Monthly Archives: May 2019

Jordan’s King Abdullah II Fights to Retain His Throne

Posted on by
4

On May 29, 2019, the United States team tasked with forging peace in the Middle East met with Jordan’s monarch Abdullah II. Abdullah insisted that the so called “deal of the century” include an independent sovereign state of Palestine with “East Jerusalem” as its capital.

On its face, the king’s comment might seem a gesture of support for the Palestinian Authority. It was actually more than that. It was a statement made out of fear about losing his own monarchy.

To understand the current state of the Jordanian king, one must appreciate two factors: the history of Jordan regarding Palestine and the current situation in the country.

History of Jordan / Transjordan / Palestine

When the Ottoman Empire was facing defeat in World War I, the world powers sought to set up distinct new entities in the Middle East. The broad region now known as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Israel were to be administered by the United Kingdom and France for a period of years until each would become an established new state. The Mandate of Palestine (1922) fell under the UK and included the area now known as Jordan.

Due to effective lobbying of the British government, the Hashemite family was able to secure a monarchy on 77% of the Palestine Mandate in 1924, incorporating all of the area east of the Jordan River. Such division was hinted at in the Mandate (Article 25), but other key provisions of the Mandate were ignored by the Hashemite king, notably Article 15 which forbade the exclusion of any person based on religion (no Jews allowed as detailed below).

The Hashemite kingdom’s quest for more of Palestine would play out over the years 1948 to 1954.

When Israel declared itself an independent state in May 1948 as the British mandate ended, the Jordanians attacked the nascent Jewish State together with armies from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. At war’s end in 1949, the Jordanians took over Judea and Samaria which would later become known as the “West Bank.” They ethnically cleansed all Jews from the region, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem, while tens of thousands of Arabs from Israel moved to the West Bank and Jordan. In 1950, Jordan officially annexed the West Bank in a move not recognized by any country other than the United Kingdom and Pakistan.

In an effort to further cement its ownership of “Greater Jordan,” the Hashemites gave all West Bank Arabs Jordanian citizenship, as well as those who moved to Jordan. The 1954 Jordanian Citizenship law specifically forbade Jews from obtaining citizenship (Article 3), a bold anti-Semitic initiative which received no condemnation at the United Nations.

In June 1967, Jordan attacked Israel again. However this time it lost the territory it had illegally annexed. Many of the Arabs who had moved to the West Bank in 1948-9 then moved to Jordan, while many others remained, holding onto their Jordanian citizenship even though they no longer lived in Jordanian-ruled land.

Many Arabs were furious with the failures of the leadership.

In 1964, several Arabs decided that they did want to be ruled by the Hashemites of Jordan nor the Jews of Israel and established the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to launch a “holy war” to free the land from “International Zionism and colonialism.” The 1967 loss of more land was an alarming setback in those goals.

In September 1970, the PLO fought to topple the Hashemite monarchy attempting to kill King Hussein, King Abdullah’s father, and take over Jordan. The Jordanian army routed the Palestinian fighters, killing over 3,000 of them. The remaining fighters were expelled to Lebanon, where they would later participate in the Lebanese Civil War and then wars against Israel.

The Jordanians would not be done with the Palestinian issue.

After Israel fought to expel the PLO terrorists from Lebanon in 1982, they moved on to Tunisia, but only for a few years. The Tunisians withdrew the passports issued to several members of the PLO leadership and cancelled the residency permits of many others in 1986. The group began to spread throughout Algeria, Yemen, Sudan and Syria, establishing terrorist training camps around the region.

And they would soon find themselves back next door to Jordan.

In 1988, Yasser Arafat nominally recognized Israel’s right to exist, as the Palestinians declared an independent state, a move not recognized by most of the world. The Jordanians revoked the Jordanian citizenship of the Palestinians at this time, leaving them theoretically with Palestinian citizenship, but effectively no citizenship since no countries recognized Palestine. The Jordanians would also give up all claims to the West Bank (indicating that they clearly sought to recapture that land before such time).

A few years later in 1991, 400,000 Arabs of Palestinian descent were expelled from Kuwait, due to the PLO’s siding with Iraq in its war with Kuwait. The vast majority of these Arabs would settle in Jordan, inflating the already significant number of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) in the country.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arab “intifada” against Israeli Jews would rage from 1987 until 1993. It was in that year that Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO, moved from Tunisia to Gaza, and the current Jordanian King Abdullah would take a Palestinian bride, Rania. The Oslo I Accords of September 1993 set in motion a plan for a “two-state solution,” one for Arabs (Palestine) and one for Jews (Israel), helping pave the way for the Jordanians to make peace with Israel in the following year, in October 1994.

The tug-of-war between the Palestinians-and-Jordanians, the Palestinians-and-Israel, and Israel-and-Jordan was seemingly coming to a peaceful conclusion.

It was not to be.

Current Situation of the Hashemite Kingdom

The Oslo I Accords would be followed by the more comprehensive Oslo II Accords in 1995 which set in motion a plan to arrive at a conclusive deal within five years, by September 2000. Those five intermediate years were marked by constant Arab terrorist attacks against Israel, but the two parties still tried to advance to a peace agreement.

The Jordanian King Hussein who forged the peace agreement with Israel died in February 1999, and was succeeded by his son King Abdullah II. Abdullah kept the peace treaty with Israel in place, a move unpopular with many Jordanians during the Second Intifada which began in September 2000 when the Oslo II Accords failed to bring about a Palestinian State. Abdullah’s police and military fought with members of the Parliament and countered riots in the street which were committed to the Palestinian cause.

The monarchy was once again caught in the three-way fight between Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians.

And then 9/11 happened.

King Abdullah strongly condemned the attacks against America, and pushed forward a much more authoritarian shutdown of the public protest in support of Palestinians. However, the daily bloodshed of the Second Intifada made the protests from the streets where most people were SAPs and had relatives in the West Bank hard to contain. Queen Rania herself led some of the protests.

But King Abdullah saw that America was coming to wage war again in Iraq after the attacks of 9/11. He ruled over a people who overwhelmingly supported Iraq just a decade earlier, and who cheered when Iraq fired scud missiles into Israel which wasn’t even part of the battle. How could Abdullah manage such a population when he relied on America for economic aid and military protection?

As described in an article by The Middle East Policy Council, King Abdullah instituted a “Jordan First” policy, to manage the internal threat.

“Through its emphasis on domestic priorities, Jordan First offered an innovative political strategy that mixed elections with repression in an effort to ensure a loyalist parliament that would allow the Hashemite regime to continue its support of American policies in an effort to secure the economic benefits essential to the regime’s long-term survival…. In brief, these policies are the maintenance of normal ties with Israel, alignment with U.S. policies toward the Middle East, and active support for the American war on terror.”

Abdullah prioritized Israel-Jordan over Jordan-Palestine while he ignored Palestine-Israel. And he would continue to do so throughout the Second Intifada, even while occasionally berating the Israeli government, in an effort to convince the Arab street that he was not a puppet of the US administration or a closet Zionist.

And then the “Arab Spring” happened in December 2010, devolving most notably into the Syrian Civil War in March 2011.

The bloodshed and anarchy of a fellow Arab monarch slaughtering his own citizens at his borders was difficult for Abdullah to watch. So his country of 9.7 million people welcomed almost a million Syrian refugees, almost 10 percent of its population. This was on top of the over 2.3 million people in Jordan who were registered as Palestinian refugees.

In total, King Abdullah rules over a population in which one-third of the people don’t identify with the country. The loyalties, allegiances and aspirations of the “Palestinian”- Jordanians and Syrian refugees lie elsewhere, in neighboring lands. The country is like an airport waiting area in which the flights keep on getting delayed and the people become more and more restless.

Which brings us back to King Abdullah’s comments today.

The Tottering Hashemite Crown

Jordan’s unemployment rate now stands at 18.7%, roughly the same high mark for the past six quarters. By way of comparison, Israel’s unemployment rate is at a remarkable low of 3.8%, a level which keeps getting lower. Jordan may have survived the Arab Spring violence that engulfed Syria, Iraq and Yemen, but it is limping along.

The “Arab Spring” may not have liberated the Arab world, but it made the populations question the legitimacy of their governments. This is much more true in the motley group of “Jordanians” who have nothing to do with the Hashemite who sits on the throne, a man who cannot deliver jobs.

It is therefore impossible for Abdullah to take on another 2.9 million Arabs living in the West Bank in a possible confederation scenario. Such a move would bring the Palestinians to roughly 42% of the Jordanian population, and together with the Syrians, a majority. And this majority has no loyalty for a small tribe which took control of the area almost 100 years ago. In Abduallah’s calculation, the Palestinians must gain their own state, or he risks losing his monarchy in Jordan.

The Jordanian king often uses passionate and flowery speech to convince his audience of his good nature. But as a creature of the volatile Middle East, he is simply a crafty survivor, fighting to retain his family dynasty among a restless and poor population which doesn’t recognize him.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Oh Abdullah, Jordan is Not So Special

The Jordanian King Abdullah’s Absurdities

Time for King Abdullah of Jordan to Denounce the Mourabitoun

The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan”

Jordan’s Deceit and Hunger for Control of Jerusalem

Related First.One.Through video:

Jordan’s Hypocrisy: Queen Rania on Palestinians and UNRWA

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Antisemitic Youth

Posted on by
4

To better understand the current risk and future of antisemitism, it is useful to examine the level of antisemitism in the younger generation, those aged 18 to 34 years old, the demographic which normally carries out terrorist attacks.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) did a comprehensive global poll of antisemitism in 2014. It found that there were 24 countries/ regions in which over half of the youth harbored antisemitic feelings.

Gaza/ West Bank 92%
Iraq 92%
Yemen 89%
Libya 89%
Algeria 87%
Morocco 84%
Tunisia 83%
Kuwait 82%
Jordan 80%
Lebanon 78%
Bahrain 77%
Qatar 76%
UAE 76%
Egypt 74%
Oman 74%
Saudi Arabia 73%
Turkey 71%
Greece 66%
Armenia 62%
Malaysia 58%
Senegal 54%
Iran 53%
Panama 52%
Hungary 50%

The most antisemitic youth were found in Muslim majority countries in the Middle East/ North Africa (MENA) region. In every Muslim country in MENA (with the exception of Syria which was not polled due to the civil war raging in the country), over half of the youth hated Jews. Greece and Armenia which both neighbor Turkey, also had a majority of their youth being antisemitic. Senegal, close to Morocco, is 94% Muslim was also on the hateful list. Panama and Hungary were the outliers, with a high percentage of antisemitic youth despite not being Muslim-majority nations nor located in the region.

Hungary stood out in another negative aspect as well.

In comparing the rate of antisemitism between the youth and older generation (aged 50 and over), the Jew-hatred was relatively uniform in the Muslim countries, meaning basically all Muslims hate Jews. However, looking at the gap between the antisemitism of the youth and the older generation yielded a different set of countries:

Country 18-34 35-49 50+ Hate-
Age Gap
Hungary 50% 45% 33% 17%
France 43% 43% 30% 13%
Botswana 34% 37% 24% 10%
Yemen 89% 92% 79% 10%
Morocco 84% 79% 75% 9%
Khazakstan 36% 32% 27% 9%
Montenegro 33% 29% 25% 8%
Turkey 71% 75% 63% 8%

Hungary and France showed much higher levels of antisemitism among the younger generation. There was some commonality among the youth of the two countries regarding their rationale towards despising Jews:

  • People hate Jews because of the way they behave (27% and 13% difference in Hungary and France, respectively)
  • Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars (25% difference in Hungary)
  • Jews think they are better than others (16% difference in Hungary)
  • Jews don’t care about anyone but their own (11% and 16% difference in Hungary and France, respectively)
  • Jews have too much power in the business world (15% difference in France)
  • Jews have too much control over the US (15% in France)

The radicalization of the youth might show a trend for greater antisemitism in the years to come as well as a greater probability for antisemitic terrorism today.

Areas of Risk

The fact that Iraq and Yemen have some of the worst levels of antisemitism is not that relevant in that there are almost no Jews living in either country today. However, the level of antisemitism in some countries with a significant Jewish population is worrying.

Jewish Antisemitic
Country / Region Population Youth
USA      5,700,000 9%
France         453,000 43%
Judea and Samaria/ West Bank         400,000 92%
Canada         391,000 7%
United Kingdom         290,000 7%
Argentina         180,000 20%
Russia         172,000 27%
Germany         116,000 15%
Australia         113,000 17%
Brazil            93,000 13%
South Africa           69,000 38%
Ukraine           50,000 31%
Hungary           47,000 50%
Mexico            40,000 21%
Netherlands            30,000 4%
Belgium            29,000 16%
Italy            28,000 14%

According to the table above, there are over 1 million Jews living among highly antisemitic young people. While Israel provides active protection for the Jews living in the Israeli territories of Judea and Samaria / the West Bank, the Jewish communities in France, South Africa, Ukraine and Hungary are highly vulnerable.


Hakim Awad, 18 and Amjad Awad, 19, Palestinian Arab murderers
of two Jewish parents and children aged 11, 4 and 3-months, in Samaria

The most antisemitic youth are located in lands with a majority of Arab Muslims, from which Jews have been expelled over the past decades, with the exception of Judea and Samaria / the West Bank. Outside of the Muslim antisemitism potentially impacting the Jews of Turkey and Iran today, the small Jewish communities in Greece (est. 6,000 Jews), Panama (est. 14,000) and larger Hungary (est. 47,000) must be very mindful of the noxious Jew-hatred prevalent in the overall young populations which could overwhelm and terrorize their small communities.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

Racist Calls of Apes and Pigs? Forget Rosanne. Let’s Talk Islam

25,000 Jews Remaining

When Hate Returns

Your Father’s Anti-Semitism

Bibi’s Paris Speech in Context

Related First.One.Through videos:

1001 Years of Expulsions (music from Schindler’s List)

The 2011 Massacre of the Fogels in Itamar

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Names and Narrative: Zionist Entity and Colonial Occupier

Posted on by
2

The subway wasn’t all that crowded but I was close enough to peer over her shoulder nonetheless. Instagram pictures in rapid succession flashed by on the women’s cellphone. A pretty girl puckering her lips with floating hearts; a cat wearing a hat; balloons on a beach.

Then the images stopped. A phone call came in. It read simply: “KIDS DAD.”

There was no name. The person had no identity. Just a label.

She would not answer the phone.

The woman returned to viewing pictures. And the phone rang again to the same reaction: no engagement.

The man was presumably her partner at one point in time. They were intimate in a way that she was not with most of the world. But that’s long gone.

The only tie that keeps them connected now are cherished children. They each want the children to be cared for but have very different visions of what that means. They may even believe the other person is no parent at all, but bound by blood to the child and nothing else.

If this woman will engage with the “kids’ Dad,” she will do so with a lawyer or mediator. She cannot talk to him without screams and shouts, finger pointing and cursing. The past cohabitation is a relic of ancient history. The future will forever include third party counselors as long as the children are minors. One day, once the kids are old enough, they will decide on their own with whom to engage.

So it is with the State of Israel.

Dozens of Arab and Muslim countries refuse to speak its name. They call it the “Zionist entity” and “colonialist occupier.”

These countries view the Jewish State as a temporary entity with whom to reluctantly deal with, only because of its connection to something they hold dear. Just as the woman may be forced to deal with her kids’ father, so the Arabs and Muslims begrudgingly deal with Israel.

But the hatred harbored in the holy land is often much deeper.

While the children’s mother may have claimed in court that the father beat her in an effort to gain sole custody, she likely never denied that the man was the father of the kids. But the Arabs do both, claiming they are innocents slaughtered by the Israeli army, and that Jews are Khazars, European invaders with no connection to the land. The Palestinian Arab leadership even flatly refuses to recognize Israel as the Jewish State because of what it might suggest for the land and people it believes Israel wrongfully occupies. Arabs become apoplectic, as though the ex-spouse converted children away from Islam, in an act of apostasy worthy of death.

Bring in the United Nations. Call the dozens of fellow Arab and Muslim nations to punish and isolate this “Zionist entity.” Collectively, they contend they can end the injustice.

But this land will never end its 18-year period of being a ward of parents. So the hated partner must be labelled an outsider, an interloper, a thief and a murderer. Whatever arguments can swing the court of world opinion to grant sole custody.

The Israelis and Arab/ Muslim world repeat a dance which can be seen in family courts every day. Sometimes calm, but most often contentious, parties fight over cherished children.

But the allegory is not that accurate.

The Jews are the actual natural birth mother of the holy land. They are the people who gave the land its sacred nature. Judaism is the only religion with a connection to a specific land, a land they lived in for thousands of years before the Muslim Arab invasion.

The Muslims and Arabs are not even foster parents of the land. They are conquerors who swept over the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Like Boko Haram which kidnapped hundreds of girls in Nigeria, the Muslims swept up others to be their brides against their will.

Like the Nigerian parents who got their girls back, the Jewish people have reclaimed their holy land. They have brought prosperity with them, together with freedom of religion and press not seen anywhere else in the MENA region. Remarkably, the Israelis welcomed hundreds of thousands of Arab residents to become Israeli citizens when it declared a state, a group which now accounts for 25% of the country.

But the word “Israel” and “Israelis” still cannot pass their lips, as Arab and Muslim countries call it the “Zionist entity” and Israeli Arabs prefer to call themselves “Palestinian citizens of Israel.” They will not acknowledge the Jewish State nor engage with it without mediators. A mindset for perpetual animosity in a tug-of-war over a parcel of land.

This relationship cannot yield peace with the current Arab mindset, only a bitter divorce with two parties forever fighting over children who will never grow older.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Both Israel and Jerusalem are Beyond Recognition for Muslim Nations

The Custodianship of a Child and Jerusalem

The Cancer in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Palestinian’s Three Denials

Squeezing Zionism

Names and Narrative: The West Bank / Judea and Samaria

Names and Narrative: Palestinian Territories/ Israeli Territories

Names and Narrative: CNN’s Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Complex Inversion

Names and Narrative: “Palestinians” versus Palestinian Arabs / Israeli Arabs

The Arguments over Jerusalem

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Palestinian-American You Never Heard Of: Issam Akel

Posted on by
4

The mainstream media often reports on a handful of Palestinian-Americans. The most dominant two are women who live in America: freshman member of Congress Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Linda Sarsour, a co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March. The outspoken women often attack the the State of Israel and Zionists who support the Jewish State and they get to enjoy the press coverage which magnifies their prominence.

The press also highlights certain Palestinian Americans who live in the Middle East to portray a particular narrative of events between Israel and the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs).

Consider Tariq Abu Kheidar, a 15-year old who was beaten by Israeli police for taking part in riots. The New York Times featured a picture of the Palestinian American teenager in a huge color photo on its front page on July 7, 2014. For the paper, it symbolized the conflict of an aggressive Israeli force beating up on Arab teenagers.

Tariq Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian-American teenager who was beaten up by an Israeli border police officer in 2014. Oded Balilty/Associated Press

The Times would cover the story again in November 2015 in a follow up article “Israeli Officer Sentenced to Community Service in Beating of Palestinian American.” The Times not only got to rehash the story, but highlight that Israeli courts did not aggressively prosecute zealous law enforcement officials who beat up Arabs, in an attempt to make a parallel to police officers in the United States attacking minorities.

However, the Times never reported on another Palestinian American who was the focus of international diplomacy, a man sentenced to a life in prison with hard labor by the Palestinian Authority for the “crime” of selling land to a Jew.

Issam Akel, a 55-year old man with American citizenship who lived in the eastern part of Jerusalem, was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in October 2018. His crime of selling his house to a Jew could have carried a death sentence, but he “only” received a life sentence, possibly because he was an American. The Trump administration secured his release to American authorities in January 2019. The Times would neither report on his arrest nor his release.

(Screenshot/Wattan News Agency)

The Times will not write about the vile antisemitism and suffering of Palestinian Americans under the Palestinian Authority as doing so undermines the narrative that the PA is moderate. The Times will only write stories where Palestinian Americans are victims of right-wing Americans and Israelis.

Related First.One.Through articles:

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

A Review of the The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias

The New York Times Knows It’s Israeli Right from It’s Palestinian Moderates

NY Times Disgraceful Journeys

The New York Times Whitewashes Motivation of Palestinian Assassin of Robert Kennedy

Thomas Friedman is a Peddler of Racist Fiction and Adolescent Fantasy

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes

Posted on by
15

People have accused U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) of getting her facts wrong about her version of history as it related to the Holocaust in stating that Palestinian Arabs helped European Jewry when they did the exact opposite. Her defenders explained that her words were misconstrued and taken out of context and that she merely suggested that it was the Palestinian Arabs who were the principle party who were left to deal with the “Jewish Problem” after Europe murdered its Jews.


U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

The direct connection of the “Nakba” of Palestinian Arabs to the Holocaust of European Jewry is not simply a falsification of history by a lone congressman. The connection is widely promoted in progressive circles.

The New York Times suggested that both Jews and Palestinians have endured suffering, and the key to the parties living with each other is for the Palestinians to understand the Holocaust and for Jews to understand the Nakba.

Putting aside the fact that comparing the Holocaust and the Nakba is akin to a ten-car fatal accident relative to a parking ticket, the two parties comprehend each other’s narrative completely differently.

Jews understand the Nakba. They are a people consumed with guilt for anything and everything they may or may not have done. What other people could produce comedians plagued with anxiety like Woody Allen and Richard Lewis or psychologists like Sigmund Freud? This is a group of neurotic people who, upon accusation of doing something intentionally or not, real or imagined, will immediately ask for forgiveness before they even know the topic of discussion. While the Bible asked Jews to feel empathy, Jews contorted that message into always feeling guilty.

Israelis appreciate the Nakba from an ARAB POINT OF VIEW. They understand the Arabs’ grievance and position about Jews coming into Palestine and changing the demographics of the land. The Arabs were a majority and now they’re not; they were under Muslim control (Ottomans) and now they’re not; grandparents used to live in Israel and now they don’t. Further, the ongoing situation of many Arabs being stateless is understood as a fact. While Jews might use different language – for example, not saying that they are “colonizers” since they are indigenous to the land – and have a wide variety of opinions regarding the methods of paving a path towards an enduring peace, the Palestinian Arab perspective is not distorted by Jewish claims.

For Jews of all political leanings, the Palestinian narrative has been heard and internalized.

However, the situation is not remotely the same for the Arabs regarding the Holocaust. Palestinians have been taught that they cannot accept the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective, as IT MUST BE TIED TO AND SEEN THROUGH THE NAKBA.

  • The Holocaust showed off the worst side of humanity: To acknowledge Palestinian Arab participation would be to admit that your ancestors were evil anti-Semites. Maybe it would imply that current Arabs are as well, and their desire for a Jew-free country has nothing to do with ancestral claims, but naked antisemitism.
  • The Holocaust was a uniquely European affair and it was the western world’s guilt that made them vote at the United Nations to create a Jewish State: Convincing the West that it made the Palestinians pay the price for European crimes might change their behavior to favor Palestinians in the Arab-Israel conflict today.

For Palestinian Arabs, the Holocaust is used as a vehicle to undermine Israel today.

Just as over 3,000 years of Jewish history in the Jewish holy land is ignored because it undermines Arab claims that only they are indigenous to Palestine, rewriting the history of the Holocaust can burnish the Palestinian position.

Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral dissertation on a particularly noxious form of Holocaust denial in which he claimed that Jews around the world had no interest in moving to Palestine in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Therefore, to encourage immigration to Palestine, a number of leading Zionists conspired with the Nazi regime to make life unbearable for Jews so that they would flee to Palestine to create a viable Jewish State.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s recent comments are complements to the theme, claiming that not only did the Palestinians not conspire with the Nazis, it was the Palestinians who gave the Jews a state.

When Palestinians view the Holocaust, they think Jewish suffering literally CAUSED Arab suffering in losing the land, while they see Palestinian suffering of the Nakba as causing Jewish joy in creating Israel. This clouded vision leads Palestinians to believe that misery can yield a global reward, so they will continue to distort the actual history of the Holocaust and Nakba to get the outcome they desire today.

It is a sick by-product of ignoring the history of Jews, denying the rights of Jews, and refusing to accept Jews.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

The Ultimate Chutzpah: A New Form of Holocaust Denial

The Palestinian’s Three Denials

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

The Termination Shock of Survivors

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

Failing to Mention the British White Paper of 1939 when Discussing Refugees

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Calming Feeling of Palestinian Refugees: Rashida Tlaib in Her Own Words

Posted on by
6

Curiously, but not surprisingly, the alt-left has run to the defense of U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) over the bizarre comments the Muslim woman of Palestinian decent made about the Palestinian Arabs helping European Jews survive the Holocaust. In order to help shed light on why many Jews were offended by her statements, below is the essence of Tlaib’s comments, but applied to Palestinians, in remarks which perhaps Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) should give:

U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
(photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

“There’s a kind of comforting feeling I get when I think about the terrible situation of Palestinian refugees from the event they call the ‘Nakba,’ and the fact that it was my ancestors, Jews in Israel, who gave up half of their homeland, many people their lives, their livelihood and their basic human dignity – their Jewish souls in many ways were wiped out – to make space for these refugees.

I mean, to think that these Jews gave up so much of their homeland as determined by international law in the 1920’s, first giving Arabs the land east of the Jordan River in what became the country of Jordan, and then giving additional Arabs half of the remaining land to be their own. Then, as if that were not enough, my ancestors welcomed over 100,000 Arabs into their own remaining sliver of the Jewish holy land when it became a state in 1948. These Jews gave up the opportunity to have a purely Jewish State – like the pure Arab regions they gave to the Arabs in Jordan as well as in Judea and Samaria and Gaza – and awarded these Israeli Arabs full rights even while Jews were not even allowed to live in the Arab territories in return. The division of the land may have been forced on my ancestors, but they accepted it and I am humbled by the grace they exhibited towards the Arab refugees by giving them so much to realize their dreams.

My Jewish ancestors continued to bestow on the Arabs so many benefits over the following decades. In 1967 they extended their hands in the goal of peace and coexistence in Judea and Samaria (which the Arabs had renamed the “West Bank”) and Gaza, and tried to help build a thriving economy as they had done with Arabs in Israel. In 2005, seeing how the Arab refugees still suffered, Jews handed the local Palestinian Arabs their own complete independence for the very first time in Arab history, by removing every Jew from Gaza without an ask of anything in return.

To this day, Jews continue to work with every Palestinian man, woman and child – both refugee and non-refugee – to have a better life, providing electricity, food and supplies into Gaza and to try to give them a kinder and gentler leadership. In the West Bank, Israel helps ensure the peace by working with the Palestinian Authority, in a region beset by wars that have killed millions in surrounding Muslim countries since 1967, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. Even though these Arabs do not recognize the Jewish State, my Jewish cousins cover them in an umbrella of safety from the wars of the Middle East.

It was both my ancestors and my cousins of today that gave up their homes and dignity for the Palestinian Arabs, even after the deep Jewish longing for a return to their homeland after two thousand years, so that the Arabs would know peace and calm after the trauma of the Nakba.

However, while the Palestinians in Gaza have complete independence they still unfortunately suffer, and I think about whether there could have been a better way. Perhaps removing all of the Jews as the Arabs wanted was a mistake. Perhaps asking the Arabs for nothing in return was a poor decision. If so, the promotion of more coexistence in the West Bank may be a better course to alleviate any remaining Arab suffering.

Perhaps there should be two Jewish States: the one with the boundaries of Israel today and a distinct second one in Judea and Samaria. Maybe Israel and the world will create a fund to expand investment in the economy and Jewish homes and businesses throughout Judea and Samaria so another Start-Up democracy can spring up between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

I am awed by how much the Jews have done for Palestinian Arabs over the past 100 years and how much more they continue to be willing to do together, even at the cost of their own dreams and dignity. While there is much that needs to be done for the Arabs impacted by the Nakba, I am comforted knowing that Israeli Jews made, and continue to make, so many accommodations to help settle the Palestinians peacefully.”

Tlaib may be right: it does make you feel better to complement yourself.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Ultimate Chutzpah: A New Form of Holocaust Denial

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust and the Nakba

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Ultimate Chutzpah: A New Form of Holocaust Denial

Posted on by
15

A curious thing is unfolding in the world of intersectionality and Muslim antisemitism: the migration from the status of victims to saviors.

For the last several years Palestinians sought to gain global succor for their situation through outrageous lies. The Palestinians sought to revise ancient history with claims that Jesus was a Palestinian Arab and not a Jew, and that the Jewish Temple never stood on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They also claimed that Palestinians were descendants of Canaanites, all in an attempt to make their historic claims to Israel and Jerusalem as much greater than the Jews. That the Arab invasion of the Jewish holy land happened thousands of years after the Jews had been living there was viewed an inconvenience to be dismissed.

Regarding modern history, the Arabs sought to invert cause-and-effect and claim the mantle of victimhood to appeal to the alt-left contingent in the western world. Jews were labeled as colonialist invaders who ethnically cleansed the indigenous Arabs, rather than a people who returned to their homeland and uniquely sacred land. The Arabs claim ongoing apartheid-like conditions, rather than acknowledge their own overt racism in demanding a state free of Jews, even to the extent of having a law sentencing an Arab to death for selling land to a Jew.

But in May 2019, the outright lies and inversion of facts took a curious turn. Instead of only manufacturing a narrative that Palestinian Arabs are victims of Jewish aggression and racism, a new voice directed the message that Palestinians were the saviors of Jews.

U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
(photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

The new Palestinian-American Congresswomen from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib made the following public comment:

“There’s kind of a calming feeling I always tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, h⁷ave been wiped out, and some people’s passports.

“I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time, and I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right, and it was forced on them. And so when I think about a one-state, I think about the fact that, why couldn’t we do it in a better way?”

It’s not just that she lied about the gross antisemitism that pervaded her “ancestors” who actively lobbied the British government to STOP Jews from coming to Palestine and she ignored the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who supported the Nazis and Adolph Hitler. We get that: the Palestinians have perfected #FakeHistory like no people on the planet.

But at least people understood WHY the Palestinians lied. They wanted to look like victims to get support from the world. They sought to appear as indigenous so their claims should be validated. Complete lies, but understandable.

But Tlaib went in a new direction. She created a whole new lie for the purpose of trying to make Jews appreciate what Palestinians did for Jews! Palestinians gave up their homes, livelihood and dignity for you Jews, so be thankful! It gives Tlaib “comfort” that her ancestors “saved” Jews from the Holocaust, and you Jews should look at Palestinians as your benefactors.

Outrageous.

Let me make this clear: Tlaib, you can continue to manufacture lies to make yourself comfortable all you want. Your orientation of talking “Truth to Power” works only in Pathological Liarland. That’s your business and we all understand your sickness to make yourself feel better.

But to now go beyond inverting cause-and-effect and aggressor-and-victim, and to state that Palestinian Arabs were the saviors of European Jews is a whole new form of Holocaust denial. It is beyond chutzpah and beyond disgraceful.

It is vile and inexcusable. And to continue to stand behind such sentiments does not simply make the statement vile. It makes you evil.

Related First.One.through articles:

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust and the Nakba

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The New York Times Excuses Palestinian “Localized Expressions of Impatience.” I Mean Rockets.

Posted on by
17

The horrible anti-Israel bias of the NY Times has been going on for roughly a decade and is covered in detail in the article “A Review of The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias,” so the May 6, 2019 article covering the 600 rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists into Israel was certainly going to be much of the same. However, one cannot help but marvel at the entirely new expressions concocted at the paper to excuse the Palestinian war crimes.

Consider this paragraph from the paper’s front page:

“The outbreak of violence appears to have begun on Friday, when a sniper wounded two Israelis, a violent but localized expression of Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.”

The paragraph is so rich in its toxicity, that it’s not surprising that it took both David Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner to write it.

  • “a violent but localized expression” What a phrase! It was violent – but localized! The mass murderer who walked into a mosque in New Zealand was also “violent but localized.” How did they come up with such nonsense? Such poetry!
  • “expression of Palestinian impatience”  It’s important for readers of The Tiimes to understand that Palestinian Arabs are not evil terrorists; they’re simply impatient. Don’t you also sometimes get impatient? These Arab snipers are really very much like you. Minus the the attempted murder.
  • “Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure”  This is even more to the point: while Palestinians might be a bit hasty, the actual failure here is really by Israel. Israel is to blame for Israelis getting shot.
  • “Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.”  And Israel’s failure is colossal. Israel is responsible for the dire humanitarian condition in Gaza.

Just like that, Israel is the evil reprehensible party and the Palestinians are merely frustrated by Israeli action. The war crimes here are by Israel, not Palestinians according to The Times. A brilliant inversion of narrative in one sentence.

So sublime, you swallowed it whole and didn’t choke on it.


Cover page of The New York Times on May 6, 2019 with a lead article titled
“Israel and Gaza in Worst Combat Since 2014”

The article continued on page A7. The expressions were not as precious as the one above, but the excuses for the Palestinian violence would multiply.

“Hamas uses its defiance of Israel to portray itself as the true voice of the Palestinian resistance, and Israel’s right-wing government exploits Gaza’s unruliness to argue that it lacks a partner for peace talks.”

Are you catching onto the games of the Times?

  • “Hamas uses its defiance” No longer violence, just defiance. Hamas stands up for the little guy. It’s the Middle East’s version of talking Truth to Power, or some other favorite alt-left nonsense to wash away vile Muslim antisemitism.
  • “true voice of the Palestinian resistance,”  Resistance is not only non-violent, it’s not even a force in itself; it only exists in opposition to a force, namely Israel.
  • “Israel’s right-wing government”  Nothing gets the hair up of a Times’ reader more than the expression “right-wing.” The expression includes a skull and crossbones and warning that it’s poison. The reader has abundant clarity of who is the good guy and the bad guy in the conflict.
  • “Israel’s right-wing government exploits Gaza” Not surprising that a right wing government would exploit people. That’s what bad people do.
  • “Gaza’s unruliness” In case you missed it, the Times will repeat it over-and-again that Gaza is not violent and that Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist organization by many countries including the U.S.. Gaza is just a tad unruly as part of its resistance – maybe a bit like some anti-Trump Times readers.
  • “lacks a partner for peace talks.” Peace talks? Seriously? Hamas Charter clearly states that it wants the destruction of the Jewish State and that it will never enter into peace talks with Israel. Israel isn’t looking to find or manufacture excuses for not advancing peace talks; Hamas states so openly and repeatedly themselves.

The topsy turvy world of #AlternativeFacts would continue.

“The fury of the weekend’s fighting reflected pent-up Palestinian frustration over Israel’s slow pace in easing restrictions that have sent the densely populated and impoverished territory into economic free fall, said Tareq Baconi, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.”

At least the Times came back to the violence – but without squarely placing it on Palestinians. It used generic language about the fighting from both sides. Additionally:

  • “pent-up Palestinian frustration” The Times makes the point over-and-again that the Palestinians are just frustrated and impatient. Do they demand the destruction of Israel? You won’t read that in the Times.
  • “Israel’s slow pace in easing restrictions”  To be clear once more, Israel’s the party that set this all in motion. An inversion of cause-and-effect.
  • “the densely populated and impoverished territory”  Root for the underdog! Pick Palestinians!
  • “Israel’s slow pace… have sent the… territory into economic free fall.” Israel’s the cause of the economic free fall. Not the kleptocracy of the Palestinian leadership. Not the failure of using the foreign aid for rockets, terror tunnels and martyr payments instead of building an economy. Israel’s fault. World, please help!


New York Times page A7 of May 6, 2019

Palestinian Arab terrorists launched 600 rockets into Israeli civilian population centers, and The New York Times sought to educate its morally-stunted readership that the true villain in the episode was Israel. Worse, it normalized the violence with soft words of “resistance,” “defiance” and “frustration,” the same words it uses for its cherished progressives in the U.S.A. fighting Trump. It’s a dog whistle to join the B.D.S. movement against Israel and the anti-Zionist cause. Or worse, to use violence against Israel and its supporters during the horrific spike of antisemitism globally.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Cause and Effect: Making Gaza

The Crime, Hatred and Motivation. Antisemitism All The Same

The New York Times Knows It’s Israeli Right from It’s Palestinian Moderates

The New York Times Inverts the History of Jerusalem

The New York Times will Keep on Telling You: Jews are not Native to Israel

In Inversion, New York Times Admits “The Truth is Hard to Find”

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Quantifying the Values of Gazans

Posted on by
16

People typically use the term “values” to describe things that are important to them and what drives their behavior, in an expression like “core values.” It is strange to use the word “value” for something that is almost impossibe to quantify. How do you put a number on freedom? Time with family? What about honesty, transparency or kindness?

What is important to people may be better explained by quantifying how they spend their finite resources like time, money or space. Core values can be extrapolated by examining what people say is important to them (say time with family) and then quantifying how they utilize such time (comparing time spent with family to time in the gym or watching TV).

Consider the 600 rockets fired by the Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza into the civilian areas of Israel over the weekend of May 5, 2019 and want can be learned.

More rockets than bullets. The roughly 600 rockets launched from Gaza is more than the total rounds of bullets used to shoot Muslim worshipers in a New Zealand mosque, the Jewish congregants in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA and at the Jewish worshipers at a Chabad House in Poway, California.

Bullets are cheap relative to rockets. Bullets are purchased by the caseload. They are one of the cheapest armaments used to kill people. While the media often portrays the “protesters” in Gaza as throwing rocks because of their “impoverished” and “desperate” situation, the people of Gaza obviously prioritized much more lethal and sophisticated weaponry.

Rockets take up much more space than bullets. Thousands of bullets can be stored on a bookshelf. Not so rockets. Each rocket takes the physical space of 1,000 bullets. Many warehouses must have been used to store the hundreds of rockets. So while the news describes the cramped quarters of the “coastal enclave” of Gaza, the militants have to qualms in using the finite space to store large weapons of destruction.

Elected terrorist army versus lone gunmen. There were a few racist murderers that burst into the mosque and synagogues in New Zealand and the U.S.A. They were fanatical “lone gunmen” who operated without support. However, the terrorists of Gaza number thousands of people who build, buy, transport, store and launch rockets. The terrorist group Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people to 58% of parliament. This is not a lone lunatic, but the mainstream desire of Palestinians.

Nearly a million targets versus a thousand people. The Muslim and Jewish houses of worship which were attacked held around a thousand people in total. But nearly a million people live within 25 miles of Gaza including the city of Ashdod with 225,000 people, Be’er Sheva with 186,000 and Ashkelon with over 100,000. These men, women and children in Israel were bombarded by the Palestinian Arab terrorists.

Antisemitic charter and mission compared to momentary lapse of reason / consumption of hatred. The racist killers in the New Zealand and American houses of worship were definitely consumed with hatred for Jews and Muslims well before they took violent action, but it is unclear what made these individuals act at that particular moment in time. Perhaps the hatred was “triggered” by a news item or something read online. Maybe it was an accumulation of things. It is possible that it was simply a moment of rage which might have passed without actually harming anyone. But not so for the Palestinian Arabs firing into Israel. Their charters calling for the death of Jews and destruction of Israel took months to write. The wars they fought against Israel have been going on for years. The 600 rockets fired into Israeli cities and towns went on all weekend. There was no momentary “snap” for the terrorists of Gaza.

We are told that Gaza is impoverished and cramped and that Gazans just want jobs, yet the Palestinian Arabs spend their finite resources on thousands of rockets. We are led to believe that there are just a few radical “militants” in Gaza, instead of acknowledging that there is an established military. We are told that the people of Gaza just want peace, even though they elected and continue to support the antisemitic jihadists of Hamas.

The Palestinian Arabs in Gaza demonstrate over and again that one of their core values is the destruction of the Jewish State.

If the madmen who killed worshipers in New Zealand, Pittsburgh and California had an army it would look like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If they ruled a country, it would look like Gaza.

The “humanitarian crisis” of Gaza is not in the lack of jobs, food and infrastructure; it is that the people of Gaza continue to deny the humanity and rights of the Jewish people and Jewish State.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Shrapnel of Intent

Pray for a Lack of “Proportionately” in Numbers. There will never be an Equivalence of Intent.

Looking at Gaza Through Swedish Glasses

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

The Palestinian State I Oppose

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Hateful and Violent Platforms: Comparing Facebook and the Golan Heights

Posted on by
1

Social media companies have been urged by U.S. government officials to do more to curb the spread of hateful ideology on their platforms. While the major platforms like YouTube and Facebook had long ago removed content which promoted violence, last week those companies took measures to remove not only specific hateful speech, but banned the individuals and hate groups themselves.

Initially Facebook had touted itself as a town hall/ public square of sorts. If an individual or group had the legal right to say something in public – even objectionable – they would permit such expression online. However, in the wake of fake news and the spread of terrorism, Facebook opted to ban “dangerous individuals” including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones and Laura Loomer.

The reaction has been mixed.

While many people believe that the opinions of some individuals raise a level of hatred in society and welcome a new world order where such opinions would be deprived air, others are worried that the powerful global platforms would become the arbiters of what is considered permissible speech. Why should pointing out noxious radical Muslim Antisemitism be an action worthy of being banned while Holocaust denial is acceptable? Why should a crazy conspiracy theory that Jews were behind the terrorism of 9/11 be free to publish, while pointing to studies linking vaccinations and autism land someone in social media purgatory?

Others contend that YouTube and Facebook are private companies and are free to set the standards of their choosing. But is that so clear? Can the platforms, for example, more actively ban conservative content like PragerU than hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine? If all private companies are permitted to decide for themselves what can be served on their platform, why the big fuss of the Colorado baker making a gay wedding cake? He didn’t ban gay people from buying items in his store, he just wouldn’t sell certain items at his store, nor create such items.

Governments also deny certain individuals particular rights if they feel such people are threats of its society.

Many countries – including leading democracies such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel – deny entry and citizenship to individuals “not conducive to the public good.” Some countries do more than just turn people away; they strip individuals of certain rights if they are viewed as threats, condemning them to “civil death.” These people lose the rights to use the country’s legal system, making it impossible to work in certain fields or even to own property.

The application of such principle is used in international contexts in the Middle East.

After decades of Syria shelling Israeli citizens in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and listening to Syrian taunts and threats of destroying Israel, Israel took the Golan Heights in the June 1967 Six Day War. That elevated platform was the launching pad Syrians used to attack the Israeli north. Israel effectively annexed the region in 1981 and the United States officially recognized Israeli rights to the area in March 2019, as the Syrian civil war wound down leaving the murderous dictator Basha al-Assad in place.


The Israeli Golan Heights
(photo: First.One.Through)

Societies around the world are making difficult decisions whether violent and hateful people, groups and governments maintain rights afforded to the public at large. How standards are applied and who protests such application, will say a lot about the organizations doing the banning and the protesters. But nothing will say more than the hypocrisies which will undoubtedly abound.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Uncomfortable vs. Dangerous Free Speech

Stopping the Purveyors of Hateful Propaganda

Selective Speech

The Press Are Not Guardians of the Galaxy

The Noose and the Nipple

New York Times Confusion on Free Speech

Alternatives for Punishing Dead Terrorists

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough