Déjà vu All Over Again

By Jennifer Hanin, March 26, 2012
israel syria border clash 20111 250x167 Déjà vu All Over Again
Protestors attempting to cross Israel’s border from Syria in May 2011 during “Nakba” day.

I had the pleasure of being one of a handful of devoted advocates manning Act For Israel’s social media during both Nakba,” (the annual date when Palestinians mourn the 1948 declaration of the Jewish state) and Naksa” (marking Arab defeat and territorial losses in the 1967 Six Day War).

While Act For Israel was able to get the word out to millions that these events were nothing more than publicity stunts aimed at demonizing Israel, it looks like we’re going to have to do it again. The Global March to Jerusalem is now set to fall in this category on March 30.

The organizers of the Global March to Jerusalem are bent on getting hundreds of thousands to rush and trespass Israel’s borders. Yet are they humanitarians? Well, that depends if you call Iranian-backed groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood humanitarians. The European Union, the United States, Canada, Israel and Japan have listed Hamas as a terrorist organization. Russia has listed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, and the United States had suspended it for suspected terrorist activity but since the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, has announced it would reopen formal diplomatic channels with the organization.

Today, the Iranian Diplomacy released this calling for participation in the march, and the Commissariat for Mobilization and Planning within Fatah (Abbas’s party) encouraged massive participation in the Global March to Jerusalem, releasing this statement regarding land:

is the center of the conflict and the core of the cause, and the survival of the people is dependent on preserving this land and holding onto every inch of it.

Other pro-Gaza groups are involved as well, including Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine (aka AsiaToGaza), whose convoy is already en route. Their Indian contingent was feted at a farewell event by Gandhi’s grave, facilitated by Indian parliamentarian Shri Ram Vilas Paswan, which included remarks by another parliamentarian, Shri Mani Shanker Aiyar. Their calls rallied more support for Palestine, and an end to the Judaization of Jerusalem and Freedom for Palestine.

Gee, I wonder if any of these groups realize Hamas is the sole group controlling and oppressing Gazans? This kind of rhetoric is not only antisemitic, it turns the clock backwards hundreds of years to the Inquisition, not forward towards peace.

The affiliations and positions of the organizers in the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ) are all far removed from those who could actually inspire real diplomacy. Not surprisingly, the groups are backed by the Iranian government according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

Their senior organizers include:

  • Ahmed Abo Halabiya, a Hamas MP who gave a sermon in 2000: “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.”
  • Zaher Birawi, a prominent Hamas activist in the UK and senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood linked Palestinian Return Center.
  • Abdul Maqri, head of the Algerian delegation aboard the Mavi Marmara who in 2010 said: “all our blood is Palestine” and declared that “Israel will be annihilated soon”.

GMJ’s advisory board members include George Galloway, Rev. Jeremiah Wright (infamous anti-Semitic and anti-American former pastor of President Obama), Mairead McGuire, Mahathir Mohammed and Sheikh Raed Salah. Sadly, even the once respected and severely misled Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an adviser for this effort.

Ok. Not the kind of crowd that you would willingly invite to your house party if you were Israeli, right?

So imagine if hundreds of thousands of anti-American protestors crossed the Canadian and Mexican borders in an attempt to rush Washington D.C.  Do you think the US government and our border patrol would allow a mob like this to illegally enter our country? I don’t think so.

What is the punishment for border trespassing in other countries? Let’s see, if  you were to trespass across the North Korean border, you would likely expect jail time plus 12 years of hard labor. If the Iranian government even thought you crossed their border illegally, you would receive several years in the country’s notorious Evin prison, and then would likely receive a fine of several million dollars. If you trespass across the Lebanon, Syria, Saudi or Afghanistan borders illegally, you’ll likely get a bullet with no questions asked. And most of these cases typically involve a single individual or a few together, not a mob containing hundreds of thousands.

When a large mob tried to storm Israel’s border on “Nakba” and “Naksa” last year, the only result was the tragic loss of protestors’ lives. Last May, 13 people were killed while attempting to breach Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon on “Nakba” and the following month 12 people were injured on the Syrian frontier on “Naksa Day.”

GMJ’s organizers much like flotilla organizers do not have the safety of the protestors in mind. They are intentionally manipulating the protestors involved with false rhetoric or payments. This is a serious injustice that we should all stand against. The Syrians that were paid to rush the border were unknowingly on a suicide mission. The organizers who paid them to storm the shared border with Israel knew in advance that they would not return alive.

The Israeli government has already warned the governmentsof Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and even the Hamas government in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority to call off the planned march. Furthermore, the Israeli government went as a far as saying that anyone approaching the border will be considered an infiltrator and the IDF will act with full force. But don’t be surprised if protestors storm the border and several (or many) are killed. There will be international “outrage”, UN condemnations and more protests over a legal act to defend a sovereign nation’s borders.

Unlike the UN’s whimper of “concern” over Syria’s second year of civil war claiming over 8,000 lives, its failure to condemn North Korea’s bombing of Yeongpeong Island, its silence on the atrocities in Darfur, and so many like  it, the UN lives to undermine Israel.

Clearly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will never end unless the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government take a different course altogether. The PA and Hamas must agree to call off the marches, the flotillas (by sea and by air), and the global BDS efforts. They must agree to stop the Israeli Apartheid campus lies, the incitement of young Palestinians, and the delegitimization of Israel and Jews. They must stop spreading the false narratives, training their sons and daughters to blow up innocent Israelis, and blanketing Israel with a barrage of Qassam rockets. In short, they must stop trying to overtake Israel by force, and give negotiation with Israel a fighting chance.

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Jennifer Hanin

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