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Phyllis Chesler

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An Illustrated Guide to Palestinian Jew-Hatred

May 11, 2011

NewsRealBlog

The propaganda, anti-Israeli and anti-American filth, coming out of Gaza and the West Bank daily, hourly, year after year, is beyond belief both in quantity but also in quality.

For example, the very gifted Palestinian cartoonist, Omayya Joha, the widow of one Hamas bomb engineer and of another Hamas operative, has remained continually obsessed with the Palestinian "right of return." The symbol for this obsession is a key (to the house left behind). Five generations later, the descendants of those whose grandparents and great-grandparents fled to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria, because the Arab League boasted that five great Arab armies were massed against the infidel Jewish state and would shortly vanquish it. However, thereafter, no Arab state (with the exception of Jordan, which has since revoked the citizenship of many "Palestinians") was ever willing to allow "Palestinians," i.e. Arabs who fled the land that Israel conquered in a war of self-defense, to become citizens in their Arab, Muslim countries.

But how do I suddenly know all this? Because Dr. Mordechai Kedar, one of Israel's leading Arabists and counterterrorism experts, currently a professor at Bar Ilan University and also associated with the Began-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, was just my houseguest. We talked endlessly for hours with great passion and intensity. But, I also had the enormous pleasure of hearing him deliver several speeches. One was focused on the cartoons of Omayya Joha.

Imagine being a trapped Palestinian child or adult ruled by despotic monsters who do not want the populace to blame them for corruption, tyranny, or Islamist strictness. The only outlet for frustration is the infidel Jewish state and the infidel West, especially the United States. Imagine being subjected to cartoons such as these every week, perhaps every day. The cartoons convey the same, highly significant message over and over again. It would be hard not to be brainwashed by these simple ideas.

First, the "key," which is contained in every cartoon and which also functions as Joha's own logo, is the symbol for the "right of return." Second, the "right of return" is always, always pictured as the return to Israel "from the river to the sea," never just to negotiated regions of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Gaza is now entirely in terrorist hands since Israel unilaterally withdrew, subjecting southern Israel to non-stop rocket barrages. Third, the Palestinians are all portrayed as humiliated, weak, weeping, burdened, poor, aged, very young, and as slaughtered. In addition, one aged, barefoot man wearing the Palestinian kefiyyeh and in tattered garments appears often. He is known as Abu A'id, the Father of Return.

Joha does not show us any masked, male Palestinian jihadists blowing themselves up, or manipulating others to do so within Israel proper; we do not see the members of Hamas shooting their Palestinian opponents at point-blank range or throwing them off the twentieth floor–after having tortured them first. We do not see the Hamas "morality" police beating women for refusing to veil or Palestinian families honor murdering their daughters, sisters, and wives.

Here are some cartoons that you have probably never seen before. With Dr. Kedar's help, I have translated them for you.

The Father of Return, holding the key which symbolizes the "right of return," and carrying on his back a number of burdens which together constitute the entire State of Israel "from the river to the sea." These burdens include the Balfour Declaration; the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe); the 1967 Naksa (Setback); and Wye, Oslo, Taba, and Sharm al-Sheikh, all the sites of meetings which led nowhere.

55 years of an independent Israel, which by definition means that the Palestinians are in chains, but are still holding the magical key which symbolizes the "right of return."

The key is embedded in a barbed wire fence, which represents the security barrier, but the entire map of Israel is bleeding and red.

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