Sunday morning is a time for protests in Barcelona, Spain. Advocates for Peru took their customary spot on top of La Rambla. About ten people listened to a woman yelling into a megaphone.
Just ahead of the small gathering were thirty people protesting Russia’s war on Ukraine. They held placards and then marched together through Catalunya square of people feeding pigeons.
Further ahead were 2,000 people marching with Palestinian flags down the main street of Pg. de Gracia. Led by a ten people wearing kaffiyehs on a truck, they marched with signs calling to “Free Palestine” and “Boycott Israel.”
Thousands marched for Palestinians in Barcelona, Spain on February 25, 2024 (photo: First One Through)
Many of the marchers wore kaffiyehs and held signs “it did not start with Hamas.” They chanted in Spanish about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blamed the United States for “Genocide.”
There were no counter-protestors.
The Jews of Spain have long since been vanquished. Once the greatest center of Jewry in the 1400s, Spain is amongst the dozens of countries which now have fewer than 25,000 Jews. By way of comparison, there are 27 cities in the United States with over 25,000 Jews.
But Muslims have returned to Spain. After the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War brought thousands of Muslim refugees and immigrants to Europe, many have once again settled in the Iberian peninsula.
Consequently, the street narrative – populated by many local Catholics – was neither nuanced nor balanced. There was no mention of the Israeli hostages or Hamas burning families alive. No demand for the Hamas rapists to face justice. Just for Israel to be replaced “from the River to the Sea.”
Pro Palestinian protestors in Barcelona
Catholic religious fanaticism routed Jews from Europe 500 years ago. Today, Muslim jihadi extremism is attempting to do the same in both Europe and the land of Israel.
There used to be jokes about how to handle one’s racist uncle during the holidays. Now the question is how to deal with a person’s antisemitic niece.
While many older cisgender White men continue to be challenged by the changing nature of America, a large percentage of women aged 18-34 (and under 24 in particular) have a hatred for Jews that would make Nazis blush.
The results from the December Harvard/Harris poll about views of Israel and Hamas segmented by age were shocking. While well over 90% of people over 55 viewed the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion and slaughter in Israel as an act of terrorism, only slightly more than 70% of the 18-34 cohort believed the killing of 1,200 people to be terrorism. An estimated 90% of people over 55 thought there was no justification for the Hamas attack, but 60% of people 18-24 thought the massacre was justified.
Young people are evenly split on supporting Hamas and Israel, while almost every older person supports Israel. After the October 7 attack, 76% of 18-24 year-olds thought Hamas is a rational actor with whom Israel can negotiate while 87% of those over 65 believe Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Consequently, 84% of seniors oppose a ceasefire now that would leave Hamas in place while 67% of the youth think a ceasefire should happen immediately and leave Hamas intact.
In the aftermath of the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, a majority of 51% of 18-24 year-olds think Israel should be dissolved and handed to Hamas and the Palestinians. Only 4% of those over 65 hold such views, with 71% preferring two states and 25% supporting Palestinians moving into neighboring Arab countries.
Lastly, the poll touched on gender-related violence. Two-thirds of seniors believe that human rights groups did not adequately condemn the rape of Israeli women, while 80% of those 18-24 thought that women’s rights organizations condemned Hamas sufficiently.
These findings confirm a January 2023 ADL poll which found “Young adults have more anti-Israel sentiment than older generations.”
The age divide is much the same regarding antisemitism in the United States.
An estimated 90% of people over 65 years old think that Jews face harassment on college campuses which drops to about two-thirds for 18-34 year-olds. Much of that disparity seems to do with whether words constitute harassment, as 92% of people over 65 think that calling for the genocide of Jews should be against university rules, while 53% of people 18-24 think students should be free to call for the genocide of Jews.
In addition to penalizing particular speech, one of the drivers seems to be driven by ideology. Roughly 81% of people over 65 oppose the notion that people should be viewed through the lens of White oppressors and non-White oppressed classes of people, while 79% of 18-24 year-olds support the ideology. Among those over 65, 91% believe that Jews should not fall into the White oppressor class while 67% of 18-24 year-olds believe Jews should be in the oppressor class.
What has driven the enormous disparity of opinions in which young people side with terrorists who slaughter Jews? What drives so many 18 to 24 year-olds to be so anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist?
A few ideas to review including a post-9/11 world, indoctrination in schools, race, social media and human rights groups.
Post-9/11 World
Americans who were adults in 2000 and 2001 can easily remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the continued heinous killing of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs from 2000 to 2004. The clarity about the jihadi extremists perpetrating the disgusting murders was apparent to all, so the support for the United States and Israel responding to the attacks was wide and deep.
For young people who do not remember the attacks but only the consequences – America’s 20-year long war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli Security Barrier which was put up to stop the flow of Palestinian Arab terrorists – the cause-and-effect is now inverted. Rather than see the Security Barrier as the effective reaction to jihadi terrorism, it is viewed as an obstacle to coexistence. Rather than appreciate the lack of mass casualty attacks in the U.S. over the past two decades, young people question why America fought wars abroad for so long.
Young people have come to believe that western powers are “imperialist” and wage wars to subjugate others. They have internalize the Iranian narrative of the US and Israel being “big Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively, aggressively fighting Muslims and people of color for no reason.
When the 2014 Gaza War concluded around the same time as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the SJP chapters started to align themselves with the Black community in an effort of allyship. It created narratives of “Gaza to Detroit” and “Ferguson to Palestine” as if the two have anything remotely in common.
Muslims claimed it did – and latched onto the oppressor/oppressed narrative which has now become university doctrine over the past decade. Teacher union bosses pushed the notion into lower schools as well, that Jews should be seen as part of the elite “ownership class” who try to keep others down.
Coupled with this incorrect portrayal of American Jews as powerful is the mischaracterization of Israel as a European colonial project. In university departments focused on decolonization, Israel is being cast as a racist state which must be dismantled. There is no subtle debate about Israel/Palestine for young people; they have been taught that Jews are not indigenous to Israel and “stole” Palestinian land.
As toxic ideologies like this inevitably metastasize, the calls to actively be “anti-racist” compelled students to become vocal anti-Zionists. Elective courses on “anti-racism” in California universities soon became mandatory in high schools, infecting the minds of tens of thousands.
While older Americans were spared this indoctrination, many Americans under 30 have been schooled in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
UN and Human Rights Groups Slander
Universities celebrated when Amnesty International published a report in February 2022 calling Israel an “apartheid” state. It gave credibility to anti-Zionists who had long defamed Israel at will – like The New York Times – using a third party’s definition rather than state personal bias.
The Obama Administration’s last middle finger to Israel as it departed was allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan, including in Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem. While older people may recall that Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, younger people have grown up where Jews living in Jerusalem is an act of evil colonization.
Racial Overview of Youth
Today’s youth is much more multi-ethnic than older generations.
America’s youth has many more non-White people while older Americans are mostly White. According to Pew Research, the most common age for Whites was 58 in 2019, and a much younger 29 for Asians, 27 for Blacks and 11 for Hispanics.
Among 70 year-olds, there are about 2.5 million White people but not even 1 million non-White people. However, among 20 year-olds, there are roughly 2.3 million White people and only slightly fewer, 2.1 million non-Whites, roughly an even split.
The multi-ethnic youth have come to see their White Jewish peers as part of the “White oppressor” class. They incorrectly assume that Israeli Jews are mostly White, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, White Ashkenazi Jews make up only one-third of the Israeli population.
Race In Colleges
The race of college students varies by the type of school. Overall, 42.3% of students are White, 17.4% Hispanic, 10.6% Black, 5.8% Asian according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The figures change dramatically when considering the type of school and degree.
At private, nonprofit four-year universities, 47% of students were white and 33% of students were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). A similar mix was found at public four-year schools where 46% of students were white, 38% were BIPOC. Shorter associate degrees attracted more minorities, with private two-year schools, 38% of students were white, 44% were BIPOC and public two-year schools, 29% of students were white, 42% were BIPOC.
More people are opting to not attend colleges, viewing them as expensive and not worth the time or investment. White enrollment declined the most from 2018 to 2022, dropping by 17.4%, while Black and Hispanic enrollment declined by 13.6% and 3.6%, respectively. Men are skipping universities in greater numbers than women, with women now accounting for 8.3 million students compared to 6.1 million men.
Despite women and minorities making up a greater share of college students, the professors are still mostly white, with White men making up 39% of all faculty and White women, 35%.
While White people make up a plurality of four-year degree programs, the schools have made very direct actions to change their faculty and curricula. They have implemented DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which are getting a lot of attention after the resignation of Harvard’s Black female president who failed to clearly condemn antisemitism at a congressional hearing.
Universities are not simply deploying indoctrinating students in a new socialist ideology compared to past generations; they are preaching to a more muti-ethnic population who are embracing the theology.
Social Media
The socialist antisemitic educational system deserves part of the blame but social media has fostered the toxicity as well.
While smartphones came to the world in 2008, the social media phenomenon on phones really took off from 2010 to 2015. Young people began to rely on news from influencers they followed (think sports stars, models, entertainers) rather than on professional news outlets. Young people fled to these idiots who offered opinions rather than facts, on platforms that pushed engagement via extremism rather than nuanced debate.
People like Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Bella Hadid have many more people reading their drivel than CNN or the Wall Street Journal, especially young people. The youth get to enjoy the thrill of interacting with their stars rather than sit passively taking in boring news. Instagram became the simplest (fewest words) and most popular social media platform for young people while older Americans barely touched it.
And here also, race plays a part.
According to a May 2020 PRRI report, “young adults (ages 18-29) are notably more likely to use social media frequently than other age groups. Nearly half of young Americans (47%) report using social media sources frequently, compared to one in four (25%) Americans ages 30-49, about one in ten (11%) Americans ages 50-64, and only 3% of senior Americans (ages 65 and older).” It added that “Hispanic Americans (30%) are substantially more likely than white Americans (19%) and black Americans (19%) to be frequent social media user.”
According to Statista, Blacks are as likely as Hispanics to be active on social media, both much more than Whites. Daily use of social media is 46% for Blacks, 44% for Hispanics and only 34% for Whites. The gap in never-users shows the same contrast with only 18% of both Blacks and Hispanics never using social media and 30% of Whites never using it. So while 2.5 times as many Blacks and Hispanics use social media daily compared to never users, the numbers are almost the same for Whites.
So while over 70% of older Americans are White and not active on social media (and more inclined to use Facebook), the younger generation is almost 50/50 White/non-White and active on Instagram.
The Chinese company Tik Tok has a similar pattern. Roughly half of viewers are under 29 years old and 57% of all viewers are female. Almost no one over 55 uses the platform. Further, 80% of the content is made by people under 24 years old.
While the United States has the most viewers, it is followed immediately by Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. Almost all of the countries where the platform has the highest penetration are Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, followed by Thailand, Qatar and Malaysia.
Antisemitism in Young People / Non-Whites
Aggregating this information leads to a real divide among older and younger Americans. Those 65 and over tend to be White, remember 9/11 and the Second Intifada, get their news from newspapers made in western countries and went to work believing in meritocracy. That’s in sharp contrast to Americans 18-24 who are are as likely to be non-White as White; have no recollection of 9/11, just the War on Terror; get their news from social media stars and very young people alongside the Muslim world and Russia; and receive an education that meritocracy is a myth and that they live under the thumb of a White patriarchy which imposes its imperialist whims on the Global South from where many of the youths’ ancestors originated.
Young people don’t comprehend that Jews were active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and view Jews as part of the White elite. They don’t believe the FBI Hate Crime reports that Jews are the most targeted group of hate crimes, and they hold antisemitic views that Jews and Zionists are deeply racist who only care about money, power and themselves.
Older Americans are relatively homogenous and see a disappointing new generation which hates America and its ally Israel. They watch young people loudly cheering the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, and call the young socialists and jihadists out as antisemites. For their part, the young see the older generation as impossibly out-of-touch White racists, unwilling to let the multi-ethnic future take the reigns of power.
Jews know math and their impossibly small numbers, and turn to the government and cling to law enforcement to protect them from the percolating tidal wave of hate.
After the heinous butchering, raping and slaughtering of 1,200 people in Israel, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres did not call for Hamas to be brought to justice nor did he lambast Muslim extremism. Instead, he called for Israel to use “maximum restraint” against the killers. It seemed bizarre to excuse mass terrorism but the rationale soon became clear.
Just last week, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths was more explicit about excusing Hamas’s atrocities and said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
The UN is correct at some level: Hamas is a popular Palestinian political party which was elected to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. It has had complete rule over Gaza since 2007. So it is indeed a political group. It is also a terrorist group and a deeply antisemitic group, but the UN refuses to acknowledge those two plain facts.
That is because the United Nations has long tried to distance the idea of “terrorism” and “Islamic extremism,” which are both at the heart of Hamas’s evil ideology.
On March 17, 2016, the then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon addressed the UN Human Rights Council about a “Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism.” At the event, the then-UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore said that “selective application of the term “violent extremism” only to Muslim believers reinforces intolerance and discrimination.”
UN Secretary General visits Gaza in 2010, even though the region was not a UN member state, and it was ruled by Hamas, a terrorist Group (Photo: Reuters)
At least in regards to Islamic extremists. The media and United Nations talk about “Israeli settler extremism” and “right-wing Israeli government,” all of the time but whitewash the brutal attacks committed by Islamic fanatics.
US Politicians And NGOs
Aggravating this horrible situation, people attempt to smear people discussing terrorism and vicious antisemitism of jihadi radicals, as “Islamophobes.” Rep. Ilhan Omar made several comments which were widely viewed as antisemitic in her first weeks in office and then inverted the perpetrator-and-victim saying, “what I am fearful of is that because [Rep.] Rashida [Tlaib] and I are Muslim, that a lot of Jewish colleagues, a lot of our Jewish constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel, to be anti-Semitic, because we are Muslim.”
Years later in 2024, when Congress passed a resolution condemning Hamas’s mass raping and mutilation of Jewish women, Rep. Tlaib refused to join civilized society and simply voted ‘present.’ The sadism of the emasculated Palestinian men was absolved by a sitting elected American official.
Tlaib’s sponsors like the DSA say much the same. The Democratic Socialists of America said that every Israeli Jew is fair game for annihilation by “resistance groups” in the months before the October 7 massacre. CAIR’s Zahara Billoo clearly called all Jews are the “enemy.” The “Mapping Project” in Massachusetts created by proponents of boycotting Israel, tried to make the targeting of Jews easy by providing names and addresses of Jewish organizations.
Notorious antisemite Rep. Rashida Tlaib being embraced by censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman (photo: AP)
The Arts and Media
The art world found its muse in Palestinian jihadists.
John Adams composed an opera called “The Death of Klinghoffer,” with arias about Palestinian terrorists who killed an elderly wheelchair-bound American Jew and threw him off a ship. The New York Times said the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said that the composer “John Adams said that in composing ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ he tried to understand the hijackers and their motivations, and to look for humanity in the terrorists.” The Times went on to call the opera a “masterpiece.”
The media world’s empathy and shield for non-Palestinian jihadists extends to those who murder Jews around the world.
In 2008, ten Pakistani men from the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorist group entered Mumbai, India and started slaughtering people. After killing dozens of people at a train station and luxury hotel, the terrorists descended on a small Jewish community center run by a Chabad rabbi. The terrorists killed the rabbi and his pregnant wife along with others at the facility. At no point in the storyline did CNN convey that the Pakistani men were Muslim and that they belonged to a radical jihadi group.
In 2015, four radical Muslim men killed people at the publishing offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, and then entered a kosher supermarket to kill more Jews. While CNN mentioned that the terrorists were upset at Charlie Hebdo for printing a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, it never wrote that the killers were jihadi extremists.
The problem is not limited to The New York Times and CNN. Reuters avoids calling Hamas a terrorist group in its articles while comfortably doing so for other terrorist organizations.
The jihadists and socialists have already entered the final phase of their war against the Jews. The Four Step Battle Plan started with 1) Denying the Enemy Rights and Legitimacy; 2) Gathering Masses to the Cause; 3) Removing the Enemy’s Defenses; and 4) Assembling the Armies for the Battle. They are now bringing the world into phase 2 at the International Court of Justice, to advance quickly to phase 3, to abandon the Jewish State and global Jewry.
When the United Nations says aloud what radical socialists and jihadists have argued for years, that Hamas is not an antisemitic jihadi terrorist group but a legitimate political actor, it is time to ring the alarm bells. Global “legitimate” actors are now backing Hamas and its supporters who attack Jews around the world, smearing Jews as supporters of an apartheid, colonizing Zionist regime, consequently not victims but fair targets for assault.
For the last few hundred years, Jews inserted three lines after their penultimate prayer in their daily services. Right after Aleinu and before the final mourner’s Kaddish, a sentence from Proverbs and two from Isaiah are found:
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.
Al-Tirah
Roots Of Al Tira Prayer
Leaving synagogue was often a traumatic affair when Jews were scattered around the world. Inside of the synagogue, Jews were both together and felt connected to God; outside was a starkly different reality. Sometimes the local non-Jews would attack the Jews with pogroms and edicts, and at other times, Jews would be fortunate to find salvation.
Today, very few congregations actually recite the prayer despite its inclusion in prayer books.
I suggest that perhaps it is now time for all congregations to begin saying it.
Israel has responded to the Palestinian barbarity. It has killed and injured roughly one-third of the political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and has leveled much of the terrorist enclave. Hamas has claimed that nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed at this point, with children accounting for over one-third.
On top of the frozen state of terror of Jews from the ongoing antisemitic attacks since October 7 is the sadness of watching the destruction of Gaza. Why did Hamas do this and why does the evil group insist that Israeli forces continue to pound Gaza rather than release the hostages and surrender the terrorists?
Hamas has an evil and twisted ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam that demands the destruction of the Jewish state, believing its presence is an embarrassment for Muslims. As it states in its foundational charter “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time… In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.”
For its part, Judaism has a different set of beliefs that stretches back thousands of years before the Islamic prophet Mohammed was born. It urges calm in the face of fear.
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. (Proverbs 3:25)
Jews are carrying both the shock of October 7 in Israel and the sickening reaction of Hamas’s fans around the world. They are simultaneously witnessing the destruction of that enemy. It’s a lot to process – the “sudden fear” and the “desolation of the wicked” – and has led many Jews and Zionists to huddle together in synagogue, and hide symbols of being Jewish when they go outside.
Jewish Calendar And Numbers
The Jewish year 5784 is a Jewish leap year which adds another month, and the year 2024 in the secular calendar is also a leap year which adds a single day. Both the Jewish calendar and the secular calendars add the time in the winter to “correct” the calendar for the upcoming spring.
We are now in the first of two months of Adar. Jewish tradition holds that Adar is a month of happiness and when Jews defeated their mortal enemies who attacked the weakest Jews. The double month of Adar is meant as a moment of double celebration.
This year of 5784 is the eighth year of the 19-year Metonic cycle which marks leap years on the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth year. Just as 2024 is the eighth year in the cycle, so was 1967, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, as was 1948, the year that the Jewish State was reborn. From 1948 to 1967 was one Metonic cycle and from 1967 to 2024 were three full cycles.
Numbers have significance in Judaism. One is connected to the singularity of God in the Jewish monotheistic faith. Three symbolizes Judaism’s founding fathers, the sections of the Shema prayer, three holidays of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the three groups of Jews.
Eight is also meaningful. Beyond the day that Jewish males are circumcised to join the Jewish nation, tradition is that eight connects man in the natural to the supernatural world. While God made the world in seven days and had seven branches on the menorah in the holy Temple, eight is the step beyond. The seven branch menorah was for the Temple, while Jews light an eight branch menorah in their homes and synagogues today to connect to the miracle.
Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. (Isaiah 8:10)
These months of Adar seem like important months to recite the oft-skipped prayer. A time to mark the third complete leap year cycle of Jewish control Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It is a time to remember that God is with us and he is the sole source of fear.
Amalek And Arms Aloft Together
When the Jewish people left slavery in Egypt they were attacked by the nation of Amalek. During the battle, Jews looked up to Moses who held his arms pointing to the sky with the assistance of Aaron and Hur who held the elderly prophet’s arms. The Jews were empowered when they saw Moses praying to God to vanquish the enemy, and prevailed as God enabled their success.
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4)
Today, there is no Jewish leader like Moses to pray on behalf of the jews, and every Jew takes their own prayer book to talk to God. They gather in minyanim around the world to pray for Jewish soldiers fighting with weapons, and Jewish lay leaders who fight against Hamas’s supporters in governments, college campuses and everywhere.
Let us all recite Al Tirah together, holding the hands of the people to our right and left, and pray for God to deliver success in defeating all of our foes.
People are trying to figure out what to do with UNRWA, the troubled United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The organization has long perpetuated the Arab-Israeli conflict, fomenting hatred for Jews in its schools, and promising millions of Arabs that their future is in Israeli towns and villages where grandparents who had wished for the destruction of the Jewish State once lived.
The temporary agency is funded by voluntary contributions from UN member states, so can be dissolved very quickly, as was always intended. The issue at the moment is that the hospitals and schools still need to operate, with or without the existence of UNRWA. The five regions where UNRWA operates – Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – all have different dynamics, politics and infrastructure, and the future will be different for each.
The best solution is for UNRWA to be dissolved and its personnel and infrastructure to be handed to proper authorities: operations in Lebanon and Syria would shift to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee agency; Jordanian operations to the government of Jordan; and operations in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, in a staged process.
Syria and Lebanon to UNHCR
There are approximately 581,000 descendants of 1948 Palestinian Arabs in Syria being cared for by UNRWA in 2022, and another 93,000 people for whom the agency also gives free services. The numbers are 487,000 and 70,000 in Lebanon for refugee descendants and other wards, respectively. All of them have been denied citizenship by their host countries.
These people and the associated infrastructure should be handed over immediately to UNHCR which cares for over 89 million people as of 2022. UNHCR would try to settle the 1.23 million people either in those host countries or find them citizenship elsewhere, just as it does with millions of other stateless people.
Jordan
Jordan was part of the original Palestine Mandate of 1922, and England separated the land east of the Jordan River to become a new country known as Transjordan in 1923. After Transjordan attacked Israel at its founding and illegally seized the eastern part of what remained of Palestine, it illegally annexed that land and renamed itself “Jordan.” It ethnically cleansed all Jews from the region, including eastern Jerusalem, and granted citizenship to everyone in 1954, as they long as they weren’t Jewish (Nationality Law Article 3).
Not surprisingly with such deep history with the land “between the River and the Sea,” roughly half of Jordan is “Palestinian”, approximately 2.6 million people including Queen Rania. These “UNRWA refugees” in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship and have zero need to collect global charity under the false notion that they are stateless and lack self-determination.
The schools and hospitals should be transferred to the government of Jordan’s control immediately. Some countries may want to continue to voluntarily contribute to the Jordanian king for some time to help absorb the hit to the country’s budget, and then slowly wean the king from the global money teat.
West Bank to the Palestinian Authority
Palestinians declared a state in 1988, and most non-western countries have recognized its independence. It is ruled by the Palestinian Authority, which elected a president from the Fatah Party in 2005 and a parliament in 2006 with a majority from Hamas.
The PA operates from the West Bank city of Ramallah and has responsibility for the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. The Authority is viewed as weak and corrupt by Palestinians and others. It supplies money to terrorists and their families in a program alternatively called a Martyrs’ Fund / Pay-to-Slay program, which is popular amongst Palestinians and detested by civil societies for directly supporting terror. The PA has failed on all fronts, not being able to show the ability to govern internally nor to advance a future of coexistence with the Jewish State.
Alas, it’s much better than the alternative Hamas which has ruled in Gaza since 2007 when it seized control of the region from the PA. Perhaps with greater focus on good governance with western oversight, the PA can be reformed.
Handing the 96 schools and 43 health facilities operating in the West Bank to the PA should happen immediately. Funding for the operations should cover only six to nine months and a cohort of countries led by the United States, which is UNRWA’s principle benefactor, should use the time to stabilize the transition. That includes ensuring that no hatred for Jews or teaching about the destruction of Israel is found anywhere in the facilities or educational materials.
Continued funding for the schools and hospitals after the initial transition period should be captured under the United States Taylor Force Act. Just as the PA is denied getting any US monies as long as it pays terrorist salaries in the Pay-to-Slay program, it would also lose funding that used to come through UNRWA for the schools and hospitals. The historic backdoor circumventing American laws would be sealed closed, and the US and PA would need to work together to ensure that supporting terrorism comes to a definitive end for any monetary support to come to the PA.
Gaza, At Some Point, to the Palestinian Authority
While UNRWA’s West Bank operations should move to the PA immediately, UNRWA in Gaza is a different story. Not only must the PA prove it can absorb the many facilities and cleanse them of their toxic hatred, the PA will be tested as to whether it can take control of Gaza after 17 years of Hamas rule.
Hamas’s complete rule of Gaza since 2007 brought the region complete destruction. It focused all of its energies on building a war infrastructure to destroy the Jewish State next door, rather than build a functioning economy and society. It left the schools and hospitals for the world to fund and run, so cared little about letting them get destroyed while its leaders hid like cowards underground.
Neither Hamas nor the PA can take over the rebuilding of the schools and health care facilities. Over the next several years, another global cohort, perhaps similar to the one easing the UNRWA transition in the West Bank, should be tasked with building institutions anew. Basic humanitarian values and rights must be incorporated into the very foundations to chart a path for a future when the PA may be able to take over Gaza as well as the new former-UNRWA infrastructure.
UNRWA camp with a keyhole and key on top symbolizing the false promise that through UNRWA, Palestinian Arabs will get to move into homes in Israel
These actions, if properly executed, should empower and moderate a new Palestinian Authority which can take over Gaza at some point, and ultimately negotiate peace with Israel.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) has long had an antisemitism problem, flagged by groups like the Anti-Defamation League. He’s made the Jews in his district feel unsafe by calling Republicans “Nazis” and voting against a resolution condemning antisemitism. He would not even come to a rally in Scarsdale after Jewish stores were vandalized.
His anti-Israel stances like boycotting the speech of dovish Israeli President Isaac Herzog have gradually become more personal and militant, as he saddles up to jihadists in his quest for more money and power.
Bowman launched his reelection campaign with one of the leaders of the anti-Israel group WESPAC as a featured speaker. WESPAC supports a number of anti-Israel extremist groups, which defended Hamas’s October 7 brutal slaughter in Israel.
His constituents and his Democratic primary challenger were outraged.
“Let me set the record straight – my opponent takes money from those who endorse Hamas’ terrorism, those who try to justify the murdering of children, the kidnapping of civilian hostages, and the raping of women as acts of ‘resistance,’” Westchester County Executive George Latimer said in a prepared statement. “As a progressive Democrat, I find that horrifying and unacceptable.”
Rather than clearly denounce Hamas and the terrorist groups’ supporters, Bowman’s latest antic is to possibly sue his Democratic primary opponent for slander. He turned the entire episode on its head by claiming that Latimer stoked Islamophobia, saying, “His [Latimer] comments equating all Muslims to Hamas are textbook Islamophobic and put the Muslim-American community in real danger. He should not only retract this false statement he’s repeatedly made. He should apologize to a community he continues to vilify and endanger.”
Of course, it was Bowman who equated the two, as Latimer clearly specified the particular people who supported Hamas and its actions, and never mentioned their faith nor attacked the entire community.
Bowman takes the endorsements and the money of Hamas’s supporters, then plays the victim, and misquotes and attacks others. It’s classic Bowman theater, putting Jewish lives at risk in an appeal to anti-Israel donors.
And he relentlessly continues to wage this real and psychological war on his Jewish constituents.
Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), a 75-year old Jewish grandmother, put forward a bipartisan resolution condemning the rape and mutilation of Jewish women by Hamas on October 7. It gathered 200 cosponsors. But not Bowman. Not Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Not Rep. Ilhan Omar nor Cori Bush.
The race in the district is boiling down to anti-Israel voters versus anti-Hamas voters. People supporting George Latimer believe that Hamas must be neutered, whether by force or the leaders surrendering, to afford a chance for peace. People supporting Jamaal Bowman believe that Hamas speaks for the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian butchery of Israeli civilians was justified in the past and would be appropriate in the future, as the group has promised.
While Jamaal Bowman sharply criticizes White Supremacy, he is going all-in on with those who celebrate jihadists massacring Jews. It’s part of the insidious jihad taking over wide swaths of America, and it should alarm every American, not just those in New York’s lower Westchester County.
The images of death and destruction in Gaza are terrible. The cruelty of Hamas’s leaders of letting the population suffer while refusing to surrender and instead hiding in tunnels underground, is a shocking display of cowardice that will be marked by generations of orphans.
Gaza ruins
Many countries are trying to figure out a way to bring humanitarian supplies to the civilians of Gaza without the food and medical supplies being rerouted to the Hamas political-terrorist group which has directed the atrocities. The arguments about whether UNRWA is best qualified to handle the situation as they have existing facilities and personnel in Gaza bypasses a critical and fundamental matter.
Why should descendants of Palestinian “refugees” from 75 years ago get better medical treatment and access to food during this war than regular Gazans?
There are a few hundred thousand regular Palestinian Arabs who have lived in Gaza for generations. They are just as injured and displaced as their “refugee” neighbors who have been living next to them for the past 75 years. Will the United Nations only supply food and medicine to those who call themselves “refugees” while letting other Gazans go hungry?
The crux of the situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis, not a refugee crisis. It should be handled by the Red Cross which is best equipped to enter war zones and remain neutral.
UNRWA is a toxic organization which has fomented hatred and discontent which led directly to the October 7 massacre. Its mission, budget and staff are vehicles designed to end the Jewish state. It causes emergencies, it doesn’t address them.
All emergency relief for Gaza should be handled by the International Red Cross as a matter of efficiency, neutrality and equity. Showing preferences for the grandchildren of refugees is a mockery of humanity and shows the ongoing perverted nature of the United Nations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It surprised no one that attacks against Jews around the world spiked after the Hamas political-terrorist group invaded Israel and butchered and slaughtered around 1,200 people. The bold and not-so-out-of-the-closet antisemites had reason to cheer the death and mutilation of Jews and took to the streets to swear allegiance to the atrocities’ actors.
Slightly more moderate and less gleeful were those who adamantly declared they didn’t hate Jews, just the Jewish State. Francesca Albanese, whose title is “UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron who had decried the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. She wrote “The ‘worst antisemitic massacre of our century? No, Mr. President. The victims of 7/10 were killed not because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.” Perhaps she thinks that Gazans would have raped and burned alive Ottoman Turks and British civilians too when they ruled in Palestine.
Many people are calling for Albanese’s resignation, not because she’s pro-Palestinian but because she’s sanitizing antisemitism to the world. People can read, and the virulently antisemitic Hamas Charter is online.
Antisemitism continues to inch beyond the borders of Israel and the confines of self-declared Jew-haters. Even those who have historically done outreach to Jews are turning away from them now, while Jews around the world pray for the dead, the injured, the hostages and their families.
There is a restaurant in Barcelona, Spain called Xerta. It is a Michelin-starred restaurant since 2016, and once a week it makes its kitchen kosher so it can accommodate the dietary restrictions of Orthodox Jews. Jews around the world have come to dine at the famous restaurant, the only kosher Michelin restaurant in the world.
Until recently.
due to the current situation in Middle East, the Management Team has decided to interrupt the service, so no Kosher service is scheduled, at least at the moment
Xerta Restaurant, February 2024
What does kosher food in Spain have to do with a war between Hamas and Israel? Why should Jews in Spain suddenly lose the opportunity of dining in a fine restaurant? The establishment clearly made an effort of outreach to the Jewish community in the past, so why the shift in stance?
Possible reasons include:
Penalizing Jews for the actions of the Jewish State
Demonstrating to fellow Spaniards that they are so against Israel, that they would deprive Jews service even though they have nothing to do with Israel
Out of fear that the restaurant would be attacked by antisemites who make no distinction between Jews and the Jewish State
The managers of the restaurant are clearly not antisemites or would not have historically offered kosher food. But they have taken action specifically against local Orthodox Jews at this time because of activities 2,200 miles away.
Xerta Restaurant in Barcelona, Spain. Emptied of Orthodox Jews
The restaurant managers know that Spain is not like other western countries and Barcelona has a radical streak. While almost every western country stopped making voluntary payments to UNRWA after it was shown that many of its employees participated in the October 7 pogrom against Israeli Jews, Spain decided to INCREASE its donations. Just last year, the mayor of Barcelona severed the ceremonial “sister city” relationship with Tel Aviv because she said Israel committed “apartheid.”
Perhaps Xerta’s management watched the news about the spike in antisemitism everywhere with chants to “gas the Jews” and attack Zionists everywhere. Maybe they feared that their neighbors’ hatred for the Jewish State would come for Jews dining in its establishment, so it kept the kosher patrons away.
Martin Niemoller (1892-1984) would be ashamed. He knew his silence was complicity for Nazi atrocities.
Cold-blooded antisemites are killing Jews, and friends of Jews are abandoning them in the cold.
It’s an old lesson for this generation. Jews are being schooled on the fragility of allies and the antisemitism of adjacencies.
‘Shield’ is an English word which is both a noun and a verb. As a verb, it means to protect something, and as a noun, it means an emblem that represents an organization.
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, acts and is Hamas’s shield.
In attempting to root out the Hamas political-terrorist group from Gaza which committed savage butchery of Israelis on October 7 in line with its antisemitic genocidal charter, Israeli troops entered and dug around UNRWA schools, hospitals and administrative buildings. It found incontrovertible proof that UNRWA is part of the Hamas war machine against Israel.
Hamas not only stores weapons in UNRWA locations, it deliberately locates its command centers under UNRWA facilities to keep the IDF from bombing it. While Israel developed an iron dome defense system which uses technology to shoot down Hamas rockets targeting Israeli civilians, Hamas uses UNRWA to protect its military infrastructure in Gaza.
In New York City, where the thin veneer of UNRWA’s 100 or so Europeans cover the fact that the rest of UNRWA’s 30,000-member staff are local Palestinian Arabs, the well-dressed leaders of the “humanitarian” agency defend Hamas to its voluntary donor countries. UNRWA talking heads appeal to countries assembled at the once-respected UN halls and attempt to deflect attention from UNRWA’s complicity and participation in the sickening and sadistic attacks on innocent Jewish civilians.
The dozen-plus member of Hamas that participated in the cruelty were dismissed as a few rogue employees. The 3,000 Hamas teachers that celebrated the massacre on Telegram were ignored. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territories, said (5:35) in the immediate aftermath of October 7 that “you Palestinians are always questioned, second-guessed, misinterpreted and defamed.”
Finally, many countries are looking at the plain evidence and can no longer turn away from UNRWA’s ongoing flimsy protection of vicious murderers. The UNRWA misdirection campaign which attempted to tug heart-strings is unraveling, and moral countries have begun to halt their donations to the agency which is complicit in the ongoing genocidal actions against a member state.
Unbowed, UNRWA continues to appeal directly to individuals donors on social media, hoping that they don’t read the news or despise Jews and the Jewish State to fund the UNRWA-Hamas front.
UNRWA campaign on Facebook, February 2024
UNRWA is not simply trying to defend itself against the mounting evidence of working hand-in-glove with Hamas to keep the money flowing to 30,000 Palestinian employees of the organization as well as to keep the lights on in hospitals and schools. As the world sees that UNRWA is not a neutral party, the agency loses all aspects of immunity. Its locations can be raided and bombed and its officers charged alongside Hamas with crimes against humanity.
The entire United Nations knows its on a sinking ship and is throwing the heaviest burdens overboard (firing the dozen October 7 murderers) and is spinning wild and unbelievable narratives. UNRWA is in a fight for its survival and will not pause in lying boldly and repeatedly that it is a humanitarian group that at worst is woefully ignorant and inept.
UNRWA acts as a shield FOR Hamas in Gaza, and a shield OF Hamas at the United Nations. The end of Hamas in Gaza must be coupled with the end of UNRWA at the UN.
The journalist echoed a theme throughout her piece that the far left-wing ‘squad’ is using as a smear campaign that AIPAC is racist and a far right-wing group. Amiri’s comments included:
“Members of the “squad” — a group of liberals in the House — are beingsingled out by pro-Israel PACs like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee”
“turning the otherwise safely Democratic districts into election battlegrounds”
“cohort of Black and brown lawmakers is facing what they see as an “existential threat””
“Muslim community has felt erased and dehumanized throughout this process”
“In 2022, AIPAC spent around $27 million targeting progressive candidates.”
““(Muslim and Arab groups) are building an infrastructure that is financial and political and social, to fight back against AIPAC and to fight back against entities that continue to demonize them as Muslims as Arabs and as brown people,” Bowman said.”
““This is versus candidates, black and brown candidates, who come from working-class backgrounds, who represent working-class districts, who do not take corporate PAC money, who rely on grassroots fundraising. So this is not a fair fight,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats.”
That several extremists make the statement is one thing; for a journalist to repeat the slander that AIPAC is racist without any fact-checking is dishonest journalism. It’s not even journalism; it’s simply platforming alt-left political propaganda, which in this case is purely untrue slander.
AIPAC has a long list of endorsement to women, liberals, Blacks and Hispanics and Asians. They include: Pete Aguilar (D-CA); Gabe Amo (D-RI); Nanette Barragán (D-CA); Joyce Beatty (D-OH); Stephanie Bice (R-OK); Sanford Bishop (D-GA); Marsha Blackburn (R-TN); Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR); Shontel Brown (D-OH); Kat Cammack (R-FL); Maria Cantwell (D-WA); Yadira Caraveo (D-CO); Tony Cárdenas (D-CA); Kathy Castor (D-FL); Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR); Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL); Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ); Katherine Clark (D-MA); Yvette Clarke (D-NY); Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO); Jim Clyburn (D-SC); Angie Craig (D-MN); Henry Cuellar (D-TX).
And that’s just some of the women and minorities through the letter C!
Of of the AIPAC’s champions in Congress is a progressive Black-Latino gay man named Ritchie Torres. AIPAC was his largest backer in the 2022 election cycle.
AIPAC featuring a talk by Rep. Torres about the Iran Nuclear deal
Israel and other pro-Israel groups were enormous backers of Shontel Brown, a Black Democratic woman in Ohio. The race was widely covered in the media – but not in the latest AP hit piece smearing AIPAC as racist.
To state over-and-again that AIPAC is a racist organization without sharing some plain and public facts that show the defamation to be without merit is complicity in the slander.
SMEAR: AIPAC is an Outside Influence While The Squad Is Grassroots
The AP piece made it sound like AIPAC is a nefarious outside actor while the squad is raising money locally in a grass-roots effort to fight off a foreign evil giant.
“It’s a struggle that raises significant questions about who can be a Democrat in Congress, what positions are permissible about Israel and the Palestinians, and what role outside groups should have in determining both.”
“Candidates being targeted by the group are trying to raise awareness for what they say is AIPAC’s toxic role in Democratic primaries.”
“In the last quarter alone, the group was the largest donor to George Latimer, Bowman’s opponent in the Democratic primary. AIPAC gave the Westchester County executive more than $600,000, representing more than 40% of his $1.4 million in contributions so far, according to campaign finance reports filed Wednesday.”
“Bowman, meanwhile, managed to raise more than $730,000 in total last quarter — the majority of which his campaign says came from grassroots Arab and Muslim groups and individual donors.”
““This is versus candidates, black and brown candidates, who come from working-class backgrounds, who represent working-class districts, who do not take corporate PAC money, who rely on grassroots fundraising. So this is not a fair fight,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats.”
“Tlaib’s massive fundraising haul can largely be attributed to a grassroots effort,”
““We are proud of our grassroots campaign that is bringing people together to fight for justice for all, no matter where you live or who you are,” said Carolina Toro-Román, Tlaib’s co-campaign manager.”
AIPAC is a bipartisan group and gives to both Democrats and Republicans. In 2022, it gave much more money to Democrats – an average of $38,730 per candidate in the House, compared to $20,700 on average to Republicans according to OpenSecrets. It’s a PAC like any other PAC, and there’s absolutely no issue with a bipartisan group giving money in primaries.
Further, the idea that Rep. George Latimer is taking “outside” money and not Rep. Jamaal Bowman is a complete lie. According to the latest filings, Latimer received 73% of his donations from inside the district while Bowman only received 9% locally.
The reality is that many locals gave to the Latimer campaign through the AIPAC donation portal, inflating what might be perceived as PAC money from around the country. While Bowman was collecting money from Muslims in Virginia and California, Latimer was collecting money from his constituents in Westchester.
To underscore the point, just last week, Bowman and Rep. Cori Bush reportedly teamed up to raise money in Los Angeles with people who praised the October 7 massacre of Jews as “a desperate act of self-defense.” The high-ticket affair held 3,000 miles from Bowman’s district is a sign of Bowman’s desperation for external extremist forces to drown out the moderate voices of his constituents.
IN FACT: Israel is a Liberal Cause
The reality is that Hamas is a genocidal antisemitic organization as proven by word and action. Meanwhile, Israel is a beacon of liberal values in the illiberal Middle East. Its rights for gays, minorities and women are unique in the region. It’s a leader in animal rights and the environment. In regards to freedoms, including speech, religion and assembly, it has no peers for a thousand miles.
IN FACT: Bowman Is Disliked for Many Reasons
Quite contrary to the AP article which led “They were warned that criticism of Israel’s conduct during its war on Hamas in Gaza could cost them politically,” Bowman is deeply disliked by people in his district for a wide variety of reasons and for a long period before October 7. He voted against the Infrastructure Bill, after he lambasted another Congressman for being against it. Unsatisfied with only being a hypocrite, he lied to his constituents that he voted for it.
His radical calls to “Defund the Police,” Abolish ICE,” pack the Supreme Court, push the most extreme forms of Critical Race Theory in public schools, ban charter schools, destroy the economy through issuing $14 trillion dollars of ‘reparations’ to Black people, taxing unearned capital gains and a host of other domestic policy issues have made him deeply unpopular.
Bowman’s bellicosity and race-baiting have made toxic. It was no surprise that he pulled a fire alarm, lied about it and was then appropriately censured by a bipartisan Congress.
The AP published a vile dishonest hit piece on AIPAC to platform left-wing anti-Israel propaganda. The editorial board should investigate and issue an apology.
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