State Department Calls Palestinian Authority ‘Antisemitic’

[Mosby]

JNS.org – For the first time, the US State Department has explicitly accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) of promoting antisemitism, a signal Jewish groups are hoping will lead to change in US policy.

According to a newly released State Department annual report on international religious freedom, official PA media “carried religiously intolerant material,” citing Palestinian television programs that called Jews “evil” or “denied a historical Jewish presence in Jerusalem.”

Previously, US officials labeled the PA denial of Jewish ties to Jerusalem as “material criticizing the Israeli occupation,” but stopped short of calling it antisemitism. Arab media channels that carried the antisemitic content were “nonofficial PA and non mainstream,” according to last year’s report.

The Obama administration no longer claims that the PA is working “to control and eliminate” expressions of antisemitism in its media outlets. Officials dropped an assertion made in previous years that the PA acted to “prevent preaching” of “sermons with intolerant or antisemitic messages.”

http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/08/17/state-department-calls-palestinian-authority-antisemitic/#

[msongs]

1. palestinians are also semites, so the state dept says thay are anti themselves? nt

[whatthehey]

3. And I used to be quite gay, but I've never been attracted to other men.

[COLGATE4]

4. Only people who desperately try to change the topic

believe 'antisemitism' has any meaning other than 'anti-Jew'.

[aranthus]

5. So how about Hatefully Anti-Jewish.

Or HAJ for short? Would that be better? Or how about just Jew Haters?

[oberliner]

7. The word antisemitic has nothing to do with semites

It means hostile towards or prejudiced against Jewish people.

The root word Semite gives the false impression that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic people. However, the compound word antisemite was popularized in Germany in 1879 as a scientific-sounding term for Judenhass "Jew-hatred".

[aranthus]

10. He knows this.

You, I and many others have told him this enough for him to know it. I know you know that, but ir's important that everyone knows that this poster is simply a troll.

[King_David]

15. That argument is so tired from you

Nobody even responds to your ludicrous, erroneous , inaccurate and inflammatory post.

[whatthehey]

2. I take no sides in this silly my god is bigger than yours crap but...well yeah

It's kind of hard not to be antisemitic, at least in its modern if not technically complete sense, when you have a manifesto calling for the eradication of Israel.

[bananakabob]

6. Even if that were true...

When your country, your homes, your schools, your hospitals - everything - are being bombed, destroyed, and leveled by Israeli (US supplied) bombs can you not see how it would be justified?

[oberliner]

8. No, prejudice against someone based on race, religion, or ethnicity is never justified

Weird that such a statement would even need to be made on a message board like DU.

[whatthehey]

9. and all that without the *slightest* provocation eh?

Oh trust me I know the Israelis are guilty of sins aplenty, but there are no innocent states/wannabe states (take that whichever way round you prefer, the meaning and truth remain identical) in that particular conflict.

[oberliner]

11. The actions of the government of Israel, whatever they may be, do not justify prejudice against Jews

This ought to go without saying.

[whatthehey]

12. True. Never said they did. Nor Palestinian terrorism prejudice against Arabs of course

I'm just not denying either the Israeli government's heavy hand and provocation, or the terrorism of the Palestinian governing authorities that both cause and are caused by the above.

If I could solve the Middle East peace process, I would have done it by now*, but it's surely looking like somebody has to unilaterally back off and risk (and a very very high risk at that) being pummelled in return, but nobody, possibly pragmatically, has any interest in doing so. It's heard to sketch out negotiations where one side says you should not exist and the other says you should not matter as people.







*Actually I, indeed anyone, could, if it weren't for that pesky bullshit about divine promises and idiots taking them seriously. For example if all the Jewish people wanted was a peaceful and secure homeland, I doubt any POTUS and Congress would balk about carving out about a tenth of topographically similar and largely empty Utah in return for 8 million educated and productive taxpayers given a free pass on free movement of residency between the states. Hell we could even keep the Zion name then. And if the Palestinians just wanted contiguous and connected territory, it could be easily cut out of an area that does not include sites where medieval chieftains pretended to teleport. But no, it's back to that my god has a bigger ineffable wang than your god crap, even though they are the same god in the first place.

[shenmue]

13. No, banana

[King_David]

16. Jew hatred is justified?

Seriously?
Are you on the right website here?

[Little Tich]

14. Frankly, the report details more instances of Israeli wrongdoing than Palestinian, but it's also

quite opaque and not a particularly interesting read.

While it's true that the report states more than once that anti-Semitic material appears in official PA media, most of the criticism in the report is actually directed at Israel.

If anyone can be bothered to read the long and rather dry report, it's here:

2015 Report on International Religious Freedom: Israel and The Occupied Territories - Israel
Source: US Department of State, August 10, 2016
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2015/nea/256269.htm

2015 Report on International Religious Freedom: Israel and The Occupied Territories - The Occupied Territories
Source: US Department of State, August 10, 2016
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2015/nea/256271.htm

[oberliner]

17. That's the point of the article

That usually these reports do not identify the PA as promoting antisemitism. This is the first one that does.

[Little Tich]

18. The report is useless - there's nothing in it that can be of any use for anyone. n/t