2015 FirstOneThrough Summary

2015 was a busy year. Unfortunately, the world continued to be in turmoil with terrorism striking various parts of the world; the New York Times and United Nations continued to bash Israel.

First.One.Through posted 151 blogs over the year. The most popular posts were:

UN Press Corps Expunges Israel

Every Picture Tells a Story: Arab Injuries over Jewish Deaths

Framing the Israeli-Palestinian Arab Conflict: WSJ and NY Times

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

While not in the top 5, the article for which I received the most favorable feedback was:

The Touch of the Sound of the Shofar

Readership continued to grow, up 33%. The average visitor continued to read 1.45 articles per visit (same as 2014).

The viewers came from 156 countries and territories (up from 130 countries in 2014), with the United States (62%), Israel (12%), Canada (5%), United Kingdom (4%) and Australia (4%) accounting for the vast majority. The top 20 countries were:

  • United States
  • Israel
  • Canada
  • United Kingdom
  • Australia
  • South Africa
  • Germany
  • Netherlands
  • France
  • Norway
  • Denmark
  • Switzerland
  • Sweden
  • Italy
  • Mexico
  • India
  • Russia
  • Brazil
  • Austria
  • Spain

The countries that dropped out of the top 20 included: Tanzania; Ireland; Belgium; and Argentina.  They were replaced with Mexico; Russia; Austria; and Spain.  The top 20 countries with the largest percentage growth in readership were: Russia; Mexico; Switzerland; Norway; and India.

These are just the statistics based on those that visited the site. Several publications such as The Jewish Press reprint the articles and that data is not always captured here.  If you would like to repost any of the articles, please use the first two paragraphs, and then use a link to the First.One.Through site to the entire post.

Please continue to read and pass the article links to friends on Facebook, Twitter and email.

All the best for a wonderful 2016.

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First.One.Through

Adalah, Dismantling Zionism

Adalah is also known as the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. It is funded by a number of left-wing organizations including: the New Israel Fund (NIF); the Ford Foundation; the Open Society Foundation (George Soros); Oxfam; and the European Commission.

Adalah claims to be “an independent human rights organization and legal center which… works to promote and defend the rights of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, 1.2 million people, or 20% of the population, as well as Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).”  It’s agenda is much more aggressive than simply defending Israeli Arabs.

The group seeks to replace Israel as a Jewish State with a bi-national, multi-cultural state.

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Adalah protested Israel’s ban of Islamic party in Israel, November 2015.  Caption states “Raed Salah, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, gestures  in Nazareth on Nov. 17 after an Israeli police raid at the movement’s office.(Atef Safadi / European Pressphoto Agency).”  The four-finger “gesture” is the salute “R4bia” supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.  The United Kingdom also declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in December 2015.

Dismantling the Jewish State

Adalah’s goal is a new Israel, which would no longer have any Jewish preferences, such as special symbols for Jews (in the national anthem and flag), nor special treatment for Jews (such as quick and easy approval for Israeli citizenship).

Adalah’s mission can be clearly seen in its “Democratic Constitution” for Israel, proposed in 2007:

  • Setting Israel’s borders at the 1949 Armistice Lines/ “1967 borders”
  • The “Right of Return” of all Palestinian Arabs that left the region, together with their descendants, back to Israel
  • “[T]he return of land and properties [for all Arab refugees] on the basis of restorative justice
  • Israel would become a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural state,” replacing the Jewish State, because it views Israel as racist due to “the exclusion of the Arab minority based on the definition of the state as Jewish.”

The group rejects the international laws of 1920 (San Remo Conference) and 1922 (Palestine Mandate) that specifically called for “reconstituting their [Jewish] national home” THROUGHOUT Palestine, as Adalah claims that such international actions ultimately turned Arabs from a majority into a minority “against their [Palestinan Arab] will.”

The organization’s mission is to remove any particular “Jewishness” of Israel, and then flood the country with millions of Arabs to make Jews the minority. Homes would be taken away from Israeli Jews and handed to Arab “refugees.”

Refusing Equality for Israeli Jews

While the group fights against what it calls Israeli laws with embedded “racial inequality,” it shows no interest in promoting equality for Jews.

  • Where is the Adalah protest that Jews should not be barred from living in Judea and Samaria?
  • Where are the Adalah lawsuits to enable Jews to pray openly on the Jewish Temple Mount?
  • Why does the group find it offensive for Arabs with Israeli citizenship to be called “Israeli Arabs” and insists on being called “Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel?”  Are they demanding dual citizenship with a future Palestinian State?  Will they advocate that Israeli Jews should similarly get dual citizenship?
  • Adalah highlights that Arabs have lived in the region for generations which entitles them to particular rights in their homeland, yet they deny the history of the Jews and their rights to a homeland in the Holy Land.

Is equality for Adalah only a one-way street where Arabs get access and rights but Jews are denied?

Adalah: Having Your Country and Eating It Too

Adalah’s goals are clear.  It seeks a two state solution for the region: one is called Israel, in which Jews are allowed to live as a minority in a bi-national state with a Palestinian Arab majority; the other country is called Palestine, which will have no Jews nor Jewish rights to their holy places.

As “Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel” are part of the broader Palestinian people, they would have citizenship in both countries, while Jews would be limited to just living in Israel.  Over time, it is easy to visualize a future where those two Palestinian Arab states would merge.  Goodbye Israel.

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Full page NIF ad in The Jewish Week, November 20, 2015
stating it supports “Israelis working for a shared society” and claiming those opposed to NIF have an “ultranationalist agenda”

“Pro Israel” groups like the New Israel Fund state that they “are working for civil rights, social justice and religious tolerance.”  Those are noble goals. However, why does NIF support organizations like Adalah which seek to destroy the Jewish State?  Why does NIF label those people who want to see Zionism flourish in the Holy Land as “ultranationalist?”

Adalah openly opposes the vision of Zionism’s founders, as well as international laws which called for re-establishing the homeland of the Jewish people.  How can NIF give Adalah funds ($1.875 million from 2008-2014) and claim that it is “pro-Israel?”

However the NIF chooses to stretch the definition of “pro-Israel,” it is certainly is not pro-Zionism.


Related First.One.Through articles:

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

“Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

Oxfam and Gaza

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UN Media Centre Ignores Murdered Israelis

In what has become a routine abuse of facts, the United Nations Media Centre continued to edit comments that have to do with Israelis being attacked and murdered by Palestinian Arabs.

On December 15, 2015, High Commissioner for Human Rights, Cécile Pouilly gave a press briefing about situations in “Burundi, Israel / Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Cuba.”  In her opening statement about Israel, she said the following:

“We continue to be gravely concerned at the unrelenting violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Israel. Since the current escalation started at the beginning of October, 21 Israelis and 117 Palestinians have lost their lives (along with two foreign nationals), with thousands more injured.

Although international attention on the crisis has waned, the level of killings, injuries and arrests has continued, with on average one person dying every day.

The UN Media Centre reported the comments as follows:

“Although international attention has waned regarding the crisis in Israel and the Occupied Palestine Territory, the United Nations human rights office today warned that the region is still rife with violence and the recent escalation in the fighting has claimed 117 Palestinian lives, along with two foreign nationals and injured thousands more.”

Poof.  The murdered Israelis were erased.  The Palestinians and two foreign nationals were killed, but the murdered Israelis were wiped from the comments and history of the United Nations Media Centre.

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Cécile Pouilly, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (Photo: OHCHR)

While the various UN bodies have long established anti-Israel biases, the media centre which summarizes the comments of hundreds of those same UN bodies, further sanitizes Palestinian Arab crimes and ignores the suffering of Israelis.

How much hatred for Israel can an organization have to deliberately omit Israelis, while mentioning every other person killed?  How far has the UN stretched itself to adopt an unbalanced, extremist Palestinian narrative?

When will western countries demand sanitizing the United Nations?


Related First.One.Through articles:

UN Press Corps Expunges Israel

UN Comments on the Murder of Innocents: Henkins

UN Comments on the Murder of Innocents: Itamar and Duma

The United Nations Audit of Israel

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

The UN Can’t Support Israel’s Fight on Terrorism since it Considers Israel the Terrorists

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Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through  Israel Analysis