Israel And Jews Everywhere Must Be Protected As An Ethnic, Religious And Linguistic Minority

On December 18, 1992, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. This year marks the 30th anniversary of that declaration which recalls that such minorities often “suffer disproportionately from the effects of conflicts resulting in the violation of their human rights and are particularly vulnerable to forced displacement through, interalia, population transfers, revocation of previously held identity documents, refugee flows and forced relocation.

The history of Jews around the world is proof of this sentiment. They have been the most persecuted religious group in every country in which they’ve lived over many centuries.

The reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in their homeland was supposed to put an end to such discrimination. Finally ruling over themselves, Jews were not going to be subject to the rash of anti-Semitic edicts passed by many countries such as banning kosher meat, banning circumcision, forcing Jews to give live in ghettoes, expulsions, forced conversions, limiting their fields of employment, etc.

Alas, people of ill-will have inverted the situation of the Jewish State in an accusatory fashion, claiming that Israel should be censured for supposedly discriminating against the one-quarter of its population that is non-Jewish. While roughly one-eighth of the vast Muslim world abuts Israel, anti-Zionists shout the slur of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” at the Jewish State, even while it affords its non-Jewish citizens full rights far in excess of any of its neighboring countries, and where the Muslim population has soared – both in excess of the Jewish population and outpacing Muslims in adjacent countries.

Christianity2,380 million30.8%
Islam1,910 million24.8%
Hinduism1,160 million15.0%
Buddhism570 million7.4%
Folk Religions430 million5.6%
Other religions61 million0.8%
Judaism15 million0.2%
No religion1,190 million15.4%
World religious populations

Today, 85% of the world belongs to an organized religion. The majority are Christian, although forecasts predict that Islam will catch up with Christianity by 2050. There are dozens of Christian-majority countries and fifty Muslim-majority ones, with more expected.

In sharp contrast, Jews, the most persecuted religious group in history, make up less than 0.2% of the global population. Roughly half of them, about 7 million, live in the State of Israel, immediately surrounded by 140 million Muslims. That’s a neighborhood where Muslims outnumber Jews by 127 times.

To consider an analogy, if one were to go to a mall with 500 parking spaces, there would be an equivalent of 4 spots for Jews and 496 for Muslims. By way of comparison, US regulations would require 10 spots be allocated for handicap people, or 2.5 times as many. If one were to stand amongst the ten handicap spots, it would look like the mall has many spots for this subset of the population but to look on a broader basis, one sees that the allocation is very small.

Israel is surrounded by most of the Muslim world. Just among its immediate neighbors, Jews are outnumbered by 127 times.

According to the United Nations own goals in the Declaration, Jews must have the right to pray at their holiest site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as “fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion,…. [noting] that the constant promotion and realization of the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, as an integral part of the development of society as a whole and within a democratic framework based on the rule of law, would contribute to the strengthening of friendship and cooperation among peoples and States.”

As it relates to organizations and countries that seek to boycott Israel and its supporters, the declaration asserts that “Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establish and maintain, without any discrimination, free and peaceful contacts with other members of their group and with persons belonging to other minorities, as well as contacts across frontiers with citizens of other States to whom they are related by national or ethnic, religious or linguistic ties.” The BDS movements targeting Jews and Jewish groups that support Israel, such as the one passed by Berkeley Law in August 2022, clearly run afoul of the UN action meant to protect marginalized groups, and to help foster friendship and cooperation.

The anti-Semitic public chant to “Globalize the Intifada” is an illegal direct incitement to violence against Jews, but was not prosecuted in the US or elsewhere. Absolution Via Inaction.

The fundamental reality is that Jews in every country and in the one Jewish State are simultaneously regional and global Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities that must be protected by every single member state of the United Nations.

Related articles:

Israel: Security in a Small Country

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

Islamic Privilege

Mahmoud Abbas And The Rubber Room Tango

There are few institutions as powerful as the teacher unions in the United States. Not only do they lock in amazing benefits and pensions for their constituents (that’s very much the teachers and not the students), the unions protect horrible teachers from being appropriately fired.

Terrible teachers, many accused of disgusting wrong-doings, end up in so-called “rubber rooms” where they don’t actively teach students anymore but sit around and mark time. All the while, they continue to be paid handsomely and accrue retirement benefits from taxpayers.

A similar dynamic can be seen with the United Nations’ favorite constituents, the Palestinian Arabs, and their pathetic leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas addressing the United Nations in 2018

Abbas is a disgrace by every measure. The Palestinians hate him, with 73% unsatisfied with his performance and 77% demanding his resignation, according to a June 2022 poll. Roughly 86% of Palestinians consider the Palestinian Authority to be disgracefully corrupt according to the same poll.

Abbas’s four year term as President was supposed to expire in January 2009 but he has refused to hold new elections, as he knows that he would be trounced, even by the leaders of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization.

Abbas lost control over much of the territory and people he was supposed to govern shortly after he assumed power. He and his Fatah Party were routed from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas has failed to negotiate a unity government with Hamas over fifteen of his eighteen year reign.

With no mandate, support, standing, proven ability to negotiate with fellow Palestinians (let alone Israelis), one would imagine that Abbas would be sidelined by the global community. Why would anyone back such a failed leader and regime?

A thoughtful initial reaction might be that it’s what corrupt political bodies do. Just like teacher unions support corrupt teachers to the chagrin of students and their parents, the United Nations continues to support Abbas and the PA, to the annoyance of Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Abbas has been given the podium to address the United Nations General Assembly every September since 2005. Last year, Abbas used the opportunity to declare that he will continue the “pay-to-slay” program in which the PA pays the families of terrorists who attack Israelis. During his address, he gave Israel one year – until now – to withdraw from the lands it took from Egypt and Transjordan in 1967, or he would abandon any attempts to negotiate a final agreement with Israel and would pursue a solution at the International Criminal Court.

Regardless of his track record and threat, US President Joe Biden paid Abbas a visit in Bethlehem and declared his administration’s support for Abbas. Abbas flew to Europe to meet the leaders of Romania and France. Abbas even went to Germany, where he outrageously accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against Palestinian Arabs.

“The rubber room. Please put him in a rubber room as quickly as possible,” were the calls from around the world. We all know he wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial and that he continues to funnel money to terrorists but we kept telling ourselves “Abbas is a moderate” despite the facts. Keep him away from governance. Stop rewarding him with official state visits. Even corrupt agencies like the UN cannot continue the ignominy of his addressing world leaders.

But they can’t stop because this farce is two-party tango.

Abbas is indeed an unpopular, corrupt, inept Holocaust denier who should be shuttled off the global stage. But he is the flimsy veneer that hides the deep anti-Semitism and rejection of peace ingrained in Palestinian Arab society. He might occasionally go off the scripts that far left-wing NGOs put before him to enable billions of dollars to flow into the PA, but he’s the only front man they have.

Palestinians have been saying consistently: they do not want a two-state solution; they do not want Jews in the Middle East; they proudly support the anti-Semitic political-terrorist group Hamas which has sworn to obliterate the Jewish State.

So western leaders shake hands with the 87-year old cartoon cutout Abbas and pretend he is a legitimate Palestinian leader. They send him billions of dollars of support, knowing much will be wasted and go to fund terrorists in the hope of placating the more radical jihadists. Abbas effectively sits in the rubber room but is trotted out to legitimize the fund flows and to make the masses feel like they are being treated with dignity.

Imagine if a horrible teacher who fomented racism and violence, was considered the best of the lot? The pretty face that covered up the greater evil that was being taught in the classroom by the rest of the staff. Would society allow that teacher to continue to teach, sit in a rubber room or be fired? To be escorted from school or be the public face to address students and parents? Would everyone recognize the systemic problem and demand that the entire institution be shuttered completely, or would they be too concerned about not having any teachers at school?

The veneer has worn through and Abbas’s dark stains are apparent. However, the anti-Semitic rot that lies behind him in Palestinian society continues to be willfully and actively ignored. All because the world is too reluctant to both consider and internalize that creating a neo-Nazi state alongside the sole Jewish State is a terrible idea.

Related articles:

The Palestinian State I Oppose

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

Most Palestinians Are For Hamas. Most Israelis Are Not European Jews.

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

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians

Abbas Declares All of Israel is a “Painful Settlement”

Collective Guilt / Collective Punishment

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

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

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The Hamas Theme Song (music by CSNY)

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Anti-Semites Don’t Ride In Cattle Cars

Nablus

The young Arab men got into their car. The backseat had machine guns and bottles prepared with Molotov cocktails. They checked their watches and called friends that they were on their way to meet them at the designated spot on the highway.

Their colleagues got to the designated spot on dirt bikes. It was a favorite way of riding around the Judean Desert and this was a relatively cool morning which made for a pleasant ride. They arrived at the perch early and prepared for the attack.

The hill afforded them a nice view of the Israeli cars coming and going on a road they demanded be Jew-free. The Muslim Arabs considered the vehicles as daggers in the heart of a land they considered purely Arab, and they were mujahideen fighting for the liberation of their country from imperialist European colonial settlers.

Their fellow jihadists phoned that they were approaching the site for the attack. It was important to concentrate their efforts, as the Zionist Occupation Forces would swarm shortly after their actions.

The stationary Arab men began to pelt the cars carrying Jews with rocks. They watched as the rocks popped against the roofs and smash into pieces on the road. Cars behind them and in the opposite direction began swerving and accelerating away from the rockstorm. Soon the Jews would call in the location of the attack. They had no more than five minutes to kill as many Jewish settlers as possible.

While the barrage was underway, the Arabs in the car gathered their weapons. The passenger in the front seat took the machine gun while the driver grabbed a pistol. As their adrenaline caught up with the speed of the car, they saw a large bus coming in the opposite direction. A ripe big bus full of Jews.

They opened fire together. They chanted “Allahu Akbar” as they shot up the bus. At least a dozen hits they estimated as they zipped past. The driver shouted that he hit the bus driver, and sure enough, his jihadist passenger spun his head around to watch the bus crash into a hill on the side of the road. The Arabs cheered and sped away.

The scene of a shooting attack on an Israeli bus in the Jordan Valley, on September 4, 2022. (photo: Israeli Bus Drivers Union)

The Bronx

The Black Congressman was annoyed but not too worried. His district had been redrawn in the latest census, leaving him without much of his base in the Bronx and handing him a bunch of wealthy White suburbanites in Westchester County. Could his Socialist message still prevail amongst one of the most Jewish districts in the country?

He decided to change nothing. His staff was 100 percent made up of Black women, unique amongst all politicians. He wasn’t going to pivot to adding a White Jew to the team at this point. Maybe he’d meet with a local Jewish politician who was peeved at being ignored during the entirety of his first term. But he only would do it at the request of a local Black leader who swore that he was the right kind of Jew.

He stood on the subway platform to greet his people. It didn’t matter that he would only gather about 3,000 votes from the nub of New York City left in his district. He was delivering a message: he was a man of the people. Let the other candidates stand on the fancy Metro North train platforms in Westchester pandering the rich for votes. There were working class people in those towns too and his message would attract their votes as well.

Confident in his approach, he told his staffers that they should not respond to the invitation by the American Jewish Congress to hear from the congressional candidates. Let the two White people split the protest vote. It assured him of an easy path to victory.

He flew down to Washington, D.C. to confer with members of the “Squad”, fellow left-wing extremists making headway in the Democratic Party. Yes, he would co-sponsor a resolution calling the founding of the Jewish State of Israel, a “Nakba“, meaning a catastrophe. Yes, he would pull his support from the Abraham Accords, which advanced peace between Israel and four Muslim countries.

The Jews are now a loud annoying part of his district but ultimately an unimportant minority. He will make that abundantly clear to them as he votes against their wishes over his next term, letting everyone know that the “Jewish Lobby” is dead.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) hugging fellow anti-Israel Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Charlottesville

The White supremacists walked the streets with torches in hand. “Jews will not replace us!” they chanted, as several sported a Nazi salute. They called out the handful of Jews who were using their Jewish power to import non-Whites onto the White shores of America.

Their actions drew the national attention they sought. While they were few in number, they wanted to galvanize support against Jews and immigrants. Against racial preferences. Against giveaways to minorities that kept holding Whites back. They saw Donald Trump as the most vocal non-politically correct politician that ever held office, and they were going to embrace this man who coveted love and loyalty more than anything else.

This spark would catch fire.

White supremacists from around the country boarded their pickup trucks, now with flags perched high. They despised the woke culture finding its way into every facet of the Christian nation they loved. And the Jews. The Jews were abetting all of it.

Several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches march in a parade at the University of Virginia. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)

The Spouses, Kapos And Abettors

Not every Jew was hauled to their deaths in cattle cars during the European Holocaust. Some Jews remained in major Nazi-controlled cities, even Berlin.

While the Nazis were hell-bent on eradicating the untermenschen Jews, some Juden had all but abandoned their people and faith, and had married proper German women. The Aryans loved their Jewish spouses, for whatever reason. The Nazis reluctantly concluded that they could not haul the Jewish spouses off to concentration camps for extermination, while these Aryan brides had brothers and fathers fighting for the Nazi cause. They allowed some of the sub-humans to remain.

The interfaith couples were relieved, and paid back their masters with silence, as Jews from around Europe were carted off for liquidation.

Monument in Berlin, Germany for the German women who fought to save their Jewish husbands from death in the Nazi concentration camps. (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Some Jews who were hauled off in cattle cars to the camps managed to survive by working with Nazi overlords. These Kapos served as stand-in guards, working with the Nazis to hustle fellow Jews off the trains, into lines and into the showers. Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, praised the Kapos as it saved critical German manpower during the war-effort, and helped divide the Jews amongst themselves. The irony was sweet poetry to the Nazis: Jews implementing the Final Solution upon themselves.

Jewish Head Kapo serving in the concentration camp of Salaspils in Latvia. (Photo courtesy Bundesarchiv)

Today, Jews continue to divide themselves. Some cling to jihadists. Some to anti-Semitic woke politicians. Some to bold racists, who nevertheless embrace common positions.

And the Jews know the history. They can see the highway to hell mapped by the terrorists on the ridge, the woke politicians standing on the platform, and the racists shouting from trucks.

And they have made up their minds. They are marrying these new Germanic lovers who will surely save them while fellow Jews are carted off. For them, “Ich bin ein Berliner” is a renewed slogan to be aired openly and publicly that they are not untermenschen. That’s those other Jews.

Some may look and others will turn away, but all will cleave to their Brides of Absolution while the anti-Semites send Jews off in cattle cars once again.

Related articles:

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Peter Beinart is an Apologist for Anti-Semites

J Street’s Ben Ami Smears Moderate Jews As Racists

Jamaal Bowman Disgustingly Compares Israeli Actions in Jerusalem To A ‘Military Coup’, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ And A “Genocide”

The March of Silent Feet

Reclaiming Zionism From Antisemites Will Not Occur With Tikkun Olam

Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy.

– Keith Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota, former Congressman (D-MN), former Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee


Over 1,000 Jews from around the world came to Basel, Switzerland this week to mark the 125th anniversary of the first World Zionist Congress. They celebrated the incredible success of the Modern State of Israel, now 75 years since its reestablishment, a mere 50 years from Theodore Herzl’s initial conference of inspiration was turned into a reality.

The kickoff speaker was Israeli President Isaac “Bougie” Herzog. His speech welcomed the Zionists from around the world, regardless of their religious denominations or political affiliation. He urged all of them to get involved in the Zionist project and questions regarding “the whole Jewish People… to debate them together, in a spirit of mutual responsibility, and most importantly, of full and institutionalized partnership.

He concluded his remarks that the broad community must “reclaim Zionism” from the vile smears that populate society today. Herzog offered his prescriptions which included uniquely Jewish and Israeli goals, as well as dealing with global issues such as climate change. He mentioned “tikkun olam (repair the world)” three times, as a mission (and potential balm) to combat the insidious woke anti-Semitism infecting the world. “[M]odern Zionism gives us our sense of not only shared fate but also shared destiny, as long as it remains anchored in our deepest roots, weaving together the inseparable threads of peoplehood, land, and state.

“Nothing is creepier than Zionism. Challenge racism”

Linda Sarsour, former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March

Herzog’s outreach to his diverse Zionist audience was sweet but showed that he has not internalized the anger and misconceptions about Zionism from the anti-Israel world. Joining the far-left in combatting climate change under the banner of Zionism sounds like he’s read a few articles about intersectionality and “allyship.” To be sure, fighting global issues is a responsibility Israel shares with the entire world, but was not a foundational matter for Herzl’s Zionism 125 years ago, and redefining Modern Zionism in such a manner today will do nothing to “reclaim” the definition from Israel haters who wish to tarnish and destroy the Jewish State.

“We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Because just because they’re your friend today, doesn’t mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights. So oppose the vehement fascists but oppose the polite Zionists too. They are not your friends.”

Zahra Billoo, SAN FRANCISCO EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COUNCIL OF AMERICAN ISLAMIC RELATIONS (CAIR)

Herzog is correct that we need to “reclaim Zionism,” but not by stretching its meaning into something far afield from its core tenets. We need to educate the world about simple foundational truths, and what Modern Zionism actually means and created.

European Jewish Zionists claimed to be descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews and to be merely “returning” to their ancient land.”

Joseph Massad, Professor at Columbia University

Universities and extremist media have painted Zionism as a violent nationalist effort by European Jews to steal Arab land. They claim Jews have no history or ties to the land and are simply the latest version of European colonialists. Does Herzog really believe that Israelis bonding over climate change help stop such inanity?

Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies.

Steven Erlander, Journalist for the New York Times

The Israeli Defense Ministry’s research-and-development arm is best known for pioneering cutting-edge ways to kill people and blow things up

David Halbfinger, the new York Times’ Jerusalem Bureau chief

Jews, historians and all people of good will need to be clear about basic historical truths and the mission of Modern Zionism.

Modern Zionism did not steal Arab history or land. It is not a derivative of the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which falsely asserts an aim to rob Palestinian Arabs as a subset of global domination. The simple fact is that Jews have thousands of years of history in the land of Israel, and have always lived and moved to the land because it is a central part of Judaism.

The Zionist idea to dominate the area from the Nile to the Euphrates was well known, but Israel realized that the two-State solution would not take it in that direction.”

Hiba Husseini, chairs the Legal Committee to Final Status Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, and a speaker at the united nations

The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

HAMAS Charter, Article 32

Modern Zionism was launched by Herzl on only two ideas. First, that Jews will forever be targeted as minorities in countries around the world, whether they present as devout Orthodox Jews or assimilated secular ones, and second, that the only way for Jews to be secure and have a future is to have sovereignty in their homeland once again.

To be an anti-Zionist means that one doesn’t believe in one of those two things. To be against the first, is to ignore and belittle the horrific crimes committed against the most persecuted people in history. To stand against the second, is to urge for the destruction of the one Jewish State. Both are blatantly anti-Semitic.

The three basic characteristics of Zionism are: racism, expansionism and settler colonialism

UC San Diego speaker at Divestment vote

Israel in its inception is not a Jewish idea but a European one.

University of Wisconsin BDS Vote

“Reclaiming Zionism” as Israeli President Herzog desires is needed, but his prescription for joining woke causes is nonsensical. Such efforts will not reorient college campuses and the media away from their misconception that Israel is a violent European colonialist state.

Instead, we must state repeatedly the fundamental truths about Jews and the land of Israel. We must clearly articulate the meaning of Zionism, and that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. And we must loudly proclaim that we are proud Zionists, and amazed by the liberal democracy that thrives in the illiberal Middle East.


Related articles:

A Core Tenet of Zionism Is Combatting Anti-Semitism

Squeezing Zionism

Hamas And Harvard Proudly Declare Their Anti-Semitism And Anti-Zionism

In San Francisco Schools, Anti-Zionism is Anti-Racism

Black Lives Matter Joins the anti-Israel “Progressives” Fighting Zionism