Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pledged his
support for a Greater Jerusalem bill that would annex places like Maale Adumim,
Givat Zeev and villages in the Etzion Bloc and would allow their residents to
vote in the Jerusalem mayoral elections.
This bill would also create independent municipalities for
Israeli-Arabs living within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries but are located
outside the security barrier.
Members of Knesset and mayors acclaim this move. Deputy
Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotovely, said that “applying Israeli law is the
most important thing to make sure that everyone realizes that Jerusalem will
remain united.”
But, is Jerusalem united?
Let me throw one bucket of icy water over our politicians who are in
denial.
If Jerusalem was truly the undivided capital of Israel how
is it that at least fourteen football clubs, based in Jerusalem, are playing
under the auspices of the Palestinian Football Association, headed by Jibril
Rajoub of the Palestinian Authority? As these clubs come under the PFA, who is
an officer member of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, these
Jerusalem-based clubs are globally recognized as Palestinian, not Israeli. The
Israel Football Association lost control of them decades ago.
Worse still, some of these clubs promote terror against
Israelis as part of their footballing activities, with the full knowledge and
approval of Rajoub. Some of these activities are supervised and funded by the
PFA.
Allow me to offer you one example. On October 11, 2016, the
Hilal Al-Quds (Al Quds means Jerusalem in Arabic) football players and
managers took to their pitch and, in front of their adoring fan, unfurled a
huge colorful banner carrying the face of Musbah Abu Sbeih, a Palestinian
terrorist who murdered two Israelis and injured five others in a shooting
attack in Jerusalem two days earlier.
Hilal Al Quds are the Palestinian soccer champions. This is
the equivalent of having Chelsea, the English football champions celebrate at
Stamford Bridge in front of their fans displaying a banner with the faces of
the terrorists who carried out their outrage on London Bridge. This would be
unthinkable but, in Israel, what Hilal Al Quds did in Jerusalem didn’t produce
a murmur of protest from the mayor or our government.
This incident is not alone. The Al-Ansar football club, also
based in Jerusalem, hold an annual soccer tournament in honor of Abu Jihad, a
Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of 127 Israelis.
Again, not a word of protest from our
politicians. In Jerusalem, this annual event is supervised and sponsored by the
Palestinian Football Association from funds budgeted to them by the Palestinian
Authority.
A children’s football tournament was named in honor of the
Palestinian teenager who went on a knifing rampage through the streets of
Jerusalem.
Israeli lives have been lost partly from terror-promoting
propaganda being pumped out at Palestinian sporting and football events in
Jerusalem. Policewoman, Hadar Cohen, was killed while on duty outside the
Damascus Gate in Jerusalem by the captain of a Palestinian football club.
There are many such Jerusalem-based terror incitement
outrages that go unchallenged by the politicians that talk about a united and
undivided Jerusalem. As part of a group of NGOs based in Israel, London and New
York, we have been campaigning to FIFA to address the issue of the promotion of
terror in Palestinian football. Sadly, I have to report that government ministries,
the Prime Minister’s Office, and even the Israeli Football Association refuse
to respond, or to address this troubling phenomenon in Jerusalem.
So let not Minister Hotovely, nor Mayor Barkat, and not even
Prime Minister Netanyahu, claim that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of
Israel.
You lost control of Jerusalem years ago to our security
cost, and the loss of too many lives.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy
at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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