Today;'s anti-semitism out of Saudi Arabia

In today's Al-Madinah, Dr. Zaid Ali Fadhil says that what he is seeing today in the US is a fulfillment of the prophecy of "President Benjamin Franklin."

The purported "Franklin Prophecy" has been an anti-semitic staple since it was created in the 1930s. The version quoted in Al Madinah is similar to this:

There is a great danger for the United State of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in every land the Jews have settled, they have depressed the moral level and lowered the degree of commercial honesty. They have remained apart and unassimilated; oppressed, they attempt to strangle the nation financially, as in the case of Portugal and Spain.

If they are not expelled from the United States by the Constitution, they will stream into this country in such numbers that they will rule and destroy us and change our form of Government for which we Americans shed our blood and sacrificed our life, property and personal freedom. If the Jews are not excluded within two hundred years, our children will be working in the field to feed Jews while they remain in the counting houses, gleefully rubbing their hands.

I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews forever, your children and your children's children will curse you in their graves. Their ideas are not those of Americans, even when they lived among us for ten generations. The leopard cannot change his spots.

Interestingly, he skips one other section of the "prophecy" that is contradicted by, well, Israel's existence:

For more than seventeen hundred years they have lamented their sorrowful fate ' namely, that they have been driven out of their mother land; but, gentlemen, if the civilized world today should give them back Palestine and their property, they would immediately find pressing reason for not returning there. Why? Because they are vampires and vampires cannot live on other vampires --they cannot live among themselves. They must live among Christians and others who do not belong to their race.

Dr. Fadhil goes on to say that nowadays the prophecy has come true and the Jews are indeed ruling the US, and America has lost the ideals of its founding fathers to the evil machinations of the Jews.

A comment on the article by the author contains a correction - he found out that Franklin was never president. Everything else is accurate, though.

There are anti-semitic articles in the mainstream Arab media every day. And not once have I seen any backlash, corrections or apologies.

Did Abbas renounce the so-called "right of return"? Of course not.

From the Times of Israel:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stated Thursday that he was not seeking the right to live in Israel, even though he was born in Safed, in remarks that implied a moderated stance on the longstanding Palestinian demand for a 'right of return' to Israel for millions of refugees and descendants of refugees.

Abbas also said explicitly that the Palestinians have no territorial demands on Israel in its pre-1967 lines.

Asked in a Channel 2 News interview what he considered to be Palestine, Abbas responded that 'Palestine now for me is the '67 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is now and forever ' This is Palestine for me. I am [a] refugee, but I am living in Ramallah.'

Interviewer Udi Segal cut in: 'Sometimes your official television' speak(s) about Acre and Ramle and Jaffa [all cities within sovereign Israel] as 'Palestine.''

'I believe that [the] West Bank and Gaza is Palestine,' said Abbas, 'and the other parts (are) Israel.'

Noting that he himself was born in Safed, in what since 1948 has been northern Israel, Abbas said he had visited the town and would like to see it again, but not to make his home there. 'It's my right to see it, but not to live there,' he said, in comments that, if applied to all Palestinian refugees and descendants, would represent a dramatic shift in Palestinian policy.

Is this a change in policy?

So far, the Fatah media has not commented on the interview at all. Islamic Jihad-oriented media that did note the interview so far did not see anything explosive in Abbas' declaration that he, personally, accepts that he has no right to live in Safed.

And Hamas interpreted Abbas' statements as being his own personal view and not an official policy:

Hamas denounced Abbas, saying he spoke only for himself.

"No Palestinian would accept ceding the right of our people to return to homes, villages and towns from which they were displaced," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

"If Abu Mazen (Abbas) does not want Safed, Safed would be honored not to host people like him."

Since Western media has picked up on this point, no doubt Fatah and the PA will be forced to issue a clarification within a few hours. It would be most surprising if they say that the official PLO position is that the "right of return" is no longer considered a right. Anyone who has read their statements in Arabic over the years knows that it is considered sacrosanct.

So how will his statement be reconciled with the long-standing insistence on "return?"

Here is one way that Abbas' statement can be true without the PLO changing its position.

Paragraph 11 of UNGA 194, the source of the imaginary "right of return," says

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return...

The General Assembly resolution, which has no legal weight, says that only those refugees wishing to return should be allowed to do so (the word "right" was deliberately left out, by the way.)

Abbas is defining himself as a refugee who chooses not to return under UNGA 194. But that in no way limits how the Arab world (mis)interprets UNGA 194, and therefore it does not impact the PLO's negotiating position in the least.

This way Abbas can continue the long Arab game of telling gullible Westerners what they want to hear without actually saying what they want so desperately to believe he said.

Other relevant posts on UNGA 194:

The UN's 1950 interpretation of the "right to return"

The part of UNGA 194 that the Arabs ignore

Why Palestinian Arabs will never negotiate on "return"

Efraim Karsh on Resolution 194

The "right of return" is the opposite of human rights

PLO reiterates "right of return" has nothing to do with statehood

Western money goes to terrorists, not peace

From the Wall Street Journal:

A report by Palestinian Media Watch recently revealed that British taxpayers have been paying salaries to terrorists. It revealed that £3 million every month is paid by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in salaries to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The salaries come from the PA's general budget. That "general budget" is kindly provided by the U.K., among other EU countries.

Many British taxpayers, struggling to pay their family's way through a recession, might rightly wonder why their money is going to pay as much as £2,000 a month to people serving the longest sentences'those who have targeted Israeli buses and other civilian targets with suicide bombers, for instance. That is higher than the average wage in nearly all of Britain. You might be forgiven for wondering, if you were a struggling teaching assistant in the North of England, why failing to tick "suicide bomber" on your careers form should have left you so much worse off than a terrorist in the Middle East.

Meanwhile:

The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, where students from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority learn together, may not open its gates in the next academic year.

Located in the southern kibbuz of Ketura, the institute was established in 1996 as an engine for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace. This is the only place in the Middle East dealing with the common environmental problems of Israel and its neighbors.

'From my point of view it's a severe blow,' explained Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, director of the institute's Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation. 'We won't have partners on the other side, the environmental problems won't go away and it will be increasingly difficult to solve them.'

The institute, Abu Hamad says, doesn't only promote international cooperation, but peace between peoples as well.

'We need $1.5 million to begin 2013. Some donors promised us hundreds of thousands of dollars over a span of years, but those contributions have shrunk or vanished."

Yes, the terrorists get paid far more every month than a real example of cooperation and peace needs to start its academic year.

No one in the "pro-Palestinian" crowd supports the existence of real peace programs between Israel and the Arabs. Because they aren't "pro-Palestinian" at all - but anti-Israel.

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Both those stories are worth reading in full for other reasons.

The British story notes how Britain's International Development Minister Alan Duncan adamantly refuses to accept the evidence and insists that paying these prisoners - whose payscale increases with the time they are in prison - is really "social welfare."

The Arava story notes that the institute has to hide the fact that it is in Israel when recruiting students from Jordan.

(h/t Ian, Zvi)

Israel offers help to Jordan on water, natural gas. No one reports it.

Jordan is having serious problems with shortages of both water and natural gas.

From AFP, October 1:

Many ordinary Jordanians, as well as others in government circles, complain that tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled from the conflict at home are draining the country's meager water resources.

In recent weeks, people have demonstrated in southern and northern villages for not receiving water for the past two months, burning tyres, blocking roads and seizing a Water Authority tanker.

Their only alternative is to buy from private suppliers at grossly inflated prices, or even steal it.

'This summer has been tough and hot, and the increasing Syrian refugees and sometimes tourists have added pressures to water resources,' Water Authority Secretary General Fayez Bataineh told AFP.

And Asharq al-Awsat talks about how Egyptian supplies of natural gas to Jordan have been interrupted many times this year. They spin a conspiracy theory of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood wanting to destabilize Jordan, which is far from convincing - it appears that there were technical problems as domestic Egyptian demands caused a shortage, and Egypt is even now importing gas just to be able to re-export it according to agreements.

Buried in an article critical of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty at Jordanian newspaper Al Ghad, we see something very interesting:

Months ago, Israel supplied Jordan with three million cubic meters of water beyond the annual quantities agreed upon in accordance with the Treaty; this water went mostly for the consumption of Syrian refugees residing north of the Kingdom.

Months before that, Israel also offered to sell the Kingdom natural gas at cost in the face of the disruption of the supply of Egyptian gas....But this offer requires a pipeline from the territory of Jordan towards the network that supplies Israel with natural gas, and could trigger an internal political storm.

So while Jordanians are protesting against peace with Israel, Israel is quietly working behind the scenes to help Jordan with its two most pressing needs.

This makes it crystal clear how much that right-wing hawkish satanic Likud government of the Zionist entity  wants peace and stability in the entire region.

Maybe if journalists would do their jobs, we - and the Arab people - would know these things.


(The article also notes how Israel is negotiating with Jordan to allow them to sell produce to European markets through Israel's ports on the Mediterranean. In addition, some 30,000 Israelis - mostly businessmen - crossed the Allenby Bridge to Jordan in 2011. Israel exported over $209 million of goods to Jordan last year, most of which gets relabeled and resold to Gulf Arab states at a profit.)

(h/t Zvi)