The Palestinian Poppy Sprouts in Britain

Great Britain observes “Remembrance Sunday” each year on the second Sunday in November. The commemoration, which honors military and civilian service personnel who served in the World Wars and later conflicts, features a public ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London. In attendance are members of the Royal Family, political leaders, and veterans.It is a solemn affair. A two-minute silence is observed at 11 a.m. and Britons wear red paper poppies — inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields” and the wild poppies that grew on World War I battlefields. Wreaths are laid at local and national war memorials.In keeping with Palestinian Arab activists’ penchant for considering nothing sacred and for making everything about their cause, some of their number are seeking to hijack Remembrance Sunday by offering for sale a “Palestine Poppy,” the Times of Israel reports.Marketed on the internet, a description of the wearable symbol explains that donations will also go toward “organizations working to educate people about the region’s history and [the] current situation and bring about the end to the occupation and war crimes through legal routes.”Other products for sale by the Palestine Poppy eBay account include a keffiyeh-styled traditional South Asian cloak and an Allah poster. The account has reportedly sold nearly 2,000 items.The website offering the badge tries to tie the Palestinian cause to the British commemoration, claiming that “During World War II, an estimated 12,000 Palestinians fought against the Nazis.”That may or may not be true but what is indisputable is that, during the war, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, actively collaborated with Nazi Germany to oppose British rule and Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Palestinian religious leader met with Adolf Hitler at Berlin on November 28, 1941, to form a political and military alliance against their common enemies — Great Britain, Zionism, and global Jewry.The cynicism inherent in the attempt to capitalize on a longstanding and solemn British honoring of veterans to claim some connection to the day of remembrance was not lost on some prominent Britons.A Labour councillor, Stuart Fawcett, who served as a Royal Navy officer, told the Telegraph that the poppy was an attempt to “hijack our national symbol of resistance.”A Conservative MP, David Reed, said: “The greatest disrespect we can show to those who sacrificed their lives for us is to turn their remembrance into a political battleground. The fallen deserve our gratitude, not our agendas.”A former Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford, told the British broadcaster GB News that “the so-called ‘Palestine Poppy’ is about as far away from remembrance as it’s possible to be. It is unashamedly political, designed to divide rather than unite.”That latter phrase well captures the essence of Palestinian activism of late. There is a reason that “promotion” of the “Palestinian cause” is so heated and, not rarely, violent. The “activists” do not seek peace and comity but, rather, conflict and hostility. The “two-state solution” that animated people of good will for decades is moribund today because the Palestinian chant of choice became “From the River to the Sea” — the erasure of Israel.Those who seek to turn everything they can to the “Palestinian cause” comprise one side of a conflict that pits the “Long Live the Intifada” mob against what has come to be known as Western civilization. Israel is only the canary in the coal mine.The attempt to hijack Britain’s commemoration of its veterans might seem a minor blip on the world screen. It symbolizes something larger, though. This poppy is poisonous.

The Palestinian Poppy Sprouts in Britain

The Palestinian Poppy Sprouts in Britain

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