RUTHFULLY YOURS

A letter-to-the-editor published in today’s (Friday’s) print edition of the influential British newspaper the Guardian by a group of renowned British figures, among them Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, denounces boycotts of Israel that other cultural figures in London have advocated.

The letter, signed by 151 members of the U.K.’s cultural and political elite, including 14 members of Parliament, reads as follows:

In February 2015 you published a letter from UK artists announcing their intention to culturally boycott Israel.

On Monday evening, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli soldier at the central bus station in Beersheba, then stole his rifle and began shooting randomly at commuters.

The soldier died of his wounds in the hospital; the terrorist was killed on location by security forces. About a dozen other people were injured — some seriously, some lightly — and many more left traumatized for life.

In the chaos of the attack, a 29-year-old Eritrean who worked at a plant nursery was mistakenly fingered as a terrorist, and he was shot by a security guard.

As if this weren’t tragic enough, after Habtom Zarhum was shot and “neutralized,” an angry mob began to beat him with anything they could get their hands on.

1. Moody’s investors service (Oct. 7, 2015): “Israel’s resilient growth model, effective governance and steadily improving debt metrics underpin its A1 government bond rating and stable outlook…. Israel’s economic growth has outpaced that of most advanced industrial economies over the past decade, supported by a competitive high-tech export sector, substantial spending on research and development and a well-educated labor force…. Israel is one of the few advanced countries that have a lower debt-to GDP ratio….” Bloomberg (Aug. 2): “Israel’s workforce participation rates have reached the targets set by the government for 2020…. In the age group 25-64, the labor force participation rate was 77.2% for the first half of 2015….“

2. The US content solution giant, Pro Quest, acquires Israel’s Ex Libris for $500mn (Globes, Oct. 8).

During a speech yesterday (10/20/15) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appropriately decried the “apologetics” which have minimized the role played by ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini (1895-1974)—founder of the modern Palestinian Muslim movement—in fomenting genocidal Islamic Jew-hatred. Netanyahu made these simple, irrefragable points, demonstrating how from the 1920s through (in particular) the World War II era, the father of the Palestinians at that time, with no [Jewish] state and no so-called “occupation,” no territories and no settlements, already sought, through systematic incitement, to annihilate the Jews. Regrettably, Hajj Amin el-Husseini is still a venerated figure in Palestinian society, he appears in study books and is exalted as the father of the nation, and this incitement that began then, incitement to kill Jews, continues.

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Congressional record contains a statement of support from New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about “Turkish and Arab agitators . . . preaching a kind of holy war [jihad] against . . . the Jews” of Palestine. During this same era within Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current—epitomized by Hajj Amin el-Husseini—promulgated the forcible restoration of sharia-mandated dhimm­itude for Jews via jihad. Indeed, two years before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, that is, in 1918, Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish coworker (at the Jerusalem Governorate), I. A. Abbady, “This was and will remain an Arab land . . . the Zionists will be massacred to the last man. . . . Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.”