06-Oct-14: Oh Jerusalem

The Saudi news report about Gazans
admitted to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount
by Israel [source]

Sitting in synagogue during the day-long Yom Kippur prayers this past weekend, it was difficult to avoid reflecting on the central role played by Jerusalem down through the generations.

The narrative which plays a central role in the Musaf liturgy - the lengthy narrative section called the Avoda - describes in detail how the Day of Atonement looked to Jews living in Jerusalem two thousand years ago:

"The quintessential rite of ancient Judaism, the most solemn moment of the Jewish year involving the holiest person (Kohen Gadol), the holiest time (Yom Kippur), and the holiest place (Temple in Jerusalem)" [My Jewish Learning]

Meanwhile for the worshipers gathered and fasting in our synagogue, today's Jerusalem in all its golden splendor was on view just outside the windows of our house of prayer which overlooks the capital's hills and homes from a gorgeous vantage point. The day's brilliant sunny weather added to the immense beauty of the vista.

There's a very different view of Jerusalem in a syndicated AFP report from yesterday; here's a link to the version ["Elderly Gazans win Eid permit to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque", October 5, 2014] published in the Saudi-based English-language Arab News. It describes how the Israeli authorities have just permitted Gazan senior citizens to travel to Jerusalem and to visit Islamic places of worship. And here's the photo that accompanies the report:

The source caption reads in part: "Palestinians from Gaza pray in front of the Dome of the Rock during their visit at the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City October 5, 2014... REUTERS/Ammar Awad [Image Source]

The point of the photo might not be immediately obvious to everyone. Its impact was evidently lost on the editors at Arab News who published it. We suspect the photo editors at Reuters, which circulated the photo among its syndication customers, might be surprised at the interpretation we are about to share.

We saw a comment this morning from an astute and uncommonly well-informed observer, Dr Harold Rhode. A professor of Islamic history at the University of Delaware in the early eighties, he spent much of his career as an adviser on the Islamic world to the US government. Between 1994 and 2010, he was an adviser on Islamic Affairs in the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's think-tank.

It's an interesting photograph, writes Dr Rhode. And he then points out what most observers will have overlooked:

Look at where their "posteriors" face... Towards the Dome of the Rock, which Muslims say to so holy to them as well. Putting your rear end towards something in the Middle East is dishonoring it. It is saying that they are prostrating themselves towards what is holy, and the Dome of the Rock - also on the Temple Mount - is therefore not holy.

There's some doctrinal background to take on board, as Dr Rhode writes, in the story of
'Omar ibn Khattab [see the Wikipedia entry], the Muslim conqueror of Jerusalem in the seventh century, and Ka'ab al-Akhbar, his aide who had converted to Islam from Judaism. In Dr Rhodes' words:

While they were both up on the Temple Mount, 'Omar said to Ka'ab: "It is time to pray. Where should we pray?" Ka'ab said: "Let is pray from the northern part of the mount so we can pray towards "the two prayer directions - in Arabic "Qiblatayn" meaning both towards the Holy of the Holies of the destroyed Jewish Temple (i.e., where the Dome of the Rock is today) and towards Mecca. 'Omar responded to Ka'ab: "There is only one prayer direction - Mecca. We will pray from the south of the mount" (i.e., with our backs and posteriors, towards where the Dome of the Rock is today.) ...Ibn Taymiya, the spiritual godfather of the Wahhabis, also specifically railed against Jerusalem, called it a Judaic innovation in Islam - and [declaring] is absolutely not holy. There are, he wrote, only two holy cities in Islam - Mecca and Medina.

Dr Rhode visited the issue in an article published on the Gatestone Institute website ["Is Jerusalem Sacred for Muslims?"] some years ago:

Jews and Christians know that Israel's claim to Jerusalem is rooted in the ancient Jewish connection to that city. Israel's declaration of independence speaks of both "natural and historic right." Jerusalem is the centerpiece of that historic right. What about the Muslim claim? [Rhode, 2010]

His review there too touches on the uncompromising views of Ibn Taymiyya, who he reminds us is "the intellectual godfather of Wahhabism, the dominant Islamic doctrine of the Saudi government", on Jerusalem:

Ibn Taymiyya went to great lengths to explain that the veneration of Jerusalem in nothing more than the "Judaization" of Islam... When they ruled over today's Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, neither [the first caliphs] nor any of the early governors nor any clerics made any attempt to build any structure over the Rock on the Temple Mount... They clearly did not attach any Islamic significance to today's Aqsa Mosque nor to the Temple Mount in general. How then, Ibn Taymiyya reasoned, could we who never knew them nor Muhammad have the right to disagree? There is no way we could know more about Islam than they. We therefore have no right to sanctity al-Aqsa because they did not do so. [Rhode, 2010]

Does this obscure branch of Islamic philosophy have implications for today? Doesn't everything?

When a Saudi editor published an article questioning something that Ibn Taymiyya had written [seven centuries earlier], he was quickly fired on the orders of the information minister. So it is rather curious that the Saudis have included, as one of the basic principles of their plan for peace between Israel and the Arabs, the idea that East Jerusalem must be the capital of a Palestinian state. Why have they rejected their godfather's stance on Jerusalem? Ibn Taymiyya must be turning over in the grave.

All of which is another reminder of how, tragically, Jerusalem the beloved, the sacred, the tranquil. the inspirational, has been cynically turned into a political football.

Speaking of which, some randomly-chosen photos below from the web showing Palestinian Arab children demonstrating on Jerusalem's Temple Mount just the sort of reverence their society has taught them to express for the city, its specialness, its history, its holiness.

[Our thanks to the people at the translated-into-Russian site (link) who turned this post into a Russian-language version.]

On Jerusalem's sacred Temple Mount, Palestinian Arab boys
and their football: Image Source

On Jerusalem's sacred Temple Mount, Palestinian Arab boys
and their football: Image Source

On Jerusalem's sacred Temple Mount, Palestinian Arab boys
and their football: Image Source

 On Jerusalem's sacred Temple Mount, Palestinian Arab boys
and their football: Image Source

02-Sep-14: Wonder how living with terror-minded neighbors works? We offer some tips

PA insider Jibril Rajoub, seeming statesmanlike in 2011. Where exactly
does he stand on terror? Read on. [Image Source]

It's Tuesday morning in Jerusalem, and the sun is shining brightly. Here's what happened here last night.

• A three-year-old toddler was lightly wounded on Monday night by Arab terrorists that hurled rocks through the window of the bus she was riding in, as it passed through Uzi Narkis Street in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat. Magen David Adom [ambulance] paramedics rushed to the scene to provide the baby girl with medical treatment, transferring her afterwards to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center. The toddler was injured while traveling on the Egged 143 bus line from Tel Tzion, located north of Jerusalem in the Binyamin area of Samaria, to the Israeli capital. Police forces were dispatched to scour the area for the attackers. [Israel National News]
• Around the same time, also last night, a Molotov cocktail [a fire bomb] was hurled at a bus traveling along Route 505 between Tapuach and Sha'ar Shomron. The bus driver suffered injuries from windscreen glass shards. Yarkon-area Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance teams treated him at the scene, while IDF troops combed the area for suspects. [Ynet]

It's been a less than pleasant time for some Israelis who come into contact with hostile Arab neighbors. Just in the past week:

Terror victims, the Sharchaton family,
in happier days

• This past Saturday night, another fire bomb [euphemism: Molotov Cocktail] was hurled at Beit Meyuhas, a Jewish residential building of historical significance (some little-publicized background here; the residence has been owned by Jews since the 1870s) in Jerusalem's Ir David ("City of David") area, immediately south of Jerusalem's Old City. A 45-year-old Jewish man was injured in that attack, suffering first and second-degree burns to the head. [Israel National News]
• Also this past Saturday night, an Israeli vehicle in which a young family was traveling in the area north of Hevron was struck by rocks (one of them "the size of a melon") which shattered the windshield, hitting the driver, Yedaya Sharchaton, 25. The car flipped over causing the driver to suffer critical injuries. His wife Hadassah and one-year-old baby daughter Nitzan emerged relatively unharmed [Israel National News].
• On Thursday, a two-year-old was injured when the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling was also hit by rocks near Yitzhar Junction in the West Bank. An IDF source said dozens of Palestinian Arabs had been throwing stones and other objects at Israeli vehicles traveling through the area. [Ynet]
• Last Wednesday, a baby of 11-months-old was injured in an Arab rock attack on private vehicle in which she was traveling. The attack at Yitzhar Junction in the Samaria District was serious but could easily have been far worse: ambulance crew members said the rock that struck and injured her was the size of a man's fist, and could have caused far more extensive injuries [Israel National News]. 
• Also last Wednesday, a woman suffered minor wounds after unknown assailants hurled rocks at a minibus traveling in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz. MDA ambulance paramedics provided initial treatment at the scene, and she was evacuated later to the city's Shaare Zedek Medical Center [Ynet]

It's difficult not to connect these attacks with the ongoing incitement by Arab leaders of their populations in the communities of the West Bank.

Here, for instance, is how the violent, dangerous and duplicitous game is played by top-of-the-pile PA insiders like Jibril Rajoub. He's a very public figure about whom we have written in the past. See for instance "3-Dec-12: Deadly dangerous games and those who play them" and "8-May-13: "I am your partner. I am going to kill you now" as two among many or click here.

Rajoub heads the PA's Sports Authority as well as holding the political position of Deputy Secretary of Fatah's Central Committee. The busy fellow is also head of the Palestinian Football Association.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) caught a recent speech of Rajoub's, delivered naturally enough in the Arabic language with the result that while his foot-soldiers absorbed the full sense of the lethal message, most journalists reporting from the field - including those who have written favorable articles about the man - would have missed it. This one was broadcast on the independent Palestinian TV channel Awdah just three weeks ago on August 13, 2014. The good people at PMW uploaded the video for the skeptics: it's here, with English subtitles.

Some highlights now of the vicious incitement the Palestinian Arab public - but not Western consumers of the news media - hear and see from the figures who run their society:

• “I’m telling everyone: Fatah has ‎decided that our relations with the Israelis are relations between enemies. There is no kind of ‎coordination between the Israelis and us... Everyone can be certain that any form of mutual ‎coordination ended a day after they declared war on the National Unity Government..."
• "OK, brother, ‎here is the occupation; am I stopping you from slaughtering a settlement? No one is stopping anyone. ‎Don’t lie and tell me: ‘The [PA] Security Forces and Mahmoud Abbas,’ and so on [stop you]. Drop it, ‎OK? No one is stopping anyone." 
• "Our political decision is resistance in the occupied territories in order ‎to bring an end to the occupation [using] all forms of resistance.”‎

Those are all direct quotes made by Jibril Rajoub: noted "peace partner", "strong defender of the peace process with Israel", "political and military leader who is seeking a more peaceful coexistence for Israelis and Palestinians", and very senior sportsman. 

Now a reminder of the content of another interview given by the great man to Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television channel back on April 30, 2013. His message of partnership and of peace included this revelatory pearl of wisdom:

Resistance to Israel remains on our agenda... I mean resistance in all of its forms. At this stage, we believe that popular resistance - with all that it entails - is effective and costly to the [Israeli] side..." [Al-Mayadeen]

Jibril Rajoub expounding on peaceful and
neighborly relations, via PMW [Video clip here]

PMW translated and published that too [here]. 

So now let's try to be clear about how Rajoub's words, as a highly influential PA insider, are understood by the simple folk out there in the villages. 

In advocating “resistance in all of its forms”, Jibril Rajoub means violence directed against Israel and Israelis - armed or not; adult or child; peace-loving or peace-resisting or neutral. Israel is “the main enemy” of Arabs and Muslims. 

So why negotiate with them at all, which he has seemed to advocate? To this, the clever Rajoub has an answer that ought to be believed. It's because, says Rajoub, the Palestinians still lack military strength - and he doesn't mean military in the ordinary sense of the word, no sirree:

"We as yet don't have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning."

In a previous post, we asked (rhetorically) what the salaried employees of the very well-funded Geneva Initiative (with torrents of Euros and Francs supplied by the governments of France, Belgium and Switzerland), who served up Rajoub (see him on video) as living proof that there actually is a partner for peace with beleagured Israel, saying now? 

Is "oops - sorry" even in their lexicon? Or is there a more subtle, peace-friendly way to interpret "If we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning"? 

The Israelis we mentioned at the top of this post probably have their opinions.

13-Sep-13: Jews, Jerusalem and Yom Kippur

The Palestinian Arabs were handed control of the sacred Temple

Mount by Israel's Minister of Defence, Moshe Dayan in 1967. Football-playing

Moslem Arab children are a very visible part of

what is there today. [Image Source]

Most Israelis, by far, want to see peace with the Arabs in general, with the Palestinian Arabs in particular, and are willing to make sacrifices and compromises so that it can happen. We're not open to disagreement on this. Anyone who knows Israelis in whatever degree knows this is true. The arguments about it are all in relation to detail.

This being so, we are endlessly astonished at how little criticism (relatively speaking) the Mahmoud Abbas-operated Palestinian Authority gets. It is a terrorism-friendly, corrupt and hateful political organization, led by a man whose academic career was built on Holocaust-denial. Review its activities in the two decades since the Oslo Agreement and you grasp why people continue to suffer and die in the course of the war the PA has waged against Israel's.

Now keep those two preceding paragraphs in mind while we put them into a specific context.

At sunset today, the Jewish world goes into Yom Kippur mode. While there are many people, and some Jews among them, who mistakenly believe its significance is in being the anniversary of a war of the same name, Yom Kippur is in reality the centerpiece of Jewish synagogue life - and has been for as long as there have been Jews. It's a day marked by holiness. 

Even Jews with relatively weak connections to their people's roots know about and respect Yom Kippur at some level. In religious terms, it's one of the great equalizers of the Jewish people: almost all of us do it.

Temple Mount Arab football-playing child [Image Source]

Paging through the mahzor, the book of Yom Kippur prayers, it's hard to not notice (among several interwoven dominant themes) the major role played by what's termed in English "the Service". Avodah, in Hebrew. Wikipedia says this:

A recitation of the sacrificial service of the Temple in Jerusalem traditionally features prominently in both the liturgy and the religious thought of the holiday. Specifically, the Avodah ("service") in the Musaf prayer recounts in great detail the sacrificial ceremonies of the Yom Kippur Korbanot (sacrificial offerings) that are recited in the prayers but have not been performed for 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. [Wikipedia]

We mention this for entirely non-religious reasons. 

As JJ Goldberg points out in this week's Forward ["A Clarifying Moment of Disunity on Yom Kippur | The Ritual That Divides Us On the Day We Are Most United"], the Avodah is "one of those things that either you get or you don’t". In our words, what he means is: Jews have views, and the range of opinions about what we ought to be thinking when we remember the sacrificial service conducted by the Jewish priests (the Cohanim, plural of Cohen) is wide.

But whether you see the ritual killing of animals for religious purposes in positive terms or negative, one aspect is beyond controversy. Jews did this for as long as the two Temples in Jerusalem stood. In ancient times, when Jews were the sovereign power in Jerusalem, this is what we Jews did there.

Temple Mount: It's a holy site sacred to two religions, or it's a

football pitch. The PA invites you to take your pick [Image Source]

The Palestinian Authority sees things very, very differently. Far from there being an undoubted, documented, historical connection of the most intimate kind between the Jews and Jerusalem (and of course the larger land in which Jerusalem is situated), the PA propagates an increasingly extremist culture of denial/hatred concerning Jews, Jerusalem and this land.

The Temple? Never existed. Unbroken Jewish connection to Jerusalem from the earliest ancient times? A modern invention, based on a hoax. Jewish entitlement to walk peacefully in 2013 on the grounds of the Temple Mount which, beyond any reasonable doubt even of the extremely cynical kind, was and is the single most holy place on earth for adherents of the Jewish faith? A provocation.

Now let's hear Khaled Abu Toameh, who knows the inner workings of the PA better than any other serious journalist, bring us up-to-date in the Jerusalem Post:

Analysis: PA campaigns against Jews at Temple Mount
KHALED ABU TOAMEH | Jerusalem Post | September 11, 2013
The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday stepped up its rhetorical attacks on Israel concerning the Temple Mount, condemning visits by Jews to the holy site as a provocation. Permitting Jews to enter the Temple Mount was a “green light to settlers to escalate their assaults against Palestinians and their holy sites and properties,” a spokesman for the PA government in Ramallah warned.
The PA claims that the visits by Jews to the Temple Mount are part of an Israeli scheme to “Judaize and divide” the site with the ultimate goal of rebuilding a Jewish Temple.
The visits are described by the PA-controlled media as attempts by “hordes of settlers and Jewish extremists to storm and desecrate the Aksa Mosque.” The PA campaign against Jewish visitors has triggered several violent protests at the Temple Mount over the past few months. Jerusalem Police have arrested dozens of Palestinians involved in the rioting and incitement and some have been served with court orders to stay away from the Temple Mount. But these measures have hardly contributed to easing tensions as the PA leadership appears to be intent on escalating its campaign.
On Tuesday, a group linked to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction went as far as calling for “fedayeen [guerrilla] operations” against Israel on Friday in protest against the visits by Jews to the Temple Mount.
The PA leadership has yet to distance itself from this call by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades to launch terrorist attacks.
It’s not clear if the group’s threat to renew terrorist attacks is real. But the latest threat should be seen in the context of the Palestinians’ drive to prevent Jews from entering the Temple Mount.
What is the PA trying to achieve through this campaign? First, the PA leadership is trying to show Palestinians and all Muslims that it is keen on defending Islamic holy sites against Israeli “conspiracies” at a time when the Arab and Islamic countries are doing nothing.
Second, the PA is probably trying to divert attention from its controversial decision to resume the peace talks with Israel. The PA has come under heavy criticism for dropping its preconditions for returning to the negotiations, including a full cessation of settlement construction.

Temple Mount, Arab child, football [Image Source]

Third, the campaign is designed to depict Israel as a country that has no respect for other people’s religion and holy sites. This would make it easier for the PA to demand control not only over the Temple Mount, but also over east Jerusalem, under the pretext that Israel is violating international laws and conventions in the city.
This campaign surrounding one of Islam’s most holiest sites could also result in another wave of violence or, even worse, a third intifada. The second uprising, called the Aksa Intifada, erupted in late 2000 after the PA leadership waged a similar campaign, telling Palestinians that Israel was seeking to destroy the Aksa Mosque.

The PA's campaign of lies, distortions and historical invention is no random thing. It belongs to a strategy. And as strategies go, it's effective. Think when you last heard a commentator or read an analyst who dismissed with the requisite scorn what Abbas and the imams who serve him say about the Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Most people either don't know history, don't understand Jewish culture and religion, and/or simply lack the rigour and courage to stand up to those, like the PA, who have consigned to the dust-heap some of the most significant historical accounts known to mankind.

Tomorrow in synagogues throughout the world, Jews will be remembering again (as we do constantly, daily) Jerusalem and its central role in our lives, exactly as they have for thousands of Days of Atonement before this year's. Perhaps we ought to invite along some analysts and journalists. 

Or some PA officials.

11-Jul-13: Football and barefaced hypocrisy

When you next hear or read about the desperate lack of resources in bankrupt Egypt, the cost of reinstating the devastated facilities of civil war-ravaged Syria and Libya, and (especially) the perennial budget shortfall of UNRWA which means yet another generation of Palestinian Arab children have to go barefoot and textbook-less and their parents and siblings must endure mediocre to horrible healthcare because their two governments - the PA and Hamas - are unable to find the money to pay the bills... pause.

Pause, and remind yourself about the perennial bloodcurdling exhortations to Arab brotherhood, solidarity and ultimate victory over the infidel enemies and especially over you-know-who...

And then read this from Associated Press:

Deloitte: Qatar to spend $200 billion for World Cup| 11:29 a.m. EDT July 9, 2013 | DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) | A report from Deloitte says the oil-and-gas rich nation of Qatar plans to spend $200 billion over the next decade as it prepares to host the 2022 World Cup. The report, released on Tuesday, said $140 billion of that will be for transportation infrastructure including a new airport, roads and a metro system to deal with the 400,000 fans expected for the month-long tournament. Another $20 billion will go to tourism infrastructure as the Persian Gulf nation expects the number of tourists to reach 3.7 million annually by 2022. Qatar was awarded the World Cup in December 2010, beating out the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea. It was a surprise choice considering the summer heat exceeds 40 degrees (104 F) in the desert country. | Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

UNRWA's total annual budget is about six-tenths of one percent of what Qatar is going to spend on football facilities. To say that another way, Qatar could pay for the entire cost of UNRWA's works, something it and the entire brotherhood of Arab states claims to deeply encourage and support, 167 times over - and that's just from its football budget.

In the 2012 overall official list of donors to UNRWA, and in the 2012 official published table of governments who give to UNRWA, Qatar does not appear at all. Go figure. Either they are offside or we are.

3-Dec-12: [Updated] Deadly dangerous games and those who play them

CNN's coverage [Image Source]

We started this blog some years ago out of immense frustration.

Living here in a democratic society, humanistic values are taken for granted. Human rights can actually be obtained, if need be, by turning to the media, the law and public opinion; no small quality here in this part of the world. We saw over time and particularly after the events of 2001 how a deadly combination of media reporting (sometimes malicious, sometimes manipulated, sometimes incompetent and superficial) and political hypocrisy produced a result in which the war by the terrorists against Israelis went under-reported and was and is, tragically, little understood.

Being the parents of a child murdered in a deliberate and greatly-celebrated massacre of children in the center of the country's capital city makes us feel there's no need to dwell on the consequences of such lethal factors. To us, it's clear that people need to hear about the terrorism and the terrorists. For the most part, that does not happen.

Today there's a reminder of how this sickening duplicity/stupidity/hypocrisy works. It concerns sport.

An Associated Press report from this past Saturday says there's yet another world-wide campaign to damage Israel by appealing to uninvolved parties - in this case footballers - to boycott an international sporting competition that is set to take place here next year.

Footballers protest Israel hosting UEFA Euro U21

Saturday, 01 December 2012 [online here]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON: Dozens of leading footballers have signed a statement protesting UEFA’s decision to stage the European under-21 championship in Israel next year following the country’s recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Sixty-two players, including Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, Arsenal’s Abou Diaby and Paris Saint-Germain’s Jeremy Menez, claim that Israel hosting the tournament will be “seen as a reward for actions that are contrary to sporting values.” The protest statement was promoted Friday by several pro-Palestinian groups... Headed “European footballers declare support for Palestine”, it was not signed by any players due in Israel in June.... “We, as European football players, express our solidarity with the people of Gaza who are living under siege and denied basic human dignity and freedom,” the players said in the statement, which was also published on the website of former Tottenham and Sevilla striker Frederic Kanoute... The draw for the biennial UEFA tournament was conducted on Wednesday in Tel Aviv, the coastal city that was bombarded by rocket fire from Gaza. But UEFA President Michel Platini has said he has no security concerns about the eight-team tournament, which will be played from June 5-18 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Netanya and Petach Tikva... Platini wrote to the Israel Football Association in June to say that the country “earned the right to host this competition through a fair, democratic vote.”

One of the incidents in the just-concluded shooting battle between Israel's defense forces and the terrorist organization Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist and an unimaginably large arsenal of rockets intended for Israeli civilian targets, involves a football field.

Israeli forces attacked and bombed a Gazan soccer pitch and stadium two weeks ago. Days later, the international roof body of soccer, FIFA, said [report] it is going to take responsibility for making good the damage. A friendly-sounding FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke is quoted saying "Soccer brings people together and we will support any re-construction necessary when football infrastructure is destroyed through disasters".

The soccer field he mentions appears in the IDF-issued aerial photo below:

We're connected to this in a somewhat personal way.

Two Fridays ago, we lit the Sabbath candles here at home in Jerusalem, and several minutes later were forced to run, carrying our wheelchair-bound youngest daughter, down the stairs for shelter, as did hundreds of thousands of other Israelis living where we do in the capital Jerusalem. A cluster of medium-range rockets had just been fired by the terror thugs of Hamas-ruled Gaza towards our home and the incoming-missile sirens were blaring.

Now we know, though we knew almost nothing at the time except fear and anxiety, that the 'football infrastructure' to which the head of FIFA refers was the launch pad for the brazen terror attack.

That field was hit by an IDF counterattack two days later, presumably to reduce the likelihood that we would have to run for our lives again, at least from that same source. For people with their heads in the sand, we remind this this is exactly what defense forces are supposed to do. The IDF did it with precision and a well developed sense of proportionality.

You will find no mention of the abuse of sporting facilities for the purposes of trying to kill innocent civilians in the footballers' letter calling for Israel to be denied the right to host an international sporting event.

Nor will we see mention of how Israeli soccer players of Arab origin are respected members of both local and national sporting teams. Nothing especially noteworthy in this, given the inclusive nature of day to day in this country, but it's truly shocking how little this is known outside our borders. Israel's Walid Badir, a soccer champ who is an Arab Israeli, is a fine example, but just one of many. Captain of the Hapoel Tel Aviv team, he has played in scores of internationals for Israel and most famously slammed the equalizing goal in Israel's 2006 World Cup qualifying match against France. There are many others like him.

Here below are the names of the players (sorted by country) who evidently signed the letter calling for a boycott of Israel [source]. Though we realize there is more than a small degree of manipulation going on here, they deserve to be named and shamed for ignorance of the facts, for their lack of sporting goodwill, for voluntarily submitting to a campaign of political manipulation of their names and their sport, and for collaborating in a masquerade that cynically exploits the terminology of human rights while engaging in the very opposite:

Jonathan	Bru	Melbourne Victory	Australia
Adama	Traoré	Melbourne Victory	Australia
Didier	Drogba	Shanghaï Shenhua	China
Frédéric	Kanouté	Beijin Guoan	China
Karim	Ait-Fana	Montpellier HSC	France
Gael	Angoula	Bastia Sporting Club	France
André	Ayew	Olympique de Marseille	France
Jordan	Ayew	Olympique de Marseille	France
Chahir	Belghazouani	AC Ajaccio	France
Ryad	Boudebouz	Football Club Sochaux Montbéliard	France
Omar	Daf	Football Club Sochaux Montbéliard	France
Alou	Diarra	Olympique de Marseille	France
Soulaymane	Diawara	Olympique de Marseille	France
Abdoulaye	Doucouré	Stade Rennais Football Club	France
Ibrahim	Duplus	Football Club Sochaux Montbéliard	France
Rod	Fanni	Olympique de Marseille	France
Ricardo	Faty	AC Ajaccio	France
Chris	Gadi	Olympique de Marseille	France
Remi	Gomis	FC Valenciennes	France
Charles	Kaboré	Olympique de Marseille	France
Anthony	Le Tallec	AJ Auxerre	France
Cheikh	M’bengué	Toulouse Football Club	France
Steve	Mandanda	Olympique de Marseille	France
Nicolas	Maurice-Belay	FC Girondins de Bordeaux	France
Jérémy	Menez	Paris Saint-Germain Football Club	France
Arnold	Mvuemba	Olympique Lyonnais	France
Laurent	Nardol	Chartres Football Club	France
Mbaye	Niang	SM Caen	France
Billel	Omrani	Olympique de Marseille	France
Lamine	Sané	FC Girondins de Bordeaux	France
Momo	Sissoko	Paris Saint-Germain Football Club	France
Djimi	Traore	Olympique de Marseille	France
Abdoulaye	Baldé	AC Lumezzane	Italia
Soudani	El-Arabi Hilal	Vitoria Sport Club Guimares	Portugal
Florent	Hanin	SC Braga	Portugal
Djamal	Mahamat	Sporting Braga	Portugal
Mahamadou	N’diaye	Vitoria Sport Club Guimares	Portugal
Issiar	Dia	Lekhwiya	Qatar
Mamadou	Niang	Al-Sadd SC	Qatar
Kader	Manganne	Al Hilal Riyad Football Club	Saudi Arabia
Fabrice	Numeric	FK Slovan Duslo Sala	Slovakia
Yacine	Brahimi	Granada Football Club	Spain
Hassan	Yebda	Granada Football Club	Spain
Aatif	Chahechouche	Sivasspor Kulübü	Turkey
Doudou Jacques	Faty	Sivassport Kulübü	Turkey
Diomansy	Kamara	Eskisehispor Kulübü	Turkey
Moussa	Sow	Fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü	Turkey
Demba	Ba	Newcastle United	UK
Leon	Best	Blackburn Rovers Football Club	UK
Yohan	Cabaye	Newcastle United	UK
Pascal	Chimbonda	Doncaster Rovers Football Club	UK
Papiss	Cissé	Newcastle United	UK
Abou	Diaby	Arsenal Football Club	UK
Samba	Diakité	Queens Park Rangers	UK
Pape	Diop	West Ham United	UK
Nathan	Ellington	Ipswich Town Football Club	UK
Eden	Hazard	Chelsea Football Club	UK
Sylvain	Marveaux	Newcastle United	UK
Mamady	Sidibé	Stoke City Football Club	UK
Cheikh	Tioté	Newcastle United	UK
Armand	Traoré	Queen Park Rangers FC	UK
Jires	Kembo Ekoko	Al Ain Football Club	United Arab Emirates

It's unlikely the promoters of this nasty anti-Israel campaign will have shared the following with the footballers. So we'll mention that the Palestinian Football Federation happens to headed by an especially unlovely individual called Jibril Rajoub, reportedly one of the promoters of the players' letter. Rajoub's Wikipedia page dishes out some facts that the defenders of Palestinian Arab sport and attackers of Israel ought to take into account but almost certainly have not.

Rajoub is a convicted terrorist who spent years in prison. He was "a close lieutenant of Arafat" who "criticized the growing influence of religious fundamentalism in Palestinian society schools" during the years immediately after the 1993 Oslo accord when it was expedient for him to hold to those views. As the head of one of Arafat's largest armed militias, he "launched a major crackdown on Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement". His men and weaponry were used "to quash political dissent and harass political opponents of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority, including the use of torture". Last year, he went public with a peace-loving, co-operation-seeking speech about the terrorists who kidnapped and held hostage a young Israeli serviceman: see "We salute Shalit's kidnappers, says Jibril Rajoub"], making it perfectly clear which of the two sides - the kidnappers and the victim - he backed.

It happens that we wrote about this giant of sports' highest values four months ago ["26-Jul-12: The Olympic Games start tomorrow. What have we learned?"]. Just before the London Olympics, decent people throughout the world were unsuccessfully campaigning [see "20-Jul-12: The Olympics, terror, cowardice and wisdom"] for the International Olympic Committee to remember the victims of the Munich Olympic massacre of 1972 - the one carried out by terrorists in the service of Rajoub's master and colleague. Rajoub's sporting contribution was to term the request for a minute's silence "racist".

Jibril Rajoub's speech on YouTube

He's a man who understands racism from the inside. Here's a video of a Rajoub speech in the Arabic language, translated to English via Palestinian Media Watch subtitles, from a July 2012 PA television show:

"Normalization with the occupation is impossible, impossible, impossible, with no exceptions... I understand by normalization that the relationship between me and you will be normal, that we'll play [sports] together and there will be a joint program. I say: There will never be normalization in sports. Next time, we are prepared to bring the Executive Committee in helicopters... so they will see no Jews, no Satans, no Zionist sons of bitches..."

Unfortunately yet another obnoxious figure who embodies the 'admirable' values of Palestinian Arab sport and whose deeply offensive rantings, expressed in a language most people outside the region don't understand, go ignored and unnoticed.

UPDATE December 8, 2012

The excellent researchers at CAMERA reported on Thursday that the 62 names on the letter above have now gone down to 52. If, as the CAMERA people write, "the text of the petition is inaccurate, why wouldn't many of the signatures be, too?" 

The following ten "signatories" (in alphabetical order) apparently never signed, and perhaps never even saw, the petition, as their names have been removed from the list of 62 purported signatories:

• André Ayew, Olympique de Marseille (France)
• Jordan Ayew, Olympique de Marseille (France)
• Yohan Cabaye, Newcastle United (UK)
• Soulaymane Diawara, Olympique de Marseille (France)
• Didier Drogba, Shanghaï Shenhua (China)
• Rod Fanni, Olympique de Marseille (France)
• Charles Kaboré, Olympique de Marseille (France)
• Anthony Le Tallec, AJ Auxerre (France)
• Steve Mandanda, Olympique de Marseille (France)
• Arnold Mvuemba, Olympique Lyonnais (France)

We think the promoters of the shabby letter/petition/campaign managed to score an own-goal.