Rashida Tlaib seems to have surprised many pundits by using her grandmother as a political pawn, stating publicly that Israel was denying her a "last chance" to see her ninety year old grandmother, and then moments after Israel granted her a humanitarian permission to visit her, Tlaib publicly condemned Israel for it and refused to accept the offer!
No one should have been surprised.
Tlaib is a Palestinian, which means she's really not a Palestinian. Her family are really Arabs who lived in what a century in the past was called "The Levant," by the Ottoman Turks, and ruled as a part of the Ottoman Empire. When Turkey lost World War I, these lands were carved up by France and Great Britain.
The French created Syria and Lebanon, and Great Britain created Trans-Jordan and Mandatory Palestine, and joined these two with Egypt as a greatly expanded British imperial presence in the region. In fact, the area named by the British as Mandatory Palestine had every bit of a Jewish and Arab influence, with Great Britain considering both Jews and Arabs an equally vital presence in the region. In fact, when this area was first designated for Great Britain by official League of Nations authority, the British were quite careful to openly refer to the region by three cultural names: Palestine as the European description, "Falestin" by the Arabs, and "Land of Israel" by the Jews.
In fact, if one wishes to be most correct, Tlaib's ancestors were Arab Falestins co-living with Jews, who referred to themselves at the time as Israelis! The British chose to call them all Palestinians -- Jew and Arab. When the UN created the two-state system, the Jews carried forward their existing name of Israel, while the Arabs should have likewise called their new nation Falestin. Of course, the Arabs rejected the UN creation while the Jews got busy turning Israel into an economic, social, and cultural success story in the region, despite suffering numerous military campaigns designed to destroy it! But, those Arab campaigns of violence started decades before the UN formally created Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
The truth is that in the 21st century, Israel continues to enjoy a fully active Arab minority, who enjoy full Israeli citizenship rights, freedom of religion, plus an economic condition vastly superior to what the average Palestinian experiences. Conversely, there is no Jewish presence in the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip, nor the Palestinian Authority ruled West Bank. As with Arab run governments throughout the region, great efforts were taken to expunge Jewish presence in these areas! There is but one country in this area of the globe which enjoys a diverse population, and that nation remains Israel. The other nations have spent the last several decades working to establish a singular cultural expression of Islam. Consider this reality the next time you hear someone accuse Israel of being an apartheid state!
When World War II began, the ancestors of today's Palestinians openly allied themselves with Hitler and the Nazi ideology, with their leader, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini, raising a division of Waffen SS troops, and seeking, thankfully unsuccessfully, to create the same death camps in the Middle East that populated Europe during the Final Solution.
al-Husseini is seen by most historians as the architect of the Islamist movement. A virulent anti-Semite, the man was the prime ring leader for riots and civil unrest against the British occupation during the 1920's and 30's. His organized efforts to eradicate Jewish presence in the Middle East continued for decades, culminating with the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in Palestine, where his forces battled both the British and Jews in the region. The tactics of his minions featured numerous acts of terrorism, plus many assassinations of fellow Palestinian Arabs whom al-Husseini considered insufficiently allied with his radical and violent movement. In that respect, the efforts of today's Hamas is entirely consistent with al-Husseini's political blueprint.
Hamas has for many decades used Palestinian people as pawns to be sacrificed upon a pointless political chess board. In this ongoing effort, brainwashing children to hate Jews in general, and Israelis in particular, has been rendered into a political science. Rashida Tlaib's generation of Palestinians were preceded by many others on a crusade of organized hatred, and calls for violence. Brave Palestinians who dared to stand against this rancid campaign were frequently hunted down and murdered by Hamas henchmen, a suicidal campaign that continues today.
Hamas' tactics drew directly from the religious fatwa that al-Husseini formally issued in summer of 1940, well after Great Britain was at war against Germany. In November of 1943, al-Husseini issued a public statement that read:
"It is the duty of Muhammadans (Muslims) in general and Arabs in particular to drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries. Germany is also struggling against the common foe (Jews) who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different coutries. It (Germany) has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world."
One cannot read that statement without understanding its depth of hatred, and its associated quest to exterminate Jews throughout the world, not merely in the Middle East. The Hamas charter publicly calls for the abolition of Israel, and uses the phrase, "from the river to the sea," to proclaim the Hamas goal of exterminating all Jewish presence from the West Bank of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. There is no good reason to believe that if that evil goal was ever realized, that the Islamist goal of worldwide Jewish extermination would not instantly begin, nor with its completion, not move on to the eradication of all cultural expressions deemed inconsistent with the Islamist movement. Again, in this area it is Hamas who implements apartheid and Israel who doesn't!
The strategic goal that US Congressman Rashida Tlaib was raised to believe in as a child was the eradication of Israel and the Jewish presence in the region, and nothing in her actions, since being indoctrinated in it by her Palestinian parents, indicates any desire to soften that absolutist mentality. Tlaib is merely an American-Palestinian raised from birth to hate Jews and to destroy Israel. Everything in her actions, statements, and affiliations, align themselves entirely with the Hamas mission statement. Tlaib openly endorses the so-called "one state solution," which calls for all of the Middle East to be entirely Arab and Muslim, with all Jews and Christians forcefully removed or exterminated. Yet, this is the public person to whom the Israeli government issued a humanitarian visa to visit her grandmother, after Tlaib publicy asked for that "last opportunity." Tlaib's rejection of that visa was simply the final act of a political ruse, every bit as clumsy and over bearing as Hamas' standard indoctrination efforts.
Hamas uses Palestinian children, and civilians in general, as human shields to guard military sites from Israeli attacks. Hamas trains children to strap on suicide vests and attempt to infiltrate through Israeli checkpoints, with plans to use any children wounded or killed by the Israeli military as political leverage points. Hamas sponsors state television programs, such as the one that featured the infamous "Farfour" character -- deliberately designed to emulate Mickey Mouse -- to teach preschool Palestinian children to hate Jews and establish an Islamist worldwide empire. The show went so far as to portray Farfour being "murdered" by Israeli intelligence operatives, after being "captured" by Israel. The final TV episode portrays this mouse character being beaten to death after he refuses to hand over the key to a fictitious Palestinian settlement named "Tel al-Rabi," which is said to be captured by Israel and turned into Tel Aviv, which is the largest city in Israel today, a city that in truth existed under the name Tel Aviv since the Ottoman Turk empire over 100 years ago!
This is the lying and brainwashing that Hamas routinely does. It deliberately poisons children to hate, and remains determined to enslave generation after generation with a consuming sense of self-righteousness, ultimately to justify murdering Jews and Israelis. When a society so abuses its children, no one should be surprised that Rashida Tlaib uses her grandmother as just another useful pawn. Tlaib learned her Hamas lessons well!
It's well past time that we draw our own lessons about her!
-- Ken Stallings
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