Hamas ended its foundational charter by clearly identifying its enemy.
The Islamic Resistance Movement is Composed of Soldiers:
Article Thirty-Six:
While paving its way, the Islamic Resistance Movement, emphasizes time and again to all the sons of our people, to the Arab and Islamic nations, that it does not seek personal fame, material gain, or social prominence. It does not aim to compete against any one from among our people, or take his place. Nothing of the sort at all. It will not act against any of the sons of Moslems or those who are peaceful towards it from among non-Moslems, be they here or anywhere else. It will only serve as a support for all groupings and organizations operating against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys.
The Islamic Resistance Movement adopts Islam as its way of life. Islam is its creed and religion. Whoever takes Islam as his way of life, be it an organization, a grouping, a country or any other body, the Islamic Resistance Movement considers itself as their soldiers and nothing more.
We ask Allah to show us the right course, to make us an example to others and to judge between us and our people with truth. “O Lord, do thou judge between us and our nation with truth; for thou art the best judge.” (Al Araf – Verse 89).
The last of our prayers will be praise to Allah, the Master of the Universe.
Hamas’s raison d’etre, its reason for being, is to fight the Jewish State. It states that it is operating as “soldiers… against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys.” It has no greater call to lead or create a peaceful society, and is happy to be the foot soldiers of other “groupings and organizations” similarly operating against Jews living in Israel and those whom support such endeavor. In particular, the fuel to light this jihad against the Jews stems from religion: “Islam as its way of life.“
Palestinian members of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, during a patrol in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on April 27, 2020. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
And the Palestinian Arabs elected Hamas to 58% of the parliament with this charter while the media talks of “Islamic resistance” as a peaceful and natural endeavor.
Jim Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, died this week. The New York Times wrote about his life’s work in a long obituary. As is commonplace for the legacy paper, it retold his final acts of generosity to conceal the behavior of its Victims of Preference, Palestinian Arabs.
In the concluding sentences of a 2000-word article, the Times wrote the following:
“His last major undertaking was in the mid-2000s as a special envoy for a diplomatic group known as the Quartet — made up of the United Nations, the United States, the Russian Federation and the European Union — which was seeking an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in which Israel would disengage from the Gaza Strip. If the deal were struck, he was to help coordinate revitalization efforts once the Palestinian authorities had taken over the area, the U.N. said at the time.
However, the negotiations failed.
“The Middle East,” Mr. Wolfensohn grimly observed, ”turned out to be my mission impossible.”
A casual reader would assume that Wolfensohn was simply one more person who tried to help the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The peace deal described above would have had Israel “disengage from the Gaza Strip” and then his work of coordinating “revitalization efforts” would commence. As “negotiations failed,” Wolfensohn did not actually coordinate any efforts to help the Palestinians.
Not so.
Israel did “disengage from the Gaza Strip” and Wolfensohn coordinated an effort which had Jewish donors around the world buy the Israeli greenhouses and equipment left in Gaza to hand to the Palestinians to jump start their economy. Wolfensohn donated $500,000 of his own money to the purchases.
A Palestinian carries a plastic roll he took Tuesday from a greenhouse, background, at the evacuated Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in the Gaza Strip.Emilio Morenatti / AP
Amid al-Masri, head of the Palestine Economic Development Company’s (PEDC) greenhouse project said the looting “will undermine our efforts to privatise the project as we hoped and also it could frighten investors aiming at other projects.” Indeed, the project designed to restart the Gaza economy once again proved the failure to launch at the start.
James Wolfensohn’s generosity towards the Arabs of Gaza went unmentioned by The New York Times, as to have done so would have required showing the theft and ineptitude of the local population and Palestinian Authority. For the pro-Palestinian legacy media, better to whitewash Arabs shooting themselves in the foot with some generic language about the intractable conflict.
Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Elizabeth Warren (MA) proposed that a new Joe Biden administration immediately cancel student debt upon taking office. They proposed cancelling $50,000 for all borrowers of federal student loans while Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) proposed cancelling all student debt.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn in July 2019, well before the pandemic. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
This initiative has great appeal to progressives whose economic mission is to transfer wealth to lower income people. It also goes directly to big Democratic donors.
The Education Industry is Democrats Big Money Donor
Democrat Joe Biden out-raised Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by 48% ($1.38 billion to $864 million). While the legacy liberal media lies that small donors made up Biden’s base, according to the non-partisan OpenSecrets.org calculations, Biden was all about big money. Libertarian Jo Jorgenson had 68.6% of her donations come in small amounts followed by Trump with 45.0%. Biden was third with only 39.3% coming from small donors.
The big money to the Biden campaign came from the usual Democratic loyalists like lawyers and lobbyists ($83 million in total, almost all to Democrats). The Education sector was even bigger, with over $110 million being contributed to the presidential campaign, of which 94.2% went to Democrats. To give a sense of scale, the hedge funds and private equity industry gave a total of $55 million – HALF as much as the education sector. The oil and gas industry gave $16 million.
Why would the education industry pour so much money into a presidential campaign? Isn’t it struggling to keep up? Don’t they always ask for more money as though cash strapped? If money is so tight, how do schools “donate” more money to an election campaign than the hedge fund, oil and gas, casino and gambling industries combined?
The education industry gave more money to the 2020 presidential campaign than the hedge fund/private equity, oil and gas, and the casino/ gambling industries COMBINED.
source: opensecrets.org
Public SchoolsK-12
The giant and powerful teacher unions are the big contributors. According to Open Secrets, “two organizations account for practically all of the contributions made by teachers unions: The National Education Association (about $20 million in 2016) and the American Federation of Teachers (almost $12 million). Both groups — which compete for members, but also collaborate with each other through the NEA-AFT Partnership — are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups.” The NEA is seemingly transparent about their partisan spending, showing on its website that 96% of its funds go to Democrats. AFT is a 1.7 million member organization headed by Randi Weingarten who makes no bones about trying to use her influence to enact liberal priorities on matters like climate change and universal healthcare.
The payoff scheme is pretty straightforward: Democrats work to empower unions whether in committing to only hire union labor or the ability to collect fees from members. In turn, the union leaders give money to Democrats and push their members to vote for their candidates. These paid-for local Democratic politicians now negotiate the contracts of the people who just helped give them their jobs, a much more loyal base than exists among taxpayers. The Democratic politicians give the unions favorable pay increases and the best healthcare and pension benefits found in the country, far superior than non-unionized citizens.
The cost for K-12 public education has ballooned under this corrupt money transfer scheme where Democratic politicians pour taxpayer money into unions who in turn pour money back into their election campaigns.
According to the US Census Bureau, the per pupil cost to educate public school students consistently rises more than inflation. In 2016, the average cost for a pubic school student was $11,763 while in 2013 it was $10,724, a 10% increase in just three years. That’s OVER THREE TIMES the 3.0% inflation of the consumer price index in that time period.
The ramp in expenses is due to a variety of items including building state-of-the-art facilities and professional-quality ball fields as well as a range of inclusion and enrichment programs for students who need more help. But the biggest costs are the teacher salaries and benefits. In 2016, 88% of the $665 billion of U.S. public school costs were in “Current Spending” of which 65% was for salaries and 35% for benefits.
Teachers’ unions focus on their core constituents – the teachers – not the students. The unions protect even the weakest non-performing teachers, making it almost impossible to fire anyone. Employees of the public education system have health and retirement plans which are the envy of CEOs of large corporations. Teachers and administrators get to retire in their 50’s with amazing benefits throughout retirement while fellow citizens must work into their 70’s. Of course, there are summers off and the occasional sabbatical, unique to the education industry. It is estimated that between 2001 and 2018 the proportion of the educational budget that went to retired teachers grew from 7.5% to 14.4%. Those fixed liabilities keep growing and are crowding out funds for children. The teacher unions prioritize their own early retirees over children and the future.
Teacher unions prioritize their own early retirees over children and the future.
Free K-12 public school is not so free to taxpayers. It is one of the major wealth transfer schemes in America where the wealthier people who own homes shoulder 65% of the costs of public school via property taxes. The wealthy and religious, who are much more likely to send their children to private school, are effectively taxed twice by paying for the services for a second time.
Public and Private Colleges
The inflated costs for education do not stop at high school and Democrats’ fingerprints are here as well.
From 1998 to 2018, the inflation for a vast range of items was 56%. The items with the highest inflation were hospital services (+211%) and colleges (+184%). A year of college today costs an average of $26,820 for in-state public college, $43,280 for out-of-state, and $54,880 for private colleges.
The cost for these degrees is beyond the budget of most people, so they apply for grants, scholarships and student loans. If it were not for the loans, many could not attend school or be forced to attend a lower cost community or in-state school.
The student loan market now stands at $1.6 Trillion. Roughly 66% of borrowers who attended public college have an average loan balance of $25,550. Graduates of private non-profit colleges have more debt, with 75% owing student loans averaging $32,300. The biggest borrowers are for private for-profit colleges where 88% of graduates have debt averaging $39,950.
Note the trend lines. The facts continue to paint an interesting story.
According to a Pew study, the number of poor and non-White people attending college increased significantly between 1996 and 2016, with the share of college students from poor households going from 12 percent to 20 percent over those 20 years, and non-White students jumping from 29 percent to 47 percent. The greatest growth occurred in private for-profit colleges, where 58 per cent of undergraduates were non-White in 2016.
The private for-profit colleges run a very different program than local colleges. As described in The Best Schools, “For-profit colleges often have higher acceptance rates than their non-profit counterparts. Many for-profit schools have an open admissions policy, meaning that they admit all who apply and meet specific, noncompetitive criteria, regardless of grades, test scores, etc. Typically schools with open enrollment only require that applicants have a high school diploma or GED certificate. For students who might struggle to gain admission to schools with competitive admissions requirements, a for-profit college might provide an open door that leads to further academic and career success.” As students with poor grades want to be able to get good jobs that often come with a college degree, they buy their college degrees at these for-profit institutions.
More poor and non-White students attending these schools are increasingly defaulting on the loans they take out for tuition. According to a report by the U.S. Department of Education, “Looney and Yannelis (2015) found that, between 2000 and 2014, the substantial increase in borrowers and the doubling of loan default rates were associated with attending for-profit, and to a lesser extent, 2-year and other nonselective institutions. Among students attending 2-year institutions who borrowed, for-profit students borrowed four times the amount borrowed by their peers who attended public colleges (Belfield 2013).”
The higher default rates are not only associated with the more expensive tuition costs at the for-profit colleges. The same report noted “on average, employment and earnings are higher for students who attend public or nonprofit institutions (Liu and Belfield 2014; Deming, Goldin, and Katz 2012). Six years after beginning their programs, students who ever attended for-profit institutions were more likely than students who attended only public and nonprofit institutions to be unemployed or out of the labor market, and they earned less than students with similar student characteristics and school completion rates did (Liu and Belfield 2014).”
The private for-profit college industry is seemingly taking advantage of everyone: the poor and non-White communities by awarding degrees at a high cost with seemingly lower ultimate earnings, and the American taxpayers who fund the loans to these students which are not being paid back.
Enter Democrats.
Rather than fight to remove the accreditation of these private for-profit colleges which fail everyone or refuse to give student loans to students with poor grades (or cap the loan amounts at a minimum as the poor grades are the underlying reason many apply to the schools), Democratic politicians are making the grand generous offer – WITH YOUR MONEY – to bail out people with high student debt because most of them are non-White. Far-left Rep. Ayana Pressley (MA) was clear in that point when she argued that cancelling student loan debt will “close the racial wealth gap.” The scheme also keeps these for-profit colleges afloat as they need the students and tax-payer funded student loans to pay their shareholders. Democrats need these institutions around to keep churning out degrees for people with poor grades who cannot get accepted to other colleges.
Knowing that the student demand is there and the loans are available, colleges have little incentive to cut costs including terminating the system of professor tenure and sabbaticals as well as renegotiating teachers’ pension largess. There is also no reason to turn away applicants with poor grades as the American tax-payers fund the farce. Democrats join the joke as they hand-out money and college degrees to loyal constituents – the education industry, the poor and non-White communities.
The education industry is a runaway freight train and Democratic politicians are gleefully throwing away the brakes.
In the waning days of the Obama-Biden administration, President Obama decided to stick a finger in the eyes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and all Israelis, breaking with decades of U.S. policy allowing UNSC Resolution 2334 to pass, declaring that Israeli Jews living east of the 1949 Armistice Lines was illegal. The action set the stage for various BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movements of Israel around the world.
Now, as the Trump administration heads into its final days, it is also considering some parting actions, following up on its pro-Israel initiatives according to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Below are some recommendations.
At the United Nations
The hostility towards Israel at the United Nations has not abated. While the United States will not be able to get any pro-Israel items through the UN Security Council, it could set markers for future U.S. administrations.
EndingPhrase“occupied East Jerusalem” and “Haram al Sharif”. The UN regularly passes resolutions which are incorrect and insulting to the Jewish State. As all of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem were separated in the 1947 UN Partition Plan (which did not pass) and the Jordanian annexation of eastern Jerusalem was illegal, there is no basis for calling the eastern part of the city as “occupied Palestinian territory.” Additionally, only calling Judaism’s most holy location, the Temple Mount, by its Islamic name is insulting. The US should declare that it will automatically oppose any resolution with such flawed verbiage, regardless of the contents of the resolution.
Dignity for Jews at the Temple Mount. UN resolutions routinely call for dignity of Palestinians but only security for Jews. They also calls for changing the status quo of Jerusalem but not for the holy sites. This outrage and hypocrisy is disgusting. A call for Jews to be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount at specific times just as the Muslims and Jews share the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron should be clearly articulated.
Biased Supporter of Israel. The Palestinians complain the United States is not a neutral mediator in trying to resolve the conflict. It should not be. Not only is Israel a strong American ally but the Palestinians have not abandoned the incitement and reward for terrorism. Further, until the UN stops singling out Israel in its resolutions, the U.S. should make abundantly clear that it will stand with Israel in the global forum and not pressure Israel into any concessions with the Palestinian Authority.
Refugees
The situation of Palestinian “refugees” going on for generations and not having self-determination must end. It is bad for the Palestinians and is bad for the peace process which cannot move forward as it undermines the very basis of two states for two people.
Prepare the Compensation Mechanism.UNGA Resolution 194 which passed in 1948, sought to bring refugees who fled the war back to their homes or compensate them for their losses, provided they were willing to live in peace with Israel. Many wars, intifadas, electing a Holocaust denier to the presidency and a terrorist group to the majority of parliament long sealed the fate of how this would play out. It is time to begin tabulating the compensation for ALL Palestinians who fled from the war (not just those under the UNRWA mandate). Similarly, compensation for the Jews who fled from Arab lands should also be calculated.
Demand Self-Determination Now. Every person as a human right to self-determination. The Palestinians who live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan (even though almost all of them were born in those countries) should be granted citizenship and full rights in each respective country immediately. The people who live in Gaza, Areas A and B under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority should be able to vote in Palestinian elections, and all people – Jew and Arab – who live in Area C should be allowed to vote in Israel, if and until other dynamics change that administrative equation.
Dissolve UNRWA. The unique agency for Palestinians is bloated in terms of funding and personnel compared to the global UNHCR and foments hatred for the Jewish State. It’s duties should be folded into UNHCR immediately and ultimately the need for the group disappears with the actions taken above.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem has been home for the three monotheistic religions for over a thousand years, and only under the Modern State of Israel have all religions been able to live and pray in their holy city.
More Jewish homes. While the city has blossomed, it has done so very unevenly. The Arab population continues to grow dramatically (counter to the false claims that Israel is ‘ethnically cleansing’ the city), with the Arab population growing 38% between 2000 and 2010 and then 29% between 2010 and 2018. Meanwhile the Jewish population in the city only grew by 12% and 13% in those time periods, respectively. All of the growth for Jews was from births as there was actually a net migration out of the city of thousands of people (6,000 in 2018 alone) because of limited housing and costs. The US should support the building of additional homes in and around Jerusalem.
Muslim population of 196,900; 272,000; 349,600 and 439,600; 491,800; 555,800 for Jews
Security
Israel has the terrorists group Hezbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza at its borders. Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which supports both groups, has threatened to wipe Israel off of the map. The Obama administration gave over $100 billion to Iran and a legal pathway to nuclear weapons threating the survival of Israel.
Bunker Busters. The United States is one of the few countries that has the weaponry to blast underground facilities. These armaments should be sold to Israel to enable it to deal with the nuclear facilities in Iran and the missiles in Lebanon.
Palestinian Terrorists. The US should make clear that no terrorist group will be allowed in a Palestinian government. Should any group not give up all weapons to the Palestinian Authority and commit to recognize Israel in becoming part of a Palestinian government, the US should cease all aid in all forms to the Palestinians, and label the PA itself a terrorist group.
Terrorism in Territories. The State Department under the Obama administration gave scant attention to terrorism that was not committed in Israel proper. Such approach fueled additional terror. It is bad enough when the UN and BBC blame the victims, but the US should make clear that any and all terrorism committed anywhere is appalling and commit to fighting terrorism aggressively, something the Obama administration only did for other countries.
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is found throughout the world both in official laws and in civilian actions. The United States should encourage other countries to join Israel in routing this global scourge.
Jews Should Never Be Banned. The world has a long history of placing Jews in ghettoes and determining where they can and cannot live. It’s a disgrace. Israel is not the world’s Pale of Settlement and Jews should be allowed to live and work anywhere. Anti-settlements is anti-Semitism in its core and should be called out as such. The U.S. should call on all governments to condemn the notion of “Judaizing” a neighborhood, regardless of where it is located.
Anti-Kosher/Halal and Anti-Circumcision Bills. Many governments are advancing laws targeting Jews and Muslims, making it impossible to live peacefully as neighbors. The U.S. should be a beacon of openness by calling out anti-circumcision and anti-ritual slaughter laws which are thinly-veiled methods of getting rid of Jews and Muslims.
Overall, the Trump administration should recommit to the 2004 President Bush letter to Ariel Sharon which gave Israel assurances to take risks for peace. The formula led Israel to give up Gaza which rapidly became a hotbed for radical Islam and terrorism. There is no chance Israel will take any future actions to make additional concessions to the PA which not only give it moral support but guarantees for its dignity and security.
The politeness of politics catering to anti-Semites has hindered the promotion of Jewish rights for too long. The Trump administration can still take actions to right these historical wrongs.
The New York Times has continued to use pictures which accompany its articles (read editorials) to frame narratives that are vehemently anti-Zionist.
On November 20, 2020, the paper had a two-page spread on pages A12 and A13 which touched upon the victims of terrorism but handled the stories very differently.
Pages A12 and A13 from The New York Times on November 20, 2020
Page A13 had a large color photograph of a victim of a terrorist attack in Toronto. The article’s title “Professed ‘Incel’ Who Killed 10 With Van Stands Trial in Toronto” had a caption under the page’s dominant picture which read “Cathy Riddell, 70, who sustained over 20 injuries, including brain trauma, in a 2018 van attack that killed 10 people and wounded 16.” The large picture gave a personal story of the tragedy that struck so many and left the reader feeling emotionally attached to her and the many victims of this ‘incel’.
The story on page A12 portrayed a very different picture for readers. The story called “Seeking Restart with Biden, Palestinians to Pare Prisoner Payments” also had a picture – but of a very different kind of “victim.”
The picture was of two people walking around rubble. The caption read “The parents of a Palestinian prisoner inspecting her house in the West Bank after it was demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces.” In this rendition of history, the Palestinian terrorist is the victim, by being in jail and having her house demolished. The dead and injured Israelis are nowhere to be found as they are not victims for the Times, as their very presence makes Arabs “resort to violence.”
While the paper could have shown pictures of Israeli victims as it did in the article on the following page, including the Henkins who were shot to death in their car in front of their children, or Tamar Fogel who was 12 years old when she entered her home to see her parents and three siblings stabbed to death by two Arab men, or hundreds of other Israelis, it opted to make the Palestinian Arabs serving in jail the victims.
Perhaps a dose-of-reality bubble could have been placed over this woman’s head as she inspected the demolished home, like Widad Barghouti who had her house demolished after her son Qassam Shibli killed a 17-year old Israeli girl on a hike. The text would read her statement just after her house was demolished: “I say to [my son Qassam], to all of them [the prisoners], that we are proud of you. If we want to talk about our achievements as mothers, then the most important achievement that we have made in our lives is that we gave birth to heroes such as these.” Nah, that would break the Times narrative crafted for its anti-Zionist readership.
The anti-Israel media will tell you explicitly, subtly, directly and indirectly until you’re brain-washed to believe that Palestinian Arabs are always the victims, even – or perhaps especially – those that murder.
The Israeli-Arab conflict has long been viewed as an intractable problem. The gap between what one side is willing to accept and another willing to give is both wide and deep. Even with such reality, governments around the world verbally encourage direct communication between the parties and state their support of an outcome which both Israelis and Palestinians would endorse.
But those parties then do everything to undermine that very concept.
The United Nations and many Arab countries stated that the basis for a peace agreement was two states along the 1949 Armistice Lines with “East Jerusalem” as the capital, echoing the stated position of one side, the Palestinians. The UN and Arab countries pushed laws that made it illegal for Israeli Jews to live in those lands and promoted a boycott movement of any business that operated east of the Green Line. These were not activities designed to promote Palestinian-Israeli dialogue but to hand the Palestinians everything they sought WITHOUT dialogue.
Further, the Palestinian Authority and Israel had signed agreements specifically stating that Israel controlled most of the “West Bank,” an area known as “Area C” in the Oslo Accords. So not only did the global community hinder dialogue between the parties, it ignored and undermined the agreements already signed by them!
The United States under President Donald Trump moved to reorient the two parties and the global community back to the basic principles of having two parties desirous of peace sit and negotiate treaties which would THEN be accepted by the entire world.
Rather than parrot the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 which gave the Palestinians everything they desired, Trump put forward a plan which Israelis desired. Finally there were two plans made public by third parties which could serve as the starting points for negotiation.
More directly, Trump advanced the Taylor Force Act which precluded handing the Palestinian Authority U.S. money while the PA financed terrorism. Trump also endorsed the Oslo Accords which stated that Area C is Israeli Territory. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited some of those Israeli Territories this week and stated clearly that any product made in those areas should carry the label “Made in Israel,” much the way products made in Puerto Rico and American Samoa are labeled “Made in U.S.A.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at Israeli winery of Psagot stated on Twitter: “Enjoyed lunch at the scenic Psagot Winery today. Unfortunately, Psagot and other businesses have been targeted by pernicious EU labeling efforts that facilitate the boycott of Israeli companies. The U.S. stands with Israel and will not tolerate any form of delegitimization.”
For too long the world gave Palestinians a pass for terrorism and the impression that they will get everything they desire now without negotiating and signing agreements with Israel. The Trump Administration has taken several important actions to refocus the parties towards a roadmap for an enduring peace.
The year of ‘protests’ has many themes and at least as many defenders.
The New York Times wrote about the Black Lives Matter protests in September 2020 that “Some Protests Against Police Brutality Take a More Confrontational Approach.” The Times did not say that they were violent, just that the protest were more assertive, “moving into white neighborhoods where activists demand that people choose a side.” It seems that the paper believes that a protest is simply ‘more confrontational’ when it directly challenges any-and-all to pick a side.
The Times used the same language in a piece on November 18, 2020 about Palestinians dealing with Israel. In describing Hamas, the article wrote that Hamas is a “militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, and which favors a moreconfrontational approach toward Israel in the West Bank.“
Calling Hamas a “militant group” instead of a designated terrorist group is an established priority for this left-wing paper. Using the new choice phrase of a “more confrontational approach” seems to reorient the reader that Hamas is an activist group moving beyond its base in Gaza into the West Bank. It’s a red herring to mislead readers about Hamas’ desire to destroy Israel.
The Times also used its platform to obfuscate U.S. laws such as the Taylor Force Act which was passed to pressure the Palestinian Authority to stop paying people to kill Israelis. The paper wrote about Democrats trying to get Palestinians to make changes including “reforming the way that Palestinians who serve time in Israeli prisons, including for violent acts, are financially compensated, an arrangement that critics call ‘pay-to-slay.’” That’s quite a bit of verbosity to get around stating that U.S. law prohibits rewarding violence, a gross human rights violation. Instead, the Times portrayed the objection as stemming from “critics,” likely those who oppose ‘protests.’
The New York Times itself is actively participating in a “more confrontational approach” to causes it opposes, a list which grows by the day, as enumerated by its alt-left readership.
Israel has a long history battling armies and terrorists since the Jewish State declared its independence in 1948. Since September 2000, a total of 1,383 people have been killed by terrorists and many times that number have been wounded.
Yasser Arafat launched the Second Intifada in September 2000 after he was disappointed with only getting 98% of his stated desires from the peace process with Israel. Terrorist attacks became daily occurrences and the death toll and carnage was horrific. In just the last few months of 2000, some 43 people were killed in Palestinian attacks. The toll increased in the following years with 208, 464, 210 and 143 murdered during the years 2001 through 2004, respectively. The reduced number of deaths in the latter years was a direct result of Israel constructing a security barrier to stem the flow of Palestinian killers from areas which Israel had handed to Palestinian Authority rule between 1995 and 2000. The barrier proved critical in saving Israeli lives in the following years.
Palestinian terrorists kill 15 civilians including 7 children and a pregnant woman at a Sbarro pizza store in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001
From 2005 through 2008, a total of 134 people were killed in terrorist attacks, a four year total which was less than 2004 alone. The numbers would continue to improve during the two Obama terms, with 55 fatalities in the 2009 to 2013 period, but escalating to 79 deaths in the second term, with a spike from the stabbing and car ramming intifadas after the peace process under U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry completely failed.
The last four years have been the safest ever.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s strong support for Israel translated into the lowest Israeli death toll from Palestinian terrorism (47 murdered), despite the various dire warnings of the region going up in flames because of the U.S.’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the move of its embassy to the city and various other pro-Israel initiatives. Year-to-date, two people have been killed by Palestinian terrorists, the lowest one year total ever. The two-year and three-year totals (14 and 28, 2019-2020 and 2018-2020, respectively) are also records for the fewest Israeli deaths from terrorism.
Four-Year Period
Fatalities from Terrorism
2001-2004
1,025 (Second Intifada)
2005-2008
134 (Security Wall built)
2009-2012
55 (Palestinians hopeful in Obama’s squeeze of Israel)
2013-2016
79 (Failure of Obama peace initiative; Stabbing Intifada)
2017-2020
47 (Trump Administration’s pro-Israel agenda)
Trump administration yields most peaceful period for Israel in decades
President Trump helped make Israel strong which helped make Israel safe. It is a formula worthy of repeating.
Jews are becoming victims again, this time of progressives who see the ashes of Jews as merely fuel for woke causes.
Consider the United Nations Secretary General who was awarded the Theodor Herzl Prize on November 9, 2020 on the anniversary of the pogroms by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) in Germany and Austria in 1938, a night known as ‘Kristallnacht.’ Antonio Guterres said the following at the event:
“This ceremony coincides with the anniversary of Kristallnacht. In remembering that night when so much was broken – synagogues, shops, faith itself – I want to sound a note of hope for repair. It is within our power to emerge from the pandemic with stronger communities, and more cohesive societies, by addressing the inequalities and injustices that have been exposed so starkly.”
Guterres strung together a thought process that started with the killing of Jews and destruction of their property… to today’s pandemic, a virus which attacks everyone… to “inequalities and injustices,” a phrase used by progressives – particularly in the United States – about the need to address income and wealth disparities and the killings of Blacks by police. Guterres did not mention the British White Paper which was initiated on the very same day as Kristallnacht which limited the entry of Jews into Palestine at the request of Palestinian Arabs, directly contrary to the League of Nations (pre-cursor to the UN which he heads) mandate given to the British to facilitate the entry of Jews. That paper enabled the killing of tens of thousands of Jews. Guterres similarly did not mention the many wars Israel has waged for its survival WHILE HE WAS RECEIVING THE THEORDOR HERZL AWARD, named for the founder of modern Zionism. Yet somehow, the head of the UN connected the Holocaust to the current plight of Black Americans.
Guterres wasn’t alone at using the slaughter of Jews as a progressive prop.
CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour decided to talk about Kristallnacht not as an assault on Jews, but on “truth,” one she said President-elect Joe Biden would seek to rectify after President Donald Trump’s four years of lies:
“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened. It was the Nazis warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to a genocide against a whole identity and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on facts, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team promises a return to norms.”
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour comparing the actions of Donald Trump to the Kristallnacht
Amanpour’s rendition of the Holocaust was sanitized of Jewish victims. She decided to cast the most pro-Jewish State president in history, the one who created the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, and with a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren as a modern incarnation of Adolf Hitler.
Amanpour has a history of bashing Jews. On January 17, 2019, she claimed that U.S. Congress are slaves to the puppet-masters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. She essentially complimented Rep. Ilhan Omar for calling out the noxious situation.
This is the post-factual media and political world we live in.
Modern-day, post-factual Austria pretends that it was a victim of Nazi Germany and not a willing abettor to crimes against humanity. The slaughter of Jews is recast as a loss to Austria of the cultural and scientific contributions that Jews could have made. We are similarly watching the modern-day, post-factual progressive movement attempt to characterize all anti-Semitism as alt-right (no such thing as Muslim or Black anti-Semitism) and to ignore Jew-hatred in its entirety in a head-long embrace of Victims of Preference, which cannot be Jews as long as Israel exists.
The current head of the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres, is a decent man and vast improvement from prior leaders like Ban Ki Moon who all but encouraged Palestinian violence against Israelis. But within that complement is the painful recognition that the United Nations blinds all.
On November 9, 2020, in commemoration of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom against the Jews of Germany and Austria which ushered in the Holocaust, the World Jewish Congress bestowed the Theodor Herzl award to Guterres. Upon receiving the award, the Secretary-General delivered a speech about the horrors of the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism including in his home country of Portugal, which had evicted all of its Jews in the Middle Ages. He touched upon the coronavirus which has unleashed new forms of blood libels against the Jews as well as the rise of Neo-Nazis. He implored the following:
We must stand together against hatred in all its forms. Our world today needs a return to reason – and a rejection of the lies and loathing that propelled the Nazis and that fracture societies today.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres
Yet the organization he leads fails to reject “lies and loathing.” It is a giant megaphone for the most vile lies and propaganda which are given legitimacy by its brand. This institution created to foster world peace has morphed into a caldron of hate and vehicle to violence.
The UN acknowledges and repeats the mantra but ignores the premise when it comes to the Palestinians.
In the same speech, Gutteres added that “it remains my fervent hope that next year, a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians can start again towards the goal of two States, living side by side in harmony and peace.” It is a fantasy sparked by a desire to see the Stateless Arabs have self-determination but ignores the systemic anti-Semitism in Palestinian society.
Palestinians are the most anti-Semitic people according to ADL polls
They voted the terrorist group Hamas to a 58% majority of parliament, with the most anti-Semitic foundational charter ever written (a combination of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion with vast conspiracy theories)
The PA leadership denies the history of Jews in the holy land
The PA falsely claims that Israel is ethnically cleansing Arabs from Jerusalem even though their growth rate surpasses Jews in Jerusalem and Arabs in other capital cities in the region
The PA falsely claims that Israel is limiting Arab access to the al Aqsa Mosque when in fact it ONLY JEWS with limited access and rights to pray
The Palestinian Authority names schools, public squares and tournaments after terrorists who kill Israeli civilians
PA President Mahmoud Abbas delivering speech to the United Nations in 2011
The United Nations is forever mum on these matters. It is blind to the manic anti-Semitism prevalent in Palestinian society which wishes to either kill or expel every Jew from land it views as pure Muslim holy land. The UN won’t even teach about the Holocaust in its own UNRWA schools in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinian attitudes towards Jews is the modern fusion of the expulsions of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century together with the Nazi Holocaust in the 20th century. The modern Inquisition is being led by Muslim nations at the United Nations with the support of far-left progressives who consider the Jewish State a colonial enterprise, an original sin which can only be exculpated with conversion or destruction.
The obstacle to peace is not Jewish homes, it is Palestinian Arab “lies and loathing” which is given support at the United Nations. Until that fact is acknowledged and addressed there is no chance for peace.
FirstOneThrough 