Author Archives: First.One.Through

J Street is Only Considered “Pro-Israel” in Progressive Circles

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J Street held its annual conference in late October 2019 where it had several Democratic presidential candidates address the left-wing crowd. The loudest applause was, not surprisingly, heard for the most progressive candidates: Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Bernie Sanders addressing J Street Conference October 28, 2019
It is interesting that J Street bills itself as “pro-Israel” when the crowd at its annual event gave a standing ovation to the most anti-Israel presidential candidate since the founding of the Jewish State. Sanders has accused Israel of war crimes, being racist and wants to divert funds meant for Israel’s security to the Arab people in Gaza who have launched three wars against Israel since 2008. Sanders may be the only Jew among the leaders of the Democratic presidential pack, but he is without question the most critical of the Jewish State.

And it is not a coincidence that Sanders if the most left-wing of the presidential contenders. It is only through the narrow prism of a progressive worldview that J Street and Sanders can be viewed as “pro-Israel.”

For most people, being pro-“fill-in-the-blank” means actively supporting that entity. It may be with words of support and encouragement to that entity. Perhaps its with active lobbying for trade and aid on that entity’s behalf. Speaking about it positively and with enthusiasm to others.

However, for J Street, being “pro-Israel” simply means believing that Israel has a right to exist and should have secure borders. I believe that Costa Rica should exist and have secure borders, but I don’t think that makes me “pro-Costa Rica.” Maybe if I associated with people who hated Costa Rica, I would be considered pro-Costa Rica for an otherwise benign point of view, but not among most of the world.

Which is precisely the J Street dynamic.

Inside the echo chambers of the progressive halls, suggesting that Israel has a right to exist is considered extraordinary and extreme. Vocalizing that it is and should remain the Jewish homeland is considered vulgar. That it has a right to defend itself against terrorism is deemed shocking.

That’s the sad reality among J Street’s peers. Groups like the New Israel Fund actively support organizations which try to dismantle any Jewishness of the Jewish State and fund global tours for people to demonize the Israel Defense Forces. IfNotNow fights to undermine Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Code Pink supports a boycott of Israeli products. Jewish Voice for Peace has supported terrorists who have killed Israelis. And the Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis on the boards of these institutions question whether Israel should exist at all.

The progressive stances on Israel can be seen in the “Women’s March” whose leaders are against “humanizing” Israelis and in BackLivesMatter which has a platform which calls Israel an “apartheid state” and advocates for B.D.S. (boycott, divest and sanctions of Israel). These are appalling statements and opinions.

With such a peer group of progressives, it should not shock people that in that narrow “coastal liberal latte-sipping politically-correct out-of-touch folks” as Barack Obama once said, J Street actually believes that saying the Israel should exist as a secure Jewish State is considered “pro-Israel.” Outside of the far-left extreme, that’s an opinion which is considered neutral – “pareve” as they would say in the Jewish community.

Actually being “pro-Israel” for groups like AIPAC means ensuring bi-partisan support for Israel, keeping trade and military cooperation intact, advocating for U.S. support for Israeli positions at the United Nations. J Street is against all of those ideas.

One could perhaps argue that it is useful for J Street to engage with their co-progressives and get them to upgrade their views on Israel. It is clear that the “Squad” of socialists in congress are not going to listen to AIPAC or the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).

But it is horribly incorrect and out-of-bounds for the general public and media to quote J Street as the mainstream pro-Israel forum when it is nothing of the sort. It is merely the fringe “meh-Israel” segment of a radical leftist anti-Zionist ideology which is regrettably beginning to permeate the Democratic party.

Related First.One.Through articles:

J Street is a Partisan Left-Wing Group, NOT an Alternative to AIPAC

Bernie Sanders is the Worst U.S. Presidential Candidate for Israel Ever

The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews

The Evil Architects at J Street Take a Bow

J Street: Going Bigger and Bolder than BDS

J Street’s Select Appreciation of Transparency

Will the 2020 Democratic Platform Trash Israel?

Anti-Israel Lobbyists Dwarf Pro-Israel Lobbyists

BDS is a Movement by Radical Islamists and Far-Left Progressives to Block Your Freedoms

A Basic Lesson of How to be Supportive

Fake Definitions: Pluralism and Progressive / Liberalism

Unity – not Unanimity – in the Pro-Israel Tent

Enduring Peace versus Peace Now

Students for Justice in Palestine’s Dick Pics

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

The Anger from the Zionist Center

Rick Jacobs’ Particular Reform Judaism

The Democratic Party is Tacking to the Far Left-Wing Anti-Semitic Fringe

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

The Fault in Our Tent: The Limit of Acceptable Speech

Anti-“Settlements” is Anti-Semitism

Please Don’t Vote for a Democratic Socialist

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The Loss of Reality from the Distant Lights

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On the fourth day of creation God set the Sun and Moon in the sky. Placed millions of miles from the Earth, the Sun did more than allow life to exist on the planet; it allowed time to be measured in seconds and seasons.

The distance between Earth and Sun changes throughout the year bringing warmer and colder weather, and the rotation of the Earth produces evolving shadows from the sunlight which enables people to tell time. As the seasons and time of day change, our views of the world around us also change. One minute the item before us may be almost black. The next it could be purple, followed by blue and red then brown. Our senses take in the natural world, and its constant evolution.

The mountains of Las Vegas at 6:16, 6:20, 6:23, 6:29 and 6:45am
(photos: First.One.Through)

The moon and stars also enable mankind to chart its path during the night. The various natural sources of light enable people know where they stand in time and place.

Man’s Ever-Encroaching Light and Lit Content

Man was able to harness and control some of nature’s light in developing and using torches and lanterns over thousands of years. However, it was in 1878 with the creation of the first light bulb that mankind began to change the essence of how we see the natural world.

It its first decades of existence, light bulbs illuminated its immediate surroundings. The light bulb first lit up a circumference of several feet and then, as the power grew, it illuminated even larger areas. But in 1927, the very nature of man’s light changed, as it also became the focus of attention with the creation of the television. No longer was man’s light used only to appreciate the natural world; it was used as a replacement to the natural world. Man’s light became embedded with its own truth.

For decades, that source of light and content remained roughly eight to ten feet from our eyes. That abridged space still afforded our eyes the ability to incorporate some other items in our peripheral vision. But the distance would continue to shrink over time, as would our incorporation of the natural world.

The first computers came to corporations in the 1960’s and individuals began to acquire them in the 1980’s and 1990’s, bringing the lit screens just two to four feet from our eyes. The distance would shrink again in the 21st century, as smartphones with luminous screens were welcomed into the hands of the masses, shrinking the space between our eyes and the screens to just one to two feet. Now, with the advent of virtual reality goggles, all space has disappeared.

AT&T’s vision for new virtual reality games based on its DC characters

The distance which had afforded us the space to see God’s creations has been eliminated. The natural world is shut out in favor of man-made reality.

Man’s Reality: The Destruction of Time and of Man

For centuries, mankind did not only use the sunlight to tell the time of day, it understood the nature of how the world changed based on the sunlight.

In the 1890’s French artist Claude Monet painted a series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral at different times of day. While the subject of the church’s facade remained constant, Monet changed the color scheme based on the lighting of the sun. In doing so, each work of art was inherently time-stamped. A viewer understood whether the painting of the church was from the morning, during the day or at sunset, based on the palette of colors.

In the 1960’s, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein recreated the Monet series in his own style.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Rouen Cathedral series at The Broad
(photo: First.One.Through)

The various colors used by Monet designed to show the cathedral under different lighting conditions in moments of time was replaced by Lichtenstein into uniform sets of color. Lichtenstein’s yellow Rouen no longer conveyed daytime, his red was not sunset and his navy could not be considered night. The pop artist eliminated the element of time, as color was just meant as color, available in any and all shades.

Lichtenstein’s style also replaced Monet’s varied and emotional brushstrokes with machine-like circles. While he painted the artworks by hand, Lichtenstein gave his artwork a poster-like, mass produced cold feeling.

In just 70 years, man migrated from personal, emotional expressions of how sunlight influenced the world around us, to art which minimized both time and man’s own unique creativity.

The “Triumph” of Man’s/ Computer’s Virtual Reality

Until roughly 2008, the use of the internet ran roughly along working hours as people logged into their computers at work. However, with the ubiquity of connected cellphones and tablets, data consumption during the morning and evening hours – all of the way until 11:00pm – has now matched, and in some cases surpassed, data usage at work. People are consuming video content during all of their waking hours, and doing it at closer and closer distances to their eyes.

Technology is eliminating the physical space which enables us to absorb God’s natural world, as we allow ourselves to be ensnared by man’s manufactured reality. While the circling sun let us know that time moved on, the digital lights blind us of those same lost moments.

The sad loss of reality afforded by God’s distant lights will be rapped in the future by an avatar during a cinematic sequence in a virtual reality game. And alas, the masses will never understand the reference, as they parry the poetry to pursue additional precious points.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Hidden Side of the Moon

The Relationship of Man and Beast

The Descendants of Noah

The Journeys of Abraham and Ownership of the Holy Land

The Jewish Holy Land

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The Descendants of Noah

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After God destroyed most of the world in the flood, He promised that He would never use water to destroy all living things again. After that covenant, the three sons of Noah – Shem, Cham and Japheth – embarked on settling the world anew:

שְׁלֹשָׁ֥ה אֵ֖לֶּה בְּנֵי־נֹ֑חַ וּמֵאֵ֖לֶּה נָֽפְצָ֥ה כָל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole world branched out. (Genesis 9:19)

Genesis 10 relayed the descendants of the three sons and early bibles sought to educate people where each of those children settled by including maps inside the bound volumes. The most famous of these was one completed by a Benedectine Monk named Arias Montanus in the 16th century.

Benedict Arias Montanus Sacrae Geographiae Tabulam ex Antiquissimorum Cultor (1571)

Benito Arias Montanus (1527-1598) was born in Spain and entered the priesthood around 1559 where he gained a reputation as an important biblical scholar. In 1568, he was commissioned by King Phillip II to supervise a new polygot (multi-language) bible which would become part of the king’s scholarly volumes on the bible. This work was to replace the first “Royal Bible” completed by the Escorial Library in 1514.

Written in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Syriac, and printed in Antwerp between 1569 and 1573, the polygot bible caused a stir. Montanus was reported to the Spanish Inquisition for purportedly giving preference to the Jewish rabbinic reading of the scriptures. His trial lasted several years and the Inquisition was finally convinced by the biblical scholar Juan de Mariane that Montanus’s interpretation of the text did not contradict Catholic dogma, acquitting him in 1580.

Montanus’s world map above shows the descendants of Shem, Cham and Japheth in Hebrew and Latin. Japeth’s sons are listed in the center of the map in Roman numerals; Shem’s sons are listed on the right side and indexed with numbers, while Cham’s sons are indexed with letters.

Japhet’s sons are portrayed as covering Europe. Sepharad is located in modern Spain, Sarphat is placed in France and Yavan in Greece – just like the modern Hebrew names for those countries. The lone exception is Madai who is placed in modern Iran. Biblical scholars consider Madai to be connected to the ancient Persian people of Medes.

Cham’s sons are placed throughout the Middle East and Africa, stretching from modern Iran to Morocco and Kenya. Mizrayim and Pelishtim are both located in northern Egypt, while Canaan is found in modern Jordan.

The children of Shem, from whom Abraham and the Jewish people are descended, were placed on the map from eastern Europe, Iraq and Kuwait eastward over China and Russia with a land bridge to the Americas. In a fascinating placement, Montanus placed Ophir both in modern-day California and Peru. It is a curious placement because Ophir was the city from which King Solomon imported gold to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 10:11). While it was known at this time that the Aztecs in Mexico had considerable gold, gold was not discovered in California for another 275 years.

The descendants of Noah scattered over the planet as described in Genesis 11:31, “according to their families, their languages, their lands and their nations.” They are part of the opening of the bible, before the text narrows its focus to the foundation of the Jewish people relocating from modern Iraq to modern Israel in the story of the Jewish patriarch, Abraham. Much like the nations of the world, the Jews would establish their nation in their land with their own language as descendants of their families’ ancestors of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Relationship of Man and Beast

The Journeys of Abraham and Ownership of the Holy Land

Abraham’s Hospitality: Lessons for Jews and Arabs

The Jewish Holy Land

Ruth, The Completed Jew

Kohelet, An Ode to Abel

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Kohelet, An Ode to Abel

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The book of Kohelet, Ecclesisates, always struck me as a peculiar portion to read on the holiday of Sukkot. The Sukkot holiday is described in Jewish prayers as “Zman Simchateynu,”‘ meaning the “time of our happiness.” Yet the book of Kohelet does not inspire such emotions.

From its opening sentences, the author appears intent on giving us full warning about the dark philosophical lesson to be shared over twelve chapters:

דִּבְרֵי֙ קֹהֶ֣לֶת בֶּן־דָּוִ֔ד מֶ֖לֶךְ בִּירוּשָׁלִָֽם׃

The words of Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem.

הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל׃

Utter futility!—said Koheleth— Utter futility! All is futile!

King Solomon, the wisest man in the world who built the holy Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, declared that “everything is futile and without meaning.” Quite a jarring and alarming sentiment. If someone of his intellect, who ruled the united kingdom of Israel at its peak can state that everything is pointless, what should an average person believe? How is such a sentiment to be read and internalized on the happy holiday?

In chapter after chapter, Solomon laid out that every human effort and emotion is for naught. Labor (1:3), beauty (1:8), wisdom (1:13-16), laughter (2:1-2), building projects (2:4-6), amassing wealth (2:7-11) are fleeting and without substance or longevity:

“10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.
11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

A man with all the wisdom, power and wealth a person could ever imagine had reached the conclusion that his efforts amounted to nothing. His existence was but a whiff of air.

So a reader is left empty. Sitting in synagogue seats on a Sabbath morning during Sukkot, a person squirms and pivots from Zman Simchateynu, a time of happiness, to depression. Is the true message of the season less about surviving the Day of Judgement at Yom Kippur the week before, to internalizing the temporary nature of life, like the huts Jews live in today during the holiday to commemorate the tents which Jews lived in during their forty years wandering from Egypt to Israel, and the pillar of cloud which God placed to protect them (Exodus 13:20-22)? Hooray, we live! But so what?

Such thoughts are depressing and stand at odds with the sentiment of the holiday. One must imagine that the rabbis who advocated reading Kohelet on Sukkot may have had another message for people to extract from Solomon’s words.

Solomon’s Intent

It is possible that the wise king was simply being modest in Kohelet or did not want to be the focus of the world’s envy regarding his status and accomplishments. It is also conceivable that Solomon was so wise that he was able to see into the future and saw that the kingdom which he ruled would soon be torn apart and that the Temple which he built would one day be destroyed.

“הֲבֵ֧ל הֲבָלִ֛ים אָמַ֥ר הַקּוֹהֶ֖לֶת הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל׃

Utter futility—said Koheleth— All is futile!” (12:8)

But there is another point worth considering.

The Jewish calendar is arranged so that Kohelet is always read publicly a few days before the Torah is finished and restarted on Simchat Torah. The Torah concludes with the end of Jewish wandering and entering the promised land of their forefathers, paired with the opening stories of the bible relaying the creation of the world and mankind.

Finishing the bible and restarting it has been a cycle which Jews have continued for thousands of years, rereading the first thousands of years of Jewish history over and again.

That history had ups and downs with heroes and villains. In restarting the Torah, Jews have a moment to connect to the stories of their favorite characters. Perhaps it was Noah who saved mankind from the destruction of the flood, or Abraham, the original monotheist, or Joseph who saved the world from starvation or Moses who took the Jewish people out of bondage.

The bible is replete with people who helped form the Jewish people into the nation which would enter their holy land by the end of the Torah. Each had a hand in crafting the character of the people.

That excitement about retelling the stories of the biblical forefathers who charted the history of the Jews is seemingly directly counter to Solomon’s Kohelet message. Solomon wrote that everything is meaningless, but we read the bible and conclude otherwise: people make a big difference.

King Solomon’s message may be more nuanced than our plain reading of Kohelet.

Consider that King Solomon had a different hero than most of us who are pulled by the classic narratives of champions and leaders. His hero was seemingly a more simple person whose only mark was worshiping God wholeheartedly. That person’s name covers the entire book of Kohelet: Abel.

Much is lost in the translation from Hebrew, as “הֶ֙בֶל֙” in Genesis is not transliterated as Hevel but translated as “Abel”, and in Ecclesiates it is translated as “futile” or “meaningless.” However, in Hebrew, the words are identical.

We know little of  הֶ֙בֶל֙/Abel other than he was a shepherd and offered the best of his flock to God for an offering (Genesis 4:4). God accepted the offering and Abel was killed by his brother shortly thereafter. Unlike King Solomon, הֶ֙בֶל֙/Abel had no wife or children, no riches or possessions. We never even learn about any of Abel’s emotions like his family members who were embarrassed (Adam and Eve) or angry (Cain). הֶ֙בֶל֙/Abel simply watched sheep and made an offering to God.

And that was the totality of his life.

For Solomon, הֶ֙בֶל֙/Abel’s name will forever live in its purest form, while his murderer will forever be marked as a villain who could not escape his secret crime.

ט֥וֹב שֵׁ֖ם מִשֶּׁ֣מֶן ט֑וֹב וְי֣וֹם הַמָּ֔וֶת מִיּ֖וֹם הִוָּלְדֽוֹ׃

A good name is better than fragrant oil, and the day of death than the day of birth.” (Kohelet 7:1)

Solomon ended Kohelet with a clear message:

וְיֹתֵ֥ר מֵהֵ֖מָּה בְּנִ֣י הִזָּהֵ֑ר עֲשׂ֨וֹת סְפָרִ֤ים הַרְבֵּה֙ אֵ֣ין קֵ֔ץ וְלַ֥הַג הַרְבֵּ֖ה יְגִעַ֥ת בָּשָֽׂר׃

A further word: Against them, my son, be warned! The making of many books is without limit And much study is a wearying of the flesh.

ס֥וֹף דָּבָ֖ר הַכֹּ֣ל נִשְׁמָ֑ע אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִ֤ים יְרָא֙ וְאֶת־מִצְוֺתָ֣יו שְׁמ֔וֹר כִּי־זֶ֖ה כָּל־הָאָדָֽם׃

The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere God and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind:

כִּ֤י אֶת־כָּל־מַֽעֲשֶׂ֔ה הָאֱלֹהִ֛ים יָבִ֥א בְמִשְׁפָּ֖ט עַ֣ל כָּל־נֶעְלָ֑ם אִם־ט֖וֹב וְאִם־רָֽע׃

[סוף דבר הכל נשמע את־האלהים ירא ואת־מצותיו שמור כי־זה כל־האדם]

that God will call every creature to account for everything unknown, be it good or bad. The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere God and observe His commandments! For this applies to all mankind.” (12:12-14)

Solomon wrote many books during his lifetime and his father, King David, wrote many psalms. But for Solomon, those don’t really matter. At this time of year, the Jewish people are once again about to read together about their foundation story: the central canon of Judaism, the Five Books of Moses. It is the nation’s time to connect to its ancestors.

Kohelet is not read on Sukkot as a way of adding to the happiness of the holiday; it is the preamble to the Torah to consider the way our ancestors lived and how to model our lives. For the rabbis concerned that people will be drawn to the biblical kings and warriors, leaders and builders, the call to read the text through a prism of connecting to God was captured best in Solomon’s Kohelet.

Solomon’s wisdom is summed up with a simple solitary suggestion: to revere God. Every other action or emotion is inconsequential.

A good name lives forever in a story which is read forever. For King Solomon, the purest person who focused solely on God and nothing else was הֶ֙בֶל֙.

Related First.Oe.Through articles:

“Cast thy bread upon the waters”

The Relationship of Man and Beast

Ruth, The Completed Jew

Taking the Active Steps Towards Salvation

A Sofer at the Kotel

The Jewish Holy Land

Abraham’s Hospitality: Lessons for Jews and Arabs

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Turkey’s Hajj of Hypocrisy

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The leader of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, was given the floor at the United Nations in September 2019. The brutal ruler who denies the Ottoman genocide of the Armenian people which killed over one million people, even while he accuses Israel of genocide for defending itself against Palestinian Arab terrorist resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 Arabs, used the global platform to once again christen the halls of hate with a harangue of hypocrisy and hubris.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Erdogan took turns slamming various countries in the region. He dressed down competing Islamic countries of Egypt and Saudi Arabia for their violations of human rights and democracy but did not blink in a moment of self-reflection at his own government’s incitement of terror in Israel and jailing of journalists in Turkey. He lambasted Saudi Arabia’s participation in the war in Yemen at its borders, and then showed the world how he planned on invading Syria to clear out thousands of Kurds to make room for millions of Muslims who had fled Syria to Turkey. A torrent of hypocrisy so full and rich, it left a mustache on his brow.

At 22:13 of his remarks, he pivoted to Israel, a longtime favorite target, on par with the Kurdish people, both of whom he feels deserve no rights or lands. He pulled out a map of the region in an effort to portray Israel as gobbling up Arab land. “Where was Israel in 1947?” he asked the audience.

Where was Palestine from 1517 to 1917 one might wonder? It was part of the Ottoman Empire, his country’s empire. It stretched out from Constantinople (what the Turk’s call Istanbul today) to cover much of the region and was pared back after World War I, allowing countries like Greece, Lebanon, Syria – and yes, Israel – to emerge. Erdogan’s predecessors made no attempt to promote an independent locally-governed Arab country. No matter. His country’s failings and atrocities cannot be acknowledged.

Seemingly bored with his own hypocrisy, Erdogan pivoted his talk towards a mix of Jew-hatred and Fake History. He pointed to a map and claimed that “Palestine” (represented in green) in 1947 was everywhere where Arabs were a majority or where there were no people living at all. Places where Jews consisted of a majority were shown in specs of white, and said “there is seemingly no Israeli presence on these lands.” This is an echo of the anti-Semitic screed that only Arabs have ever been Palestinian, while in fact Jews, Christians and others also referred to themselves as Palestinian. The Palestinian Liberation Organization charter of 1964 created the new definition that only Arabs were Palestinian and connected to the land. Erdogan extended that foolishness by saying that any neighborhood which was majority Jewish was “Israeli.” Does he similarly think that current Jewish neighborhoods in Istanbul are “Israeli?” Heaven help those poor remaining Jews in Erdogan’s racist Turkey.

Erdogan continued:

“The year 1947 the Distribution [Partition] Plan takes place, gets ratified, Palestinian lands start shrinking and Israel starts expanding. And from 1947 to 1967 Israel is still expanding; Palestine is still shrinking.”

Left out from Erdogan’s remarks was that the entire Muslim world rejected the Partition Plan. Ignored facts include that five Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948 to destroy it completely, but the Arabs lost and Israel took over more land in its defensive war. Omitted from his history lesson was that the remaining “Arab” lands were taken over by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan which annexed the West Bank. Palestine was not just “shrinking,” it ceased to exist in any form.

If Erdogan really feels that international law is paramount and that Jews are the same as Israel, then why not acknowledge the international law of the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, which called for “reconstituting their national home” of Jews in Palestine in the 1922 Mandate of Palestine. That law was for the ENTIRETY of the land he highlighted in his map – all of the green and all of the white areas – for Jewish settlement. And for Erdogan Jews equals Israel, ergo all of the land is Israel.

Erdogan was far from done. At 24:45 he went after Judaism’s holiest city, its capital in Jerusalem:

“The current Israeli government and the administration right next to these murders and atrocities is busy with intervening and attacking the historical legal status of Jerusalem and holy sacred lands and artifacts. As Turkey we have a very clear stance on this issue. The immediate establishment of an independent Palestinian State with homogenous territories on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital is the only solution. Any other peace plan other than this will never have a chance of being fair, just and it will never be implemented.”

Israel has been the only country to permit access and rights to people of all religions in Jerusalem. When Muslim Arabs ruled the city from 1949 to 1967, Jews were banned from entering or living in the city. The Ottoman Empire forbade Jews from even climbing all of the steps of Judaism’s second holiest location, the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs in Hebron.

But beyond Erdogan’s fake history and selective memory is his long-standing love affair with hypocrisy.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and took over the northern half of the island-country. In the war, Turkey seized half of the capital city of Nicosia, in a move condemned by the United Nations and the world. To this day, Turkey continues to claim its rights to the seized lands including half of the capital, in a long-simmering dispute. Yet the world’s admonition of Turkey’s actions does not seem to bother Erdogan, even as he claims lands which were seized in an offensive war which were never deemed part of Turkey. Quite a bit of hypocrisy, relative to Erdogan’s stance on Israel’s reclaiming Judaism’s holiest city in a defensive war.

September at the United Nations is the hajj of hypocrisy, where Islamic tyrants and dictators lecture the world about rights and laws which they trample upon with abandon. Recep Erdogan has long been the hajj’s mascot.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The United Nations Absolves Turkey’s Erdogan

Both Israel and Jerusalem are Beyond Recognition for Muslim Nations

The Churlish Turkish Leadership

New York Times Talking Turkey

Pakistan’s Muslim Leader Cannot Address Fellow Muslim Leaders

Goodbye Mahmoud Abbas

Related First.One.Through videos:

Turkish Hypocrisy: Turkey Threatens its Neighbors

Turkish hypocrisy: Erdogan’s Line of Defense

Netanyahu’s Apology to Erdogan (music by Joe Cocker)

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Pakistan’s Muslim Leader Cannot Address Fellow Muslim Leaders

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The leader of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan, took to the floor of the United Nations for almost an hour in September 2019. He covered four principle areas, including “Islamophobia” and the conflict in Kashmir. He shared his thoughts and observations and asked the western world and the United Nations to take particular actions; actions he did not consider for fellow Muslim leaders.

Pakistani President Imran Khan at United Nations, September 2019
(photo: AFP)
Consider his remarks about Islamophobia which he claimed came into being after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. At 23:27 of the speech he said:

“In the western society, and quite rightly, the Holocaust is treated with sensitivity, because it gives the Jewish community pain. That’s all we ask. Do not use freedom of speech to cause us pain by insulting our holy prophet.”

Nazi Germany’s butchering of one-third of the world’s Jews is “rightly… treated with sensitivity” in the western world. But it is not treated with any sensitivity in the Muslim world.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been hosting Holocaust cartoon contests since 2005, shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s inauguration as president. The contests have continued after he left office, including a contest in 2016 which awarded $50,000 towards the top three winners.

Palestinian Arabs elected Mahmoud Abbas to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority in 2005. Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial. For its part, Abbas’s rival political party Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, has a charter lifted from the anti-Semitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Hamas’s enclave in Gaza, it refuses to allow the United Nations to teach about the Holocaust in UNRWA schools.

And while Pakistan’s leader was asking the western world to use the same care in talking about the Islamic prophet as it does in talking about the Holocaust, the Prime Minister of Malaysia was spitting Holocaust denial uptown at Columbia University.

Khan did not care about reciprocal respect, common courtesies or similar sensitivities. He knew that Muslim leaders would never insult the Islamic prophet, and narrowly addressed his remarks to the non-Muslim world, even when he fully understood that the Muslim world offered no comparable concern for Jews.

The hajj of hypocrisy at the United Nations would continue.

The main focus of Khan’s remarks were about the disputed territory of Kashmir. At 47:47 he said:

“What is the world community going to do? Is it to appease the market of 1.2 billion [people in India] or is it going to stand up for justice and humanity? If this goes wrong – you hope for the best but be prepared for the worst – if a conventional war starts between the two countries, anything could happen. But supposing, a country seven times smaller than its neighbor is faced with a choice: either you surrender or you fight for your freedom until death, what would we do? I ask myself this question. And my belief is that there is no God but one. And we will fight. And when a nuclear armed country fights to the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders. It will have consequences for the world… This is a test for the United Nations. You are the ones who guaranteed the people of Kashmir the rights of self-determination.”

The words were unmistakable: the Pakistani leader urged the United Nations to take action to protect the people of Kashmir, or the outnumbered people of Pakistan would resort to using nuclear weapons against India, and maybe elsewhere.

But how did Pakistan and the United Nations react in early 1967, when the leaders of the Arab Muslim world threatened to wipe Israel off of the map? The population in Egypt was 32.5 million, in Syria 5.7 million, and in Jordan 1.4 million, a combined total that was 14 times the Israeli population of 2.75 million, or twice the disparity between India and Pakistan today.

During the Six Day War, Pakistan sent members of its air force to fight alongside its Muslim brothers, despite its overwhelming numerical superiority. To clear a pathway for the genocide of the Jews, the United Nations pulled its UNEF observer force from the Sinai peninsula and Gaza in May 1967 at the urging and direction of Egypt. Both the UN and Pakistan participated in the stated goal of destroying the nascent Jewish State, not two decade post the Holocaust.

The leader of Pakistan was no doubt sincere about his long-winded requests and warnings before the United Nations. His hypocrisy was equally as true.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

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

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

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

Both Israel and Jerusalem are Beyond Recognition for Muslim Nations

I’m Offended, You’re Dead

Blasphemy OR Terrorism

Reuters Can’t Spare Ink on Iranian Anti-Semitism

Active and Reactive Provocations: Charlie Hebdo and the Temple Mount

Blessing Islamophobia

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Goodbye Mahmoud Abbas

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September in New York means the United Nations General Assembly is in session and the maniacs of the world show their colors.

Acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, a man who has refused to hold elections and is a decade past his expiry date, took the to floor of the UN for his annual address. He effectively called for a religious war for the Old City of Jerusalem and said that he would never stop paying money to the families of terrorists, while peppering his remarks about non-violence and legitimate rights.

Proudly announcing the funding of terrorism and inciting terrorism at the floor of the United Nations is the answer to Abbas’s own question about why the PA cannot be allowed to become a country in its current orientation.

It is also an answer as to why he should never be allowed onto the floor of the United Nations again.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Palestinian State I Oppose

The United Nations Applauds Abbas’ Narrative

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

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

Abbas’s Harmful East Jerusalem Fantasy

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

Abbas Knows Racism

Palestineism is Toxic Racism

The United States Should NOT be a Neutral Mediator in the Arab-Israel Conflict

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Ayman Odeh Doesn’t Speak for Arab Israelis, Jewish Israelis or Peace

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Member of Knesset Ayman Odeh received prime real estate in the Op-Ed page of the September 23, 2019 print edition of The New York Times. He aired his personal wish list of a neutered Jewish State, at odds with the wishes of both Arab and Jewish Israelis.

“We call for repealing the nation-state law that declared me, my family and one-fifth of the population to be second-class citizens.”

There is no “we” in that statement. A July 2018 poll taken of Israeli Arabs shortly after passing Israel’s Nation-State bill showed an incredible 84.8 percent approval rating for recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people. That was even more than the 61.9 percent approval by Israeli Jews.

“The morning after the exclusionary “nation-state” law was passed, I drove my children to school and thought about raising them in a country that has repeatedly rejected Arab Palestinian children. Israeli governments have made this rejection clear time and again, from the years of military rule imposed on Arabs in Israel from the founding of the state until 1966.”

When Israel was founded in 1948, it gave every person living in the land Israeli citizenship. Over 160,000 Arabs became citizens on that day, quite the opposite reaction of Odeh’s “brothers and sisters” who went to war with Israel, evicted every Jew from the land they seized, and forbade any Jew from becoming citizens. To say that Arabs in Israel lived under military rule, is not simply fake history, it suggests that Odeh views the nation in which he serves as a member of parliament as completely illegitimate from its founding.

“The Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel…”

Israel permits dual-nationality for its citizens with many countries, but Israel does not recognize any country called “Palestine,” so why does Odeh call himself by such title time and again? He is an Israeli Arab, given citizenship and rights to vote, work and participate in government like millions of others. The government in which he serves clearly rejects such nomenclature.

“Our decision to recommend Mr. Gantz as the next prime minister without joining his expected national unity coalition government is a clear message that the only future for this country is a shared future,”

Odeh is seemingly very confused. He claims to desire a shared future but refuses to join in such shared future. It is a similar call to the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) who call on Israel to do everything, but do not act constructively to bring about a shared future.

“We will continue our work toward a better, equal future, and our struggle for civil rights, rooted in our national identity as Palestinians. There is room enough for all of us in our shared homeland,”

If Odeh would like to define his “national identity as Palestinian” then he can move to such a country when and if it is created. If he truly believes that there is “room enough for all,” then he should stop protesting when Jews move to Judea and Samaria, in lands east of the invisible Green Line. The two state solution he endorses is really a 1.5 state solution: a Palestinian Arab state devoid of Jews and non-Jewish egalitarian state for both Arabs and Jews.

Odeh’s endorsement of boycotting Israel, even going so far as refusing to attend a meeting located on the same floor as the Jewish Agency, are well known. Lesser known are his comments for violence against Israel “I can’t sit in my house in Carmel and tell the Palestinian people how to fight. I think that my people will choose how to fight, will choose its path.”

Ayman Odeh’s statements are at direct odds with the entire notion of two states for two people as called for at the United Nations for one hundred years, and against the stated desire of Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. His goal is to destroy the Jewish State from within, not to advance peace inside and outside of Israel.

Related First.One.Through articles:

“Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

In Defense of Foundation Principles

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

New York Times Grants Nobel Prize-in Waiting to Palestinian Arab Terrorist

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On Accepting and Rejecting Donations

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The head of the MIT Media Lab, Joichi Ito, was forced to resign when people learned that he accepted donations from Jeffrey Epstein after he had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Ito also resigned from several other boards in short order.
While institutions need donors’ money to exist and operate, they are becoming reluctant to be associated with certain types of individuals – in this case, taking money from someone who committed crimes against minors.
This is part of a growing trend of considering the source of donations, particularly among not-for-profit institutions.
Consider The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York which stated it will no longer accept donations from the Sackler family. While the Sacklers were not convicted of a crime, the Met felt that the owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyCotin, were responsible for “the ensuing public health crisis surrounding the abuse of these medications.” While the proper use of the drug helped many, the abuse of the drug became an epidemic causing the Met to conclude that the association with the Sacklers was toxic to the image and values that it wanted to portray. The simplified math was the Sacklers equaled Purdue equaled OxyCotin equaled opioid overdoses and death which should never equal the Met. Goodbye Sackler dough.
In June 2019, the University of Alabama decided to return the largest donation in its history after the donor called for a boycott of the State of Alabama and the university for passing a very restrictive abortion law. The university said that it did so because of the donor’s “ongoing attempts to interfere in the operations of the Law School.”
The cases above highlight institutions returning donations because the donor either tarnished the institution’s brand image or actually sought to harm operations.
Some politicians have similarly returned donations from people who are associated with “sinful” activities like e-cigarettes. Sometimes the action is spurred by activists demanding that an institution return donations from companies who profit from actions deemed harmful, like immigrant detention facilities or, on the opposite side of the coin, demand a donor recall a personal donation or risk a massive boycott of their businesses.
In short, cash donations are no longer considered neutral currency of exchange but a binding seal between giver and recipient.
So what is one to make of noted Israel-basher Linda Sarsour raising money for Jewish causes, like repairing vandalized Jewish cemeteries? Are her vile comments about Israel and activists like Ayaa Hirsi Ali as well as association with anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan reasons to reject her funds? Many Jewish groups want her to be banned from speaking at forums or even entering Canada, while others are content to take her funds and ignore her more evil inclinations.
Universities are typically the most likely to turn the cheek while they open their pockets.
The New York University and many other colleges take in millions of dollars from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country that openly executes minors as well as people who convert from Islam (apostasy), a fundamental human right. Yet no one batted an eyelash, until the Saudi government was accused of murdering a journalist. Suddenly, it became common knowledge that several U.S. universities had taken over $600 million from the Saudi government and Saudi companies. Those universities, not coincidentally, had become hotbeds for anti-Israel activity, including Columbia University, Tufts University, and the University of Southern California with each school receiving at least $1 million and George Washington University receiving $12 million in 2017. MIT received $78 million from the Saudis between 2011 and 2017.
Saudi Arabia’s funding of American universities paled compared to Qatar, which gave over $1 billion between 2011 and 2017. Qatar openly funds Hamas, a U.S. State Department designated foreign terrorist organization, and an openly anti-Semitic organization. No matter. Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, and Northwestern established satellite campuses in the small country.
Curiously, there is virtually no public outcry about universities taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Without a protest, it is highly unlikely that these institutions of “higher learning” will do anything.
Consider the situation when Islamic antisemitism went into global overdrive in mid- 2000 just before the start of the Second Intifada, pushing money and narratives of Jews and Israel as enemies of the entire world, most notably manifest in the 2001 Durban Conference about Racism. 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. It took the non-profit group The David Project and a student at the Harvard Divinity School, Rachel Fish, to loudly protest the donation and Center itself. Harvard did nothing for years, but ultimately returned the gift in July 2004, but not before hosting speakers like former president Jimmy Carter and former Vice President Al Gore.



Jeffrey Epstein and Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan: too hot to handle
For the most part, Qatar and Saudi Arabia’s funding of terrorism and anti-Semitism has not irked the American public. Organizations only started to return funds to Saudi Arabia – like the Endeavor talent agency – after the murder of the journalist in October 2018. It would appear that the well-being of journalists ranks much higher than of children or Jews.
The dirty money does not only go towards research or new Islamic study departments at American universities. Oftentimes the money is for paying for scholarships to send tens of thousands of Muslim students into American campuses.
In the 2017/18 school year, Saudi Arabia had over 44,000 students studying in American universities – the fourth largest total in the world and as much as every country in South America COMBINED (a population 13 times as large). That total was actually down from the 2016/17 school year when there were over 52,000 Saudi students, and lower then the incredible 61,287 in 2015/16 – an astounding one Saudi student in the United States for every 537 people from that country. To give that figure context, that’s the equivalent of 610,000 American students studying in a single country, while the actual number of US students studying abroad, all over the world, was 330,000.
The enormous number of students coming from Saudi Arabia was the part of the Obama Administration’s outreach to the Muslim Middle East. The United States permitted greater numbers of students from Muslim countries than anywhere else in the world. That policy reversed course under the Trump Administration, as seen in the table below showing the annual change in the number of foreign students in the U.S.

NYU, Harvard, Columbia, MIT and many other universities have been taking hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of students from corrupt Islamic regimes who finance terror and spur antisemitism. As many American institutions have begun to return tainted money from the likes of the Sacklers and Jeffrey Epstein, it is similarly time to send the money and students back to their point of origin.

Related First.One.Through articles:
An Easy Boycott: Al Jazeera (Qatar)
Buckets of Deplorable Presidential Endorsements
Rep. Ilhan Omar and The 2001 Durban Racism Conference
The Many Lies of Jimmy Carter
Paying to Murder Jews: From Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran to the Palestinian Authority
Related First.One.Through video:
Drive Saudi Arabia (music by The Cars)
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Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

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America’s “call-out” culture has seemingly had a very easy time identifying racism, but a much more difficult time seeing anti-Semitism.

Consider a new potential cast member for Saturday Night Light, Shane Gillis, who was found to have made off-color comments in the past. He was terminated this week before his first day on the job and the media was clear that his racist jokes were the cause:

The list goes on.

Every headline made it clear that Gillis made racist remarks. They were not “perceived as racist,” “allegedly racist” or people “claimed they were racist” or “objected to the comments.” For the racist jokes – meant for amusement, not malice – the media was definite in calling it out without condition.

But the same cannot be said of antisemitism.

The founders of the Women’s March repeatedly smeared Zionism and said that Jews who back the Jewish State are sinister. The female founders stated that they were proud of their association with the vocal anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan. No matter. In commenting about three of the four founders stepping down from their post this week because of their comments and associations, the media made their comments very conditional:

Carmen Perez, Bob Bland, Tamika D. Mallory, and Linda Sarsour attend the TIME 100 Gala on April 25, 2017, in New York. CHARLES SYKES / INVISION / AP)

For the media, the antisemitism was not so clear. The women were simply accused of antisemitism, but did not necessarily say anything antisemitic. Even while the intent of the women was to vilify, demonize and dehumanize, the media opted to bracket and condition the antisemitism, while doing nothing similar for Gillis’s racist jokes which were meant to entertain.

Even the most clearly vile and noxious antisemitism spewed from the mouth of the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, got a pass from the press.

Shane Gillis also denied that he’s a racist and was just trying to be funny, but his protest did not make it into the headlines.

When the anti-male and anti-White comments by New York Times Asian female columnist Sarah Jeong came to light including “White men are bullshit,” “#CancelWhitePeople,” “white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants” and “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men,” the Times pardoned her comments and let her remain on staff.

So we are left to question the disparity.

Is the source of the comment the differentiator? Are the racist comments from white men perceived as worse than those coming from women or minorities?

Consider a leading white male politician in the United Kingdom who has made antisemitic and anti-Israel comments as matter of ritual. The antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become so intense, that many Jews have left the party and the parliament itself. Still, the press conditioned the accusations against the Corbyn and the party:

This liberal white male was given the soft-touch by the media.

He was not alone.

When acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas said that Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust because of their behavior, and that Europeans have hated Jews for centuries because of their “function,” the press was tepid in labeling his outrageous statements as anti-Semitic.

The media is uniquely adept at clearly identifying and calling out racist speech while it contorts itself around antisemitism, noting that some people (you know who those pesky critters are, the media keeps telling you they’re racists) might possibly consider certain comments as problematic and allege antisemitism. Such manipulations makes room for the hatred and gives it air.

That action itself is antisemitic as well.

Related First.One.Through articles:

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

A Review of the The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

Covering Racism

New York Times Finds Racism When it Wants

Mayor De Blasio is Blind to Black Anti-Semitism

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

What Kind of Hate Kills?

Where’s the March Against Anti-Semitism?

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