Last month the present writer reported briefly on the Qatar Conference that took place in Doha, capital of Qatar, at the end of February, discussing one aspect of the conference as an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate-fest. In light of the March 30th “Global March to Jerusalem,” it is time to re-visit the Qatar Conference and examine its probable long-term impact.

The participants and agenda of the “International Conference for the Defense of occupied Jerusalem” displayed an unprecedented broad spectrum of the Arab and Muslim nations and organizations, uniting in Qatar for the sole purpose of strategizing new ways to destroy Israel. Unusual, but not surprising, was the official presence of representatives from the UN and Iran, the American and UK Muslim Brotherhood organizations, an Israeli Hamas leader, and Neturei Karta rabbis, who, despite their much ballyhooed sympathies for the Palestinian cause, were brutally beaten by Arab marchers. Unofficial attendees included EU leaders and U.S. and European academics.

One of Israel’s greatest advantages in its fight for survival against the 64-year long Arab war to destroy the Jewish state has been Arab disunity. For that reason alone, the Doha Conference deserves special notice by virtue of the event’s successfully hosting Sunni and Shi’ite, Arab and Iranian, participants for whom the old Arab proverb, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” took on new meaning.

The conference featured four themes: the legal status of Jerusalem and its holy places under “Israeli occupation,” the Arab identity of the city, Israeli crimes against the Muslim world by its efforts to “judaize” Jerusalem and how to combat these efforts, and appropriate measures to engage civil society in the struggle to maintain the Arab character of the city. In addition to vilification of Zionism and demonization of Israel, most of the conference focused on strategies to “rescue Jerusalem” from Israel. This new “rescue Jerusalem” theme may be the result of recent statements by some Hamas leaders and Abu-Youssef el-Qaradawi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, in which Israel’s “tampering with el-Aqsa” becomes a new casus belli for the Muslim world.

Over the past six years, the Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored a series of such conferences to develop strategies to delegitimize and vilify Israel, many of them in Turkey and with the cooperation of the Turkish government: apparently part of the new Turkish government’s interest in becoming a new nexus for the Muslim world, a nexus whose first priority is the destruction of Israel.

According to its website, the concept of a “Global March to Jerusalem” (GM2J) has been discussed for decades; but the eventof Friday, March 30, was born a year earlier in discussions among the organizers of the Asian Caravan to Gaza, which will useTurkey as its port of departure for its as yet unrealized blockade-busting voyage to Gaza.

The Asian Caravan to Gaza has close connections with the Muslim Brotherhood, as do the Global March organizers[i]; and the Muslim Brotherhood leaders were key players in the Qatar conference. It is probably no coincidence, therefore, that a year after the Asian Caravan folks began discussing it, and only a month after the Qatar conference focused on “rescuing Jerusalem,” we witnessed close to 20,000 people massing on Israel’s borders on Friday, March 30, to rescue Jerusalem from Israel’s “judaization” of the future capitol of “Palestine.”

There was ample news coverage and analysis in the weeks leading up to the march,[ii] with speculation about how Israel would handle this massive civilian, yet hostile, breach of its borders. There was somewhat more limited coverage of the event itself in mainstream media, perhaps because it drew nowhere near the two million participants of which organizers boasted in the days leading up to the event. There was some violence and one fatality, but the Israeli security forces effectively used non-lethal riot-control techniques and hi-tech interference to dampen mob enthusiasm; and Jordanian, Lebanese and Egyptian forces prevented marchers’ access to the Israeli borders.

In light of the unexpectedly poor turnout and relatively uneventful nature of the event, several post-mortem analysts have declared it a “dud” and “fizzled instead of sizzled.” None the less, the GM2J website declared the event a major success, acknowledging the poor turnout but stressing the broad-spectrum participation of people from 84 nations across the globe. They have a point. After all, 20,000 people is still a lot of people, even though it is a mere one percent of the organizers’expected 2,000,000; and the participation of representatives from 84 nations does justify calling it a global march.

But there is another reason why this even was indeed a major victory for the Arab cause and a set-back for the Jewish state: it looks like it is the first in a new series of anti-Israel tactics.

Just as the poorly attended but ground-breaking anti-Israel conference at Harvard created a new front in the campus warsagainst Israel, so too the GM2J and its backers and organizers, from the Asian Caravan and the Muslim Brotherhood to the Qatar Conference and Neturei Karta, can all rejoice in their new tactic: the mass mobilization of civilians in unarmed and non-violent hostile activity.

The wars have failed, the terrorism has failed, boycotts and divestments and sanctions have failed, American vetoes haveprevented Arab sponsored anti-Israel resolutions from succeeding in the UN Security Council, and most of the western public has begun to lose interest in the endless relentless rhetoric of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of their supposedly oppressive Israeli occupiers. So now is the time for some new and improved creativity. Since the “free Gaza” flotillas fizzled and the plans for an airborne blockade-busting event never got off the ground, the creative thinkers behind the strategies of the annihilate-Israel crowd have come up with this visionary break-through idea: unarmed civilians by the thousands or tens of thousands, violating Israel’s borders and marching on Jerusalem – a new front in the endless war.

Israel handled this one well, there were not enough marchers, and the Arab countries bordering Israel did not cooperate. So now the GM2J knows what kinks need working out before the next global march; and now, at last, they can look forward to some global Muslim unity, as demonstrated at the Qatar conference, in support of their new tactic.

Notes:

[i] And see also http://globalmbreport.org/?p=5932 ; http://globalmbreport.org/?p=5787; and http://globalmbreport.org/? p=5645 (reporting on a left wing European website, http://www.antiimperialista.org/gmj_europe, which invites Europeans to join with the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizers to march on Jerusalem).

[ii] http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/28/the-global-march-to- jerusalem/? utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5701a467f2 -Mailchimp_FrontPageMag; http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/reverend-jeremiah-wright- leads-global-march-to-jerusalem-protesters-throw-firebombs-rocks-at- police-video/; http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article599335.ece ; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/n/a/2012/03/29/international/i081339D56.DTL#ixzz1qXpgaGNZ and http://issuu.com/jewishvoice/docs/201203, for example. (Copyright © 2012 FrontPageMagazine.com 04/06/12)