Jews Worldwide under Murderous Attack

 Video Of The Week – Media’s Silence - https://tinyurl.com/9f4f54ed

 For the full Article by Melanie Phillips go to: https://tinyurl.com/8urf945t              

The Jewish people are under murderous  attack both in Israel and the diaspora. The violence is not confined to the Middle East. There has been a huge upsurge in attacks on diaspora Jews in Britain, Europe and America. On the streets of European cities, demonstrators have been screaming for the destruction of Israel and chanting that the “army of Mohammed” has returned to slaughter the Jews.

Britain’s Jewish defence organisation reports at least a five-fold increase in antisemitic incidents over the course of the Gaza war. The most dramatic example was a four-hour motorcade  around Jewish areas of North London screaming abuse: “F*** the Jews, f*** their daughters, f*** their mothers, rape their daughters and free Palestine.”

What’s happening now is that the Palestinian war against Israel has been reframed as a war against the Jews. Most of this is being perpetrated by Muslims. But it is being reinforced by extreme hostility to Israel from western “progressives.” It’s not just the twisted reporting, distortions and blood libels  that have been transmitted by the BBC, Sky UK, the Guardian, The New York Times  and others. Worse still is the intensity of the perverse and unjustified passions with which Israel is demonised. It’s the spitting outrage that not enough Israelis are dying to justify military action.

 It’s the virulent satisfaction with which every military action that Israel takes  is seized upon as proof of its moral depravity. For a Jew, it’s impossible not to hear the unmistakable echoes of previous horrors — the medieval blood libel against the Jews and the Holocaust. While the Nazi comparison is repeatedly misused, on this occasion it is all too justified. Indeed, it is not too fanciful to view what we are witnessing as the last, overlooked but still active front of the Second World War.

Left-wing thinkers urged a total repudiation of the nation-state. This led to the dogma that Israel was a colonial and illegitimate enterprise, Zionism was racism. In the Muslim world,  Jew-hatred is rooted in Islamic theology. The most notorious Arab Nazi was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini. And al Husseini’s most devoted acolyte is the current leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Today, the Palestinians of both Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah constantly churn out Nazi-style, murderous incitement. The Iranian regime, which funds and arms Hamas, regularly announces its genocidal intentions towards the Jews.

So today’s war against western civilisation and the Jews amounts to infernal unfinished business. But unlike the Second World War, when those in the free world on the side of the fascists were regarded as traitors, such people today march with those pledged to Islamic holy war against the Jews. The heirs to the Nazis are still intent upon the same terrible aims. The difference now is that those fighting for civilisation are being undermined by an enormous fifth column.

 

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Failed Hamas Rockets killed Gaza civilians

 Video Of The Week - Israel, Starwars, Distortion and Lies - https://tinyurl.com/55ts8dhj

 “Hamas uses the civil platform to shoot at us. It doesn’t distinguish between civilians and the Israeli army. But we are doing all we can to distinguish between the two components,” the official told JNS.

 For the full article BY YAAKOV LAPPIN go to: https://tinyurl.com/2jbjaf3v

 Rockets fired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip killed a number of Gazan civilians in the first hours of attacks on Monday, an Israeli security official said on Thursday.

 After Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem at 6 p.m. local time, three hours passed before the Israel Defense Forces responded at 9 p.m., according to the source. Yet during those three hours, he said, 17 Gazan noncombatants were killed by failed rocket launches that crashed into Gaza areas.

 “This is an internal mistake or a technical problem that happened when they fired,” said the official.

 The official said that the Israel Defense Forces is making every possible effort to distinguish between Gazan civilians and enemy combatants, saying, “There are mistakes, but we are doing everything in our power to distinguish them and putting all of our resources into this.”

 Every target must be approved by the highest-ranking officer before it is struck as part of the effort to avoid civilians, the source stressed. The IDF also places warning calls and drops empty munitions on buildings (“roof-knocking”) before striking in many cases.

 “Hamas uses the civil platform to shoot at us,” said the official. “It doesn’t distinguish between civilians and the Israeli army. But we are doing all that we can to distinguish between the two components.”

 Earlier on Thursday, Defense Minister Benny Gantz approved the call-up of 9,000 reservists, after the previous approval of 7,000 reservists. The personnel will enter combat units and support headquarters as part of “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Gantz’s office said in a statement, adding that they will be stationed in the IDF’s Southern, Central and Northern Command in place of other units mobilized to other missions.

 Also on Thursday, the IDF intercepted an armed drone sent by Hamas over southern Israel.

 ‘The neighborhood looks like a rocket-impact area’

 IDF spokesperson Capt. (Res.) Libbi Weiss told JNS that the military had been following the threat of armed drones by Hamas for a lengthy period, adding that the IDF was not surprised by the attack.

 It shot down a total of four unmanned aerial vehicles, of which two were explosive drones, according to Ynet. The report said the Iron Dome air-defense system was used to shoot down one threat, a second by a Python missile fired by an F-16, while “the third and fourth were intercepted through a classified means,” said the report.

 Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck the apartment of Samer Abu-Daka, head of the Hamas unmanned aerial vehicle unit, which was used for military planning and operations.

 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continued firing rockets at southern and central Israeli cities throughout Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, the IDF clocked more than 1,750 rocket attacks since the beginning of hostilities with some 300 falling short in Gaza. Iron Dome intercepted 90 percent of projectiles heading to built-up areas.

 At 2 a.m. on Thursday, a rocket got through the defense systems and smashed into a residential area in Petach Tikvah, injuring five Israelis and causing damage to a four-story building.

 “I’m standing here at Petach Tikvah, looking at the damaged building,” said Weiss. “It very much serves as an unbelievable example of what is going on here. It is miraculous that they were all able to get into the shelter. The neighborhood looks like a rocket-impact area. These developments are incredibly concerning to us.”

 Earlier on Thursday, International IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the military had struck more than 600 enemy targets in Gaza belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that airstrikes were continuing.

 Also on Thursday, jets hit a Hamas intelligence headquarters, including the main military observation center used by Hamas. Dozens of Hamas operatives were present at the site during the Israeli airstrike, said the IDF.

 A total of seven Israelis—six civilians and one IDF soldier—have been killed by terrorist projectiles since Sunday.

 ‘We have a set plan of military targets’

 The IDF continued to hit a range of targets, including a missile manufacturing site belonging to Hamas and a Hamas naval force site that doubled up as a missile manufacturing site in central Gaza. Other weapons production sites were hit all over the Strip. Several buildings used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for military purposes were hit as well.

 An additional target, described by Conricus as a defensive tunnel, where operatives hide and move between locations, was hit. “This specific tunnel was dug under a school and in very close to an infirmary,” he said. “We continue to strike the different rocket-firing pits, too.”

 Israel has been able to knock out a significant part of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad firing capability, but “it is by no means totally degraded,” said Conricus. Dozens of enemy combatants have been killed by IDF strikes, he added.

 Wednesday’s IDF strike that killed a number of Hamas’s senior military leadership had somewhat of a cooling effect on Hamas, though it was too soon to know how long this would last, he said.

 IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi spoke with his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff on Wednesday, and updated him on the situation, the challenges Israel faces and its preparations. He also shared details of Israel’s military planning.

 “This was a very important conversation,” noted Conricus.

 “Our posture going forward is that the IDF is continuing operations. We have a set plan of military targets belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Our intention is to continue to strike those targets to derail their military capabilities to fire at us,” he said.

 IDF ground maneuver units are in “various stages” of preparations at the Gaza border, he added, though no order has been given by the Israeli government to launch such an offensive.

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“Sheikh Jarrah” Exemplifies the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Video Of The Week - Is Sheikh Jarrah in "Palestine"? https://tinyurl.com/u8jpmt7t

This past week anti-Israel forces have been in overdrive over the Jerusalem District Court’s decision authorizing the eviction of certain Arab families from homes in the “Sheikh Jarrah” neighborhood of Jerusalem. These critics have aggressively railed against Israel on social media and even started a trending hashtag, “SaveSheikhJarra.”

 

But first, some history about this neighborhood is needed. “Sheik Jarrah” is an Arab neighborhood that was established in 1865. And before 1949, there was a separate Jewish neighborhood within it. For about 2000 years before that, this area was known by the name “Shimon HaTzadik” (Simon the Righteous), named after the famous rabbinical sage whose tomb is located there.

 

For centuries, the Jewish presence in the area revolved around the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik, who was famously one of the last members of the Great Assembly (HaKnesset HaGedolah), the governing body of the Jewish people during the Second Jewish Commonwealth (after the Babylonian Exile).

 

Because of the tomb and its significance to the Jewish people, the Sephardic Community Committee and the Ashkenazi Assembly of Israel purchased the tomb and its surrounding land (about 4.5 acres) in 1875. Shortly thereafter, it, along with the neighborhood of Kfar Hashiloah in the Silwan area of Jerusalem, became home to many, mostly Yemenite, Jews who had migrated to Jerusalem (Zion) back in 1881. Notably, by 1844, Jews were the largest ethnic population in Jerusalem.

 

Between 1936 and 1938, and then again in 1948, the British Empire assisted Arabs, incited by raw-Jew hatred, in ripping Jews from their homes  in Shimon HaTzadik (and in Kfar Hashiloah). The Yemeni Jewish community was also expelled from Silwan, for “their own safety,” by the British Office of Social Welfare. Essentially, the British preferred to force Jews out of their own homes rather than expend the resources to protect Jewish families and their property rights in Jerusalem.

 

Then, in 1949, after TransJordan (now Jordan) invaded Israel as part of an express attempt by the entire Arab League to destroy Israel and “push the Jews into the sea,” TransJordan’s British-created and British-led Arab Legion captured Judea and Samaria, all of the Old City of Jerusalem and many of its surrounding neighborhoods, including the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood. Then the Arab Legion either killed or ethnically cleansed every last Jew. Not one was allowed to remain. Not one. Even those whose families had lived in the region for centuries before the Arab invasion in the seventh century.

 

After Israel gained control of all of Jerusalem from the Jordan during the Six Day War, Israel passed a law that allows Jews whose families had been forced out of their homes by the Jordanians or the British to regain control of their family homes if they could provide proof of ownership and the current residents could not provide proof of a valid purchase or transfer of title.  All of the homes that are the subject of these 2021 eviction proceedings, in addition to being on land purchased in 1875 by the Jewish community, were owned by Jewish families that had purchased those homes, and had deeds registered first with the Ottoman Empire (which governed the region from 1517 to 1917) and then with the British authorities (who controlled the area from 1917 to 1948).

 

This is how the current controversy and conflict surrounding the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood is emblematic of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict:

 

In Shimon HaTzadik, Jews are trying to move back into homes, which were purchased peacefully and legally by their ancestors on land that is part of the Jewish people’s indigenous, historical and religious homeland. They are trying to move back into homes on land that was conquered by a foreign Arab army and renamed to erase the historic Jewish connection and character of the area. This, too, applies to every inch of the land of Israel before 1948.

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Human Rights Watch Exploits its Mission for Hate

Video Of The Week - Yes, there is Apartheid in the West Bank - https://tinyurl.com/3pyac8n4

Article from JNS 29-4-2021 by Gerald M. Steinberg  https://tinyurl.com/bf4mcypw

Why has HRW focused so much money and energy on viciously targeting Israel for more than 20 years?

(April 29, 2021 / JNS) In the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet bloc and the Arab league combined forces in the United Nations to promote anti-Semitism and demonize Israel. This crescendoed into the infamous 1975 United Nations resolution labeling Zionism as racism.

By the 1990s, the hatred had spread to powerful political organizations working under the banners of human rights and international law. In particular, the propaganda war against the Jewish state was and continues to be led by Human Rights Watch (HRW), an NGO superpower working in close cooperation with other groups, including some in Israel. In 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernstein, writing in The New York Times, criticized his own organization for helping “to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

HRW’s latest contribution to the anti-Israel agenda was launched on Tuesday under the heading of “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” With an annual budget of almost $100 million (including some long-hidden donations such as from a corrupt Saudi billionaire), the organization was able to gain a great deal of publicity and media coverage.

The headlines highlight the disingenuous equivalence that HRW draws between Israel and the South African apartheid regime. HRW’s publication has 200 references to apartheid — approximately one per page—interspersed among false accusations and distorted (or invented) versions of international law, many of which were copied directly from other NGOs. HRW attacks everything from Israel’s 1950 Law of Return, enacted in the shadow of the Holocaust, to counter-terror measures, which, they claim, are used “to advance demographic objectives” and “have no legitimate security justifications.” This claim is made easier by the fact that they fail to mention decades of Palestinian terror against Israeli victims 

Why has HRW focused so much money and energy on viciously targeting Israel for more than 20 years? The answer is Kenneth Roth, who has led HRW since 1993 and is the driving force behind the organization’s obsession with Israel. Roth has not hidden his strong anti-Zionist compulsion. In 2004, an Israeli journalist asked him, “What’s a good Jewish boy from Chicago doing at the helm of HRW, the famous NGO that many accuse of singling out the Jewish state?” Roth did not deny his hostility toward Israel, but instead referred to his father’s “stories of life in Nazi Germany until he fled in summer 1938.” For many years, Roth’s official HRW biography cited his father’s experience in Germany, as if this somehow explained singling out Israel for attack.

In addition to his obscure personal factors, Roth also promotes a condescending worldview known as post-colonialism that automatically treats supposed victims of the West as innocents who can do no wrong, in contrast to the West—particularly the United States—which he always paints as guilty. After 1967, when Israel was no longer in danger of being destroyed by Arab armies, was receiving increased support from the United States and became an “occupier,” the Jewish state became a primary target for the post-colonialists, including Roth.

Many years ago, Roth also understood the value in comparing Israel to the heinous South African apartheid regime. He sent HRW officials to play a central role in the 2001 U.N. Conference in Durban, South Africa, and defended this comparison as part of the organization’s agenda of countering what he referred to, even then, as “Israeli racist practices.” In interviews and on Twitter (Roth posts every hour, seven days a week), he frequently promotes the apartheid and racism theme.

In 2017, after the white supremacist march and violence in Charlottesville, Roth tweeted a link to a propaganda piece headlined “Birds of a feather: White supremacy and Zionism.” He included a picture depicting a Confederate and Israeli flag, commenting, “Many rights activists condemn Israeli abuse & anti-Semitism. Some white supremacists embrace Israel & anti-Semitism.”

Over the years, Roth has also hired a number of experienced and dedicated anti-Israel activists, such as Sarah Leah Whitson, who was born in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City (then under Jordanian occupation). Her family reportedly moved to the United States in 1960, but for whatever reason, her anti-Israel passion, often crossing the line into anti-Semitism, is well-entrenched. Prior to joining HRW in 2004 and heading their BDS campaign, she had been active with the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and, even then, ran campaigns attacking Israeli “apartheid” and its “matrix of control.” (Whitson also raised money in Saudi Arabia and suddenly left HRW in early 2020 when those details were leaked.

In 2016, Roth and Whitson hired Omar Shakir—the lead author of HRW’s “apartheid” publication. Shakir is also deeply and personally invested in vilifying Israel and spent many years as a campus activist speaking under headings like “Apartheid IsReal.” He has led HRW’s (failed) effort to press Airbnb and the FIFA soccer association to join the anti-Israel boycott. For Shakir, who left Israel after his work visa was not renewed and he lost a lengthy court battle, this is revenge propaganda.

But perhaps this time, Roth, Shakir and HRW overshot their target. After the report was criticized in media reports, such as in Le Point (often quoting NGO Monitor), they tried to spin the message, claiming that they were not actually comparing Israel to South Africa but instead were using a new definition of apartheid. But with the long history, the 200 references and the title, even an NGO superpower will have trouble selling that canard.

Gerald M. Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of the Institute for NGO Research.

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Rattling Israel's BBC Tormentors

 Video Of The Week - BBC'S "Blood Libel" https://tinyurl.com/9urahnes   

 Melanie Phillips April 21st 2021

 For the full Article go to - https://tinyurl.com/ed9vrvfw

 A reliable sign that someone has managed to puncture one of the BBC’s doctrinal falsehoods is when an interviewer is sufficiently rattled to keep interrupting.

 These theatrics occurred last evening on BBC TV’s Newsnight, when anchor Emily Maitlis grilled Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s new ambassador to the UK.Hotovely,  is highly controversial because of her profile as an Israeli religious nationalist.

 The Newsnight item was ostensibly about what Britain might learn from Israel’s “green” vaccination passport.Maitlis noted concerns that the introduction of a British vaccination passport might widen social divisions. Then she said : But in Israel, where the Palestinian population has not been inoculated at anywhere near the rate of the Israeli population, there’s plenty of concern about the passport’s ability to widen the gulf.

 Subsequently noting Israel’s impressive achievement in getting nearly 60 per cent of its population fully vaccinated, she nevertheless added:

…but the roll-out to Palestinian citizens has been much slower at 0.5 per cent.

 Woa! Stop right there! She appeared to be suggesting that Israel was discriminating against its own Arab citizens by vaccinating them at a slower rate. This is totally untrue. Israeli Arabs have been offered the vaccination in exactly the same way as every other Israeli citizen.   Maitlis seemed to be conflating Israeli Arabs, who are Israeli citizens, with Palestinian Arabs who are not Israeli citizens but inhabit those disputed territories beyond Israel. Under the Oslo Accords, their health needs are delivered by the Palestinian Authority.

 Hotovely proceeded to hole other falsehoods below the waterline. She pointed out that the Palestinian Authority hadn’t wanted Israel to provide the Palestinian Arabs with a vaccination programme. The PA had instead wanted to provide it for them itself, and had done just that by purchasing doses of the Russian Sputnik vaccine.

 This unanswerable fact so wrong-footed Maitlis that she pulled out what she presumably believed was her killer point — that six Israeli ultra-leftist NGOs had said Israel had a “legal, moral and ethical” obligation to deliver Covid vaccinations to the Palestinians.

Hotovely kept her cool and responded with the first of her two zingers of the evening. “Let me ask you, Emily,” she said, “would you actually impose getting vaccines [on] the leaders of the Palestinians? Would you actually say [they had to] accept Israeli access and Israeli help? When they’re not interested?”

 Maitlis started to talk over her by robotically intoning “legal, moral and ethical obligation”. Hotoveley,proceeded to drive her point home:

But you’re not answering my question. My question is very simple. Can you impose receiving the vaccine on populations [whose] leadership wants to be in charge of the programme? You’re patronising the Palestinians.

 Maitlis asked:

You’re telling me that the Palestinians didn’t want to take up the vaccinations? Replied Hotovely:

No no, they had their own programme, they bought the Russian vaccine, they had a agreement with the WHO and they wanted to run their own programme and I think we need to respect that. And when they asked for Israel’s help, we were there to help.

With the collapse of that line of attack, Maitlis switched to the presumed awfulness of both Hotovely herself and the State of Israel that she represents.

 So it was that an item on the issue of vaccination passports found it necessary to accuse Israel of having proposed last year to annex up to one-third of the “West Bank”; and to accuse Hotovely, a former “settlements minister”, of being such a right-wing religious extremist that her appointment as ambassador had provoked 2000 liberal British Jews to petition against it. Did she or did she not, demanded Maitlis, support the “two-state solution”? To which Hotovely said how gratified she had been by the warm response to her arrival from the Jewish community, and calmly delivered her second zinger of the evening.

 You cannot speak about a formula when the Palestinians aren’t willing to sit and negotiate with Israel. They’re not interested in any two-state solution.

 From all of which we might make two observations. The first is that this was an impressive debut appearance by Tzipi Hotovely. She remained calm, factual and pleasant while delivering facts that punctured the lies (and which many Brits will not have heard before).The second is that,  the BBC seems to be taking its talking points not just from the Guardian, but also now from extreme-leftist NGOs.

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Israel stands alone on Iran

 Video Of The Week - Who Are Israelis, Really? - https://tinyurl.com/2tpzzt7d

 From al-monitor by Ben Caspit. For the full article go to https://tinyurl.com/5xzp8fzd

Lt. Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of the US Central Command’s Air Force, visited Israel at the end of February. His host, Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, took him up personally on an F-15 Eagle for a bird’s eye view of Israel’s borders.

Guillot’s late February visit reflects the extent of cooperation between the various Israeli and American defense and intelligence agencies, which has been experiencing a golden age in recent years. Israel is the only country in the world other than the United States in which a prototype of the F-35 Stealth fighter is being upgraded with additional armaments and fuel tanks. Israel is the only country permitted to install its own domestically developed technology on the advanced aircraft, which will allow it to share the F-35’s sophisticated command and control system with older fighter planes in the Israeli fleet, such as the F-15 and F-16.

These capabilities, as well as being the only country in the world to dispatch the Stealth on real time operational missions on a daily basis, have drawn the attention of many other air forces. The extensive cooperation with the British, Italian, Greek, German, Emirati and other air forces is breaking all records. Israel’s two main defense assets — the absolute control of the skies over the Middle East and the seemingly inexhaustible information collected by its intelligence community — have turned Israel into a magnet for international cooperation, ardent courting and joint drills.

However, the picture is bleak for Israel’s diplomatic posture on the world stage. Israel is experiencing “withdrawal symptoms” from the high it enjoyed for four years of the Donald Trump presidency. Unlike the welcome presence in many countries of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Mossad director Yossi Cohen, Norkin and other top brass, Israel’s foreign affairs arena is under threat of international boycott from Washington and elsewhere.

The businesslike but chilly tone adopted by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on his visit to Israel on April 11-12 is just the tip of the iceberg with which Israel risks colliding in the coming months. Although this has not been completely verified, Israel apparently did not convey to the Americans in full a detailed warning of the operations and attacks it allegedly planned to mount on Iranian targets over the past two weeks — with suspicious timing proximity to the renewal of talks with Iran on its nuclear program and Austin’s visit to Israel.

Israel has adopted a policy of deliberate ambiguity regarding its low-intensity warfare with Iran, the so-called war between the wars. A long string of attacks on vessels smuggling Iranian oil and/or weapons has been attributed to Israel over the last three years. In recent weeks, however, Israel appears to have abandoned this clandestine posture and displayed a seeming interest in being blamed for certain actions against Iran.

Three such operations have occurred in recent weeks: An airstrike on weapons depots near Damascus, the sabotage at Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and the Red Sea attack on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vessel used to stage operations and gather intelligence. Iran, which usually ignores such attacks and focuses instead on what it perceives as its primary mission — the lifting of the international sanctions crippling its economy — seems to have had a change of heart. On April 13, an Israeli-owned merchant ship — MV Hyperion Ray — was attacked near the Gulf of Oman in the third operation of its kind in two months. Shortly after, The New York Times reported that senior Israeli officials have conveyed messages to the effect that Israel would not respond to this latest attack, which caused minor damage, and is seeking instead to restore a measure of calm in the arena.

One thing is certain: Israel has been left more or less on its own to face the US alignment with its allies in striving for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with Iran rather than escalating sanctions and clashes. Israel’s new allies in the Gulf are backing it up, in silence, but on the real front vis-a-vis the world, Israel stands glaringly alone.

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Mohammed Dajani and his Reflections of the Holocaust

Video Of The Week - Medical Volunteers to Care for Holocaust Survivors - https://tinyurl.com/2mh8pbah

By Craig Brandhorst, 10-2-2021. For the full article go to https://tinyurl.com/2hu4fj6

In 2014, Mohammed Dajani, longtime professor at Jerusalem’s al-Quds University, took 27 Palestinian college students to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, Poland. He wanted them to confront the Holocaust, which he believes is downplayed in Palestinian schools, and to consider the complicated history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from multiple perspectives. The backlash, however, would cost him his job and endanger his life. It would also embolden his commitment to reconciliation.

Mohammed Dajani is a man without a country. Born in Jerusalem in 1946 but driven to Egypt in the Nakba, or Palestinian exodus, during the Palestinian-Israeli War of 1948. Educated in Quaker schools in Jordanian-controlled east Jerusalem and at the American University of Beirut. Banished from Lebanon for radical activity but welcomed by the United States. Graduate of not one but two Ph.D. programs, the first at the University of South Carolina. 

Dajani is also a complicated man. Secular Muslim well-versed in the Quran. Founder of the political science program at Jordan’s Applied Science Private University and of the Institute for American Studies at al-Quds University. Adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Co-director of the Wasatia Graduate School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Flensburg in Germany. Scholar. Philosopher. Activist. 

At heart, though, Dajani is a teacher. That’s evident from the start of our conversation, which occurs over two days in September via video chat — him at his Jerusalem apartment, me at home in Columbia, quarantining during the pandemic. I’m intrigued by the Auschwitz trip, which prompted a backlash in the Palestinian press and threats to his safety, but three minutes into the call he is delivering an erudite minilecture on the need for cultural education in a civil society.

“If we look at history, when Plato was disappointed with Greek democracy, he did not reject it but started the Academy,” he says. “When John Dewey felt that democracy in America was faltering, he wrote Democracy and Education. I believe that is what we need here for reconciliation between Israel and Palestine.” 

Dajani is emphatic but polite, soft-spoken, professorial. He tents his fingers, smiles ever-so-slightly at the webcam. He’s not guarded but chooses his words carefully. “Part of our conflict is ignorance,” he explains. “Ignorance of ‘the other,’ lack of empathy for ‘the other,’ lack of knowledge of ‘the other’ — their culture, their history, their literature. I feel that education can play a significant role here.”

But first, he says, Palestinian and Israeli schools need reform. He describes the current education model as “conflict education disguised as national education” and suggests, instead, a curriculum based on conflict resolution, negotiation, tolerance, dialogue — the basic tenets of Wasatia, an initiative he and his brother, Munther Dajani, started in 2007 to promote reconciliation. The word comes from the Quran, he explains, and means “middle path.”

“ ‘Wasatia’ is moderation,” he says. “We would like to raise children within a moderate culture, within a democratic culture, for them to understand the elements of conflict, to understand ‘who is the other,’ ‘why is the other,’ and to appreciate the legitimacy of ‘the other.’ We want to change the mentality from ‘us or them,’ to ‘us and them.’ This is crucial to the existence and welfare of both peoples.”

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