The Israeli-Arab conflict has long been viewed as an intractable problem. The gap between what one side is willing to accept and another willing to give is both wide and deep. Even with such reality, governments around the world verbally encourage direct communication between the parties and state their support of an outcome which both Israelis and Palestinians would endorse.
But those parties then do everything to undermine that very concept.
The United Nations and many Arab countries stated that the basis for a peace agreement was two states along the 1949 Armistice Lines with “East Jerusalem” as the capital, echoing the stated position of one side, the Palestinians. The UN and Arab countries pushed laws that made it illegal for Israeli Jews to live in those lands and promoted a boycott movement of any business that operated east of the Green Line. These were not activities designed to promote Palestinian-Israeli dialogue but to hand the Palestinians everything they sought WITHOUT dialogue.
Further, the Palestinian Authority and Israel had signed agreements specifically stating that Israel controlled most of the “West Bank,” an area known as “Area C” in the Oslo Accords. So not only did the global community hinder dialogue between the parties, it ignored and undermined the agreements already signed by them!
The United States under President Donald Trump moved to reorient the two parties and the global community back to the basic principles of having two parties desirous of peace sit and negotiate treaties which would THEN be accepted by the entire world.
Rather than parrot the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 which gave the Palestinians everything they desired, Trump put forward a plan which Israelis desired. Finally there were two plans made public by third parties which could serve as the starting points for negotiation.
More directly, Trump advanced the Taylor Force Act which precluded handing the Palestinian Authority U.S. money while the PA financed terrorism. Trump also endorsed the Oslo Accords which stated that Area C is Israeli Territory. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited some of those Israeli Territories this week and stated clearly that any product made in those areas should carry the label “Made in Israel,” much the way products made in Puerto Rico and American Samoa are labeled “Made in U.S.A.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at Israeli winery of Psagot stated on Twitter: “Enjoyed lunch at the scenic Psagot Winery today. Unfortunately, Psagot and other businesses have been targeted by pernicious EU labeling efforts that facilitate the boycott of Israeli companies. The U.S. stands with Israel and will not tolerate any form of delegitimization.”
For too long the world gave Palestinians a pass for terrorism and the impression that they will get everything they desire now without negotiating and signing agreements with Israel. The Trump Administration has taken several important actions to refocus the parties towards a roadmap for an enduring peace.
The year of ‘protests’ has many themes and at least as many defenders.
The New York Times wrote about the Black Lives Matter protests in September 2020 that “Some Protests Against Police Brutality Take a More Confrontational Approach.” The Times did not say that they were violent, just that the protest were more assertive, “moving into white neighborhoods where activists demand that people choose a side.” It seems that the paper believes that a protest is simply ‘more confrontational’ when it directly challenges any-and-all to pick a side.
The Times used the same language in a piece on November 18, 2020 about Palestinians dealing with Israel. In describing Hamas, the article wrote that Hamas is a “militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, and which favors a moreconfrontational approach toward Israel in the West Bank.“
Calling Hamas a “militant group” instead of a designated terrorist group is an established priority for this left-wing paper. Using the new choice phrase of a “more confrontational approach” seems to reorient the reader that Hamas is an activist group moving beyond its base in Gaza into the West Bank. It’s a red herring to mislead readers about Hamas’ desire to destroy Israel.
The Times also used its platform to obfuscate U.S. laws such as the Taylor Force Act which was passed to pressure the Palestinian Authority to stop paying people to kill Israelis. The paper wrote about Democrats trying to get Palestinians to make changes including “reforming the way that Palestinians who serve time in Israeli prisons, including for violent acts, are financially compensated, an arrangement that critics call ‘pay-to-slay.’” That’s quite a bit of verbosity to get around stating that U.S. law prohibits rewarding violence, a gross human rights violation. Instead, the Times portrayed the objection as stemming from “critics,” likely those who oppose ‘protests.’
The New York Times itself is actively participating in a “more confrontational approach” to causes it opposes, a list which grows by the day, as enumerated by its alt-left readership.
Israel has a long history battling armies and terrorists since the Jewish State declared its independence in 1948. Since September 2000, a total of 1,383 people have been killed by terrorists and many times that number have been wounded.
Yasser Arafat launched the Second Intifada in September 2000 after he was disappointed with only getting 98% of his stated desires from the peace process with Israel. Terrorist attacks became daily occurrences and the death toll and carnage was horrific. In just the last few months of 2000, some 43 people were killed in Palestinian attacks. The toll increased in the following years with 208, 464, 210 and 143 murdered during the years 2001 through 2004, respectively. The reduced number of deaths in the latter years was a direct result of Israel constructing a security barrier to stem the flow of Palestinian killers from areas which Israel had handed to Palestinian Authority rule between 1995 and 2000. The barrier proved critical in saving Israeli lives in the following years.
Palestinian terrorists kill 15 civilians including 7 children and a pregnant woman at a Sbarro pizza store in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001
From 2005 through 2008, a total of 134 people were killed in terrorist attacks, a four year total which was less than 2004 alone. The numbers would continue to improve during the two Obama terms, with 55 fatalities in the 2009 to 2013 period, but escalating to 79 deaths in the second term, with a spike from the stabbing and car ramming intifadas after the peace process under U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry completely failed.
The last four years have been the safest ever.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s strong support for Israel translated into the lowest Israeli death toll from Palestinian terrorism (47 murdered), despite the various dire warnings of the region going up in flames because of the U.S.’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the move of its embassy to the city and various other pro-Israel initiatives. Year-to-date, two people have been killed by Palestinian terrorists, the lowest one year total ever. The two-year and three-year totals (14 and 28, 2019-2020 and 2018-2020, respectively) are also records for the fewest Israeli deaths from terrorism.
Four-Year Period
Fatalities from Terrorism
2001-2004
1,025 (Second Intifada)
2005-2008
134 (Security Wall built)
2009-2012
55 (Palestinians hopeful in Obama’s squeeze of Israel)
2013-2016
79 (Failure of Obama peace initiative; Stabbing Intifada)
2017-2020
47 (Trump Administration’s pro-Israel agenda)
Trump administration yields most peaceful period for Israel in decades
President Trump helped make Israel strong which helped make Israel safe. It is a formula worthy of repeating.
Jews are becoming victims again, this time of progressives who see the ashes of Jews as merely fuel for woke causes.
Consider the United Nations Secretary General who was awarded the Theodor Herzl Prize on November 9, 2020 on the anniversary of the pogroms by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) in Germany and Austria in 1938, a night known as ‘Kristallnacht.’ Antonio Guterres said the following at the event:
“This ceremony coincides with the anniversary of Kristallnacht. In remembering that night when so much was broken – synagogues, shops, faith itself – I want to sound a note of hope for repair. It is within our power to emerge from the pandemic with stronger communities, and more cohesive societies, by addressing the inequalities and injustices that have been exposed so starkly.”
Guterres strung together a thought process that started with the killing of Jews and destruction of their property… to today’s pandemic, a virus which attacks everyone… to “inequalities and injustices,” a phrase used by progressives – particularly in the United States – about the need to address income and wealth disparities and the killings of Blacks by police. Guterres did not mention the British White Paper which was initiated on the very same day as Kristallnacht which limited the entry of Jews into Palestine at the request of Palestinian Arabs, directly contrary to the League of Nations (pre-cursor to the UN which he heads) mandate given to the British to facilitate the entry of Jews. That paper enabled the killing of tens of thousands of Jews. Guterres similarly did not mention the many wars Israel has waged for its survival WHILE HE WAS RECEIVING THE THEORDOR HERZL AWARD, named for the founder of modern Zionism. Yet somehow, the head of the UN connected the Holocaust to the current plight of Black Americans.
Guterres wasn’t alone at using the slaughter of Jews as a progressive prop.
CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour decided to talk about Kristallnacht not as an assault on Jews, but on “truth,” one she said President-elect Joe Biden would seek to rectify after President Donald Trump’s four years of lies:
“This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened. It was the Nazis warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to a genocide against a whole identity and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on facts, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team promises a return to norms.”
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour comparing the actions of Donald Trump to the Kristallnacht
Amanpour’s rendition of the Holocaust was sanitized of Jewish victims. She decided to cast the most pro-Jewish State president in history, the one who created the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, and with a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren as a modern incarnation of Adolf Hitler.
Amanpour has a history of bashing Jews. On January 17, 2019, she claimed that U.S. Congress are slaves to the puppet-masters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. She essentially complimented Rep. Ilhan Omar for calling out the noxious situation.
This is the post-factual media and political world we live in.
Modern-day, post-factual Austria pretends that it was a victim of Nazi Germany and not a willing abettor to crimes against humanity. The slaughter of Jews is recast as a loss to Austria of the cultural and scientific contributions that Jews could have made. We are similarly watching the modern-day, post-factual progressive movement attempt to characterize all anti-Semitism as alt-right (no such thing as Muslim or Black anti-Semitism) and to ignore Jew-hatred in its entirety in a head-long embrace of Victims of Preference, which cannot be Jews as long as Israel exists.
The current head of the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres, is a decent man and vast improvement from prior leaders like Ban Ki Moon who all but encouraged Palestinian violence against Israelis. But within that complement is the painful recognition that the United Nations blinds all.
On November 9, 2020, in commemoration of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the pogrom against the Jews of Germany and Austria which ushered in the Holocaust, the World Jewish Congress bestowed the Theodor Herzl award to Guterres. Upon receiving the award, the Secretary-General delivered a speech about the horrors of the Holocaust and centuries of anti-Semitism including in his home country of Portugal, which had evicted all of its Jews in the Middle Ages. He touched upon the coronavirus which has unleashed new forms of blood libels against the Jews as well as the rise of Neo-Nazis. He implored the following:
We must stand together against hatred in all its forms. Our world today needs a return to reason – and a rejection of the lies and loathing that propelled the Nazis and that fracture societies today.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres
Yet the organization he leads fails to reject “lies and loathing.” It is a giant megaphone for the most vile lies and propaganda which are given legitimacy by its brand. This institution created to foster world peace has morphed into a caldron of hate and vehicle to violence.
The UN acknowledges and repeats the mantra but ignores the premise when it comes to the Palestinians.
In the same speech, Gutteres added that “it remains my fervent hope that next year, a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians can start again towards the goal of two States, living side by side in harmony and peace.” It is a fantasy sparked by a desire to see the Stateless Arabs have self-determination but ignores the systemic anti-Semitism in Palestinian society.
Palestinians are the most anti-Semitic people according to ADL polls
They voted the terrorist group Hamas to a 58% majority of parliament, with the most anti-Semitic foundational charter ever written (a combination of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion with vast conspiracy theories)
The PA leadership denies the history of Jews in the holy land
The PA falsely claims that Israel is ethnically cleansing Arabs from Jerusalem even though their growth rate surpasses Jews in Jerusalem and Arabs in other capital cities in the region
The PA falsely claims that Israel is limiting Arab access to the al Aqsa Mosque when in fact it ONLY JEWS with limited access and rights to pray
The Palestinian Authority names schools, public squares and tournaments after terrorists who kill Israeli civilians
PA President Mahmoud Abbas delivering speech to the United Nations in 2011
The United Nations is forever mum on these matters. It is blind to the manic anti-Semitism prevalent in Palestinian society which wishes to either kill or expel every Jew from land it views as pure Muslim holy land. The UN won’t even teach about the Holocaust in its own UNRWA schools in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinian attitudes towards Jews is the modern fusion of the expulsions of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century together with the Nazi Holocaust in the 20th century. The modern Inquisition is being led by Muslim nations at the United Nations with the support of far-left progressives who consider the Jewish State a colonial enterprise, an original sin which can only be exculpated with conversion or destruction.
The obstacle to peace is not Jewish homes, it is Palestinian Arab “lies and loathing” which is given support at the United Nations. Until that fact is acknowledged and addressed there is no chance for peace.
Saeb Erekat died on November 10, 2020 in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem from COVID-19. He had suffered from a series of health ailments before the onset of the coronavirus including a heart attack in 2012 and a lung transplant in 2017. When he was admitted to the Hadassah Medical Center on October 19, he was already in critical condition.
Saeb Erekat was born in Abu Dis in 1955 while it was under Jordanian control. Jordan had expelled all Jews from the region in a war it initiated to destroy Israel in 1948, and later annexed that territory in 1950. All Arabs living in that land were granted Jordanian citizenship in 1954. While the Jordanian annexation of the “West Bank” was not recognized by most of the world, Arabs born in the region were acknowledged to be Jordanian.
Erekat spent much of his young life in Jericho which switched to Israeli-control after Jordan attacked Israel (again) in June 1967 and lost the area it had illegally annexed. As Israel only offered Arab residents of Jerusalem Israeli citizenship after it reunified the city in 1980, Erekat remained a Jordanian.
He moved to the United States for school, obtaining a BA and MA in international relations from San Francisco State University (SFSU). He managed to get US citizenship too.
When he returned to the Middle East he settled in Israeli-administered Nablus and became a professor at An-Najah University where he began his fight as a Palestinian. It is believed that Erekat was a facilitator in creating close ties between his alma mater at SFSU and An-Najah. In later years, the Middle East Forum lobbied SFSU to cut ties with An-Najah due to its involvement in terrorist activities, the most horrific being the 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizza store in Jerusalem which killed 15, including 7 children and a pregnant woman while injuring 130.
Erekat was arrested by Israeli police during the early days of the First Intifada in 1987 and ultimately became part of the Palestinian negotiating team at the 1991 Madrid Conference. He would play a significant role during the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords which resulted in Palestinians having control of land for the first time, as Israel handed the Palestinian Authority (PA) several cities.
The Oslo Accords contemplated a final settlement to be reach by September 2000 but Yasser Arafat refused to accept anything less than his maximalist demands. When Israel only offered 98%, Arafat launched the Second Intifada, a gruesome spectacle of Arab suicide bombers blowing up buses and restaurants, killing and wounding hundreds of Israeli civilians. The death toll only started to come down when Israel constructed a security barrier with checkpoints to limit the flow of West Bank Arabs. By June 2004, the number of bombing attacks was cut to a handful.
With the death of the PA President Yasser Arafat in November 2004 and Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah winning the PA presidency in January 2005, Erekat aligned himself closely with his new boss. Things became complicated when the rival political party Hamas won control of 58% of the Palestinian parliament in January 2006 and then took over Gaza in a mini-Civil War in June 2007. Erekat’s vision for peace had been doomed by Arafat’s intransigence in 2000 and now appeared to be killed again by the rival party which was committed to the destruction of Israel controlling over half of parliament and almost half the Palestinian Arab population.
As revealed in the Palestine Papers, a secret trove of communication released by Al Jazeera, Erekat opted to build his credibility with Israelis while simultaneously removing his political rivals. In exchange for sensitive information about the location of terrorists wanted by Israel, Erekat was able to get US funding and weaponry for his security force. The information he shared with Israel and the weapons received from both the U.S. and Israel were used to kill dangerous Palestinians.
Many Palestinians considered Erekat a traitor for his actions, especially those among the fanatical elements in Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). However, many in the West Bank also hoped that an organized police force and the cessation of violence and terrorism could usher in a Palestinian State.
But Erekat did not factor the incompetence of Abbas or the Obama administration.
While initially very hopeful that U.S. President Barak Obama was taking a harsh stance against Israel forcing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a ten-month settlement freeze, he could not get Abbas to move forward in any constructive way. In the second Obama administration Erekat was optimistic when he was able to lead U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry by the nose adding new requirements to negotiations which Kerry simply parroted such as Israel releasing terrorists with blood on their hands (not part of the original deal agreed to by the Israelis) and that the exchange of land between Israel and the PA would have to be of “similar quality,” an entirely new concept which Kerry now demanded of the Israelis. Just as the peace talks were getting ready to conclude in the summer of 2014, Fatah and Hamas announced a unity government – yet an additional obstacle which Israel could not accept. A bloody war from Gaza ensued shortly thereafter, just two years after Hamas launched a war in 2012.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, listens to Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat In January 2014. (AP Photo/Brendan Smialowski, Pool, File)
The violence would spread and Erekat would take his war on Israel to the global media stage.
In 2015 and 2016, the Arabs of the West Bank rejoined the mayhem in what became known as the “Stabbing Intifada” targeting innocent Israelis. When Israeli forces cracked down on the mayhem Erekat claimed that Israel was trying to “justify the escalating Israeli crimes against the people of Palestine,” inverting victim and perpetrator. Amid the terror, Erekat produced the “KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER WHEN REPORTING ON OCCUPIED PALESTINE,” a rewriting of history and facts that has become the staple of anti-Israel reporting.
Erekat was a consummate politician that was never embarrassed by his inversion of facts or his hypocrisy. He would advocate for BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) of Israel even while he turned to Israel for medical help; he would ask the world for financial assistance while refusing to take tax receipts held by Israel; and would proclaim that Hamas and the PFLP were not terrorist groups even while he gave the coordinates of group members to Israel for assassination.
While born a Jordanian, Erekat played politics like a Palestinian, and died in Israel’s care in the Jewish State’s unified capital city.
The notion that international actors are attempting to interfere in the U.S. elections has been written about extensively. Whether Iran, China or Russia are planting fake news stories, leaking classified documents or even hacking the voting system itself has passionately engaged politicians, the security industry and the media. Yet other forms of international interference get either scant attention or are readily dismissed.
Here are a few.
Foreign Funding of American Universities
Many of America’s leading universities have taken in billions of dollars from foreign governments, corporations and individuals, which has altered course curricula as well as the student bodies.
Qatar, which openly funds Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, has contributed over $1 billion to American universities since 2011, with the vast majority going to Georgetown, Northwestern, and Texas A&M. All three universities set up satellite campuses in Qatar. There are reports that the dean of Georgetown University’s Qatar campus Ahmad Dallal is a proud promoter of another terrorist organization, Hizbollah.
According to a Financial Times analysis of the US education department’s Foreign Gifts and Contracts Report, Persian Gulf countries gave $2.2 billion to U.S. universities. Saudi Arabia paid hundreds of millions of dollars to fund an estimated 110,000 scholarships for Saudis to attend American universities. The number of Saudi students peaked under the Obama administration and have come down during the Trump administration.
A Department of Education investigation concluded that in excess of $6.6 billion of funding since 1990 went unreported from Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates into American universities. The investigation led to ten schools, including Cornell University, Yale University, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University, Texas A&M University, and Carnegie Mellon University reporting approximately $3.6 billion in previously unreported foreign gifts.
This foreign funding is often used to promote extremism and anti-Semitism, by funding particular anti-Israel programming and groups as well as placing tens of thousands of students with illiberal backgrounds onto campuses.
Consider that in July 2000, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, donated $2.5 million to the Harvard Divinity School to endow the Sheik Zayed Al Nahyan Professorship in Islamic Religious Studies. Within a short period of time, the Zayed Center became a noxious fountain of anti-Semitic screed complete with Holocaust denials and blood libels.
The Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP) has tracked a direct correlation between universities which accept donations from Gulf countries, and the presence of Students for Justice in Palestine, an extremist anti-Israel group. Anti-Semitism is much more pronounced on those campuses.
The Media
Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. It entered the United States market by buying former Vice President Al Gore’s CurrentTV for about $500 million in 2013. It has since rebranded that channel Al Jazeera America. It is available in many US households while its hip AJ+ channel can be found on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
In 2014, the Al Jazeera gave special airtime to various members of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. The main media channel, Al Jazeera Arabic, routinely posts anti-US and anti-Semitic pieces. But those posts are beyond the capabilities and reach of most Americans, so they believe that watching Al Jazeera America is simply watching a news channel that represents an Arab point of view. In truth, they are supporting a media company that broadcasts propaganda for terrorists, which is owned by a government that funds those same terrorists.
NGOs
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are designed to be civil organizations which alleviate humanitarian needs. They might help communities fighting poverty, people addressing disabilities or supporting global stability. USAID states that NGOs “are critical change agents in promoting economic growth, human rights and social progress. USAID partners with NGOs to deliver assistance across all regions and sectors in which we work and to promote inclusive economic growth, strengthen health and education at the community level, support civil society in democratic reforms and assist countries recovering from disasters.“
International NGOs are suppose to be non-profit groups, and have operating budgets of billions of dollars. Groups like CARE, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision International are major examples. The names and goals are seemingly charitable.
The reality paints a much grimmer picture.
NGO Monitor tracks many of these non-profit organizations. Many stray far from their mission of alleviating poverty and hunger and insert themselves directly into conflicts such as between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Boycotts of products, culture, and academics – BDS activists lobby stores not to carry Israeli products and encourage others not to purchase them. They send letters to artists, musicians, authors, and academics, imploring them not to perform and appear in Israel or cooperate with Israeli institutions and pro-Israel individuals.
Divestment from companies that do business with Israel – Distorting the concept of ethical investing, NGOs accuse companies that conduct business in Israel of involvement in war crimes and violations of international law.
Sanctions against self-defense measures – Anti-Israel activists demand that the international community enact comprehensive sanctions against Israel – treating Israel as a pariah state. Other forms of sanctions include arms embargoes, which are premised on baseless charges of war crimes.
The NGOs also engage in “lawfare” which include lawsuits and campaigns in foreign, domestic, and international courts, against Israeli officials and companies, and governments that have relations with Israel. They also organize provocations such as flotillas and violent demonstrations under the guise of humanitarian operations and international law.
The vast majority of the funding for these activities come from European governments including Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. In many instances, this is in direct contradiction to the foreign policies of these countries, which explicitly oppose boycott efforts and support a two-state solution.
In December 2015, the Israeli government passed a bill which would provide transparency regarding those NGOs which receive a majority of their funding from foreign governments. The left-wing Pro-Palestinian group J Street came out strongly against the bill it claimed was “aimed at restricting the work of progressive non-governmental organizations which monitor human rights and oppose the occupation,” because most of the BDS NGOs are funded by governments while other NGOs operating in the region are supported by foreign companies and individuals.
The United Nations
The UN was founded on the principle of promoting world peace and stability but has strayed far from its mission. As the global body became more populated over the decades with dozens of non-Democracies, the UN and its various bodies became hotbeds of intolerance. The organizations have used considerable efforts to undermine Israel, the sole Jewish State.
UN Watch noted that “its absurd & morally obscene” that groups like the UN Human Rights Council elected some of the worst human rights offenders onto the committee including China, Cuba, Pakistan and Russia, especially as China “herded 1 million Uighurs into camps.“
This UNHCR assembled a “BDS Blacklist” listing 112 Israeli and foreign companies with the false charge of human rights violations because they operate in the West Bank. As noted by NGO Monitor, “the UN has repeatedly claimed that Israel is an occupier and responsible for carrying out economic and social obligations, yet at the same time seeks to punish Israel and companies doing business with Israel for carrying out the very duties specified under the law of occupation.” Further, these companies act in concert with the Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, making the UN an enemy of the only agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The UN also created a unique agency, UNRWA, to help Palestinian refugees from Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. That organization continues to exist today to not only deal with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of internally-displaced people, but tens of thousands of others who might need care. These “refugees” in Gaza and the West Bank live next door to cousins who are not considered refugees as their grandparents were born in Gaza and the West Bank. UNRWA keeps these wards distinct from actual global refugees fleeing wars served by UNHCR, so as to compel Israel to absorb the Palestinian Arabs and cease to be a Jewish democracy.
US Actions to Change Governments
To return to the original complaint that Iran, China and Russia may be meddling in American politics is a bit too rich in hypocrisy. The Obama administration gave funds to a group trying to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015. More forcefully, the Obama administration backed the killing of Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya which completely destabilized the country as it has descended into a haven for terrorists.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton poses for a photo during a visit a hospital in Tripoli, the capital of Libya on October 18, 2011. AFP PHOTO/KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL (Photo credit should read KEVIN LAMARQUE/AFP/Getty Images)
Foreign governments – particularly from the Persian Gulf – have infiltrated American universities and the media and advanced narratives and organizations which promote anti-Semitism. Those same governments and many from the European Union are actively assisting groups with ties to terrorists and those engaged in economic warfare against Israel.
And the momentum continues, as those countries are pushing all member states of the United Nations to join in their efforts against the Jewish State.
The first part of the Hebrew bible showcases leaders who exhibit a full range of leadership qualities and attributes. The first monotheist, Abraham, was a religious leader who spoke with God, a military leader who fought battles, and a skilled negotiator who struck treaties with foreign kings. In later books of Old Testament, as the Jews took kings in Israel, the word of God was often imparted by a prophet who kept the ruler in line with God’s desires in a division of labor.
As Jews lost their holy land, the spiritual leaders assumed greater responsibilities to lead the community. Acting as administrators, the rabbis often made poor decisions, such as Rabbi Akiva who backed the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 132CE which almost led to the complete destruction of the Jewish people. Thousands of years later, many prominent rabbis in Europe did not lead their communities to flee to either the holy land or the United States and they perished in the Holocaust. Even today, many brilliant rabbis are not enforcing health protocols amid the pandemic, leading to hundreds of deaths.
It is therefore important to take note and appreciate a rabbi who was able to lead on a local, national and international level both on a spiritual and political basis. Such was Lord Jonathan Sachs who passed away on November 7, 2020.
Lord Sachs was not only the rabbi of the largest synagogue in England, but served as the Chief Rabbi of England who had a seat in the House of Lords. He wrote 25 books, was a professor at several universities and spoke around the world. He stood before English Parliament to clearly denounce anti-Semitism in a speech heard around the world. His message for compassion, love of every Jew, contributing to society, love of God, love of learning, commitment to Israel and building interfaith bonds made him a favorite among Jews and non-Jews around the world.
Lord Jonathan Sachs
God created the word through division, separating light and darkness, water and land, and man and woman. Over history, humanity saw similar benefits and instituted mechanisms to separate powers such as military, political, judicial and religious. So it is a rare situation for a leader to earn the respect of so many beyond an anointed title. Such was Lord Jonathan Sachs, an Orthodox rabbi who not only led the spiritual lives of the Jews of England but inspired people of all faiths around the world. May his memory be a blessing.
Over the past several years, people on the political left-of-center chose to label those right-of-center as ‘Nazis.’ Actual Nazis, not just ‘depolrables‘ the way Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had called them.
Current Democratic President-elect Joe Biden said that President Donald Trump was “sort of like Goebbels,” referring to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda machine’s mastermind. The left-wing media leveled accusations that Trump welcomed Nazis into the Republican Party. There were slurs by lower level Democratic politicians about Republican rivals in local elections that they were Nazis. And so many American citizens – including employees at Google tasked with fact-checking – condemned conservative commentators such as Ben Shapiro (who is an Orthodox Jew), as modern Nazis.
All of this slander despite Trump having an Orthodox Jewish daughter, creating a new position in the State Department to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, and being the most pro-Israel president in American history.
Meanwhile, these same leftists simultaneously refuse to call out as Nazis the most anti-Semitic people committed to killing Jews and to destroying the Jewish State.
Palestinian Arabs voted the terrorist group Hamas to a majority of Parliament with the most anti-Semitic foundational charter ever written. The bile in its charter and daily calls to murder Israeli Jews are readily available to see, yet the left-wing media writes that Palestinians are “resorting to violence.” On the rare occasion that the left-wing media labels Hamas as a terrorist group, it calls it a “right-wing” one, even though it is nothing of the sort but a devoutly Muslim one.
Cover page of the Philadelphia Daily News in December 2015 essentially calling President-elect Trump a Nazi “fuhrer” for a “Muslim ban,” a fake media charge
We are now at a pivotal time when the Democrats who besmirched those to the right of them as Nazis are about to assume control of the White House. This Biden/Harris ticket said it will reverse many pro-Israel positions taken by the Trump administration. Kamala Harris said the new administration “will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.” [note that the US consulate was in WESTERN Jerusalem, not East Jerusalem]. The new administration said it is eager to re-enter the JCPOA which gave Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which has threatened to destroy Israel, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons.
These are all plain and terrifying facts.
If this country truly wants to unify and overcome hate, this administration, the media and every American must finally stop besmirching people with whom they disagree as ‘Nazis’ and simultaneously condemn and punish the terrorists and genocidal maniacs hell-bent on killing Jews and destroying the Jewish State.
The people of France suffered two terrible attacks in a short period of time. On October 16, 2020, a French schoolteacher was beheaded by an 18-year old Muslim refugee from Russia who was offended by the teacher’s display of a cartoon of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed. Then on October 29th, another Muslim man stabbed three people to death in a church in Nice.
These were not the first attacks on French soil by Islamic radicals. On July 26, 2016 two Muslim men who affiliated with ISIS attacked people in a church in Normandy, slitting the throat of the priest. Two weeks earlier, during Bastille Day celebrations, a truck driven by a Tunisian Muslim man killed 86 people and injured hundreds.
In response to the attacks, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a decision to expel 231 foreigners who are believed to hold extremist religious beliefs. According to Reuters, France defines extremists as “people who, engaged in a process of radicalisation, are likely to want to go abroad to join terrorist groups or take part in terrorist activities.”
While several Muslim countries condemned the stated intentions and related comments by Macron, most of the world remained silent. UAE’s Minister of Foreign Affairs actually said he agreed with him.
The hypocrisy is a bit rich as France had just protested the planned expulsion by Israel of a French-Palestinian who is an active member a terrorist group.
Salah Hamouri is an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union. The group has killed scores of people through the decades, including 17-year old Rina Shnerb who was on a peaceful hike with her family in August 2019.
Rina Shnerb, 17, killed while hiking with her family by members of the terrorist group, PFLP
Hamouri had already served time in prison for trying to kill the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadyah Yosef some years before. After being released from prison as part of the prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, Hamouri continued his involvement with the PFLP terrorist group. In light of those activities, in early September 2020, Anna Azari, Israel’s Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Europe, told French Ambassador to Israel Eric Danon that Hamuri’s residency was being revoked, adding “Israel is committed to fighting terror[sic] and is acting against the terrorists among us.“
The stench of French hypocrisy now evicting 231 foreigners it views as radicals while simultaneously protesting Israel’s expulsion of a single active member of a terrorist group cannot be masked by fancy perfumes. The true intention must be made clear: France isn’t standing in solidarity with Palestinian Arabs; it doesn’t want to take in another radical Muslim, even a French-Palestinian from Jerusalem.
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