Every Picture Tells a Story: Have Israel and the US Advanced Peace?

After 26 years of seeking a normal place in the Middle East, Israel struck two normalization agreements in a single day with the help of the United States. The Wall Street Journal broadcast the news while The New York Times hid it in the shadows.

Cover page of The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2020

Featured prominently on the WSJ cover page in a large color photo were leaders of three foreign countries surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump standing on the balcony of the White House. With smiles and waves, the four gentlemen conveyed the new warm feelings they had for each other, with the imprint of the presidential seal.

The caption was just as positive: “SEALED: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani and the United Arab Emirate’s Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan wave from the White House balcony after the signing ceremony Tuesday. The pact is seen as the foundation for a broader alignment against Iran in the region.” The top of the picture had a bold header “Israel, Two Gulf States Sign Peace Deal at White House”

A moment for celebration with each other and the whole world.

The New York Times had a very different view of the two pacts.

Cover of the New York Times, September 16, 2020

The Times also gave the story a large photo – but it was impossible to make out any of the individuals or even if the photo was in color, as it showed the backs of the four men in a dark room.

In contrast to the WSJ picture of people standing together, the Times showed a disjointed group. The Journal showed global leaders happily standing before the world while the Times made it appear that the four men were reluctantly engaged in a farce.

The caption of the NYT picture was a short single line: “President Trump hosted the Prime Minister of Israel and the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.” None of the foreign leaders had their names mentioned – perhaps not a surprise as their faces were not shown either. The caption did not even mention that Trump hosted these world leaders TO SIGN A NORMALIZATION AGREEMENT, the first Israel signed with an Arab country in 26 years!

The New York Times could not give the historic agreements – nor the leaders it despises in Trump and Netanyahu – the limelight. It belittled the milestone and the men.

But in reality, the pictures laid bare the disgraceful anti-Trump, anti-Israel and anti-peace bias of The New York Times.


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Every Picture Tells a Story: No Need for #MeToo for Palestinians

Every Picture Tells a Story: Fire

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The New York Times’ Buried Pictures

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Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?

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Naked Trades in the Middle East

The template for forging peace between Israelis and Arabs for the last many years was based on the notion of trading one item for another. The idea was for Israel to give land to Arabs and would get peace or normalization in return. The formula worked in the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and to a lesser extent in the 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan. During the period of the Oslo Accords, the same idea was advanced between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

After signing of the Oslo II Accords in September 1995, the Palestinian Authority received several towns and cities from Israel. This was the first time that local Palestinian Arabs got to rule themselves in their history. It was orchestrated as a test to see if the PA could build a functional government and establish controls to enable and enforce a peace agreement with Israel. The five year period ending September 2000 was designed to test the thesis and then hand considerable more territory to the PA.

The Oslo effort proved a complete failure.

The five year period between 1995 and 2000 was marked by intense violence and terrorism. It was capped when Yasser Arafat launched the Second Intifada in September 2000 when the negotiations did not yield 100% of his stated demands. Years of bloodshed began to slow to a trickle when Israel constructed a security barrier separating many of the towns in the “West Bank” from which the Palestinian terrorists emerged.

As the violence ebbed, Israel sought to implement a long-term solution, even without a peace partner. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon opted to unilaterally withdraw all Israeli troops and civilians from Gaza in 2005, with the assurances from U.S. President George Bush in 2004 that Israel’s borders would not follow the 1949 Armistice Lines and account for current realities. Israel took the action and asked for nothing from the Palestinians.

This first naked trade in the Arab-Israeli conflict was a failure. Within two years of withdrawing from Gaza, the terrorist group Hamas seized control and used the area as a launching pad for terrorism against Israel including three full wars in 2008, 2012 and 2014.

Israel pulled civilians from their homes in Gaza in 2005. It asked for nothing from the Palestinians in return.

It took many years for another one-way trade to take place.

In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and would relocated its embassy to the city. While the U.S. Congress had approved such measure in 1995, every president deferred such recognition and move, hoping to couple such actions with something for the Palestinians. However, in light of the acting-President of the PA’s refusal to engage with the U.S. administration, Trump moved forward with the one-party deal.

The politicians and pundits who worked the region for years derided the move. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the move was “ill-advised” and former Secretary of State John Kerry said that Trump wouldn’t survive a year in office. Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights said that the move would fuel the “narrative of extremists who want to paint the Western world in terms of a religious war.

Those predictions proved incorrect. There was no outbreak of violence throughout the Muslim world in reaction to the announcement or the relocation of the embassy. The naked trade rectified a historic wrong and did not lead to mayhem. It led to additional positive actions like Guatemala, Serbia and Kosovo recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The success of the 2017 Trump action has enabled the quick adoption of additional one-way trades: the 2020 normalization of relationships of both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with the Jewish State, to be signed in Washington, D.C. on September 15.

Palestinians were apoplectic that fellow Arab countries would recognize Israel before a peace agreement with the PA was signed. While the Palestinians were angered by the Israeli peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, each Arab country at least got tangible benefits from their respective agreements. Such treaties were therefore viewed as not only understandable, but clever. Egypt and Jordan essentially gave away nothing – just a “hudna,” a ceasefire which could be over-turned at any time – while they obtained real immediate benefits. Palestinians were therefore able to convince themselves that they were still a priority for the broader Arab nation.

But these naked trades by the UAE and Bahrain have laid that lie bare. The two gulf emirates are receiving nothing in the near-term but the prospects of gaining access to Israeli and American technology and military capabilities. The trade was for a long-term situational benefit, much like Israel had assumed leaving Gaza in 2005 would yield.

It would appear that we have entered a new stage of diplomacy in the Middle East which is not based on near-term raw cost-benefit analyses but rather on long-term situational positioning. Goodbye land-for-peace. Hello aspirations for the future.

Let’s all hope that this evolution to naked trades will produce an enduring peace for the region.


Related First One Through articles:

Enduring Peace versus Peace Now

The Peace Proposal Monologues

The Arab Spring Blooms in the UAE

Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

Schrodinger’s Cat and Oslo’s Egg

Republicans Do Not Believe There is Any “Occupation”

Netanyahu Props Up Failed Arab Leaders

The Shrapnel of Intent

Nikki Haley Channels Robert Aumann at the UN Security Council

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians”

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Bad Education: Al Jazeera

People have advanced the notion that ignorance is the root cause of global hatred, racism and antisemitism. The unfortunate reality is that much of it is because of bad education.

Consider the Qatari-run news site Al Jazeera. It does not simply support an anti-Israel point of view in its stories nor simply supply a collection of alternative facts; it delivers its readership complete fabrications.

Palestinian Territories and the 1967 “Border”

Consider the “in depth” work about “The Naksa,” the terms some Arabs use to describe the 1967 Six Day War. The article led with:

“More than 50 years ago, the state of Israel shocked the world when it seized the remaining Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip,”

A map of the area included a caption which read “In the 1967 War, Israel took control of the shaded areas of the Egyptian Sinai, Syrian Golan Heights, and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

This is a work of complete fiction. Between 1948 and 1967 THERE WERE NO “PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES.” The “West Bank” and East Jerusalem were annexed and folded into Jordan. By the 1967 War, the United Nations had even stopped referring to the area as distinct from Jordan on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. Further, the Gaza Strip was run by Egypt.

Al Jazeera continues versions of this lie to this day when it refers to Palestine’s 1967 borders, even though “Palestine” had no lands whatsoever, and the Israeli “borders” were specifically declared to not be viewed as such in the 1949 Armistice Agreements that Israel had with Egypt and with Jordan. The reality is that Palestinians only got land to administer for the first time when Israel handed the Palestinian Authority land in 1995 as part of the Oslo Accords.

Inverted Claim of Ethnic Cleansing

Al Jazeera’s piece continued with accusations that were not just lies but the inversion of the reality of what Arabs did to Jews, using the notion that the best defense is a good offense.

in 1948, the state of Israel came into being in a violent process that entailed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Zionist forces, in their mission to create a “Jewish state”, expelled some 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland and destroyed their villages in the process.”

The reality is that it was the Jordanians who ethnically cleansed the Jews from the region – and continue to try to do so to this day.

When the British separated the eastern bank of the Jordan River as they were allowed to do under Article 25 of the Palestine Mandate, they failed to uphold the condition of Article 15 which stated that “no person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.” But the Jordanians did just that, invading Israel in 1948, expelling every Jew in Jordan’s illegally seized lands including the Old City of Jerusalem, and then enacted the antisemitic citizenship law of 1954 which specifically excluded Jews (Article 3).

For its part, the State of Israel specifically welcomed all non-Jews to become “full and equal” citizens when it declared statehood in May 1948. That the Arabs left the fighting scene while they waited for their “saviors” from five invading Arab armies to wipe the Jews into the sea can hardly be called an “expulsion” the way Al Jazeera pretends.

The Reasons Behind the 1967 War

Al Jazeera may have felt a bit soft on the Arab belligerence leading up to the 1967 War as it offered that “the motives behind the war are a point of contention among various historians and analysts,” but then wrote this preposterous rationale:

“Some believed that Israel had “unfinished business” for failing to seize the whole of historic Palestine in the 1948 war. On the eve of the 1967 attack, Israeli minister Yigal Allon wrote: “In … a new war, we must avoid the historic mistake of the War of Independence [1948] … and must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel”.”

Absent from the AJ background were the statements of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser who said on a number of occasions in May 1967:

  • “We are not only confronting Israel but also those who created Israel and who are behind Israel. We are confronting Israel and the West as well”
  • “Preparations have already been made. We are now ready to confront Israel.”
  • Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight . . . The mining of Sharm el Sheikh is a confrontation with Israel. Adopting this measure obligates us to be ready to embark on a general war with Israel.”
  • We will not accept any … coexistence with Israel. … Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel …. The war with Israel is in effect since 1948.”
  • “The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel . . . . to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not declarations.”

None of these calls for war were mentioned by Al Jazeera nor the statements from Cairo radio which included:

  • “This is our chance Arabs, to deal Israel a mortal blow of annihilation, to blot out its entire presence in our holy land” ; and
  • “The Arab people is firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map”

Instead, AJ continued to invert historical fact by making Israel the attacker.

Al Jazeera was blocked by the UAE and Saudi Arabia in 2017. Maybe they were on to something.

The bad education continues throughout the article in outright lies and complete omissions, such as the Arab world’s infamous “Three No’s” it issued in September 1967 that there would be “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it,” opting instead to make Israel appear as the aggressor acting unilaterally.

Blind hatred including racism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism do not arise from ignorance; it comes from bad education such as that transmitted by Qatar’s Al Jazeera. And this venom is now found in U.S. homes thanks to former Vice President Al Gore selling his Current TV to Al Jazeera in 2013 for millions of dollars.


Related First One Through articles:

Al Jazeera’s Lies Call for Jihad Against the Jewish State

An Easy Boycott: Al Jazeera (Qatar)

The Jordan Valley in 1930 and 2020

Al Jazeera (Qatar) Evicts Jews and Judaism from Jerusalem. Time to Return the Favor

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ

Antisemitism Includes the Denial of Jewish History

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

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September in New York City: 1981, 2001 and 2021?

I was enrolled in a private high school on the upper east side of Manhattan in 1981. The school had just moved to a new building and I was getting my bearings of the new neighborhood as school started. I went around the corner on Madison Avenue to Gristedes to pick up some food and found myself standing behind Art Garfunkel in line. Just a few days, later he and Paul Simon would stand before hundreds of thousands of people congregated together in their remarkable concert in Central Park.

Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon, September 1981

Twenty years later, I was living on the upper west side of Manhattan and heading to my office across the street from the World Trade Center. I did my civic duty by stopping by the local school to vote in the Democratic primaries that sunny Tuesday morning which put me a bit behind my regular routine. As I entered the 72nd street Broadway subway station, someone said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I decided to get on the local train and work out of my firm’s midtown office, as I assumed that downtown would be a bit crazy. I had no idea that the day would end with almost 3,000 people murdered in a series of terrorist attacks.

Now, on the nineteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I wonder what New York City will look like next September.

A global pandemic has forced my daughter to move out of her apartment in NYC and move home to Westchester, while a son opted to move into the city to video conference into his college classes down the street. The closure of businesses for many months forced many stores to close permanently, while those which were able to reopen could only accommodate a limited number of people, leaving many people standing in lines outside. They stood alongside homeless people who were moved into neighborhood hotels to lower the concentration of people in shelters, as well as the growing number of people standing in line for food assistance. A series of riots after the killing by police of a Black man further strained the social fabric of the city.

In 1981, two wealthy White Jewish males gave a free concert to millions of people who sat and sang together in close harmony to the joy of the city’s Jewish mayor. Twenty years later, radical Islamic terrorists attacked America’s financial and military centers, killing thousands and causing billions of dollars of damage. And now, just a year away from the score anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, many New Yorkers (particularly the wealthy) are fleeing the city headed by a progressive mayor blind to anti-Semitism. New Yorkers are unable to sit together, let alone in harmony, but have collaborated to rid the city of its White Jewish congressional representatives as they elect radical progressives.

The trendlines of September in New York do not inspire hope, unless you’re a Progressive looking to break a society which you never much cared for.


Related First One Through articles:

Mayor De Blasio is Blind to Black Anti-Semitism

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

Socialists Employ Arabs’ Four Step Battle Plan

Leading Gay Activists Hate Religious Children

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Voting the Time Warp: Palestinians 1967 and Democrats 1988

Many people have their taste in music locked in by their mid-20’s. They typically find it hard to add new artists to their song lists and revert to their old favorites each day.

Similarly, people see their spouses and old friends through old lenses. They don’t really age in their minds who remain as youthful and energetic as their memories allow, not as they truly exist today.

We see this dynamic playing out in politics today as well.

The Palestinian Arabs call for a new state to be established on lands ruled by Jordan and Egypt way back in 1967. The fact that over fifty years have passed since those illegal occupiers were routed by Israel does not seem to faze the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Many Palestinian Arabs are even more ambitious with seemingly older memories when they chant “we don’t want two states; we want ’48,” in a call to recreate a reality from 1948 before the Jewish State was reborn.

American voters are doing it as well. They have deluded themselves into believing they are voting for Joe Biden as he was in 1988 and not the man as he exists today in 2020. They ignore his clearly compromised facilities and pretend he is up to the task of running the country.

I do not fault people for seeing the world as they want it to be or as they really visualize it. But it is madness to pretend that others share their time-warped perceptions. It is delusional, off-putting and not constructive.

When a fellow American says they cannot vote for a 2020-Joe Biden or an Israeli says that he is not going back in time to set borders from 1948 or 1967, it doesn’t mean that they do not share some common desires like peace in the Middle East or a president that is not Donald Trump. It means that they see the world as it truly exists today and will act accordingly.

Looking at the world through vintage glasses is wonderful when engaging with close friends and family members but is dangerous when negotiating or entering the voting booth. Democrats are doing both when they dismiss the Trump peace plan which considers reality in Israel and its territories, and when they delude themselves into talking about 2020-Joe Biden as if he’s still 1988-Joe Biden.


Related First One Through articles:

Eyes Wide Shut

Schrodinger’s Cat and Oslo’s Egg

When Power Talks the Truth

Trump’s “eastern Jerusalem” and Biden’s “East Jerusalem”

The Peace Proposal Monologues

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For the Sins of 5780…

… for supporting the antisemitic and racist Black Lives Matter group

… for apologizing to Blacks when Blacks kill Jews

… for pretending that only White people are anti-Semites and that there hasn’t been a spike in Blacks murdering Jews

… for defending rioters attempting to destroy America’s founding principles

… for enabling the Progressive war on Israel

… for believing the news from CNN and The New York Times

… for pretending that the problem is all in social media and not the mainstream media

… for voting for Socialists

… for contributing to alma maters which promote antisemitism

… for donating to J Street

… for using J Street’s tagline “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” when it is nothing of the sort

… for giving cover to politicians who slam Jews

… for inviting anti-Israel speakers into our synagogues

… for being silent when liberal politicians sought to funnel money into Gaza

… for considering qualifying or reducing investments in Israel

… for not clearly identifying Hamas as an antisemitic terrorist organization

… for not holding Palestinian Arabs accountable for their actions and statements

… for not advocating for Jewish prayer on the Jewish Temple Mount

… for still referring to a place called “East Jerusalem” which only existed for less than two decades in the 1950’s and 1960’s

… for the cultural appropriation of the term “promised land” and not ascribing it to Jews and Israel

… for saying Donald Trump has done nothing positive for Israel

… for dismissing antisemitism while being particularly sensitive to racism

… for demanding nothing from Jewish leadership

… for fighting against funding police for Jewish institutions

… for pretending that something that makes you feel spiritual is Tikkun Olam and the essence of Judaism

… for not articulating clearly the difference and inter-relationships between Jews, Judaism and Israel

… for not advocating for the dismantling of UNRWA

… for being silent as European countries banned kosher meat

… for not taking COVID-19 seriously

For all these things, please pardon us.


Related First One Through article:

For the Sins of 5777 of…

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David Duke, Ilhan Omar and the Three Lenses of Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism comes in a variety of colors and creeds. The most commonly called out in the media is alt-right White supremacists. The mascot for these Jew-haters is David Duke, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan who was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992. His antisemitism combines race, religion and politics as White, Christian and Conservative into a singular orientation of “White supremacy.”

Antisemitism is found in the other extreme but often viewed in three distinct lenses: Black, Muslim and Leftist. Many notable anti-Semites easily check off one or two of the boxes such as Louis Farrakhan (Black and Muslim), Linda Sarsour (Muslim and Leftist) and Roger Waters (Leftist). These anti-Semites often defy the neat caricature of David Duke on the right but the trifecta can best be painted as Ilhan Omar, a Black Muslim Somali-American who is serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota.

The asymmetry of the amalgam on one side (White+Christian+Right) and the dissected anti-Semites on the other (Black/Muslim/Left) creates a number of issues in confronting baseless hatred of groups.

  • Group Hate. There is an easy understanding that not all Blacks or Muslims or Progressives hate Jews. People are evaluated on the basis of their statements and actions, not by the inherent traits of their persons. However, the same cannot be said of the amalgam painted on the right in which many people view White Christian Conservatives as White supremacist racists and anti-Semites unless proven otherwise. The portrayal of the alt-right is that of the establishment patriarchy, of smug White men of privilege who harbor hate. Many people jump to a conclusion that a White Republican is a racist – or as Hillary Clinton said, “a deplorable” – by default. They therefore quickly harbor their own hate for such persons.
  • Undeserved Absolution. The converse is that the Black anti-Semites as well as Muslims, Leftists and women are given a pass as they are considered the persecuted minorities. People seek to either ignore or excuse their Jew-hatred (Blacks kill Jews because of gentrification; Muslims hate Jews because they control Muslim holy land). But ugly racism and antisemitism are noxious from any source and the shields assembled by progressive defenders are undeserved.
  • Smug Self-Righteousness. Knee-jerk reactions to hating White Christians as racists and absolving Blacks, Muslims and Leftists goes beyond stupidity. It actively places a person in the very same camp of racists and anti-Semites that they seek to distance themselves from, by participating in group hatred OF Conservatives and encouraging group hate FROM Progressives. Wrapping the bile in smug self-righteousness only makes these haters more blind and unable to change.

The liberal media fosters these flawed appraoches.

Recently, The New Yorker covered the book “White Too Long,” with an opening:

“In a 2019 nationwide survey, eighty-six per cent of white evangelical Protestants and seventy per cent of both white mainline Protestants and white Catholics said that the “Confederate flag is more a symbol of Southern pride than of racism”; nearly two-thirds of white Christians over all said that killings of African-American men by the police are isolated incidents rather than part of a broader pattern of mistreatment; and more than six in ten white Christians disagreed with the statement that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.”

For the magazine and book, the poll analyzed White Christians. It coupled race with religion and concluded that not reaching the morally appropriate conclusions of the author about the state of upward mobility for Blacks and agreeing that there is systemic racism in police departments marked this group as overwhelmingly racist.

Yet the magazine and most liberal media wrote NOTHING about the ADL polls of 2014 and 2015 that showed that Muslim countries are almost completely antisemitic and that in non-Muslim countries, Muslims are three to five times more likely to be anti-Semites than Christians. The ADL polls questions were also not so vague as those posited in “White Too Long”: the respondents said that Jews have too much power and too much money and only care about their own. These were direct and clear sentiments of Jew-hatred by Muslims, not inferred racism as was done for White Christians. If anything, the media did the very opposite of giving weight to the study, as New York magazine doubted the entirety of the study in an article called “The ADL’s Flawed Anti-Semitism Survey.”

But bashing White Christians in the media is noble. The author of “White Too Long” was featured in NBCNews, The Atlantic, NPR and The Washington Post. CNN covered the book and led that these White Christian racists are all supporters of President Donald Trump. With the amalgam of Whites+Christians+Rightists as racists complete, it is easy to add antisemitism to the mix.

Society has reached a particularly bizarre point where a person’s inherent traits are the marks of being a racist and anti-Semite as well as being incapable of being a racist and anti-Semite.

  • Whites are inherently racist, or at a minimum benefit from a system of racism, while Blacks cannot be racists as they have no power
  • Christians are not taught love but hate, while Muslims have a different set of values which we simply don’t understand
  • Conservatives’ focus on capitalism is cold and ripe for exploitation, while progressives’ orientation towards empathy precludes baseless hatred

Intersectionality has made all Whites and Christians and Conservatives evil both individually and collectively, while it has simultaneously granted perfect absolution to Blacks, Muslims and Progressives.

This modern formulation is pure nonsense but is becoming the lifeblood of the Democratic Party. It has made them blind to the mainstreaming of anti-Semites in their midst while making it impossible to work in a bi-partisan manner on a wide range of issues.

All people must consider others based on their actions and comments, not their race, religion, gender or political party. As such, people should despise Ilhan Omar as much as they hate David Duke because Jew-hatred is not the sole dominion of a single type.

David Duke’s March 2019 Twitter feed on admiration for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Term “Z.O.G.” means “Zionist Occupation Government”


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Organized and Disorganized Antisemitism

Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing Antisemitism

New York Times Recharacterizes Hamas as a Right-Wing Terrorist Group

A Deplorable Definition

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

Criticizing Muslim Antisemitism is Not Islamophobia

The Heartwarming Story of My Guilty Demise

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

As Ilhan Omar Clearly Demonstrates, Not Every “First” is Jackie Robinson

Antisemitism Includes the Denial of Jewish History

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CNN and Democratic Politicians Recraft and Redraft MLK’S Mountaintop Speech

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) went on CNN and told Anderson Cooper that Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as the Vice Presidential running mate was the attainment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of reaching the mountaintop.

“There was much reflection, but a lot of tears and a lot of reflection on the history of what we’re making today. What I would say is that so many women have tried to climb that mountaintop that Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of.”

There are a number of problems with this quote by the Black Congresswoman.

First, MLK used the mountaintop as a metaphor for himself in seeing the Promised Land (freedom) but NOT being able to reach it, much like Moses climbed to the top of the mountain but could not cross over to the Jewish Promised Land. The Congresswoman thought that reaching the mountaintop was the pinnacle of success, when MLK actually used it to describe it as coming up short of one’s goals.

Second, to use this particular quote on CNN is horrific. CNN edited MLK’s Mountaintop speech in a particularly noxious antisemitic fashion to cut Jews out of the story in a seemingly poor attempt to disassociate “God’s children” as MLK called the Jews, with the land of Israel.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on CNN with Anderson Cooper Aug 11, 2020

Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C. also contributed nonsense to the CNN segment stating “We have had White women on the ticket. We have never had an African American woman.” The issue is that Harris is not African American but of southeast Asian descent. CNN did not fact-check the statement nor print any clarification when it reprinted the story. It’s not a surprise as the media outlet which claims that “CNN holds elected officials and candidates accountable by pointing out what’s true and what’s not,” only does so for Republicans and the conservative media.

How far will CNN go to modify facts and history to fit its liberal narrative? #AlternativeFactChecks


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For CNN, The Critical Israeli Facts Have No Murdered Jews

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CNN’s Politicization of Antisemitic Murder

CNN Will Not Report Islamic Terrorism

CNN’s Embrace of Hamas

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New York Times Recharacterizes Hamas as a Right-Wing Terrorist Group

For years, The New York Times has refused to label Hamas as a designated foreign terrorist organization and instead has opted to call it an “Islamist militant group.” That changed on September 5, 2020 but not for a good reason.

The Times went so far to label the group in its headline, “The Justice Department Charges Two With Trying to Support Terrorist Group Hamas.” It seemed a moment to celebrate the Times finally calling out this horrible antisemitic group. However, the two pictures of White men under the title gave immediate pause.

September 5, 2020 NY Times article

The article said that the “Justice Department on Friday charged two American citizens with ties to a far-right extremist group with trying to support the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas – a case that shows that extremists have sought to turn protests against racism into opportunities to commit violence, but that also runs counter to President Trump’s assertions that those extremists are predominantly from the far left.” It would continue to call a Hamas a terrorist group two more times before continuing that “the Justice Department has predominantly charged members of Boogaloo with crimes, contradicting claims by Mr. Barr and Mr. Trump that far-left extremists are responsible for the violence and crimes that have occurred at protests.

After a decade of not referring to Hamas as a terrorist group in hundreds of articles which mentioned it, the Times did so FOUR TIMES in a single article as it linked it to a far-right extremist movement. Yet Hamas is not a right-wing movement but an Islamic one, championed by progressives supporting Palestinian Arabs including former Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

The Times is actively moving past its history of ignoring Palestinian Muslim antisemitism and terrorism to actively recharacterizing it as an evil of the right. I wonder whether these efforts will win the praise or scorn of Muslim anti-Zionist Democratic members of Congress like Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).


Related First.One.Through articles:

The New York Times Refuses to Label Hamas a Terrorist Group

The New York Times wants the military to defeat terrorists (but not Hamas)

Strange difference of opinion on Boko Haram and Hamas in New York Times

For The New York Times, “From the River to the Sea” Is The Chant of Jewish and Christian Zealots

The Many Lies of Jimmy Carter

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The Arab Spring Blooms in the UAE

The Arab Spring began in December 2010 with a cry for help from a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire. The self-immolation quickly spread as widespread protests in other Muslim Arab countries where people sought to overturn backwards authoritarian regimes which were not accountable to its citizens. The masses were seemingly tired of the kleptocracy of the ruling class, the lack of investment in education and technology to enable a 21st century economy, as well as arbitrary rules and restrictions in daily lives. The western world assumed the multi-country protests would also lead to modifications to the entrenched religious laws prohibiting basic human rights like converting from Islam and women’s emancipation, and to the elimination of executions for “crimes” like homosexuality and adultery.

The dream faded for both the local Arabs and the West.

The West watched as Egypt threw out its autocratic regime to replace it with a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood. Much like the Palestinian Arabs who voted the terrorist group Hamas to a majority of its parliament, it seemed that the Arab masses simply craved a different type of authoritarian regime. In short order, the brotherhood was tossed out by an Egyptian military takeover. Three regimes in Egypt in two short years.

The leader in Yemen departed only to have a civil war emerge with Iranian-backed Houthis on one side and Saudi Arabian-backed rebels on the other. There was no celebrating the change in government as death knocked on every door.

The local Arabs in Syria fought their own civil war. The Syrian leader was not able to quash the rebellion with a mere 20,000 dead as his father was able to do in Hama in 1982, and has slaughtered 30 times the number (and counting) with the help of Russia and Iran. Syrians now long for the old status quo when at least they had their lives and homes with the same maniac in charge.

But in August 2020, one small country was able to rise above old hatreds and backwards thinking. The United Arab Emirates announced publicly that it would recognize and normalize relations with Israel. While arguably a non-event for two countries which had never fought a war to establish political and commercial dealings, the break from the regional antisemitic thinking was shocking, meaningful and completely refreshing.

Over the last few years the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia decided to allow women to drive, Lebanon became more accepting of homosexuality and now the UAE has reached out to the Jewish State. While it may take many years for the Arab Spring to revolutionize the ruling class, at least some countries are moving past historic antisemitic, homophobic and misogynistic patriarchal sentiments. Hopefully more will follow.

The Tel Aviv municipality building lights up with the UAE flag on August 13, 2020, after the announcement of the Israel-UAE normalization deal brokered by the US. (Tel Aviv municipality/Twitter)


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