If you think you get an accurate idea of what Arab leaders believe
when you listen to Hannan Ashrawi interviewed on “Nightline” or on CNN,
think again.
Yasser Arafat has played a skillful media manipulation game in the
West, helping to persuade most Americans that the Middle East crisis can
be settled by rearranging a few borders — by Israel exchanging more
“land for peace.”
It’s just simply not so, as I have attempted
to point out recently
with some historical perspective.
But, forget the history.
You’ve all seen the inflammatory quotes
from Arab leaders when they are not on western television and talking
only to their own people. The hatred is palpable. These are not the kind of differences that can be worked out over a negotiating table.
And it’s getting worse, not better.
Look at what a leading cleric in Gaza had to say in
a sermon just
last Friday. “None of the Jews refrain from committing any possible evil,” said Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabita, former acting rector of the Islamic University. “If the Labor party commits the evil and the crime, the Likud party stands by it; and if the Likud party commits the evil and the crime, the Labor party stands by it. … The Jews are Jews, whether Labor or Likud. … They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They all want to distort truth, but we are in possession of the truth.”
I would like to repeat that this is part of a sermon — a sermon! But it gets even worse.
“O brother believers, the criminals, the terrorists — are the Jews, who have butchered our children, orphaned them, widowed our women and desecrated our holy places and sacred sites,” said the cleric. “They are the terrorists. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: ‘Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers. …”
There’s more — if you can stomach it.
“O brothers in belief, this is the case of the Jews and their habitual conduct, and what happened yesterday, and has been going on for two weeks, and before that for many years, and which will be repeated in future years unless we stand up like men and unless we have the known Muslim position, (the position) of those who wage Jihad in the path of Allah, those who defend their rights and who sacrifice all that is dear to them,” said Halabita. “O brothers in belief, the beautiful bride has a costly price and dowry. … Our bride is paradise, O brothers in belief. …The cost and the dowry of this bride, the dowry of this paradise, is that we fight in the path of Allah, and kill and be killed.”
And for those of you non-Jews, don’t think this hatred is directed only toward Israel. Here’s more from Halabita:
“This is the truth, O Brothers in belief. From here, Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them. And he who does that, is one of them, as Allah said: ‘O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies, for they are allies of one another. Who from among you takes them as allies will indeed be one of them. …’ The Jews are the allies of the Christians, and the Christians are the allies of the Jews, despite the enmity that exists between them. The enmity between the Jews and the Christians is deep, but all of them are in agreement against the monotheists — against those who say, ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger,’ that is — they are against you, O Muslims.”
Yes, this is a worldwide jihad.
“Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them — and those who stand by them — they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims — because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine. They created it to be the outpost of their civilization — and the vanguard of their army, and to be the sword of the West and the crusaders, hanging over the necks of the monotheists, the Muslims in these lands. They wanted the Jews to be their spearhead. …”
Land for peace? I don’t think so.
- If you’d like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the
WorldNetDaily poll.
