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Essay

Editorial

Standing
Tall For
Israel

Laud A Free Israel
This Fourth of July

C

Muslim sheds
terrorist leanings
to be empowered
Zionist.

K

asim Hafeez, now 30, is a
British-born Muslim with
Pakistani family roots. On a visit
to a small, dusty Pakistani town to visit
family in 2000, he became a jihadist who
grew to despise Jews, Israel and the West.
Today, he's a tenacious Zionist, an elo-
quent spokesman for Israel in its conflict
with the Palestinians and for the West in its
struggle against Islamism, the political radi-
cal form of Islam that belittles infidels, all
nonbelievers.
Talk about a transformative mindset.
Like many young Muslims growing up
in the United Kingdom (UK), Hafeez was
exposed to his
111.101".' =
immigrant grand-
parents' open hos-
tility toward Jews
and Israel even
though they had
never met a Jew or
an Israeli.
"They were very
observant Muslims,
but not radical by
any stretch of the
imagination by
what we define as
radical today; Hafeez told a June 3 lunch-
and-learn audience of 75 at the Sarah and
Ralph Davidson Hadassah House in West
Bloomfield. "But when Israel or Jews were
mentioned in conversation or on TV, my
grandparents became very uncomfortable,
saying: 'You know, you can't trust Israelis;
they're killing innocent Muslims. You can't
trust Jews; they control America:"
His grandparents, who had supported
Pakistan's push for independence as a
Muslim state in the 1940s, had come to the
U.K. in the 1960s in search of better eco-
nomic opportunity and better education for
their children and grandchildren. But clear-
ly, their anti-Zionist fervor never waned.
The views of Hafeez's father were more
extreme.
"He'd frequently say that Hitler was a
great man whose lone mistake was not kill-
ing enough Jews; Hafeez said. "It was not
a great message to be growing up around
when you are 6 or 77
Hatred of Israel and distrust of Jews —

16 July 3 • 2014

Appearing in West Bloomfield, Kasim
Hafeez spoke up for Israel.

"With those who hate
Israel, the truth is
irrelevant."
- Kasim Hafeez

imposed beliefs, not firsthand experiences
— represented the default position of the
predominantly Muslim neighborhood in
which Hafeez lived as a youngster in the
U.K.
This past March, Hafeez moved to west-
ern Canada, partly for a change amid the
threats he received after he became an out-
spoken defender of Israel's right to exist as a
Jewish state. He works as an education offi-
cer with B'nai B'rith Canada. In the Detroit
area, his hosts were StandWithUs, Hadassah
and the Zionist Organization of America.
His weeklong U.S. visit included speaking
engagements in Los Angeles, Chicago and
Grand Rapids.

Roots Of Evil

As Hafeez tells it in his presentation, what
radicalized his Nottingham, England,
neighborhood was Salmon Rushdie's The
Satanic Verses, a 1988 book inspired partly
by the Prophet Muhammad's life.
"The issue was that the book seemed to
be offensive to Islam and Muslims; Hafeez
said. "It was considered blasphemy. There
were huge Muslim protests against the book
in the UK. and elsewhere in Europe, the
Middle East, south Asia and maybe North
America, calling for it to be banned. Then
Rushdie received a fatwa, a death sentence,
issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini7
The Rushdie affair served as a rally-
ing cry for sheltered Muslims to speak up
beyond the comfort of their local communi-
ties. Outside agitators, for example, were
urging U.K. Muslims to take up the cause

Standing Tall on page 17

elebrating Independence Day on
Friday will give America's Jews
an uplifting backdrop to celebrate
just how precious Israel and its Western-
style democracy are in a very beleaguered
region. The freedoms enjoyed by Israelis of
all ethnicities and religions are unusual in
the Middle East, a region roiling from strife
of some sort at virtually every turn.
Consider the geographic neighborhood: Syria's civil war has encroached
into Israel's Golan, Hezbollah terrorists operate from south Lebanon and
Hamas continually blasts rockets toward Negev towns with the intention to
kill, maim and destroy. What's more, Israel's supposed peace partner in the
West Bank, the Palestinian Authority's Fatah, boasts its own terrorist wing,
the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Israel holds peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt. And there's faint hope
it might resume peace talks with the Palestinian Authority's technocratic
governance of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank despite the
Fatah-Hamas unity agreement. But let there be no doubt: Israel's other
neighbors, Hamas included, are committed to erasing the Jewish state
from the map.
Still, much of the world is swayed by Palestinian propaganda. As a result,
Israel has been blamed for most of the region's instability and foment.

Worthy Ideals

Israel is a nation that follows the kind of rule of law we in America under-
stand and appreciate. It treats all citizens – Jews and Arabs – justly and
with dignity.
Israel is a nation where life, not murder and martyrdom, is revered. It is a
nation where children are raised to respect, not hate, others. It is a nation
whose armed forces are deployed to protect and secure, not summarily
invade and conquer. Israel captured the Golan, the West Bank and the east-
ern sector of Jerusalem in provoked wars emanating from Arab aggression.
The Palestinian Authority, once more linking Ramallah and Gaza City, has
a checkered history of leveraging terror for political gain, exploiting young
people in the process and imbuing a culture of hate that will take at least
two generations to vanquish. President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, has
refused to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state while allow-
ing anti-Zionist sentiment to permeate Palestinian society.
Hamas, which kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006 and held
him more than five years until a prisoner exchange deal was negotiated,
tried to break Abbas' leadership when two members brazenly abducted
three Israeli teens hitchhiking in the West Bank on June 12 and murdered
them. The kidnappers' intent had to be not only to incite Israel, but also
to disrupt the newly constituted Palestinian Authority, perhaps in hopes
of spurring another prisoner release as well as a third intifada. Instead,
the abductions elicited outrage from Abbas, who vowed to cooperate with
Israel in locating the captives. Abbas now must cut all ties with Hamas, a
terror-wielding organization, to maintain a semblance of credibility.

Courageous Israel

Palestinians look to Israel for freshwater supplies, security support and
high-end medical care yet, unbelievably, blame it for creating the climate
for their sweeping oppression and poverty.
While we Americans shoot off fireworks to honor our constitutional
freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, hate-filled Arabs and
Muslims to Israel's south and north have kept aiming rockets and explo-
sives at the ancestral Jewish homeland, America's strongest Mideast ally,
to inflame unrest and inflict terror.
The dark truth is that the Arab/Muslim world historically has viewed
the matter of Palestinian refugees and statehood as a strategic means to
advancing the common interest of ridding Israel of Jews, not building a
negotiated, internationally recognized Palestinian state coexisting in peace
with the Jewish state.

❑

