Consulate Offices in Ramallah

Posted on November 10, 2021 by First.One.Through

The Biden Administration has decided to pick a fight with Israel over opening an official consulate for the Palestinian Authority in Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem. The logical place to open the office is in Ramallah near the government offices of the Palestinian Authority, like many other countries.

Here is a sampling of some countries with consulate offices in Ramallah:

*View of Ramallah from the Malta Consulate*

The Israeli government voiced its strong objections to Biden’s decision to open an office in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minster Naftali Bennett said “My position, which has been presented to the Americans by myself and by Foreign Minister Lapid, is that there is no place for an American consulate that serves the Palestinians in Jerusalem.“

In the past, there was a consulate which serviced Palestinian Arabs since 1967 at 18 Agron Street in the area Palestinians call “West Jerusalem,” in a building that the US has used since the Ottoman Empire ruled the area. It proved impractical and dangerous, as the armed guards which escorted American diplomats from the building in Israel to the offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, had to hand off security at the perimeter of Area A. US President Trump shut the Palestinian consulate and moved the services into the embassy to Israel.

If the United States wants to separate the facilities serving Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, it makes the most sense to open the consulate in Ramallah. Alternative locations can be cities in Area A under the control of the Palestinian Authority. The question is how much the Biden Administration wants to anger Israel, please Palestinians and put American diplomats in danger.

possible Location of consulate for palestinians	commentary
Ramallah	Most practical, as seat of PA government. Many countries have consulates there
Jericho	Part of Area A, controlled by the Palestinian Authority
Bethlehem	Part of Area A, and also part of what was envisioned as “corpus separatum” along with Jerusalem in the UN 1947 Partition Plan
eastern Jerusalem	Annexed by Israel, would anger Israel and please PA as actively challenging Israel’s annexation
18 Agron Street, western Jerusalem	Desired location as past location of consulate, but most controversial and impractical

Possible locations of US consulate to Palestinian Authority ranked from least to most controversial and dangerous

Related First One Through articles:

Western Jerusalem’s U.S. Consulate and Embassy

Going Green With Embassies in Jerusalem

The Hypocrisy Between An Embassy for Israel in Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, OPT

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Why Blockade Gaza

Posted on November 8, 2021 by First.One.Through

The United Nations, liberal media and politicians are bemoaning the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, arguing that it is a form of “collective punishment” and is creating an economic disaster in the small coastal enclave. Those articles and arguments all fail to describe why the blockade exists and why it is essential for it to continue.

The landside blockade of Gaza began in June 2007, shortly after the political-terrorist group Hamas ousted its rival Fatah from the area. A naval blockade went into effect in January 2009 to further clamp down on the region, after the December 2008-January 2009 war against Israel launched by Hamas.

Ruled by a Terrorist Organization

Hamas is an extremist Islamist terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews. It is a designated foreign terrorist organization by the United States and many western countries. Its 1988 founding charter is the most anti-Semitic political document of the modern age, a combination of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Russian forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Palestinian Arabs elected Hamas to a majority of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. The organization calls for the destruction of Israel in any form and calls for a global jihad against the Jewish State.

Repeated Wars from Gaza

Hamas has launched wars from Gaza against Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014 and May 2021. When not sending missiles all over the Jewish State, it launches arson balloons to burn Israeli fields, digs tunnels into Israel to abduct Israelis, and attempts to destroy the separation fence and infiltrate Israel.

Gazans Want To Kill Israeli Civilians

The Anti-Defamation League did global polls in 2014 and 2015 and found the Palestinian Arabs were by far the most anti-Semitic in the world, with 93% of the population harboring anti-Jewish attitudes. However, while almost every Palestinian Arab is anti-Semitic, the Gazans and West Bankers have different views about physically attacking Israeli civilians.

The gap in attitude between Gazans and West Bankers about violently attacking Israeli civilians inside of Israel has continued to grow
(source: Palestinian PCPSR polls)

Palestinians poll themselves every quarter about their attitudes on a variety of topics. One of the questions asked each poll is “Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I…” with choices ranging from “strong support”, “support” to “oppose”, “strongly oppose” and “I don’t know.” The fact that the poll asks such question says a lot about Palestinian society generally, but an analysis of the trend in the chart above is important.

Between 2001 and 2008, the attitudes among Gazans and West Bank Arabs were much the same, with Gazans preferring killing Israeli civilians inside of Israel by an average of 11.6% more than West Bankers. After the 2008-9 Gaza war and the implementation of the naval blockade, the gap in attitudes widened. Between 2009 and 2017, Gazans preferred attacking Israeli Jews inside of Israel by a gap of 22.1%, almost double the 2001-8 period. Between 2018 and today, the gap has become even more pronounced, with Gazans voting for violence by a difference of 43.9%, nearly doubling again. Further, after the 2014 and May 2021 wars, Hamas’s popularity soared as did the uptick in Gazans desire to see more Jewish blood.

The difference in attitude is stark and the sentiment is frightening. And it is not theoretical.

In March 2011, after a the horrendous slaughter of a family of five by Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, Gazans celebrated the murder (51.0%) while West Bank Arabs did not (75.6%).

*Palestinian poll taken shortly after slaughter of Fogel family in Itamar, including an*
*11 year old, 4 year old and 3 month old, all stabbed to death.*

This attitude was not an outlier. In August 2019, Palestinian Arabs blew up a 17 year-old girl, Rina Shnerb, while she was on a family hike. Over 80% of Gazans supported the attack.

*Palestinian poll taken shortly after bomb blew up and killed Rina Shnerb*.

It is hard to imagine that there are any places in the world where there would be any support for stabbing to death a 3 month old lying in its crib, or for blowing up a 17 year old girl going on a nature hike. But in Gaza, the MAJORITY support the slaughter of innocent Jews.

For people who want to counter and prevent violent extremism, and who care about peace, justice and the sanctity of human life, it is well past time to pull all support from the terrorist enclave of Gaza, including shutting UNRWA in the area. Human rights and decency demand it.

Related First One Through articles:

UN’s Confusion on the Legality of Israel’s Blockade of Gaza

Quantifying the Values of Gazans

The United Nations Can Hear the Songs of Gazans, but Cannot See Their Rockets

What’s Wrong with UNRWA

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Israel’s Apology List

Posted on November 4, 2021 by First.One.Through

The Arab League called on Britain to apologize for the 1917 Balfour Declaration calling for the reestablishment of the Jewish national homeland. They were echoing the annual demand from acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas that Britain formerly apologize to Palestinian Arabs “for the catastrophes, misery and injustice this declaration created and to act to rectify these disasters and remedy its consequences, including by the recognition of the state of Palestine.“

Maybe Israel should come up with an apology list of its own.

From Jordan

Jordan was established with almost three-quarters of the land that was allocated by international law to the Palestine Mandate. Even though the mandate specifically stated that no one should be excluded from living anywhere in the mandate because of their religion (Article 15) even if the area east of the Jordan River was split off into a distinct territory (Article 25), that was precisely what Jordan did, banning Jews from living there.

In 1948, Jordan attacked Israel in a war that went on for over a year. At war’s end, Jordan seized additional territory and expelled all Jews from the land that it went on to annex in 1950. In 1954, Jordan granted “any person who, not being Jewish” (Article 3) in the illegally seized lands Jordanian citizenship, in a blatantly anti-Semitic edict.

Jordan attacked Israel again in 1967 in support of Egypt and Syria which had bound together to try to destroy the Jewish State once again. Fortunately, that time, their plans against Israel failed.

From the British

After Palestinian Arabs killed dozens of Jews in their homes and synagogues in the city of Hebron in 1929, the British “evacuated” (read expelled) all of the remaining Jews from the city, considering that their lives were in jeopardy from Arab mobs. Rather than defend the Jews and punish the Arabs, the British punished the Jewish victims, teaching the local Arabs the valuable lesson which they would employ over the next hundred years – terrorism pays, and will get the Jews to leave the places where they were living peacefully.

In November 1938, as Kristallnacht was effectively launching the Holocaust in Europe, the British leaders in Palestine met with local Arabs to decide to limit Jewish immigration to just 75,000 people over the next five years. Britain slammed the door on millions of Jews running for their lives facilitating the genocide of European Jewry.

Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary said after Kristallnacht: “When we promised to facilitate the establishment of a national home for Jews in Palestine, we never anticipated this fierce persecution in Europe. We have made no promise that that country should be the home for everyone who is seeking to escape from such an immense calamity, and even if there were no other population in Palestine, its rather meager soil could not in fact support more than a fraction of those Jews who may wish to escape from Europe. The problem of the refugees in Central Europe cannot be settled in Palestine.“

From the United Nations

The UN has evolved into a blatantly anti-Israel organization. It was headed by a former Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, from 1972 to 1981, when the General Assembly passed the infamous Resolution 3379 declaring Zionism is a form of racism. The UN has members which openly call for the destruction of Israel, another member, to a chorus of silence.

The UN Human Rights Council reserves item 7 on its agenda every session to lambast Israel. The Secretary General appointed a special coordinator for Mideast Peace who has a long history and particular loyalties only to Palestinians. The global body prioritizes the stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) over actual refugees fleeing wars to faraway lands, donating billions of dollars into a specialized agency, UNRWA, which has a history of teaching anti-Semitism and being a harbor for Arab terrorists. It encourages the SAPs that the United Nations is the pathway to grandparents’ homes in Israel.

*Entrance to UNRWA “refugee camp” in Bethlehem with key and keyhole, representing the agency as the pathway for Arabs to ultimately enter Israel.*

From the United States

While the USA has long been Israel’s greatest supporter, the Obama Administration put Israel at greater risk on the world stage. It allowed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews (the law says Israelis, but no one considers an Israeli Arab) to live in Judea and Samaria. This was despite assurances from President Bush that with Israel’s leaving Gaza, there would be US support for staying in such lands. Obama also negotiated the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which gave Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which had called for Israel’s destruction, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons in ten years.

Jews moved to Palestine at a rate of over 6 times the rate of Muslims BEFORE the Balfour Declaration (and at a similar rate afterwards), but the narrative of Abbas and the Arab League is that the British created the very desire and notion for Jews to move to Arab land, when in fact the British PREVENTED Jews from settling the land. Perhaps it is time for the Jewish State to demand its apologies.

Jewish population growth during the last 100+ years of Ottoman rule was 13.4 times, 6.4x the rate of Muslim growth which was only 2.1 times between 1800 and 1914 (Muslims did not move to Palestine – 2.1x growth in 114 years is the natural rate of births minus deaths). Jewish growth over the last 100+ years of British and Jewish rule has been 6.9x the rate of Muslims, roughly the same as the prior century. As Jews moved to the region in yet greater numbers, Muslims decided to come as well.

Heinrich Himmler’s Heirs, “Freedom Loving Arabs”

Posted on November 2, 2021 by First.One.Through

Heinrich Himmler, the head of Nazi Germany’s infamous SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads), was responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the “Final Solution,” the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe.

When Himmler took over the SS in 1929, it had just 280 people. By the time the Nazis were voted into power in 1933, it had 52,000. Over the next few years, Himmler fused the SS with other “security” organizations like the Gestapo in 1939, empowering him to execute his vision of “racial purity” and extermination of the Jews.

When the Nazis took over Poland in 1939 and later the Soviet Union, Himmler’s power expanded into the new territories. He dispatched Einsatzgruppen, essentially mobile killing units who targeted Jews and Roma for annihilation. To achieve his goal of the complete eradication of these untermenschen, Himmler oversaw a vast concentration camp system.

Himmler’s enormous hatred for Jews extended beyond his direct reach. He held meetings with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had already met with Adolf Hitler in 1941, professing natural loyalty to Nazi Germany as they had a common enemy in the British and the Jews. Hitler was taken by the Palestinian Arab’s anti-Semitism, saying that Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews, that naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests.

*Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini with Nazi leader Heinirich Himmler*

On November 2, 1943, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Himmler sent his fellow anti-Semite a telegram wishing him a “great victory” in his battle against the Jews.

*Telegram from Heinrich Himmler to Grand Mufti on November 2, 1943*

In 1945, Nazi Germany was defeated and Hitler and Himmler died, but the sick hatred for Jews did not disappear.

The orphaned Jews of Europe came to Palestine to join fellow Jews in trying to start a new life but were confronted by Arabs which sought to annihilate the survivors. In every decade the local and regional Arabs launched wars against the Jewish State, killing whomever they could, refusing to recognize its existence.

Eighty years ago, the Nazis were the “standard-bearer in the battle against world Jewry” who appreciated “the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs, particularly in Palestine, against the Jewish invaders.” Today, it is a disparate collection of organized and disorganized alt-left and alt-right anti-Semites who rally to the new standard-bearer against world Jewry, Palestinian Arabs.

Related First One Through articles:

Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’

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

Considering Nazis and Radical Islam on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

Hamas’s Willing Executioners

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

The Re-Introduction of the ‘Powerful’ Jew Smear

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians

Will Palestinians Ever be Taught About the Holocaust?

Stopping the Purveyors of Hateful Propaganda

The “Unclean” Jew in the Crosshairs

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“Land Belonging to Palestinians Before the 1967 War”

Posted on November 1, 2021 by First.One.Through

One of Israel’s leading critics in congress is Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) who uses the battering ram of “defending Palestinian children” to portray Israel as an offensive abuser of human rights. The foundation of her view of Israel is her belief that Israel has stolen land belonging to Arabs.

While McCollum didn’t utter a word about Hamas’s barrage of missiles against Israeli civilians in the summer of 2014, nor the killing of three Israeli teenagers which sparked the war, nor the Hamas Charter which blames Jews for all the world’s ills thus marking them for death, she did begin to find her voice regarding her view of the region a year later. In 2015, she berated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for opposing the Iranian nuclear plan, and in 2016, she admonished Israelis living in Area C of the West Bank. She then applauded the Obama Administration’s decision to allow UN Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass, making those Israeli homes illegal. On January 9, 2017 she offered the following:

“[telling hard truths] is particularly true when it comes to the issue of illegal Israeli settlement expansion. This policy is one of the most serious obstacles to achieving a two-state solution, the only viable avenue to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It has long been the bipartisan policy of U.S. administrations to oppose settlement expansion on land belonging to Palestinians before the 1967 war precisely because these settlements diminish the prospects of reaching a two-state solution and are not essential to Israel’s security.“

The quote above is full of factual inaccuracies, inane predictions and false beliefs. They each deserve to be unpacked as McCollum is likely not alone in these feelings.

“land belonging to Palestinians before the 1967 war”

This statement is full of problems:

No sovereign Palestine. The land was not “Palestinian” as there was no “Palestine” before the 1967 war. The area commonly called the “West Bank” was annexed by Jordan in 1950. All of those “Palestinians” received Jordanian citizenship in 1954, as long as they weren’t Jewish (clause 3 spelled that anti-Semitic dynamic clearly). It is only because of the Oslo Accord signed by the newly created Palestinian Authority and Israel that there is some self-rule by Palestinians today. Roughly 86% of West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B under Palestinian control and 100% of the Arabs in Gaza live under Palestinian control. There are about 14% of West Bank Arabs living in Area C under Israeli control – all post the Oslo Accords of the 1990’s.
The dividing line was never a border. When the Jordanians and Israelis reached a ceasefire at the end of the 1948-9 war, the frontier for the “land belonging to Palestinians” was defined by the 1949 Armistice Lines. The ceasefire agreement specifically stated that the line is “without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines,” meaning that they were never considered to be a border. Therefore, not only was the land up to the 1949 Armistice Line not under Palestinian sovereignty, the border was never defined. A final resolution could be just half of the area thought of as the West Bank, or the border configuration put forward under President Trump.
Individual ownership then and now. As described above, the land was not under the sovereignty of Palestine in 1967 but there were individual Arabs who owned land. Arabs owned and continue to own property in Israel too. Arabs under Palestinian rule today, and the 14% of Arabs who live in Area C also owned and continue to own homes. That hasn’t changed, but Jews who had owned land in the “West Bank” and eastern Jerusalem before 1967 had it seized by the Jordanians, so Jewish property now appears as something novel.
Jews and Arabs each own property on an individual basis in both Israel and the West Bank, and property rights have remained intact, as long as people are able to show valid documents.
International law prohibits banning people based on religion. When the League of Nations gave the British the Mandate for Palestine which was a single territorial unit but now considered to be Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, Article 15 specifically stated that “No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.” The idea that UNSC Resolution 2334 can call an Israeli Jew living in Area C as “illegal” but can call an Israeli Arab living in Jerusalem as legal is a violation of human rights, international law and blatantly anti-Semitic.
International law encouraged Jewish immigration throughout Palestine. Article 6 in the same Palestine Mandate called for Britain to “facilitate Jewish immigration… and… close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.” International law considered the land not privately owned by Arabs to be designated for Jewish purposes.

When McCollum discusses “land belonging to Palestinians” she might be talking about individual Arab property which was and remains the same before and after Jordan attacked Israel in June 1967. But by adding the clause “before the 1967 war,” McCollum is seemingly implying that there was Palestinian sovereignty over discrete land with defined borders. There is absolutely no truth for any such characterization.

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) attacks Israel regularly with fabrications and innuendoes.
(photo:by Preston Keres)

Rep. Betty McCollum’s entire basis for approaching the Arab-Israel Conflict is incorrect, illogical and based on a Palestinian narrative that rejects coexistence with Jews.
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“illegal Israeli settlement expansion”

Israeli “settlement expansion” was legal as described above, UNTIL the passage of UNSC Resolution 2334 in December 2016. McCollum used twisted logic to defend enabling the passage of a law labeling Israeli homes as illegal by saying that they were illegal. But they weren’t illegal before the resolution! One can use similar logic by passing a law that makes owning a gun illegal and then defending the law by saying of course it’s illegal because it’s illegal! The fact is it was legal before the new law’s passage.

“most serious obstacles”

McCollum stated that Jewish families living in a section of the West Bank is one of the “most serious obstacles” to peace. More than Arab terrorism and incitement to murder. More than rampant Palestinian anti-Semitism. More than the Arab belief that Jews have no rights or connection or history living in the land.

To believe such nonsense, one must have adopted the Palestinian narrative whole OR simply want to grant the Palestinians their wish to have a country devoid of any Jews.

I will agree that Jews living in Judea and Samaria are an obstacle to a particular formulation of a two state solution – one preferred by Palestinians and others who want to limit where Jews can live. But that formulation is inherently anti-Semitic and a pathway to ensure that there will never be an enduring peace.

“not essential to Israel’s security”

A congresswoman from the United States told a country which is 444 times smaller than it, which has three times as many neighbors – several of which have refused to acknowledge its existence and have been in a constant state of war – that it has a good handle on what is and is not essential for the small country’s security.

No country in the world puts its capital city nor its largest city on a border, let alone with a neighbor which has constantly fought against its fundamental existence. If McCollum was truly concerned about Israel’s security, she would endorse Israel’s annexation of the area known as E1 east of Jerusalem all of the way to Maale Adumim, rather than state that Israel should divide its capital and largest city in two.

Rep. McCollum’s basis for approaching the Arab-Israel conflict is incorrect and illogical. It is perhaps not surprising that she tries to advance “soft” resolutions about protecting Palestinian children, hoping to avoid discussing her dangerous and false anti-Israel narrative.