It is the Season to Nail Israel

 Video Of The Week - Christian. Israeli. IDF Officer -https://tinyurl.com/yale4cl

By David m. Weinberg   December 24, 2020

For the full article go to Israel Hayom: https://tinyurl.com/y7nyelwm

 ‘Intersectionality” is the idea that race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics “intersect” with one another and overlap, and that all injustices are interconnected.

 Intersectionality has risen to smash Israel for Christmas. Two weeks ago, the “Irish Unity Movement” tweeted, “If Mary and Joseph set off to Bethlehem today, they’d cross 15 Israeli checkpoints and a 30-foot wall,” setting-off a Twitter-storm.

 One diplomatic correspondent responded that Mary and Joseph were Jews (!), who today would have been barred from visiting Bethlehem by Palestinian police. Others responded bluntly that “If Mary and Joseph somehow made it to Bethlehem they probably would be raped and lynched by a Palestinian mob.” Others noted correctly that the Christian population in Bethlehem has dropped drastically since the PLO took over.

 Intersectionality aside, the Western media annually devotes considerable Christmas ink, and many Christian NGOs dedicate their Christmas appeals, to purveying the false impression that Christians are under assault by Israelis. And worse still, that Jews are crucifying Christians smack in the heart of Bethlehem.

 THESE SCREEDS demonize Israel and seek to cover up the real reason for Christian decline in Bethlehem: the Palestinian Authority and radical Islam.

 It started with Yasser Arafat. Arriving from Tunis, Arafat immediately set out to suppress the Palestinian middle class across the West Bank, which he understood could be the only real opposition to his planned dictatorial authority. He nationalized most business sectors and squeezed Palestinian small businessmen out of business. Especially hard hit were middle-class businessmen of Bethlehem, mainly Christian.

 Arafat then sidelined the long-time Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, and Arafat’s henchmen led a campaign of terrorism and intimidation against Christian institutions and families in the city. Land theft, beatings and harassment of Christians in Bethlehem by PA security services and other gangs became routine. Forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men were reported. In 2002,

 The result was an inexorable and ongoing Christian exodus from Bethlehem; a city captured by the PA and taken over by a very intolerant strain of Islam.

 Nevertheless, PA President Mahmoud Abbas annually releases a malevolent Christmas message in which he cynically calls Jesus Christ a “Palestinian messenger,” and goes on to blast Israel for denying “millions” of Christians their “right to worship in their homeland.”

 This is an ugly attempt to apply “replacement theology” (in which Christians are said to have superseded the Jews in a covenant with God) to the Palestinian assault on Israel. In Abbas’s reversed and warped world, the Jewish-Christian Jesus has been replaced by a Palestinian Christ, and Christianity is under attack by the Jews, not the Arabs and Muslims. Not only is this untrue, but it ignores the radical Islamic assault on Christians across the Middle East, often with government encouragement and support.

 In Gaza, Islamic terrorists have bombed churches, killed prominent Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox), and forced others to convert to Islam. In the West Bank, Arab Christians are better off than almost anywhere in the region, but only an estimated 50,000 live there – about 2% of the population, down from 10% in 1920.

 Overall, Christians now make up only 4% of the population of the Middle East, down from 20% a century ago.

 It should be the season for a rigorous world defense campaign on behalf of beleaguered Christians in the Middle East. Instead,‘tis the season to nail Israel.

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Morocco First Arab Nation to teach Jewish History and Culture

Video Of The Week -Cave For Holocaust Survivors- https://tinyurl.com/y9c9dep6

 From Israel Hayom by Dan Lavie - https://tinyurl.com/y6b4xaeb

 Trailblazing change, Morocco on Sunday announced that its schools will soon begin teaching Jewish history and culture as part of the official curriculum—a first in the region and in the North African country, where Islam is the state religion.

It follows King Mohammed VI of Morocco’s decision to normalize relations with the Jewish state in yet another historic peace deal brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and announced last week.

The move has had “the impact of a tsunami,” Serge Berdugo, secretary-general of the Casablanca-based Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco, told the French news agency AFP.

The decision concerning the curriculum was reportedly made discretely, even before Rabat and Jerusalem formerly normalized relations. According to AFP, the decision was made as part of an ongoing revamp of the educational curriculum in Morocco, which began in 2014.

The move aims to “highlight Morocco’s diverse identity,” according to Fouad Chafiqi, head of academic programs at Rabat’s Education Ministry.

AFP further cited two U.S.-based Jewish associations—the American Sephardi Federation and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations—as saying that they had “worked closely with the Kingdom of Morocco and the Moroccan Jewish community” on the “groundbreaking” academic reform.

“Ensuring Moroccan students learn about the totality of their proud history of tolerance, including Morocco’s philo-Semitism, is an inoculation against extremism,” leaders of the two organizations said in a statement published on Twitter.

As part of the plan, two new books will be introduced into the curriculum. They include a description of the life and heritage of Moroccan Jews under Sultan Mohammed Ben Abdellah al-Khatib, a descendant of the Alawite dynasty that rules the country to this day.

The books, intended for fourth and sixth grades, include historical accounts dating from the 17th century to the present day.

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Will UAE be safer for Jews than most of Europe?

Video Of The Week - 500 Ethiopian Jews Airlifted to Israel - https://tinyurl.com/yc2sx752

For the full article By SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPost, 13-12-2020, go to https://tinyurl.com/ycs96vbn

Hanukkah celebrations in Dubai last week and the national efforts to support tolerance and coexistence in the United Arab Emirates have created a reality in which Jews are more welcomed and safe in the UAE than in Europe.  Many friends and contacts I have spoken to say they were surprised by the feeling walking around the Emirates’ most populous city over the last week wearing a kippah, something they would be hesitant to do in many places in Europe.

This is a testament to the reality of most Western democracies: It’s dangerous to be a Jew in Europe. Jewish schools are attacked and Jews with a kippah are assaulted. It happens almost every day throughout Western Europe and the US, where in some places half of all religious hate crimes target Jews.

Today, Jews are safer in the UAE than in most European countries and most American states. We measure antisemitism in most Western countries by how many thousands of attacks there are – that’s the reality. In most European countries, intolerance towards Jews is widespread, and growing.

This is evident on any visit to a synagogue or Jewish school in European countries. I have been to most of these countries over the last twenty years. I’ll never forget going to a kosher coffee shop near Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin. It was near the beautiful New Synagogue in that part of the German capital, a shul burned down during the Nazi era. Outside the coffee shop there were two policemen to guard against attacks. There were no people inside having coffee.

To be a Jew in Berlin, I wondered at the time, meant that if I go to a kosher coffee shop, there will have to be police guarding it. This is not “protection” but rather an illustration of the levels of hate directed at Jews.  But this isn’t security. People shouldn’t have to pray behind armies of police and soldiers with assault rifles. When we talk about a decline or increase in antisemitic attacks in Europe, we count them in the thousands. In 2018, for instance, there were 1,652 antisemitic incidents in the UK.

A person has to think twice before wearing a kippah in most countries in Europe – it’s risky. One could be spat on, shouted at, randomly attacked or even murdered.

NOW, a new embrace of Jews appears to be happening in the Gulf. These words of tolerance are not just about words, but appear to be about making Jews feel part of the fabric of places like Dubai, where people from 200 nationalities live. This means Jews can become a fabric of these societies, so that a man with a kippah is as normal as anyone wearing any other type of outfit. That is the way it should be.

It should be normal to be Jewish, to celebrate Hanukkah, to wear a kippah if one wants, to do Jewish things and buy kosher food if one keeps kosher. It should be as normal as to be Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. Yet, a Buddhist and people of other faiths can go to prayers in Germany or France or the UK and not worry that they and their children will be beheaded and murdered by extremists. Their graves will not be vandalized.

IT’S POSSIBLE to have zero levels of anti-Jewish attacks. But it’s difficult when members of some European political parties, such as the Labour Party in the UK, are found to be members of secret social media online groups that openly deny and mock the Holocaust. That’s the reality.  When educated people in the leading political parties are “liking” and tolerating posts on Facebook claiming the Holocaust didn’t happen, or claiming Jews “exploit it,” then you have a problem. You can’t have tolerance when some of the people who are supposed to be progressive and in charge of tolerance in places like the UK deride and dislike Jews and tolerate Holocaust denial.

It’s not clear if the new messages from the UAE, Bahrain and other states that are pushing tolerance and coexistence will lead to a new era in the Middle East, but today I’d feel safer in the UAE with a kippah than in most countries in Europe. That says a lot about the disastrous failure of wealthy Western countries to create a society of tolerance towards an ancient minority.

 

ISIS Creeps Further Into Sinai

Video Of The Week - Christians Bring Golden Menorah From Rome To Jerusalem- https://tinyurl.com/y6dr3qhs

  Islamic terrorists may be preparing to renew attacks against Israelis, expected to flock to Sinai vacations once the pandemic ends.

By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel- https://tinyurl.com/y6bavytw  

Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies (INSS) is warning that Islamic terrorists in the Sinai desert appear to be gearing up to renew their deadly attacks against Israeli targets.

In a report on the state of Islamic terror in the Sinai Peninsula on Israel’s western border, the INSS says the ISIS affiliate in Egypt is transitioning from defense to offense, having stopped their border attacks against Israel in 2012.

In 2011 and 2012 terrorists in the Sinai staged several attacks on the Israeli border, killing at least nine Israeli civilians and soldiers, several Egyptian soldiers, and wounding dozens of others. Following those incidents they fired rocket into Israel on two occasions in 2015 and 2017 that caused little damage and no direct injuries.

INSS researchers are concerned that once the coronavirus pandemic in Israel ends with the use of new vaccines, tens of thousands of Israelis may stream back to resorts in the Sinai, a popular destination for Israeli tourists – but turning themselves into potential targets for Islamic terrorists who are still lodged in the Sinai and have struck before.

“Once the Taba crossing [from Eilat to Egypt] reopens, Israelis who flock to the Sinai Peninsula may find themselves targets, and Israel must prepare for this possibility – now more than ever,” researchers Tomer Naveh and Yoram Schweitzer reported.

Once affiliated with Al Qaeda, the group known as Wilayat Sinai swore allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 and has mostly concentrated its deadly attacks against the Egyptian army and government, slaughtering any Egyptian civilians who get in their way.

The horrific brutality of the Islamic terrorists was shown in their deadliest attack to date on November 24, 2017, when they attacked a mosque in the village of Al-Rawda in the northern Sinai, slaughtering 311 unarmed villagers who were at prayers, injuring at least 122 others.

The researchers say that Wilayat Sinai may be making a strategic change, “shifting from survival-based defensive action toward offensive actions that inflict considerable damage on the Egyptian regime and economy” that includes attacking the Suez Canal and tourism in the Sinai Peninsula. A speech earlier this year by an Islamic State spokesman called on Wilayat to attack Israel, but instead of attacking heavily armed IDF patrols, the terrorists may go after the softer, easier target – Israeli tourists.

“Wilayat Sinai might attempt to fulfill this directive by attacking Israelis, who are likely to return to Sinai once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted,” the researchers warned, with attacks against Israelis also hitting Egypt’s struggling tourism sector.

The INSS also noted that the growing terrorist threats against both Israel and Egyptian strategic assets “creates a convergence of interests and invites a broad scope for improving security cooperation between the two countries.”

“Israel should work with the Egyptians to coordinate a swift and effective response to such scenarios and assist in improving Egyptian security and formulating the required response,” the researchers concluded.

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There are Real People on Givat Hamatos

 Video Of The Week - City of David: Bringing Bible to Life - https://tinyurl.com/y59sdt8s

From Israel Hayom, By  Leora Levian 18-11-2020 https://tinyurl.com/y42lkpyf

Anyone who stands in the neglected Jerusalem neighborhoodsand shouts that it is "Palestine" is about as relevant as someone standing on the outskirts of Bethelehem, calling it part of east Jerusalem.

Anyone who heard the reports about the approval of a construction plan for the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in east Jerusalem could get the impression that it was a real estate jewel on which the Israeli government wanted to build luxury apartments, make a fortune, and on the way torpedo the dream of a territorially contiguous Palestinian states.

But the neglected caravan site with the impressive view is, first of all, a human story, a social one, a story about domestic issues in Israel. In the 1990s it was populated by hundreds of families who arrived as part of the large waves of aliyah from Ethiopia and lived there until they could move into permanent accommodations. They were joined by a few dozen families in need of emergency housing, and they are the ones who live in the "neighborhood" – a slightly puffed-up name for a twisted road with broken streetlights, stray dogs, and broken-down mobile homes.

I know Givat Hamatos well because I arrived there in 2009 after I called all the community centers in the area and realized that the neglected site was a former part of Jerusalem. There were four of us, looking to make the world a better place, who came to fill the social and educational vacuum. We set up a clubhouse for children and teens that is still in operation. For some, it rescued them. We became an integral part of the place the responsibility for which has been passed back and forth between the Jerusalem Municipality and the Housing and Construction Ministry's Amidar building company for years.

Once every few years, including this week, the neglected neighborhood makes it into the headlines. "Construction in east Jerusalem," the left-wing organizations cry, and envoys of the European Union rush to criticize the "attack on the peace process." Former US Ambassador Martin Indyk took to Twitter to ask if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to "embarrass" President-elect Joe Biden through controversial construction in Jerusalem.

But the "peace process" hasn't been on the agenda for a long time now, and the "embarrassing" construction includes hundreds of housing units for the adjacent Arab neighborhood of Beit Zafafa, and Givat Hamatos – get ready for this – is in the far south of the city, near Bethlehem and Gush Etzion, not in its east. This perfect disorientation is so symbolic of those who in the name of a dream ignore reality; those who seek out Palestinian "oppression"  and are blind to the fact that real people are already living there. Before they run to lay out the borders of an imaginary Palestinian state, maybe they could turn the spotlight (and resources) to the big questions involving the people who live there now: questions of housing and education policies; personal responsibility and government planning; massive investment in certain sectors while others are ignored; historical mistakes and who is responsible for fixing them.

Anyone who has a hammer sees only nails; anyone who has European funding sees only a problem of Israel oppressing the Palestinians. But anyone who stands on Givat Hamatos and screams "Palestine!" is about as relevant as someone who stands on the outskirts of Bethlehem and calls it "east Jerusalem."

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Peace With Saudi Arabia??

 Video Of The Week - Netanyahu with Pompeo in Saudi Arabia - https://tinyurl.com/yx8fmq7a

 From JP 23-11-2020 by Iahav Harkov

 For the full article go to- https://tinyurl.com/y573a9d9

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Neom, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, Israeli sources have confirmed.

 Netanyahu, along with Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and Netanyahu’s Military Secretary Avi Bluth, used a private plane belonging to businessman Udi Angel, which the prime minister has used for past diplomatic trips. The plane left Israel at 5 p.m. on Sunday and returned after midnight.

 The Israeli and Saudi sides discussed Iran and normalization, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior Saudi adviser.

Netanyahu said in a Likud faction meeting that “for years, [he] never commented on these matters and will not start now. For years, I have spared no effort in strengthening Israel and expanding the circle of peace.”

 Still, Education Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed that the meeting in Saudi Arabia took place, calling it an “amazing achievement” and “a matter of great importance” in an interview with Army Radio.

 Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan denied that the crown prince met with Israeli officials during the meeting with Pompeo, saying, “the only officials present were American and Saudi.” However, he did not deny that any meeting between MBS and Netanyahu took place.

 Farhan’s denial is likely a reflection of Saudi King Salman’s continued reticence to make his country’s warming ties with Israel official.

US President Donald Trump mentioned the possibility that Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords Israel signed with other Gulf states in recent months, but reports came out immediately afterward of a generational divide, with the 84-year-old king remaining loyal to the traditional Saudi position – that peace with a Palestinian state must come before normalization with Israel – while the 35-year-old crown prince supports open ties with the Jewish state.

 The trip was kept tightly under wraps in Israel as it was being planned for more than a month, and neither Defense Minister Benny Gantz nor Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi were informed before it took place. IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi was also uninformed, though Netanyahu’s military secretary did participate in the meeting.

 On Sunday, however, Prince Faisal told Reuters that normalization with Israel would only come after “a permanent and comprehensive peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis including the establishment of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders.”

The minister said his country has “supported normalization with Israel for a long time,” pointing out that they authored the Saudi Peace Initiative that would have the Arab world establish ties with Israel in exchange for their vision of a two-state solution.

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al-Masri’s Killing to aid Biden-Israel relations?

 Video Of The Week - Israeli Arab Yoseph Haddad On BDS. https://tinyurl.com/y4ajt3g7

For The Full Article go to JP, by Seth j. Frantzman  15.11.2020 https://tinyurl.com/y5h7qf8a     

  Initial reports said Abu Muhammad al-Masri was killed at the “behest” of the US. He was killed in August, so why did the information only come out in November?

 The reports of the killing in Tehran led to important questions about Iran’s role in accepting global terrorists, former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren said.

 “No one is asking why Iran is hosting al-Qaeda commanders and why the United States should renew a nuclear deal that gives tens of billions of dollars to those who harbor the murderers of 3,000 Americans,” he said.

 The operation to track and kill Masri took place earlier this year, the Associated Press reported Sunday, and was facilitated by “bold intelligence operations by the two allied nations.” The US provided the intelligence on where Masri was living and his alias, and “Israeli agents carried out the killing,” the report said.

 Masri was killed by “Kidon, a unit within the secretive Israeli spy organization Mossad allegedly responsible for the assassination of high-value targets,” the report said. Masri’s daughter, the widow of Hamzah bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, was also killed, it said.

 The killing of this al-Qaeda senior leader could help Israel with the new US administration, according to reports. This is important because the Biden team is considered close to Israel but is also critical of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

 Regarding Iran, there was deep divergence between the Trump administration and those who preferred to stay within the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran deal. There is also a lot of discussion about Iran’s role in the region.

 Some depict Iran as more moderate, a regime the US can work with to reduce tensions. Others see the regime as seeking regional hegemony. Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and drones, and its role in supporting proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, are often a threat to US allies.

 The timing of the reports on the killing of Masri creates two converging narratives. First, it provides evidence of the close relationship between the US and Israel and showcases Israel’s capabilities in the region and why it is such a key ally of Washington. That means the relationship between Israel and the US is not just one of Washington supporting Jerusalem; it goes both ways. Israel provides key capabilities in the region for the Americans.

 Second, the revelation that al-Qaeda operatives are being hosted in Iran shows that Iran not only works with Sunni extremists against the West; it specifically harbors those who killed Americans. Iran could have ejected these terrorists as part of the Iran deal to show it is moderating. But it did not.

 This illustrates what many experts in the region have been saying about Iran: Its threat is not just about the nuclear program but is the sum of all of the threats it poses, including its willingness to work with al-Qaeda.

 This bursts the bubble of the simplistic narrative that portrays Iran as only a Shi’ite Islamic theocracy, incapable of working with Sunni jihadists.

 Iran is also a cynical country that does everything it can to oppose the US and US allies. It has never altered that course, despite opportunities to do so.

 The operation in August revealed that. The timing of the reports on it suggest important ramifications.

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Rabbi Sacks on the connection between Judaism and Israel

Video Of The Week"Why I am a Jew" by Rabbi Sacks https://tinyurl.com/y4wjzdq8

For the full article go to Jonathan Sacks- https://tinyurl.com/y33f6ogl

 How can Anti-Zionism be the new Anti-Semitism? Surely there’s no connection between them. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews as a people, a race, an ethnic group. Anti-Zionism is objection to a country, a nation, a state. What’s the connection between them?

 Anti-Semitism is a virus that mutates, so that new anti-Semites can deny they are anti-Semites at all, because their hate is different from the old. In the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated for their race. Today they are hated for their nation state, Israel.

 What then is the connection between Jews as a people, Judaism as a religion, and Israel as a state? The connection between the Jewish people and Israel goes back long before the birth of either Christianity or Islam. Jews created a society there in the days of Joshua, a kingdom in the days of Saul, and a nation with Jerusalem as its capital in the days of King David: all this more than 3,000 years ago.

 Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there. At all other times in the past 3,000 years it was merely an administrative district in an empire whose centre was elsewhere: the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans, and finally the British. Jews are the only people who have maintained a continuous presence in the land. They are its indigenous, original inhabitants.

 The November 1947 United Nations vote to bring Israel into existence was a momentous reversal of imperialism. It gave back to the Jewish people the home taken from them by empire after empire. Israel was the only non-artificial creation in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The rest ­– among them Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – were artificial creations that hadn’t been states before, which is why most of them still exist in a condition of ethnic, religious and tribal strife. Only Israel had previously existed as a nation state.

 That’s the unbreakable connection between Israel and the Jewish people. The connection between Israel and Judaism is equally ancient and fundamental. It is more than just as Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Read the Hebrew Bible and you’ll see immediately that it isn’t about the salvation of the soul. It’s about creating in the holy land a society based on the biblical ideas of justice, welfare, the sanctity of life – and caring for the stranger “because you know what it feels like to be a stranger.”

 Judaism began with two journeys to the land, one by Abraham and Sarah, the other by the Israelites in the days of Moses. At least half of the 613 commandments of the Bible are only applicable to the land of Israel. And though in the centuries of exile and dispersion Jews lived in almost every land under the sun, Israel has remained a focus of their prayers and the only place where they have been able to do what every other nation takes for granted, construct their own society in the light of their own ideals.

 Judaism differs from the other Abrahamic monotheisms, Christianity and Islam, in that it is the only one of the three that never created or sought to create an empire. It was the imperialism of the Roman emperor Hadrian that led him in the 2nd century to change the country’s name to Palestine, one of the first, but certainly not the last, deliberate falsifications of history by those who seek to deny the Jewish people’s right to their land.

 There are 56 Islamic nations, and 159 in which Christians form the majority. There is and only ever has been one Jewish state, tiny and vulnerable though it is and always was. That is why Anti-Zionism, denying Jews the right to their one and only collective home by misrepresenting Judaism, is the new anti-Semitism, every bit as virulent and dangerous as the old.

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The Real Enemy of Islam

Video Of The Week - Jeremy Corbyn Suspended https://tinyurl.com/y3mftt7v

For the full Article from Gatestone by Khaled Abu Toameh 3-11-2020 https://tinyurl.com/y3t3krk2

a)     "The beheading of the French history teacher proves that political Islam has become a real threat to world peace in light of its expansionist tendency, which is currently embodied by Erdogan's project, which not only targets the societies of Muslim countries, but also other societies that incubate important Islamic communities." — Al-Habib Al-Aswad, Tunisian journalist, Al-Arab, October 28, 2020.

b)     He wants to represent himself as a defender of Islam. Which Islam does he speak for? Erdogan has committed crimes in Libya, Syria and all Arab countries. He is the one who is offending Islam." — Mustafa Bakri, Egyptian media personality, Al-Dostor Studio, October 30, 2020.

c)     The reactions of many Arabs and Muslims show that they view Erdogan as a more serious threat to Islam than Macron or others in the West.

Turkish President Erdogan is not authorized to speak on behalf of the Muslims, especially regarding the current controversy surrounding France's attitude toward Islam and Muslim terrorist attacks. That is what many Muslims are saying these days in the aftermath of Erdogan's attempt to present himself as the grand defender of Islam in a conflict that recently erupted between Muslims and France.

According to several Muslim political analysts and writers, Erdogan is trying to take advantage of the anti-France campaign in the Muslim world for his own political gain. The message the Muslims are sending to France and the rest of the world is that Erdogan is a hypocrite and opportunist, who is acting from personal interest and not out of concern for Muslims or Islam.

Last week, France condemned Erdogan for comments he made about French President Emmanuel Macron's mental health and treatment of Muslims. Erdogan had suggested that the French president needed "some kind of mental treatment" because of Macron's attitude toward Muslims in France. "What else is there to say about a head of state who doesn't believe in the freedom of religion and behaves this way against the millions of people of different faiths living in his own country?" Erdogan said in a speech at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party. He also called on Muslims to boycott French goods.

Erdogan's remarks came in response to Macron's pledge to crack down on radical Islamism in France after a Muslim terrorist beheaded history teacher Samuel Paty on October 16. Paty had taught a class on freedom of expression during which he used cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Even before Paty was murdered, Macron defended the right to caricature the Prophet Mohammed. In September, he described Islam as a religion "in crisis" and announced that he would present a bill to strengthen a law that separates church and state in France.

Some Muslims see Erdogan's attacks on France as an attempt to divert attention from the growing criticism in the Arab world toward Turkey's meddling in the internal affairs of a number of Arab countries. Saudi Arabian activists have called for a boycott of Turkish products to protest Erdogan's repeated attacks on Arab leaders and countries.

"Erdogan's statements and his defense of Islam do not bear in their essence any religious dimensions, but rather an attempt to win the friendship of the angry street and also to save his country's economy, which is suffering badly after the success of the Arab boycott of Turkish goods."

Noting that Arab business executives and others have called for a boycott of Turkish products to protest the "hostile policies of the Erdogan regime," the newspaper quoted Egyptian political analyst Tareq Fahmi as saying:

"Erdogan's talk about adopting the defense of Islam has become unacceptable after everyone realized that the matter is purely political and has nothing to do with the religious dimension. The issue is also related to addressing Arab and Islamic public opinion so that Erdogan appears in the image of the great Arab and Islamic leader. Erdogan aims to ride the current wave and try to employ and invest it politically in his battles against Europe and France."

Lebanese journalist Joseph Abu Fadel scoffed at Erdogan's call for the protection of Muslims in France:

Abbas pointed out that Erdogan was also motivated by his concern over the decline of his popularity in Turkey:

"The beheading of the French history teacher proves that political Islam has become a real threat to world peace in light of its expansionist tendency, which is currently embodied by Erdogan's project, which not only targets the societies of Muslim countries, but also other societies that incubate important Islamic communities... When the Turkish president incited against France and President Macron, his primary concern was not religion or the Prophet Mohammed, but rather his geopolitical struggle with the French in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, and generally North Africa and the Sahara region. Erdogan is convinced that Macron is a declared ally of countries that Ankara considers its enemies."

Egyptian media personality Mustafa Bakri said that Erdogan was taking advantage of various crises and cannot be sincere in his defense of Islam. Erdogan, he added, "is not an honest man."

"He took advantage of the situation against France and claimed to be defending Islam. He wants to represent himself as a defender of Islam. Which Islam does he speak for? Erdogan has committed crimes in Libya, Syria and all Arab countries. He is the one who is offending Islam."

"Some populist politicians think only about achieving their personal victories by using powerful and extremist rhetoric... What Erdogan came out with cannot be considered an endeavor to defend the interests of Muslims and the Prophet Mohammed, and he knows more than others what the consequences could be for the Muslim communities living in Western societies."

The reactions of many Arabs and Muslims show that they view Erdogan as a more serious threat to Islam than Macron or others in the West. The voices of Erdogan's critics, however, rarely find their way to the mainstream media.

Ironically, Erdogan, who is currently calling for a boycott of French products, is himself being boycotted by a growing number of Arabs and Muslims. It is Erdogan, bemoaning the "insults" to Islam made by Westerners, who is himself being accused by Muslims of killing Muslims and occupying their lands.

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