers.

Even so, the premeditated disruptions at the Wall grew increasingly violent. Husseini exhorted all Muslims to a “Holy War to protect al-Aksa from Jewish conquest.” To fan the flames, provocative photomontages of Herzl (then deceased for 25 years) ostensibly standing near el-Aksa were circulated.

Here was incontrovertible evidence of a high-ranking Jewish visitor to rankle the ranks of the true believers. On August 23, 1929 Husseini sent his disciples to avenge Herzl’s confrontational visit. The week-long bloodbath left 133 Jews slain.

The country-wide pogroms began in Jerusalem, but the most notorious carnage was in Hebron where 67 men, women and children were hideously hacked to death. The centuries-old Jewish community was uprooted, as were smaller Jewish enclaves in Gaza, Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus. The mandatory authorities expelled them as the “destabilizing element.” The Brits attempted the same in Safed but failed.

Husseini’s riots established the prototype whereby Jews are punished for Arab crimes against Jews. The set pattern was of appeasing Arab wrath – as if Jewish existence were in and of itself a casus belli.

Western antipathy to Jewish self-preservation was already gallingly glaring in 1920, as was indulgent acquiescence to Arab belligerence. It’s scary to realize how little has actually changed.

The enlightened vanguard of the global good-guy brigade – where Sky snugly fits in – still seethes with bias against this land’s Jews. Self-appointed foreign adjudicators – like Sky news editors – don’t hold Abbas accountable for impeding peace, for glorifying the murderers of Jewish children and for inciting to jihad Husseini-style.

All that transpires now was kick-started by Husseini, while Abbas convinces willingly gullible saps of what they’re anyway predisposed to imbibe.

Contrary to postmodern predilections – like Sky’s – the past mustn’t be consigned to irrelevance. Unbroken historical continuities contextualize current events. Nothing springs forth from a vacuum.

14 thoughts on “Another Tack: Not Telling It Like It Is

  1. Sadly Sarah, all our leaders throughout the years have been scared of their own shadows.
    Yours truly believes in a policy of expulsion tinged with a hint of extermination (circa 1948).
    Hey, am I allowed to say that ? Well I just did.
    שבת שלום

  2. Britain is often called by its real name “the Perfidious Albion”. Perfidious derives from the latin word perfidia = treacherous. Albion is a very antique Greek name for Britain. Sky is the tiny top of the iceberg. There is a millennium of horrid events against the Jews, from the burning of that tower in York, with all the Jews inside, to occasional prohibition to the Jews to live there.
    When the British won the Mandate (this word means: command!) to organize a Jewish Home in all of Palestine, they used it just for the contrary, buying Arab gratitude, against the Jews. Together with French diplomat Picot, the British Sykes concurred in creating an artificial division of the just defunct Ottoman Empire, without taking into consideration local aspirations. Or, better said, they tried to earn from the Arabs, and all at the expenses of the Jews. They created the Transjordan, on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Then, they divided the rest to leave the Jews in what was called “undefendable borders”. They let the Arabs invading the Land, looking for better living, but they stopped the Jews or sent them back to die under Hitler. Finally, on leaving, they offered all their military means to the Arabs.
    Sky is nothing, compared to the crimes of their government. Anyway, God forgave the Jews for their continuous surrendering and the Israeli soldiers overcame all pessimistic expectations. However, God did not forgive the British. Within a few years, after Israel independence, Britain lost its entire Empire. And now they are also losing the motherland with the hostile invasion of their previous subjects, from their colonies, and particularly to the Muslims who don’t make any secret on their intention to cancel all aspects of British culture.
    When it will inexorably happen, I for one, shall not cry!!!

  3. Islam and its followers, al-Aksa and all mosques must be eradicated, same as the Nazis and Nazism, which in the case of Islam goes even further by canonizing in their Qu’ran and their own religious works the command and examples to murder our people to the very last one.

    Ours is not a cause of this conflict but rather a response to a conflict thrown upon us.

    Yes, al-Aksa needs to be razed. Had our people known the nature of Islam in 1967 (after nearly 1400 years we still have not internalized the nature of Islam and its followers… shame on us), we would have exposed Islam for what it is, say by reading aloud the Qu’ran, and started demolitions.

    The solution for the moment is not a war of aggression against Islam but rather the education of our people and of western civilization regarding Islam.

    Religions can be evil. People need to understand the exact details of Islam, its history to this day, its tactics, its strategies, and to grasp the Darwinianly perfected nature and makeup (with the intelligence of captured and bred blood of other peoples including our own) of its people. We need not to take for granted extrapolations of early unrelated biblical texts that predate by thousands of years where the people of Islam may have originated. We must not blindly accept as truths Muslim explanations for their origins. They simply are what they are, and have Darwinialy perfected themselves by systematically killing off any of their own people who become apostates or voice civilized and intelligent ideas.

    The first step to dealing with Islam and its followers is to learn about it and then to educate others. And don’t take your education from the followers of Islam but rather from its critics. People will then step back in horror at the realization of what we have in our midst. Islam and its followers will then become marginalized, and that will be the beginning of the end for Islam and its followers.

    Learn about Islam. Learn who it is you are not. In the words of Bat Ye’or, “Learn everything first”. And don’t forget to educate others until everyone knows what we are dealing with. From that will come the answers of how we must handle ourselves in the face of Islam and its followers.

  4. A great piece dear Sarah !
    It cannot be written any better.
    In my humble opinion, al-Aksa and the Dome of the Rock should become museums and be put out of propaganda service.
    Okay, this is impossible…really ?

    • No, as long as the al-Aksa and the Dome of the Rock exist, Muslims will think they have a foothold, not just in Israel but also in the rest of the world.

      We have our museum. Its the ruins of our last temple. Let it remain as a reminder for all time of our history.

      And if you want to build a new temple, build it off to the side somewhere, but not on the site of the second temple nor the rock. Do get rid of the Al-Aksa and the Dome. Islam… gone, outlawed, bye-bye, eradicated… just like the Nazis with whom they collaborated to murder all of our people.

      I do concur with one thing you say… “Okay, this is impossible…really?”. Yes, it is possible as you infer. People must understand Islam itself and its followers in order to know why the choices we make are just.

  5. Sarah Honig once again offers readers a brief but insightful historical summary of the Israeli/Arab conflict/s that is beyond brilliant and far beyond disputing.

    The facts presented are just that- historical facts.

    That few non-Jewish individuals of average intelligence cannot grasp, digest, understand and acknowledge the historical facts which Ms. Honig clearly enumerates, speaks volumes. And that is truly heartbreaking.

    With just a few sweeping and broad brushstrokes Ms. Honig gives the “Lie” to 99.99 % of the arguments about and for, the so-called “Two State Solution”.

    The visceral hatreds and general loathing of all Jews in the Middle-East and Israel in particular, existed, as Ms. Honig correctly observes, long before there was a Nation known as the State of Israel.

    This is why it is so boundlessly depressing to watch people like Mr. Kerry do “his thing” over and over ad infinitum. And as he fails, every time, in his “Mission Impossible”, he as well as President Obama and all his loyal and willing stooges, lackeys and sycophants, try to suggest, imply and/or directly assert that all the fault lies with the State of Israel and the so-called “intransigence” of Israel’s leaders.

    No person who possesses even the most minimal and foggy knowledge and familiarity of the history of the world should have any difficulty separating fact from fiction, and historical truth from abject lies and overtly racist propaganda.

    But what perhaps astonishes and depresses me the most is the fact that there are so very many highly educated Jewish Israelis who actually believe, and with all their Heart, that the so-called “Two State Solution” will all in one instant cause all the problems, the old hatreds, the centuries long loathing of the Jewish people, to suddenly evaporate into thin air- as if Anti-Semitism never happened and Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Sobibor et al, never existed.

    And that once a “Palestinian State” is established and comes to exist, 30 seconds from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, (by Iranian supplied Missiles), suddenly all the Anti-Semitism in the entire world will cease to exist.

    How is it possible that people can be so naïve just 75 years after the Holocaust ?

    Can someone explain how in G-d’s Name is it possible?

  6. Let’s go after the individual journalists, the ones who perpetuate these fallacies. Please let some investigative reporter explore the background of the editors and managers of the news organizations. Are they muslims? Are they vulnerable to exposure as inveterate Jew-haters?

  7. I do apreciate your article. Should we move to seek public support for acknowledgement as wittnes of our jewish heritage, if not from Unesco, so from the Pope ? שבת שלום

  8. The fact that the Muslims thought that we were going to takeover al-Aksa, with neither intent nor action on our part, and how they acted without that intent or action on our part, is the very reason why al-Aksa must be destroyed with no pieces for display remaining.

    The fact of the Muslims canonized call, intent and actions for the destruction of our people (and western civilization) is why Islam and its followers must themselves be eradicated.

  9. I do apreciate your article. Should we move to seek public support for acknowledgement as wittnes of our jewish heritage, if not from Unesco, so from the Pope ? By your comprehensive view I feel backed in adressing the Vienna Archbishop/Kardial for requesting his public supporting voice. So should all jews initiate in their galut locations. שבת שלום

  10. Sarah Honig tells it like it is like nobody else can.

    Sarah then asks what we all ask: How is it possible?

    Yet such a question may well be a waste of time.

    We do know this: Genocidal maniacs want to kill us.

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