September 22, 2011: Palestinian leaders are telling their followers that the UN will soon approve Palestinian use of terror against Israelis, even when it means killing women and children. One Palestinian official stated that the UN will back efforts to free Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for terror attacks. All this is supposed to happen when Palestine is allowed to join the UN. The Palestinian effort be obtain UN membership seems likely to succeed, and soon. This would not create a Palestinian state; it would simply make Palestine a member of the UN. This is a bizarre situation, but such things are not unknown in the UN.

The Palestinians have been discussing all the terrorist implications of UN membership in their Arab language media. Little has been said in English and other Western languages. There’s good reason for that. Many Western diplomats know exactly what the Palestinians are up to and have warned that UN membership, and all the lawfare games that would flow from it, will mean a sharp decline in Western aid. The UN bureaucrats have also warned the Palestinians that the UN will not go along with this interpretation of UN membership. But the Palestinians have long ignored reality, and UN warnings. Palestinian media continue to describe the ongoing war to exterminate Israel and kill or drive all Jews from the region. This doesn’t get much attention in Western media, but it’s all over Arab language media (and not just the Palestinian outlets).

These odd, to Westerners, pronouncements are not new, or uncommon. Last December, just in time for Christmas, Palestinian Authority TV came out with shows extolling the fact (at least as far as Palestinians were concerned) that Jesus was a Palestinian and the first Palestinian martyr. Christians believe that the Romans executed Jesus to placate a faction of the Jewish clergy who opposed the message Jesus was putting out. Jesus was known as a popular rabbi, and was accused by the Romans of claiming to be "king of the Jews." Some Jews (who later became Christians) accepted Jesus as the long awaited messiah. But most Jews, and all Moslems, do not. Moslems believe Jesus was a prophet sent by God to the Semitic Jewish tribes of what is now Palestine. This is an important point, as Palestinian propaganda considers Jews who don't look Semitic (Arab) to be polluted by alien blood and thus not welcome. The Semitic Jews of Israel (the descendants of those expelled from Arab countries in the late 1940s) are also considered unwelcome, largely because they consorted with the invading Western Jews. These Jews from Arab countries look just like Arabs, and often join the intelligence services, since they make excellent undercover agents.

Palestinian propaganda, meant mainly for internal consumption, depicts all of Israel as "occupied Palestine" and holds that Jews (who have lived in the area continuously for over 3,000 years) have no right to be there. Arab Christians in the neighborhood, some of them descendants of those who were followers of Jesus, keep their heads down amidst all this, as the recent Palestinian propaganda also declared that Jesus was preaching Islam, over five centuries before Mohammed arrived on the scene. Religion can get you killed in this part of the world, but that doesn't seem to discourage radical interpretations of historical events.

Religious intolerance, as well as religious diversity, are both characteristic of the region. Islam arrived five centuries after Christianity and, like earlier new religions, attracted adherents. What was different about Islam was that it was aggressively seeking to persuade all conquered people to become Moslems. This did not always work, as there were often stubborn minorities. In the area that is now Israel and the Palestinian territories, there are several religions that survived, in one way or another, the Islamic conversion effort. The two most obvious groups were Christians (several different sects) and Jews (ditto). But there were others, most of who pretended to become Moslems, but did so on their own terms. Thus we have the Druze, several flavors of Shia, and others. These Moslem sects are considered heretics by many mainstream Sunni Moslems (especially hard core groups like the Wahhabi and al Qaeda).

For Palestinian propaganda purposes, it's possible to find enough hooks in the complex religious and ethnic history of the region to get many Moslems to believe that Jesus was not a Jew, but rather the first Palestinian martyr. The Arabs tend to keep stuff like this to themselves, thus you will only find these messages in the Arab language media. But it is always there, especially during the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus.