The New York Times, mouthpiece for progressive dreams rather than facts, once again made up news that the Islamic Republic of Iran is taking a “conciliatory tone” in the Middle East and “that it wants less confrontation,” even after the Islamic Republic’s leaders blast Israel.
Throughout the article, the Times claimed that Iran had a “shift in tone” and sought to “defuse tensions” in “recent diplomacy.” It concluded that “Without a doubt, among senior officials and ordinary people, there is a real desire to end the tensions with the West and get along…. Cooperation with the West is not viewed as a defeat.”
These comments stand in sharp contrast to those published by Hezbollah’s Al Manar which led its article with “Resistance Unbreakable: Imam Khamenei Declares Israel’s Doom, Al Aqsa Storm Unstoppable.”
The article quoted from the “Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei” who said that “regional resistance movements cannot be quelled” and that the “Zionist regime is destined for departure.” The article said that “Hezbolah hailed the operation’s [war against Israel] success” as did Hamas.
Al Manar concluded with a quote from the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei who said that “the result of the warmongering and crimes committed by the Zionist regime, fully supported by the United States… is the martyrdom of 60,000 innocent people,” inflaming the jihadi readers to seek retribution against the West.
The editors of the Times do not want the United States or Israel to go to war remove the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, so openly lie to its readership that Iran is a peaceful actor in the region and not the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is publishing boldface and dangerous lies.
It begs the questions of whether The New York Times is a tool of Iran.
On November 5, 2024, New York’s 15th Congressional District once again elected Ritchie Torres to serve in Congress. With broad support from the Latin, Black and Jewish communities in the area, the consensus candidate was a shoe-in.
In the weeks following the sweep of Republicans to the Executive Office, Senate and House, Torres attacked the far-left of the Democratic Party for foolishly advocating for non-common sense positions. He has taken particular aim at New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat whom he seems intent on challenging in the Democratic primary of 2026.
On November 21, Torres said there was a “poverty of governance in New York” as well as a “leadership crisis.” The next day he called Hochul “the new Joe Biden” who is so clueless about “her vulnerabilities as a Democratic nominee,” that allowing the Democratic machine to prop her up will “give us a Republican Governor in 2026.”
Torres has not officially declared he will run for state Governor but his attacks on a fellow Democrat are not subtle. The following week he called Hochul a liar and hypocrite.
While Torres represents the poorest district in the United States, he has built strong relationships with many wealthier sponsors including Jews and pro-Israel advocates who appreciate his strong fight against antisemitism and supporters of Hamas. Torres should be able to stage a strong fight against Hochul, if he can build support around New York State.
The next question becomes who is best positioned to take his seat in Washington, D.C. should Torres move on to Albany. The likely contenders are former Congressmen Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones.
Bowman has strong roots in the Bronx. He defeated Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary in 2020 and then rapidly lost hold of the district when new lines were drawn which replaced much of the Bronx with lower Westchester County. While Bowman lost in his 2024 Democratic primary, he faired well in Co-op City in the Bronx.
Jones has bounced around a few districts after his seat in Rockland and Westchester counties were redrawn. After a single term in 2020, he failed in his attempted run for office in lower Manhattan in 2022, and then again running in 2024 for the lower Hudson Valley in NY’s 17th district. He would need to build a new strong ground team to take on Bowman in his comfortable turf.
Or a newcomer could enter the race, perhaps someone Hispanic as the district is 53% Hispanic and 31% Black.
Will the Democratic Party rally to the disgraced Bowman who was censured for pulling a fire alarm, putting many lives at risk? For chanting to a crowd that there were no rapes of Jewish women by Palestinian Arabs on October 7, 2023, in a #DontBelieveJewish Women moment?
The Jewish community that invested so much in Torres and wants to see him succeed in his political aspirations will be outraged and appalled if Bowman comes back to Congress to represent them. It must therefore work with the Democratic power brokers, Mondaire Jones or another rising candidate from the Bronx immediately, to prevent the return of the toxic squad.
Over the last few days, anti-Israel Canadians smashed storefronts and burned cars on the streets of Montreal. An owner of a coffee shop in a Jewish hospital shouted that “the Final Solution is coming your way” and flashed a Nazi salute.
This is the same Canada that arrested Muhammad Shahzeb Khan in September, a Pakistani man living in Canada, who planned to commit a mass slaughter of Jews at the Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn, NY in support of ISIS on the anniversary of the October 7 massacre.
Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi and his son, during court proceedings in Ontario
This is the same Canada where Charlotte Kates, a leader of the group Samidoun took to the streets of Vancouver to scream “long live October 7th!” On October 15, 2024, Canada and the United States both labeled Samidoun as “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.”
WESPAC, a US-based “charity” based in White Plains, NY came out to defend Samidoun and Kates on November 22 stating “The Vancouver Police Department raided her [Charlotte’s] home using such unnecessary militarized force with the aim of humiliating and instilling fear not just against Charlotte but her community and anyone who chooses to advocate for the human rights of Palestinians.”
Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) issued a statement on November 25 that “The government must act now to stop the scourge of antisemitism.” It cited a poll of Canadian Jews that 82% believe that Canada is less safe for Jews than it was before Oct. 7th massacre and 36% have been targeted (themselves or a member of their family) by antisemitic remarks since October 7, 2023.
Significantly, Canada’s Jews feel unprotected, with 85% and 75% feeling that the government and police, respectively, should be doing more to combat antisemitism in Canada.
It is no surprise.
Their government grants citizenship to a man featured on ISIS propaganda videos beheading people. Their government relied on France to alert them about an impending attack. Their government only identified a sham charity fronting for terrorist groups a year after Germany.
In September 2023, before Palestinian Muslims slaughtered over one thousand civilians in Israel, India’s foreign minister said he was alarmed about “Canada and its growing reputation as a place, as a safe haven for terrorists, for extremists, and for organized crime.”
Free range terrorists are roaming the Great White North and are coming for Jews across North America. Others too, but mostly Jews.
Antisemitism in western countries – especially the United States – has been rising in volume and intensity over the past several years. What started as harassment and intimidation became discrimination. What began as verbal threats became violence against property and persons. What started as punches became murder and hostage taking.
Memorial at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh after attack killed eight people, November 2018
Jews began to fear for their safety. Many hid their Jewish identity to avoid attacks.
Then their government told them that they couldn’t and wouldn’t protect them. Instead of hiding their faith because the government would be slow to act, Jews saw that the government was reticent to act, and released antisemites quickly to attack again.
And the situation is somehow now worse.
Law enforcement has told Jews that THEY are the problem, not the Jew haters. It is their physical presence that is a ‘provocation’ for people who want a world free of Jews.
Jewish family having coffee in Montreal Canada was told by police to leave the area, November 2024
Police were not telling Jews to leave the public square for their own safety (a disgraceful request at its most basic) but because their presence is a form of violence against antisemites.
Rather than firmly enforcing the law and protecting civilians, police are starting to give in to the mob. Free speech is trumping the basic right to enjoy and access the public square.
While the moves from intimidation to discrimination to attacks on property and then people is an easy horror story to comprehend, the collapse of basic protections – from protecting to not protecting to demanding Jews disappear – is a more fundamentally terrifying breakdown in society.
Is the next low for police to hand over Jews to the antisemitic horde the way the Globalize the Intifada mob demand?
This is a very dark moment in the New World: law enforcement asking Jews to clear the streets because antisemites are triggered by the sight of a Jew.
Israel announced that it was not going to allow UNRWA, the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency, to continue to operate from its territory. The United Nations came down hard on Israel, including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as well as members of the UN Security Council.
Guterres has always stood by the “humanitarian” group which he has called an “indispensable” “lifeline” and force for “stability” and “hope for a better future.” He urged global support for the group as “an investment in peace.”
The media has chosen sides as to whether UNRWA has some terrorists among its staff and whether the humanitarian group can continue to operate in Gaza amidst the war.
Lost in the discussion was that the Palestinian Authority has curiously welcomed the attention, and has asked the United Nations to make clear that the entire mission of the UNRWA is to facilitate the “right of return” of millions of stateless Arabs into homes where grandparents lived in Israel.
The “humanitarian work” of the decades-old temporary agency is besides the point.
The staff is not the topic.
The MISSION of UNRWA is to move millions of Arabs into Israel against the Jewish State’s wishes. UNRWA schools teach their Muslim students that there is no path to coexistence but to wiping out the Jews and reclaiming all of “Palestine.”
Even those young UNRWA students who don’t talk about a genocide of Jews, still say that their future is in grandparents’ homes in Israel, even if they are compensated for ancestors’ lost property.
UNRWA student talks about killing all the Jews
Blind to reality, UNSG Guterres describes UNRWA schools as a place to “learn about democracy, human rights & tolerance, preparing them to be exemplary citizens,” in Israel? in Palestine? How does instilling vile antisemitism into Muslim children prepare them for peaceful coexistence with Jews?
UNSG Guterres posts about UNRWA schools in April 2019
Much of the discussion about UNRWA is whether ten or 100 or 1,000 employees are terrorists, and whether that is a disqualification for continued operations. The inherent problem with UNRWA is its mission as the UN’s operating tool to dismantle the Jewish State. The Palestinian Authority wants the UN to state it clearly for the entire world to hear.
On November 21, 2024 the House of Representatives approved H.R. 9495 by a vote of 219-184 with 30 people not voting. The bill was called the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act” and principally involved relaxing laws about tax collection if people are “detained” like hostages in Gaza, as well as to terminate “the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.”
J Street, the left-wing pro-Palestinian group marketed as Jewish and pro-Israel was “dismayed” at its passage. It had joined with 50 other progressive groups in a letter to members of Congress to oppose the bill on the grounds that “the bill threatens to politicize decisions.”
On July 13, 2010, J Street called for a “Treasury investigation into settlement charities.” It claimed that “tax-exempt organizations are working to undermine a two-state solution by deepening the occupation.”
The head of J Street, Jeremy Ben Ami, would not relent on this Holy Grail quest and tried to push the willing ears of President Barack Obama in his fight. On September 9, 2016, Ben Ami posted an urgent plea: “J Street Calls on Treasury Department to Review Tax Deductibility of Donations to Groups Entrenching Settlements.” It stated that the best way to advance its preferred public policy goals was to terminate tax exempt status for those with different agendas.
J Street called on its supporters and all who support a just Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement to urge the US Treasury to review the tax-deductibility status of contributions to groups working to entrench or expand Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.
J Street September 9, 2016
The call to stifle free speech and expression was obvious to all. Eugene Kontorovich wrote in Tablet Magazine on October 6, 2016 that called J Street’s action “unprecedented and clearly unconstitutional” in attacking charities “pursuing goals at odds with the foreign policy of the President.”
Snapshot of article by Eugene Kontorovich in Tablet on October 6, 2016
Now that a Republican president is about to take office, progressive groups are suddenly worried about politicizing the tax-exempt status of charities, an effort they had inaugurated.
And that’s a red herring as it’s not what the bill states. It is not trying to rob charities of donations for having different opinions, the bill specifically is about supporting terrorism. As laid out, “the term ‘terrorist supporting organization’ means any organization which is designated by the Secretary [of Treasury] as having provided, during the 3-year period ending on the date of such designation, material support or resources (within the meaning of section 2339B of title 18, United States Code) to an organization described in paragraph (2) (determined after the application of this paragraph to such organization) in excess of a de minimis amount.”
J Street has long fought to strip the tax-exempt status of charities operating east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), such as a charity which provides wheelchairs for the elderly in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is now crying foul as Congress passed an act to fight terrorism, because of the long list of Palestinian terrorist groups and even longer list of its supporters.
Berlin, Germany’s top cop, Barbara Slowik, issued a warning to Jews and gay people, “There are areas of the city, we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly gay to be more careful.” She added “There are certain neighborhoods where the majority of people of Arab origin live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups.”
New York’s Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) was outraged by the warning. He said “A healthy society tells its Jewish community: “We will keep you safe.” A sick society tells its Jewish community: “You should go in hiding.” Antisemitism is a sign of societal sickness.”
He is right. But the problem isn’t solely on Holocaust soil. It is a growing presence in the United States.
On May 21, 2021, President Biden’s Jewish Engagement Director Aaron Keyak posted on X “It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your magen david (Jewish star),” in response to growing antisemitic attacks coming from the jihadi-socialist alliance.
That was two and one half years before the October 7 Palestinian Arab massacre of Israelis and spike of jihadism in the United States.
Keyak lives and breathes the world of Democratic politics and interfaith relations. As profiled in his bio on the State Department site where he serves as Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism since November 2021, “Deputy Special Envoy Keyak is an experienced leader and interfaith coalition builder who has previously held senior roles advising members of Congress, the Obama Administration, and the Biden-Harris Administration transition team.”
People operating in the highest ranks of the U.S. government whose job is to combat antisemitism, liaise with the Jewish community and build interfaith relationships, told the Jewish community that they must hide. He tacitly gave permission for pogroms since law enforcement would do little or nothing.
It is a deep descent from George Washington’s letter to a synagogue in Rhode Island written in 1790 in which he wrote “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
There is a moral rot in the left flank of the Democratic Party, which has demanded sanction to bigotry and assistance to the persecution of Jews. It is not only an abandonment of Jews but to the principles of America.
Joe Biden was elected by many in the hopes of healing the division in America but he laid bare the “societal sickness” of licensed antisemitism. It is no wonder that Jews voted for Donald Trump in 2024, in the greatest percentage for any Republican in 36 years.
On Saturday November 16, nearly 100 trucks carrying aid into Gaza were violently set upon by armed Arab gangs. According to Reuters, Louise Wateridge, UNRWA’s Senior Emergency Officer would not say who carried out the ambush. Reuters added that “An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of its war against Hamas, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was U.N. distribution challenges.”
Tor Wennesland, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process – no friend of Israel – was more explicit in his remarks to the United Nations Security Council on November 18 when he specifically called out “organized armed Palestinians” as the culprit in stealing humanitarian aid.
Tor Wennesland remarks to the UNSC on November 18, 2024
The New York Times would have none of it. It blamed the looting of aid on Israel.
The Times alternatively called the militants “looters” and “attackers” without giving any description as to who committed the attack. It even tried to use passive language that the aid “was looted” to avoid placing blame on local Gazans.
Later in the article the Times said that “it was not clear who was responsible for the looting,” but the surrounding text made it very clear: Israel was responsible, even if it didn’t commit the looting.
The Times blamed Israel for “restrict[ing] a huge amount of the humanitarian response” in which the “woefully inadequate food supplies have led to looting.” Israel is to blame because of “the collapse of law and order… and the policies of Israeli authorities.” Further, Israel placed aid workers at risk from “attackers” who steal the much needed assistance from “desperate Palestinians.”
Israel has long complained that aid trucks are being looted by Palestinian militant groups and not making it to civilians. When the charge became abundantly clear to the entire world, the Times reoriented the story that Israel remains at fault. Such is the anti-Israel animus in the media today.
It is alarming to watch mainstream media excuse rampant antisemitism as stemming from the Gaza war. It’s not about Gaza; it’s about a global jihad to purge Jews from Jerusalem.
New York Times article arguing that “Israel’s asymmetric response to Oct 7” has brought out the antisemites who are also making “many Muslims in Europe… feel threatened,” diverting the narrative that the prime attackers against Jews are radical Muslims.
Hamas labeled its war against Israel the “Al Aqsa Flood,” meaning the launch of millions of Muslims into Jerusalem. As Hamas stated in starting the war, “the battle of the beginning of the Liberation of Al-Quds [Jerusalem], our land, our people and our prisoners held in the jails of the Zionist occupation…. Today, the enemy has had a political, military, intelligence, security and moral defeat inflicted upon it, and we shall crown it, with the grace of God, with a crushing defeat that will expel it from our lands, our holy city of Al-Quds, our Al-Aqsa mosque, and the release of our prisoners from the jails of the Zionist occupation.”
They were clear. The genocidal jihadists are waging a war to eradicate the Jewish State and to reclaim Jerusalem, as though we were in the Middle Ages fighting Crusades.
The slightly less genocidal Palestinian Authority headed by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas has done his best to gather the Muslim world to join in the jihad. Its Wafa media site continues to claim that “fanatic Israeli settlers… broke into the compounds of al-Aqsa… and raided the holy Islamic Mosque” to inflame hatred against Jews around the world. [Note: the “storming” was regular Jews walking around the Jewish Temple Mount during regular visiting hours and never stepping foot into the al Aqsa mosque.]
Others have sought to recruit Christians to the jihad for Jerusalem, most infamously Jordanian King Abdullah II.
Abdullah spoke at the United Nations in September 2022. At 9:13 of the talk, the king took aim at Jews “Undermining Jerusalem’s legal and historical status quo triggers global tensions and deepens religious divides,” meaning Jews wanting to pray at Judaism’s holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount.
He continued: “As custodians of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites, we are committed to protecting the historical and legal status quo and to their safety and future. And as a Muslim leader, let me say clearly, that we are committed to defending the rights, the precious heritage, and the historic identity of the Christian people of our region. Nowhere is that more important than in Jerusalem.Today, Christianity in the holy city is fire. The rights of churches in Jerusalem are threatened. This cannot continue. Christianity is vital to the past and present of our region and the holy land. It must remain an integral part of our future.”
For clarity, neither Christianity nor Islam are under threat in Jerusalem. The Jewish State has allowed full access for the two global faiths in the Jewish State. Further, the Jordanian king has no rights or control of Christian sites but only Islamic ones with the permission of Israel. This was a naked and dangerous call for the Christian world to join the Islamic one to combat Jews in Jerusalem.
And the Muslim world is enormous. At roughly 1.9 billion people, it is almost twice the entire population of North, Central and South America combined.
When agitators storm campuses or graffiti synagogues, they write “Free Palestine” because they are part of the global jihad against Jews everywhere to destroy the Jewish State. When university professors from Columbia and Cornell express their “joy” about the mass murder of Israelis, they believe they are seeing the beginning of the “liberation of Palestine.” They are not considering the casualties that will come upon Gaza.
When anti-Israel groups made a mapping project of Jewish institutions in Massachusetts they were zoning in on Zionists. When CAIR called out Jewish groups like Hillel as “enemies,” it was months before the October 7 attack.
The “martyrs” in Gaza are marketing fodder to enlist people in the global jihad. Like an advertisement, the product being sold is not the ad but the item itself, in this case, the annihilation and expulsion of Jews.
The People of The Book know history. They read and analyze their own texts and consider what others write and say. They:
know Muslim Arab Antisemitism. They reviewed the various ADL surveys which showed Muslims are two to five times more antisemitic than Christians in European countries. They now watch Muslim mobs engaged in ‘Jew hunts‘ in those same places.
are seared by the October 7 Palestinian Massacre. EVERYONE in the small country knows someone who was killed, injured or abducted on that horrible day. They’ve watched the videos that Hamas took of themselves slaughtering women, babies and the elderly, and movies reviewing the rapes of Israelis by thousands of Gazans. They listened to the calls of Palestinians bragging to their parents how they killed Jews with their bare hands.
Hamas terrorist shooting civilians in their homes
know about the broad Palestinian support for the heinous crimes against humanity. They watched videos of dozens of Gazans hitting and spitting on a dead Israel woman being hauled into Gaza, who was later found beheaded. They’ve read the polls of overwhelming Palestinian support for the gruesome massacre.
Hamas hauls the body of woman into Gaza where crowds cheer as they beat and spit on her corpse
know Palestinian Arabs want to continue to kill as many Jews as possible. They watched leaders on news programs say they intend to repeat the mass atrocities “again and again.”
know the United Nations supports those Palestinian goals. They have read the global organization’s condemnations of terrorism everywhere else in the world and demands for justice, but never in Israel where it immediately called for “maximum restraint.“
know the need for Justice includes accounting for every Gazan who participated in the October 7 slaughter and for bringing hostages home. They know the only way to live in peace is to be alive, at home, with enemies unable to act upon their evil aims.
know the war in Gaza taking place, intimately. Israel has a citizen army and they or members of their family have either been fighting in Gaza or participating in the war effort. They are consumed with the news from Gaza because they not only get firsthand accounts, but attacks emanating from there have not stopped, and over 100 hostages remain in captivity.
Image released by the Israel Defense Forces on Oct 29, 2023 shows its ground operation in the Gaza Strip
know the anti-Israel media bias. They read how newspapers constantly refer to the Israeli government as “right-wing” yet never label Hamas a “designated terrorist group by the US and many other countries.” They read opinion pieces that refer to Hamas supporters as “decent Palestinians”, “many Muslims” and “human beings,” while vilifying Israelis as cold, heartless and clueless with “heads in the sand” and “lacking sensitivity.”
Article by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times stating that Israelis have their heads in the sand about Gaza, arguing that Palestinians are decent human beings with no agency
know the desire to protect certain people – other people – involves inverting actual cause-and-effect. They read absurd claims that Palestinians are “resorting” to violence and that Muslim gangs are “reacting” to the situation in Gaza, while they know basic facts that the SAPs launched their premeditated genocidal jihad.
know the International Criminal Court has wrongly accused them of a “genocide.” They are actively engaged in a defensive war they didn’t start, don’t want, and would end immediately if the hostages were released and the terrorists would surrender. They know the steps they take to minimize civilian casualties as they prosecute a war against an enemy intent on maximizing civilian casualties, with the lowest civilian-to-combatant ratio in urban warfare.
know they are a beleaguered minority-minority with centuries of ingrained scars at the hands of wide range of attackers. They have Holocaust survivors in their families and truncated branches of the family trees due to the Holocaust and various pogroms.
The People of The Book know history. They are writing new chapters about their attackers and abetters. The testaments will act as a guide for future generations and the testimonies will beg Gd to pass judgment on the wicked and save the Jewish people today.
First One Through 