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If anyone has been desecrating al-Aqsa Mosque, it is Muslims who have been rioting and using rocks and fireworks to attack police officers and Jewish visitors.

By Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute

Palestinians are again repeating the lie that al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is in danger because the Jews are planning to “storm” and “desecrate” it.

Some Palestinians and Muslims have gone so far as to accuse the Jews of plotting to destroy the mosque. The latest campaign of lies and misinformation arrived as Jews, on May 18, were preparing to celebrate the reunification of Jerusalem by holding a flag parade in the city.

For days, the hashtag “al-Aqsa Mosque is in Danger” was trending on various social media platforms, evidently as part of a concerted campaign to smear Jews and rally Muslims against them.

Notably, participants in the Jerusalem flag parade — which is held every year — never enter either the premises of al-Aqsa Mosque or the Temple Mount compound. Like all non-Muslims, however, Jews do visit the Temple Mount on other days of the year. There is no ban on such visits. Jewish visitors, however, contrary to claims by some Palestinians, do not set foot inside any mosque on the Temple Mount. They tour only outdoor parts of the Temple Mount compound, and under heavy police protection.

If anyone has been desecrating al-Aqsa Mosque, it is Muslims who have been rioting and using rocks and fireworks to attack police officers and Jewish visitors. Muslim rioters — not peaceful Jewish visitors — are the real threat to the sanctity of the mosque.

Israeli authorities have clarified that the route of the “flag parade” absolutely does not include entry into any mosque. According to a statement published by the Israel Police on May 18:

“In recent hours, we have witnessed the continuation of incitement attempts on social networks, along with old videos and documents that are out of context.”

“This morning the prayers of the Muslims on Temple Mount are held as usual and so is the movement in and to the Old City. In addition, the visitations [by non-Muslims, including Jews] are held as usual on the Temple Mount in accordance with the rules of the holy site.”

Assurances by the Israeli authorities, however, have not stopped Palestinians and other Muslims from spreading fake news and libels against Jews.

Sheikh Abdel Hai Yusef, described as a Muslim “scholar,” posted a video on Twitter in which he called on Muslims to converge on al-Aqsa Mosque to “defend” it against attempts by “the Zionists to desecrate the mosque during the so-called flag march.” He added: “This is the duty of all Muslims. Anyone who can arrive at the mosque should do so out of loyalty to God and his prophet, Mohammed.”

Egyptian Muslim “scholar” Sheikh Mohammed Al-Sughayyar called on Muslims to barricade themselves inside al-Aqsa Mosque. According to the cleric, it is the “duty” of all Muslims to converge on the mosque on the pretext that is “in danger.”

Iran’s terror proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have also used the celebrations in Jerusalem to spread the libel that Jews are planning to “desecrate” al-Aqsa Mosque.

Hassan Ezaddin, a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese parliament, also urged Muslims to “assume their responsibility to defend al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said that the Palestinians will not allow Israel to “tamper” with al-Aqsa Mosque. As far as Hamas and other Palestinians are concerned, the very presence of Jews at their holy site and in Israel is supposedly a “provocation.”

Hamas and several terror groups in the Gaza Strip, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also repeated the lie that “al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger.” The groups published a statement in which they said that the Israeli “aggression on al-Aqsa Mosque requires an escalation of resistance activities.” When the terror groups talk about “resistance,” they are referring to the need for terrorism against Israel, including firing rockets from the Gaza Strip, and attacks by stabbing, shooting and car-ramming.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) also joined the campaign of incitement against Israel and Jews ahead of the celebrations in Jerusalem. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, echoed the threats by the Iranian-backed terror groups and Muslim “scholars” and also warned that the “flag parade” was a “provocation that would lead to tension and an explosion.” He, too, repeated the lie that Jews were planning to “storm” al-Aqsa Mosque – a reference to totally peaceful tours by Jews to the Temple Mount.

The PA’s involvement in the campaign of incitement against Israel and Jews is not new. In the past, the Palestinian Authority issued a number of statements propagating the false slogan that the Jews are planning to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque.

Abbas has, on a number of occasions, even denied any connection of Jews to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, despite vast archeological and documentary evidence that incontrovertibly demonstrate the opposite. The Western Wall, for instance, sacred to Jews, is a retaining wall: all that is left of the Temple of Solomon, destroyed for a second time, by the Roman Empire in 70 CE. King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia had already destroyed it before, in 586 BCE. Additionally, the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Josephus Flavius and the name of the area Judea, all massively attest to the presence of Jews throughout the region, dating back more than 3,500 years.

This view, that the Jews do indeed have a deeply-rooted connection to the land of Israel, known previously as Canaan, was reaffirmed once again on April 14 — inside al-Aqsa Mosque — by the Palestinian Islamic scholar Issam Amira:

“The people of Palestine have no historical rights to Palestine. They have no right that dates back 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 years. The right of the Canaanites to Palestine is equal to the pharaohs’ right to Egypt. Is it conceivable that any Muslim in Egypt would say: ‘I am Pharaonic and proud of it?’ Well, it is the same if a Muslim in Palestine said, ‘I am a Canaanite and proud of it.’ To hell with your Canaanite identity and to his Pharaonic identity. People, our history is simple and it is not ancient. It must not be said that the Palestinians have Canaanite roots. Our history dates back only 1,440 years. 1,440 years ago we had no rights of any kind. Absolutely none. ….. The only thing you are allowed to say is: Oh Palestinians, you are Muslims.”

Nevertheless, in a speech at the United Nations on May 15, Abbas again claimed there is no proof of Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and its adjacent Western Wall. “They [Israel] dug under al-Aqsa Mosque… they dug everywhere, and they could not find anything,” Abbas said. He also claimed that “ownership of Al-Buraq Wall [the Western Wall] and Haram Al-Sharif [Temple Mount] belongs exclusively and only to Muslims alone.”

Is al-Aqsa ‘in danger’?

The lie that Jews are planning to destroy the mosque is also not new.

For the past century, Palestinian leaders have used the lie that “al-Aqsa is in danger” to incite their people to attack Jews. Palestinian leaders, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, an ally of Hitler and Nazi collaborator, as well as former PLO leader Yasser Arafat, have denied the existence of a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and accused Israel of planning attacks on the mosque.

According to Nadav Shragai, a veteran journalist and expert on Jerusalem:

“The archaeological digs that Israel has conducted over the years near the Temple Mount, far from the mosques, are a laudable scientific and cultural endeavor. Since liberating Jerusalem in 1967 from Jordanian occupation, Israel has protected religious sites of all faiths and ensured freedom of worship for all peoples.”

The revival of the “al-Aqsa is in danger” libel is part of an ongoing effort by Palestinians and other Muslims to delegitimize and eliminate Israel. Palestinian leaders and Muslim “scholars” spread lies about Israel and Jews to encourage and justify terrorism.

Moreover, this libel is part of a longtime effort to deny Judaism’s 3,000-year-long connection to the Temple Mount. The mosque is by no means under threat by Jews, who since 1967 have allowed Muslims to manage the affairs of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound through the authorities of the Islamic Waqf.

The real threat to the mosque and other holy sites in Jerusalem is posed by those Palestinians and Muslims who use battle cries to incite violence, terrorism and Jew-hate.

Incomprehensibly, much of the international community (here, here, here and here), the media (here, here and here), and even prominent self-declared “human rights” organizations (here, here and here) persist in defaming Israel and ignoring this fabricated, toxic incitement by Palestinian and Muslim leaders.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

The post The real threat to Al-Aqsa mosque is from Muslims, not Jews appeared first on World Israel News.

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America’s blood plasma industry is the largest in the world and preys on the economically desperate.

Plasma donation is a multibillion industry that has largely been hidden from public view. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

When Montana-based journalist Kathleen McLaughlin set out to report on the United States’ blood plasma industry, she had a distinctly personal reason for doing so: McLaughlin has a rare chronic illness that requires her to receive infusions of a treatment made in part from other people’s plasma. McLaughlin, who has spent much of her career reporting from China, wanted to learn more about an industry that has played such a central role in her life.

Blood Money: The Story of Life, Death, and Profit Inside America’s Blood Industry, the book McLaughlin published earlier this year, is a harrowing dive into the underbelly of a multibillion industry that has largely been hidden from public view — a tour of places and people who have been forced to sell parts of their bodies to survive in a country that has all but abandoned them.

Jacobin caught up with McLaughlin to learn more about the blood plasma industry and the grinding economic conditions that have fueled its rise.

Abe Asher

One thing that jumped out to me in reading your book is that the United States is supplying, by far, the majority of the world’s plasma.

Kathleen McLaughlin

That’s the thing that struck me as well. When you start getting into the numbers, you realize that, first of all, we are a country with a large population — there aren’t many countries with a population as big as ours — and that we have a large population of people who are living on the economic margins. And we don’t pay that much attention or care that much, as a society, about people living on the margins. So there is plenty of room for exploitation of people, I think.

A few months ago, before the book came out, someone was asking me, “Oh, is there a country in the developing world that’s the biggest supplier of plasma?” And I said, “Actually, it’s us.” For me, it’s really interesting because I first became aware of the plasma industry when I was living in China, and they had tried to create this thing called the plasma economy. I thought that was so dystopian and weird. The fact is, we did it while nobody was really paying attention.

We’re in this very bizarre place that we are allowing widespread exploitation of people and demanding that people sell parts of their body. There hasn’t been a big political outcry to regulate this practice better or to pay people more, so I think it does say a lot about us as a society — of where we are and how we view people who aren’t wealthy.

Abe Asher

Many of the places you traveled for your reporting are places that, in their own ways, the United States has left behind. The geography of this industry seems pretty intentional. Is that fair to say?

Kathleen McLaughlin

It absolutely is. There have been a couple studies that show that plasma centers are much more likely to pop up in poorer zip codes. It’s not an accident.

Part of what I tried to do in the places I chose is to show a cross section of the demographics. So you have Rexburg, Idaho, which is majority white but not wealthy by any measurement, and then you have El Paso, which is majority Mexican, and then you have Flint, which is majority black. And the same thing is happening in all of them.

Abe Asher

It seems like there’s a range of opinions about these centers in communities. What did you feel like the pervasive opinion of these places was from people living in these areas of the country that have been kind of abandoned?

Kathleen McLaughlin

I would describe it as pragmatism. People are not stupid. People know what’s going on. They know why these places exist in their communities. They know that it’s exploitative. I didn’t talk to anyone who was like, “Wow, this is the best opportunity ever.” They’re doing it because they need the money. So there’s a very clear-eyed awareness of what is happening, why these places exist, and why they are engaging with them.

It’s very much what I’d call a gray economy, where it isn’t being watched; it isn’t being well regulated. Most people who are doing it are not filing taxes on the income they’re earning. The companies are quiet about how many people are selling plasma and about how much money they’re making. It thrives, in part, because these places are forgotten and left behind and ignored by a lot of powerful people and powerful media outlets.

Abe Asher

People are making a little bit of money selling their plasma, but who is really profiting off the donations?

Kathleen McLaughlin

The big profiteers are multinational pharmaceutical companies — two of the three biggest companies are headquartered in Spain and Australia. So essentially big pharma is making the profits.

The plasma industry owns the supply chain from beginning to end: it owns the extraction centers, the clinics where people go to sell plasma, the manufacturing facility that turns it into medication, and the distribution business as well.

Abe Asher

What is known about the medical cost of being a plasma donor over a long period of time?

Kathleen McLaughlin

Not much. There’s been one study that shows that it can deplete your protein levels in your blood even after you stop donating. There’s a lot of anecdotal reports of people feeling a lot of fatigue and things like that, but there hasn’t been any long-term study that shows serious negative consequences. But there isn’t a huge body of scientific research out there that says this is totally fine. There’s more an absence of scientific research.

When I said at the beginning that we as a society have a lack of care and concern for people who are on the economic margins, that’s part of it: these are not powerful people, and so we’re not studying what’s happening to their bodies when they’re donating plasma twice a week for five years. (Editor’s note: the Red Cross has significantly stricter limits on how often people can donate blood).

Abe Asher

You mentioned a couple minutes ago the extent to which plasma donors are selling part of their body. Did you see connections to any other profession or industry where mostly poor people are selling parts of their bodies?

Kathleen McLaughlin

Someone recently compared it to sex work to me, and that might be a fairly good comparison — in part because sex workers also lack labor protections, and it’s heavily stigmatized. It’s obviously not the same thing, but you can look at it as another way of earning an income that we don’t go very far in making better for workers because we’re reluctant to talk about it as labor. So I think sex work is a pretty decent comparison.

Abe Asher

One reading of the book is very dystopian: one class of people feasting on the blood of this other class of people. But obviously it’s not that straightforward — plasma clearly has huge health benefits for people. What might a better plasma industry look like, one that is less morally objectionable and offers more reasonable conditions for the people who are making it possible?

Kathleen McLaughlin

The number-one thing that would need to happen is a more transparent payment system.

Right now, people get paid more according to how many times they donate plasma. If you go once in a week, you might get $30. The second time, you might get $40. And you just never know exactly what you’re going to get, because it’s gamified. You get bonuses, you get referral bonuses — there are all these incentives that are designed to make you go as often as possible in order to earn the highest amount of income possible.

But what if it was designed so that you got a much higher payment every time you went, so that you knew what you were going to get and you didn’t have to feel compelled to keep going back twice a week forever and ever and ever? So let’s say you got paid $100. I’m just throwing that out there based on nothing, because I think it would take some research to figure out what is actually fair. But let’s say you could count on getting $100 for every donation — maybe it would feel less exploitative for people. That’s, I think, the number-one thing that could be done.

Like you said, it does have this vibe that it is one class of people feasting on the blood of other people — but my medication now is up to almost $15,000 per dose. So if you’re someone who doesn’t have great insurance, even if you’re getting this dose, it’s also exploiting you as well.

Abe Asher

This does seem like an industry that is rich for regulation, as you’re illustrating. Have you heard from elected officials, anyone working in and around legislative politics since you started this reporting?

Kathleen McLaughlin

Nope. Not a word. I think that part of this is the generational divide. People in politics in the United States are older, so they probably don’t have experience with this. And their families probably don’t have experience with this, because we know that people who are in elected office don’t tend to come from poverty or have any experience of poverty. So those are probably two big factors. This just isn’t something that affects them.

Abe Asher

In your book, I remember the gentleman who said that he was donating plasma and putting every cent away to be able to take a vacation with his family to Florida. For some reason, that stood out to me. Are there any moments you had talking to people in any of these locations that really stuck with you?

Kathleen McLaughlin

The one that kind of haunted me was Emily in Texas, who was selling plasma to pay court fines. She said to me, more than once in our interviews, that she would sell a kidney if she could. And she was dead serious. She kind of laughed when she said it, but we have set these arbitrary limits on what parts of our body we can sell. Right now, it’s blood plasma, eggs, and sperm. Those are the three pieces of your body you can sell in the United States right now. But why have we set it that way, and at some point are we going to decide it’s fine if poor people need to sell a kidney too? So we’ve drawn a line in the sand and said that’s okay, but is it okay? And should you really have people who are thinking, “God, I wish I could sell a kidney?”

That was in the middle of reporting this book, and that put everything in perspective for me — because there are a lot of people living in economic situations where they would take extreme risks with their health and their bodies just to make their financial situation better.

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MK Moshe Gafni says he would “donate clothes” to singer Noa Kirel, Israel’s contestant in the Eurovision song contest who won third place.

By World Israel News Staff

A senior ultra-Orthodox lawmaker came under fire Monday after he took aim at a pop star’s wardrobe, hinting that it is immodest, while defending his party’s call for increased spending on yeshiva student stipends and religious schools.

MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism), chairman of the Knesset’s powerful Finance Committee and head of the Degel HaTorah faction within the UTJ party, addressed the Knesset plenum Monday morning as the government presented its proposed 2023-2024 budget plan.

During his address, Gafni pushed back on criticism over UTJ’s call for an additional 600 million shekels in funding for yeshiva students and ultra-Orthodox schools – a step ultra-Orthodox lawmakers said was necessary to retroactively apply the new budget’s spending plan for religious schools, bringing them on par with state schools, to the first five months of the year.

Gafni accused critics of the UTJ’s demand of bias against ultra-Orthodox Jews. Hitherto, independent-religious schools have received fifty percent of the funding per pupil as state-secular and state-religious schools.

“I spoke with my daughter recently; she never heard of Noa Kirel. Never heard of her. So what? So because of that she shouldn’t get the same kind of funding? I would donate clothes to [Noa Kirel] so that she would have.”

Kirel, 22, is one of Israel’s top-charting pop music singers and came in third place recently in the 2023 Eurovision song competition.

Opposition lawmakers harshly criticized Gafni for his comment, with Yesh Atid MK Meirav Ben-Ari calling it “repulsive.”

“What does he care what Noa wears?” Ben-Ari tweeted. “Noa Kirel built herself up with hard work from a young age. While doing that, she enlisted in the army and did full army service. She was also an outstanding soldier, and in the end, she represented Israel wonderfully and in an inspiring way. All these things, Gafni didn’t do and knows nothing about. Disgusting.”

Former Finance Minister MK Avidgor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) tweeted: “Gafni, just so you know, this is not Iran.”

Hagit Pe’er, head of the women’s organization Na’amat, said Kirel “represents the beautiful face of Israel to the world, Gafni makes sure that he reminds the world of the darkness we won’t allow here. Noa — you are amazing, strong and empowering. You’ll probably get along just fine without Gafni.”

Shortly after Gafni’s comments in the Knesset plenum, UTJ announced that it reached a deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, securing the party’s support for the budget.

In exchange, the state will fund a one-time payment to full-time yeshiva students, retroactively increasing their stipends from the beginning of the year. The move will cost 250 million shekels, less than half of the 600 million demanded by UTJ.

The post Ultra-Orthodox lawmaker sparks backlash with potshot at pop star’s wardrobe appeared first on World Israel News.

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