Western European nations claim to oppose all forms of racism, yet fund Muslim Jew-hatred. It is a special kind of irony when that funding helps promote old European blood libels.
“The Jews who lived in Europe would always bake a large pastry… mixed with the blood of a victim…from among those who were not Jews… a little boy, whom they would place in a perforated barrel full of spikes…” “Because of this, the European peoples loathed the presence of the Jews… they were…the mechanism for the commission of every crime… source of all…corruption…”
Shockingly, this is not some obscure accusation from generations ago in Europe, but a statement from an article written just last week by Dr. Mustafa Al-Lidawi, a former Hamas official, while in Israel we celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim. The Ma’an News Agency (MNA) — “the largest independent TV, radio and online media group in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”, according to its own website — found it appropriate to publish this in an article it ran about the Jewish holiday which commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from the evil Persian Haman.
This medieval blood libel was brought to readers courtesy of MNA’s generous Western sponsors. On its website, the news agency gives special thanks to two countries in particular: “MNA was launched with generous funding from the Danish Representative Office to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Netherlands Representative Office to the PA”.
One cannot help but wonder, whether this was the kind of “news” Denmark and the Netherlands had in mind, when they helped launch the agency in 2005?
According to NGO monitor, MNA is funded (last available figures are from 2014) by Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States, among others. In 2016, Ma’an Television Network received €427,200 (roughly $500,000) from the European Union for “Leveraging Media Initiatives to Promote Participatory Engagement in the Peace Process.” Ma’an Network received £730,000 (roughly $1 million) in 2015-2017 from the United Kingdom as part of a “multimedia project to raise awareness of, and seek to prevent, violence against women and girls.”
Western European nations, claiming to be against all forms of racism and supremacism, lavishly fund Muslim Jew-hatred. It makes for a special kind of irony, when that lavish funding helps promote old European blood libels.
Christians imported the old European blood libels into the Middle East, but Muslims adopted them with rather fervent enthusiasm, as evidenced in present times by not only Al-Lidawi’s article, but also the behavior of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas himself. In June 2016, Abbas gave a speech to the Parliament of the European Union in Brussels, where he falsely claimed that, “Certain rabbis in Israel have said very clearly to their government that our water should be poisoned in order to have Palestinians killed.”
The members of the European Parliament thanked Abbas for this new take on an old European tradition by giving him a standing ovation.
It is not, however, as if Muslims lack their own anti-Semitic sources and need to import new ones. The Koran is brimming with verses portraying the Jews in the most hateful and violent ways.
The Koranic passages 5:60 and 7:166, for instance, proclaim that the Jews are cursed and that Allah transformed them into apes and pigs (hence the frequent comparisons of Jews to apes and pigs in Palestinian Authority news, children’s television, official statements etc.).
Jews are portrayed as “avid listeners to falsehood” (Koran 5:41), “the greediest of mankind…” (Koran 2:96) and Muslims are warned not to take them (and other non-Muslims) as friends, “O you who believe! Take not as (your) Bitanah (advisors, consultants, protectors, helpers, friends, etc.) those outside your religion (pagans, Jews, Christians, and hypocrites) since they will not fail to do their best to corrupt you. They desire to harm you severely. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, but what their breasts conceal is far worse… (Koran 3:118).
And these are just a select few verses from the Koran.
Then there are the hadiths, such as the following, frequently preached in mosques around the world: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him”.
This hadith even forms part of the Hamas’ “Charter of the Islamic Resistance”.
Is it not curious that in an era, when almost everyone is constantly offended by phrases or language deemed “insensitive” or “hurtful”, no one is offended by the vilest racism flowing so freely from the “Palestinian” Arabs?
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Judith Bergman is a columnist and political analyst
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I would suggest that this is not ironic behaviour but pure evil behaviour on the part of Denmark, Netherlands and the UK. Surely these countries have a responsibility to monitor the use of the funds they provide to ensure their supposed objectives are carried out. Shame on them.