RUTHFULLY YOURS

“There have been more blasphemy cases and convictions during the Sisi era than during the Morsi era.” — Ibrahim Eissa, Muslim television host in Egypt.

Their crime was to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State — an act interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. “The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment [five years].”

Egypt is becoming more like Pakistan. Although that nation also prohibits the defamation of all religions, only Christians and moderate Muslims are targeted and imprisoned; some, such as Asia Bibi, a 50-year-old Christian woman and mother of five, are on death row. Conversely, Muslims who openly defame Christianity — and they are many — are regularly let off.

Despite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s many pluralistic words and gestures, which have won him much praise from the nation’s Christians and moderates, he appeases the Islamist agenda in one very clear way: by allowing the controversial defamation of religions law, colloquially known as the “blasphemy law,” to target Christians and moderates in ways arguably worse than under the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi.

Last month three Christian teenagers were jailed for five years for breaking the defamation of religions law. A fourth defendant, 15, was given juvenile detention for an indefinite period. [1] Earlier, they were detained for 45 days and subjected to “ill-treatment,” according to a human rights group.

Their crime was to have made a 20-second video on a mobile phone mocking the Islamic State — an act interpreted as mocking Islam. In the video, the boys appear laughing and joking, as they pretend to be ISIS members praying and slitting throats. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an independent rights group, confirmed that the four teenagers were performing scenes “imitating slaughter carried out by terrorist groups.” Even so, according to their defense lawyer, Maher Naguib, the Christian youths “have been sentenced for contempt of Islam and inciting sectarian strife…. The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s Wisconsin presidential primaries, U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was in Israel, the destination he chose for his first foreign trip since assuming his post at the end of October.

In meetings with Israeli leaders — and in an interview with Times of Israel editor David Horovitz — Ryan reaffirmed his commitment to the Jewish state and his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran. He also stated, in no uncertain terms, that — contrary to increasing rumor and pressure — he is not going to end up becoming the Republican nominee at what threatens to be a contested GOP convention. Nobody really believes he means it, however, because he had been equally adamant about not wanting the position he is currently occupying.

But, while distraught Americans from both parties are obsessing over whether Donald Trump can win the nomination — and if he does, whether he can beat likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — the Obama administration is being given a free pass to get away with murder, figuratively. More literally, it is enjoying the benefit of the doubt caused by the distraction of the public away from the havoc the White House and State Department are continuing to wreak, which is enabling the actual death of a lot of people in the present, and a whole lot more in the future.

The terrorism of the Islamic State group is only a tiny part of this, though it seems to be the only jihadist organization that gets a rise out of Westerners, whom it makes no bones about targeting for mass murder. Indeed, as the suicide bombings in Brussels on March 22 indicated, Europeans and Americans only wake up when a lot of people with whom they can identify get slaughtered senselessly. That this kind of thing is going on routinely everywhere else in the world barely elicits a yawn.

But as evil as ISIS is, it is still small fry compared to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism, with tentacles reaching far and wide. And now, thanks to the Obama administration, it also has multibillions of dollars at its disposal with which to build its nuclear arsenal. Nor does it hide its ambitions to wipe Israel off the map and its loathing for America, the “great Satan.”

Why, throughout its history, have the Palestinians been the victims of so many irresponsible leaders who harm their own constituents?

Historically, the Palestinian “liberation organizations” have had no ideology or motivation beyond the destruction of the State of Israel. They are proxies of the countries funding them, instead of acting in the authentic national interests of the Palestinian people.

Instead of bringing jobs, water and better education — as they promise when they stand for election — some Arab Israeli legislators sell out their people for a few crumbs of headline attention. They parrot the Iranian line, with no regard for the needs of their voters. Iran just wants to get its foot in the door.

With the generous “help” of our Palestinian leaders — and especially with the “help” of the treacherous Europeans who keep on enabling them — any real help for the Palestinians, and the top of our mountain, look more distant than ever.

We Palestinians, as a new people on the stage of history, have not yet learned from the experience of those who preceded us. We always seem to be motivated by factors working against us, and let ourselves be manipulated by foreign countries who use us as proxies to further their own interests.

We are making mistakes again, one after another. We do damage to the Palestinian national interest and instead of propelling ourselves forward, we push ourselves back. We work against our own best interests by constantly lying. We all know, for instance, that there is no truth to the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian, or when we say that the Jews have no historic links to Jerusalem. We just make ourselves look ridiculous. Whoever makes such claims not only attacks Christianity but also represents the entire Palestinian narrative as a blatant lie.

The Palestinian leadership continues to destroy every chance the Palestinians might have of becoming a genuine, internationally recognized nation by insisting on demands they know the Israelis will never meet. These include the right of return for more than 11 million Palestinians to a country of eight million, and refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Israelis correctly understand both demands not as a desire to have a Palestinian state, but as a desire to have Israel’s state. That impression can only be confirmed every time anyone looks at a map of Palestine: by pure coincidence, of course, it is identical to the map of Israel, only the names are different

In 1948, when we could easily have established a Palestinian state in the large territories offered by the UN, and instead joined with five Arab armies in an attempt to destroy Israel and erect Palestine in its place.

Between 1949 and 1967, we could have established a Palestinian state in the West Bank while it was still under Jordanian control, and in the Gaza Strip governed by Egypt.

During the 1970s, instead of thanking Jordan’s King Hussein for taking in Palestinian refugees, Yasser Arafat and the PLO tried to overthrow him. The result was a civil war and the expulsion of the Palestinian leadership from Jordan to Lebanon.

Once in Lebanon, we set about creating a terrorist state-within-a-state, bent on subverting Lebanese sovereignty and attacking Israel. The Israelis consequently entered south Lebanon, and with the support of the Shi’ites there, we were expelled once again, this time to Tunisia.

Under Palestinian influence, Tunisia then became a hotbed of crime and international conspiracies, again endangering our hosts.