Juneteenth and the Deceptive Hustle

June 19, 1865 was the day that slavery came to an end in Texas and generally marks the end of the abominable practice in the Confederate States. While President Lincoln may have emancipated the slaves on January 1, 1863, a bloody civil war would have to be fought for another two and a half years for black people to gain their freedom.

The black slaves had their lives, property, work product and dignity stolen from them, and their descendants came to the U.S. Congress on June 19, 2019 to ask for reparations from the United States. It is a claim that is appropriate and just. History is clear about the crime and consideration must be given.

Actor Danny Glover, right, and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, left, testify about reparation for the descendants of slaves during a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Various speakers on different platforms argued that the period of injustice continued well past 1865, as laws remained which kept black people from obtaining citizenship, the right to vote, to receive a proper education and ability to work freely, and as such, the reparations must cover this time frame as well. There is some truth to these arguments although not as clear cut as the situation regarding slavery. Should every child who ever received a bad education (or their descendants) be allowed to sue the government? Are all descendants of women who also didn’t have the right to vote entitled to compensation?

The recitations of wrongdoings kept coming, and the arguments became even more tenuous.

Talking heads with lofty titles argued that slavery exists today in the form of the mass incarceration and home foreclosures among black people, as well as the income gap and wealth gap between black people and white people. They argue that these modern day forms of slavery and injustice which must also be addressed through similar mechanisms of reparations.

This is a dangerous and slippery slope of blending real and perceived rights.

Prison reform is an important issue worth reviewing. Whether the government should forgive and wipe clean the arrest records for minor crimes must be discussed, and there is seemingly no question that such matter has impacted the black community disproportionately. But the laws were made for all Americans to benefit all Americans. There was no malice targeting the entire black community.

Home foreclosures was a matter of individuals, of all backgrounds, not paying their mortgages to financial institutions. These were transactions between homeowners and banks, not governmental laws prejudicing a segment of society. U.S. taxpayers should not provide any compensation to any single segment of the population because of personal financial matters. To fold this unfortunate situation into the discussion of slavery is absurd.

Lastly, the inequality of outcomes regarding income and wealth are byproducts of thousands of variables, including education, location, vocation and marital status. An equality of outcome is not a right, regardless of how many times the alt-left demands. If there are issues regarding the causes of income or wealth inequality based on race, then those are the only items which should be reviewed, and such consideration in no way means that there must be cash compensation offered to the black community. For example, imagine the black community sues the U.S. government in the future because of the disproportionate number of abortions which black women have, thereby reducing the black population and proportionate power. That’s an outcome which results from the choices made by black people, not one mandated by the government.

Reparations for the U.S. government’s crime of slavery is a worthwhile point to consider but it has become entangled in the current commentary about income and wealth inequality. It is a deceptive hustle to broaden the discussion and fatten the greenback pie, but ultimately undermines the legitimacy of the Juneteenth discussions.


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The Left Wing’s Accelerating Assault on the Holocaust

The left wing’s assault on the Holocaust continues to gather momentum.

Over the past several years, the left wing media and progressive politicians sought to portray the Jewish State of Israel as committing atrocities against Arabs as similar to the Nazis, with claims of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” The fact that the number of Arabs in Israel has grown faster than the number of Arabs in any other country in the region doesn’t seem to bother their pathology. Accusing Jews of becoming the genocidal monsters that slaughtered their parents and cousins was seemingly a painful insult worth making if it could help the stateless Arabs.

Since the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria met with the push back in the U.S. and Europe against the enormous immigration coming from Muslim countries, the media went after the Trump administration. It claimed that a Syrian girl is the Anne Frank of today, and that Trump was acting like then President Franklin Roosevelt who turned away boats of refugees fleeing for their lives.

Now, left wing politicians and the media are accusing Trump of not just being cold-hearted like FDR, but being a mass murderer like Hitler, while today’s Latin immigrants and black people are the new persecuted Jews.

On June 18, 2019, the new Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that “the United States is running concentration camps on its southern border.” She demanded of her viewers on Twitter that “‘Never Again’ means something,” a reference to the widely used expression that the evils of antisemitism of the Holocaust must never be allowed to reoccur. AOC made clear that she views President Trump like Adolf Hitler and that Hispanic immigrants are the new Jews.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter

Seemingly not wanting to be outdone by a fellow alt-leftist, CNN anchor Don Lemon specifically connected President Trump to the Fuhrer. “Think about Hitler. Think about any of those people…” Fellow anchor Chris Cuomo pushed back on the comparison as being highly inappropriate but Lemon would hear none of it and continued “Listen, for people like me, how this the president [Trump] feels about the Central Park Five, that could be a life or death issue for people like me [black people]. He took a big part of their life away… and demonizing immigrants and talking about ‘sh**hole countries’ and saying that ‘there were very fine people on both sides.’ For people of color in this country, it is a life or death issue…

For the alt-left, Holocaust denial has taken on a new noxious formula: portray anyone to the right of you as an evil Nazi and depict any minority as innocent slaughtered Jews. Minimize the uniqueness of the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust and attempt to demonstrate that extremist progressives are the true champions of minority victims.

There is indeed evil in the world. Sometimes evil comes from those who distort what evil really is.


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Considering Mohammed Morsi and Hamas: The Muslim Brotherhood in Power

Mohammed Morsi, the once democratically-elected ruler of Egypt, died on June 17, 2019 while in court. His death is a useful time to consider the difference between most Arab Muslim countries dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood and that of the Palestinians.

Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood was developed in Egypt in the early 20th century, not long after the British and French Mandates took control of most of the Middle East. It espoused the adopting of Islamic sharia law in all aspects of society and the unification of Muslim lands to thwart western “imperialism.”

The Brotherhood grew to a major force and was involved in a number of violent acts including assassinations before it was banned by Gamel Abdel Nasser. His successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak were similarly cautious about them, but it was the “Arab Spring” in 2011 that truly afforded the group to chance to come out from the shadows and run aggressively in the country’s election in 2012. It won 52% of the vote and was declared the winner on June 18, 2012, with the party’s leader Mohamed Morsi sworn in as president on June 30.

Morsi’s tenure would last just a year as concern about how his reforms would play out worried non-Muslims and liberals. The military took over and arrested Morsi and hundreds of other members of the Brotherhood. Many were sentenced to death, with several – like Morsi – spending the rest of their lives in courts pleading for their lives.

Palestinian Arabs and Hamas

The Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Israel and Gaza was launched in 1987 together with the first Intifada, and called Hamas. Hamas published its charter in 1988, calling for the death of Jews around the world and the complete destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. It was the most antisemitic ruling document of any party ever written – including from Nazi Germany.

Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) viewed Hamas as a political rival to his own Fatah party. He did not ban it as much as tried to use and abuse it, much the way political enemies do.

When the Palestinians created the Palestinian Authority and held elections for president and parliament in 2005 and 2006, respectively, Hamas participated with the support of the U.S.’s Bush administration. Hamas won 58% of the parliamentary seats. In its rivalry with Fatah, it fought a mini-war in 2007 to seize control of the Gaza Strip, which it continues to hold to this day.

Saudi Arabia and other Muslim States

The Muslim Brotherhood denounced the Saudi monarchy for both allowing U.S. soldiers on “Muslim land” during Operation Desert Storm, and the ongoing close relationship that the monarchy maintains with the west. The government designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2014, as a long developing post-9/11 U.S. initiative on the “War on Terror.”

Syria banned the Brotherhood and considered membership in the group a capital offense as far back as 1980. The UAE labeled the group a terrorist organization in 2014, around the same time as Saudi Arabia.

The principal backers of the Muslim Brotherhood are Qatar and Turkey. Its messages can be found throughout the Qatar-owned media outlet, Al Jazeera. Turkey’s strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved his country much further towards sharia over his tenure. Both Turkey and Qatar are significant backers of Hamas.


The Muslim Brotherhood has some deep support in the Muslim Middle East, with calls for institutionalization of sharia law and a caliphate, quite similar to the goals of the Islamic State/ ISIS. The MB has been banned and prosecuted by the leaders of most of the Muslim countries as a threat to their ruling status, and the leaders use their military and court system to suppress the group.

The Palestinian Authority does not have a strong leader. Mahmoud Abbas has no military and barely a court system. Abbas cannot bring himself to strike a compromise joint government, and he risks losing foreign funding if the Palestinian government includes a terrorist organization. His attempts to woo the Palestinian Arabs to Fatah have been weak, as he has not brought the economy and self-determination which many had hoped for.

Morsi’s life and death is a window into the Muslim Middle East: people who desire a caliphate and to be ruled by sharia law, in competition with leaders who want to maintain their own power as well as access to money and respect from the western world. As long as that non-Muslim world continues to demand Middle East oil and shipping through the Suez Canal, the tension will continue. When it stops caring, the caliphate of the indigent will be here.


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When It Becomes

An allegory.

 

Seth’s ninth birthday seemed like a welcome time for skipping school and a take-your-son-to-work day. As his father, the architect, did most of his work from home, his mother was quite excited to bring Seth to see her latest projects.

The housing development was designed to accommodate 73 homes. With only about 20 homes completed, the sunny day was a great chance to show the nine-year old the various stages of home building.

Seth knew that his mother was a home builder but had never really understood what was involved in her day-to-day activity. He was very excited to find out.

They parked at the entrance of the complex and got out of the car to take in the lesson on foot. Seth was surprised that they began at an open field.

“There’s nothing here,” Seth said, “it’s just a bunch of grass.”

“Yes,” his mother replied, “this is how things are before we break ground. I wanted you to get a sense of how a house is built by taking you through the various stages of home building. Here we have a flat field which will one day have a four-bedroom house.”

They walked up the road to what looked like a large hole in the ground. Inside the pit were rectangular gray walls with various notches on top. Seth was confused. “What’s this?”

His Mom replied, “that’s the foundation to a house. It’s what holds up the rest of the house and keeps it from sinking into the ground. We start by digging a hole and then pouring concrete which is very strong that can hold up the walls of the house. These gray rectangles will become the rooms of the basement.”

“I can’t really see it,” Seth mumbled. “It just looks like a jumbled maze.”

His Mom laughed. “I know, it’ll look more obvious to you as we get further along.”

The next stop had a few people working. They wore helmets and were standing among lots of wooden beams. Measuring tape and tools were everywhere.

“What’s happening now?” Seth asked.

“They’re putting up the walls. Those are wooden frames of the outside and inside walls of the house.”

The child was frustrated. “I still don’t see it. It looks like a jumble of wood. There are no walls! I can see though everything!”

The mother was upset. Her goal was to make this interesting and exciting, not frustrating. She decided to move onto a more complete project. They took a diagonal cut through some sites to a large building.

Seth became excited. “Now I see it! There’s the roof and walls and windows! That’s where the door goes!”

“That’s right! You can start to make out the definite outlines of the house at this point. Grab this helmet and let’s go inside!”

The two of them walked up some boards and into the house. “Be very careful and try not to touch anything,” she warned. “It’s an active construction site so there’s a lot of workers with nail guns which are dangerous. Stay close to me.”

Seth was excited. It finally felt like he was seeing a house.

Seth noted that the tone of his mother changed. She suddenly went from being his Mom to a working professional. “This is going to be the entrance hallway. Over there is the living room. Come with me and we’ll look at the kitchen,” she said.

The large space looked much like the other large spaces. There was saw dust everywhere just like the first rooms. His mother started going into details about where the refrigerator and oven were going to be, the sink and the island. She waved her hand at the open walls which was going to have the kitchen table. Suddenly, it started to come together in Seth’s mind. “I get it. I can imagine the table, but it’s hard to imagine all of the appliances. I still just see open walls.”

“Come to the next house which already has the plumbing and electrical work installed. We will be closing the walls this week. A building inspector is going to be there tomorrow.”

The house next door was still under construction but clean. There were wires and pipes in many of the walls. “These are the guts of the house. These thin wires are for electricity and broadband. These pipes are for hot and cold water. And these big tubes are the air conditioning.”

Seth nodded. “So that’s why the walls aren’t solid? So you can put in all of the pipes and electricity?”

She smiled, “that’s certainly a big part of it. It also would be much more expensive to make all of the walls solid.”

They went outside and down the street to a home that looked totally finished. The grass wasn’t in, but the house itself looked safe.

They went inside. Aside from the lack of furniture, everything looked finished. “Didn’t anybody buy this house? Why is it empty?” Seth asked.

“The owner’s want everything completed before they move in. They’re adding some chandeliers, changing the paint in some rooms, adding window treatments. A bunch of little items before they move in the furniture.”

Seth paused for a second. “So Mom, when is a house officially a house? Is it once a person moves in?”

“That’s an excellent question. I would say a house becomes a home when a family moves in. That’s when there’s a personal connection to the building, when people make memories. But a house becomes a house much earlier.”

“Like when a foundation is put in?” Seth asked.

“No, that’s too early. That’s the building blocks for a house, but not yet a house itself. I would say it’s when the building gets the ‘C of O,’ the certificate of occupancy.”

Seth was now confused. He didn’t see any ‘C of O’ on the tour. “What’s that?”

“Do you remember how I said that a building inspector was going to come look at the wiring of the house before we closed the walls? The city sends a person to look at the house during various stages of the construction to make sure that everything is safe and up to the latest safety codes and regulations. When they’re satisfied that everything is done and the house is ready to be occupied, they issue a Certificate of Occupancy. Typically, no one moves into a house for many more weeks as the house gets the finishing touches, but I would say the C of O probably marks the house as officially being a house.”

“So even though the government doesn’t own the house, it gets to decide on whether it really is a house?”

“No one ever suggested that the government owns the house and gets to decide on the colors of the draperies or anything like that. But the government does get the sign-off on when the building is ready.”

“And how long does that typically take?” asked Seth.

“There’s no set formula, but for this project, from the time we break ground to getting a C of O takes about 24 weeks. The last weeks before people move in are installing lighting fixtures, back-splashes and other incidentals that invariably take a bunch of time. It’s about 9 months from the start until someone moves in.”

“That’s almost like a baby,” noted Seth.

“Yes, it’s very much like the development of a baby. It takes about 24 weeks from conception to become a viable person, and a total of nine months for the baby to be born and for a family to begin to build a lifetime of memories together.”


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#NeverGillibrand #NeverSanders #NeverHarris #NeverDeBlasio

US elections have become affairs seemingly as much about who people will NOT vote for as much as who they actually do endorse.

In that spirit, with a crowded field of Democrats vying to become the next US president, let’s toss out the clearly unacceptable candidates, those who will tear this country apart – the extremists.

Both Republicans and Democrats have them, and the current nature of the primary season is unfortunately to cater to the radical base of the party. But it is a recipe for disaster and a continuation of the fracturing the great United States.

Three of the Democratic candidates for president are among the most extremist liberal fringe of the senate, as compiled by GovTracks, an independent monitoring group which tracks the voting records of all members of Congress.

Look at the five most extreme liberal voters in the US Senate for 2018:

Rank Score Senator

#95 0.09 Sen. Edward “Ed” Markey [D-MA]
#96 0.05 Sen. Kamala Harris [D-CA]
#97 0.03 Sen. Jeff Merkley [D-OR]
#98 0.01 Sen. Bernard “Bernie” Sanders [I-VT]
#99 0.00 Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY]

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Three of the most extremist members of the US Senate are running for president. Voting for such people to the highest office is akin to trying to initiate a civil war in the country between the blue states and the red states, between the rural and the urban, between the religious and the secular.

Similarly, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is a far left-wing fringe politician and should be shunned on the national stage.

When Barack Obama was leaving the political stage, he warned his fellow Democrats not to let themselves be “characterized as coastal liberal latte-sipping politically-correct out-of-touch folks.Well they’re not be characterized as such – they are the very epitome of the alt-left.

If Americans actually want to heal the divide, it is time to encourage the moderate voices from both parties to take leadership roles in the national debates, not the lunatic fringe embodied by Gillibrand and Sanders.


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The United Nations is Beyond Criminal Prosecution

It may also be beyond repair.

In May 2019, Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel hired to investigate the matter of whether US President Donald Trump conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election said there was a limit as to what he could do in his investigation, as “a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office.” Democrats went berserk.

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller makes a statement on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S., May 29, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of various crimes including trading favors with an Israeli news outlet for favorable coverage, and now people claim he is trying to build a new ruling parliamentary coalition with parties which will protect him from indictment. The left-wing parties have gone nuts.

Around the world, leaders of democracies are possibly breaking the law to get into power or stay in power, and are using the system to try to avoid paying any price for their actions.

That’s the game of politics that politicians play: they compete vigorously to get in power, to stay in power, and to remove the other party from being in power. Whether laws are or are not broken, the opposition party goes into high gear to bring the ruler down. While it may sometimes appear that politicians are noble in trying to uphold the law, even a toddler is cynical enough to not lose sight of the fact that the nature of the purported Trump and Netanyahu crimes were getting into and maintaining power at the expense of those very people who are now trying to bring the leaders down. That’s why there are some laws to prevent and limit rulers from being sued in the courts, as they are perpetual political targets for opposition parties and their fans.

But what happens when there are REAL CRIMES such as rape and murder? What if there is NO RECOURSE to hold the party accountable? What if there are NO OPPOSITION parties and all of the power resides in a single person and a dysfunctional committee? That doesn’t happen in democracies.

That’s the disgrace of the United Nations.

The Crimes and Immunity of the United Nations

The crimes of the UN and its agencies are plentiful:

  • From 2004 to 2007, UN peacekeepers from Sri Lanka exploited nine girls in a sex ring
  • For many years up to his assassination in 2008, a teacher for UNRWA in Gaza was a top bomb maker for Islamic Jihad
  • In 2013, the UN finally admitted it was responsible for the deaths of over 8,000 Haitians from a cholera epidemic that UN’s carelessness fostered
  • In 2014, UN peacekeepers from France and Georgia were involved with sexually exploiting children in the Central African Republic
  • In 2014, the terrorist group Hamas used UN schools to store weapons and launch rockets into Israeli civilian neighborhoods
  • In 2016, UN reported 41 cases of abuse involving peacekeepers from Burundi and Gabon

The list goes on and on. Thousands exploited. Thousands dead.

And no one goes to jail. No one pays a fine.

As noted in UN Watch:

“By virtue of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, and the UN Charter, the U.S. Federal Court has ruled that “the UN is immune from suit unless it expressly waives its immunity.

Likewise, the Appeal Court in The Hague ruled that “the UN has been granted the most far-reaching immunity, in the sense that the UN cannot be brought before any national court of law in the countries that are a party to the Convention.”

Regarding the cholera epidemic in Haiti, former Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon expressed sympathy for the injured, but refused to pay compensation to the victims. You see, the UN is above the law. It’s above everything.

In September 2018, then US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley introduced a resolution at the Security Council to finally hold the bad actors accountable. The resolution went nowhere because China and Russia killed it. Undeterred, the U.S. took some unilateral actions, such as cutting funding for various UN agencies which have failed to reform.

So the politicians and their media partners came out swinging again.

The left-wing journal The Nation, attacked Haley a few weeks later after she submitted her resignation with an article titled “Nikki Haley Was Never The Adult In The Room.” Another left wing paper, The Washington Post wrote a piece “Nikki Haley Somehow Avoided Public Humiliation and Legal Jeopardy.” Even though there was no accusation of Haley committing a crime nor positioning to gain power, the political game was being played by left-wing media with a wink from left-wing politicians.

The Nation couldn’t spare so much ink about the appalling behavior of the United Nations.


A report from the Associated Press claimed that over 2,000 people were raped and sexually exploited by UN peacekeepers, principally from Bangladesh, Brazil, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uruguay and Sri Lanka. One of the rape victims saidas far as the UN goes, they came here to protect us, but all they’ve brought is destruction.” Adding to the injury, the evil perpetrators have gone unpunished.

In democracies, there are some limits to the charges which can be leveled against a leader accused of misdemeanors, particularly as they relate to the power game of politics, but ideally there are no protections if the leader committed high crimes like rape and murder. But the United Nations is no democracy and the majority of its constituents are not democracies. It smugly claims to solve “issues confronting humanity” while it commits horrific abuses around the world.

It is well past time to hold this body accountable or to defang it completely.


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The Real Offensive Question of the US Census: Dominican or Cuban?

There is quite a bit of fuss about a particular question in the 2020 census.

Many Democrats are contending that a question asking about the citizenship status of people is an attempt to under-count Hispanics who are often not citizens and will be nervous to check off the “not a U.S. citizen” box in the form in fear of being deported. Many of these non-citizens live in urban areas which vote Democratic, and the Democratic politicians are looking to boost their weight in Congress and budgetary allocations so want to ensure as many people fill out the census forms in Democratic strongholds as possible. Anything which might hurt their personal politics is repulsive.

But the census forms are filled out anonymously. The forms specifically state that the information collected is private and confidential. Are the Democrats worried that the census results will show that the number of people in a census block is much lower than the number of voters, proving severe voting irregularities with many people voting in elections who are non-citizens? That there is a perfect correlation between high levels of non-citizens and newly minted “sanctuary cities”?

According to the US Census Bureau, the citizenship question has been asked for many years, “in 1820, 1830, 1870 and 1890 to present.” Why the sudden hullabaloo?

If people were really concerned about the Hispanic population and not their own politics, why not challenge the government asking about the origin of Hispanics? Why does it matter if someone came to the United States from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba or El Salvador? Will the government use a different dialect of Spanish in some forms? Will it change the meal plans at schools?

The census form has a distinct question about race, not related to the Hispanic question. The race question asks Asians to specify if they are Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese and other. That is understandable as each speaks different languages. Further, the government states that it asks questions about race to “evaluate government programs and policies to ensure they fairly and equitably serve the needs of all racial groups and to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws.” Seems fair enough.

But why does the form separate Hispanics into a different category outside of race? The Census Bureau clarifies:

“Though many respondents expect to see a Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish category on the race question, this question is asked separately because people of
Hispanic origin may be of any race(s) in accordance with the 1997 Office of Management and Budget standards on race and ethnicity.”

Are only Hispanics of mixed race? In the race question, respondents are allowed to check off more than one box (say, White and Black), but not so in the Hispanic question. That seems bizarre. A person cannot be both Cuban and Puerto Rican?

When the FBI reports on hate crimes – a pretty good indicator of whether there is discrimination in society – it doesn’t break down the details of “anti-Hispanic or Latino” into Cuban or Dominican, so why is there a need for so much granular detail in the census? In 2017, the number of hate crimes against Jews was more than against Hispanics, Arabs, Asians, Native Americans and Pacific-Islanders COMBINED. If the US government is really concerned about discrimination, why doesn’t the census ask questions about religion?

It is far more likely that the government is extracting details of the country of origin in the census as a matter of mapping international relations. More Mexicans in the US may mean reconsidering trade policy with Mexico, or changing the visa and immigration policy. If the US governments finds a spike in Hondurans in the United States, it might decide to either cap or relax immigration policy with Honduras, and similarly with each of the Latin American countries where the majority of US immigrants are coming from.

That’s a real concern for the Hispanic community which no one discusses.

If Democrats really cared about the Hispanic community and not about their own personal politics, it would attempt to abolish the census question which might limit immigration from Latin America, not the power of Democratic kingpins.


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Ruth, The Completed Jew

On the holiday of Shavuot which celebrates the giving of the Torah, we read the story of Ruth. It is, at first glance, a particularly strange choice. Why would Judaism, which has a prohibition against marrying a Moabite (Deuteronomy 23:3) use the story of a marriage to a Moabite, on any holiday, let alone one of the three festivals of pilgrimage, and the one devoted to the giving of the laws?

Peoplehood, Land and Religion

The three festivals represent three parts of the collective Jewish nationhood as told in the five books of Moses:

  • Passover tells the story of Jews becoming a nation, a single people. While they entered Egypt as a single family of 70 souls, they left Egyptian bondage as a people numbering 600,000 men. Their vast numbers yet common experience of slavery and freedom bound them together as a singular nation.
  • The holiday of Sukkot, Tabernacles, represents both the travels and protection of the Jews as well as their final destination in the land of Israel.
  • And the third of the festivals, Shavuot, is about religion. God gave the Jewish people the 10 Commandments on this day, just seven weeks after leaving Egypt.

These three elements are critical to understanding the nature of of the the Jewish people. At the most fundamental level, any Jew is part of the Jewish people, whether or not they observe the commandments in the Bible or live in Israel. A religious Jew who lives in the diaspora or a secular Jew living in Israel appreciate two of the three aspects outlined in the Bible. And a Jew who lives in Israel and observes the Torah’s commandments covers all three elements.

Which brings us to why the Book of Ruth is read on Shavuot. Other than Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism who came to the holy land hundreds of years earlier, she is the only person in the Bible who takes upon all three elements upon herself.

Ruth told her mother-in-law Naomi (1:16-17):

וַתֹּ֤אמֶר רוּת֙ אַל־תִּפְגְּעִי־בִ֔י לְעָזְבֵ֖ךְ לָשׁ֣וּב מֵאַחֲרָ֑יִךְ כִּ֠י אֶל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר תֵּלְכִ֜י אֵלֵ֗ךְ וּבַאֲשֶׁ֤ר תָּלִ֙ינִי֙ אָלִ֔ין עַמֵּ֣ךְ עַמִּ֔י וֵאלֹהַ֖יִךְ אֱלֹהָֽי׃

But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God

בַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר תָּמ֙וּתִי֙ אָמ֔וּת וְשָׁ֖ם אֶקָּבֵ֑ר כֹּה֩ יַעֲשֶׂ֨ה יְהוָ֥ה לִי֙ וְכֹ֣ה יֹסִ֔יף כִּ֣י הַמָּ֔וֶת יַפְרִ֖יד בֵּינִ֥י וּבֵינֵֽךְ׃

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you.”

Ruth accepts becoming part of the Jewish people, travels with Naomi back to Bethlehem in the Jewish holy land, and accepts the Jewish God. Ruth, more than any person in the Bible, represents the essence the three pillars of the Jewish Nation. It is for that reason that she was given the honor of being the great grandmother of King David, who united the Jewish people in a single kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.


Related First.One.Through articles:

Abraham’s Hospitality: Lessons for Jews and Arabs

Taking the Active Steps Towards Salvation

A Seder in Jerusalem with Liberal Friends

Here in United Jerusalem’s Jubilee Year

The Jewish Holy Land

Today’s Inverted Chanukah: The Holiday of Rights in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria

The Nation of Israel Prevails

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

D-Day. Liberation by the Collective

Today marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when well over 150,000 men hit the beaches of Normandy to turn back the barbaric Nazi regime. Roughly 19,000 men lost their lives in that invasion, meant to stop the German killing machine.

The Allied forces came from many countries. They had watched the white supremacists slaughtering other white people all over Europe, taking over more and more territory as they attempted to build their Empire. There were stories of the Germans liquidating Jews wherever they found them which many found hard to believe. But the videos they saw of the people of London cowering in bomb shelters and the underground to avoid the aerial bombardment felt real and relatable. The Allies moved into action.

At great sacrifice, thousands upon thousands of young people lost their lives to redeem the western world they had known. A world of liberty and freedom.

It took a full robust attack on Germany – not just against the soldiers, but the entire war machine – to end the nightmare. The British and Americans dropped so many bombs on the city of Dresden in February 1945 that a firestorm blazed for three days which engulfed the city and killed an estimated 25,000 people. There may not be a 75th anniversary memorial in Dresden in eight months, but the decimation of a city was also part of turning back the evil tide.

In all, the Nazi menace was thwarted. The citizens of London came out from their shelters to sunshine. The partisans of France returned from the forests. The people of the Netherlands took back their country.

But the Jews, the Jews were decimated. Ezekiel’s valleys of dry bones were covered in massive graves, sprinkled with the ashes of Jews incinerated in crematoria.

ISIS. The Nightmare of the Caliphate

Mankind’s pathology for hatred runs deep.

Not 100 years later, a similar sickness would take over Muslims in the Middle East. Known by a variety of names in including ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, the Islamic State sought to restore a Muslim Caliphate throughout the region. They mostly slaughtered other Muslims who did not adhere to their strict version of the religion and destroyed people of other faiths including the Yazidis mercilessly.

The radical Islamic killing machine was proud of its accomplishments. It filmed the decapitation of people and setting fire to prisoners in cages. The Islamists would then post the videos online to share with the world in the hopes of instilling fear in their enemies and winning recruits from their supporters.

A new coalition came together to turn back this evil in 2014. The United States once again led the charge, assembling countries which fought in Europe during World War II, but also local Muslim countries from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. 

The Islamic State’s emerging Caliphate was defeated as they lost city after city to the coalition. The Muslim fighters have mostly scattered and gone underground. Perhaps they will face justice if the world fashions a force like the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Or perhaps they will simply emerge as terrorists in other countries.

The buildings in Iraq and Syria are pockmarked with the scars of wars, both against ISIS, as well as recent wars in Iraq with Iran, Kuwait and the United States, and in Syria’s own civil war. The Christian, Yazidi, Kurdish and Jewish populations which lived throughout the region have been decimated. Many of those communities will never return.


The Allied Forces remained in Germany, as they did in Japan after the war. They would impose many restrictions on the countries as they also tried to rehabilitate the infrastructure and economy based on democracy and freedom. And they would impose restrictions on the spread of hateful ideology in an effort to stem a rise of Nazi Party 2.0.

While ISIS has been defeated, the same radical ideology lives on. The Taliban of Afghanistan is still a killing machine. Iran has infiltrated Iraq, Syria and Yemen and has its affiliates in Hezbollah in Lebanon dominating much of the country. A Shia Caliphate in the making. ISIS 2.0.

The Nazis took power of Germany in 1933 and formed its alliance with Austria in 1938 and began invading countries and slaughtering Jews en masse the following year. It took another five years for the world to react and defeat the German army. It would take many more years to squash the Aryan ideology.

Radical Islamists slaughtered thousands of people in the United States on September 11, 2001 and proudly decapitated a Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. ISIS emerged in the defeated plains of Iraq and Syria and the upheaval of the “Arab Spring” which began in 2010. The world reacted, but very slowly and locally.

The world is debating and dithering regarding an ongoing confrontation with radical Islam. It considers whether forces should remain in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. It has allowed Iran to maintain its entire nuclear infrastructure and provided a pathway to legally build nuclear weapons within a decade. It spends more time discussing “Islamophobia” than defeating the hateful radical Islamist ideology.

And the alt-left voices urging to end the fight against radical Islam have grown louder.

Niche or National?

No one ever claimed that all white people were Nazis in the 1940’s and no one claims that all Muslims are radical Islamists today. Or do they?

Today’s left-wing fringe has pushed forward the notion that all white people have “white privilege” and have special inherent advantages in western society. They argue that the “patriarchy” has dominated the legal structure of society and have instituted laws enabling “white supremacy” to become the norm. They have argued that all white people suffer from racism. Only white people. And yes, all of them.

Curiously, these intersectional radicals who label white people indiscriminately, are pushing the notion that “Islamophobia” has taken over white society. They repeat the phrase to hammer their thesis that white people are racists. But their blanket claims of all consuming white nationalist hate are untrue.

All white people are not racists and all Muslims are not radicals. Hatred exists in society, but typically at the fringes, in niche groups with deplorable attitudes.

However the hateful ideologies have been mainstreamed.

European countries, alarmed by the mass influx of Muslim refugees, are enacting laws to make it harder for them to enter and live in the country. They are electing governments committed to stop the “invasion.”

The leading candidates vying to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency trip over themselves to either portray themselves as non-White (Elizabeth Warren) or apologize for being white as they genuflect to an alt-left base which is anti-white or apologetically-white.

People in the streets of Europe have no qualms yelling once again that “Hitler was right” when they protest Israel’s defensive battles, or in the streets of the United States that “Jews will not replace us,” when they’re concerned that Jewish agencies are facilitating the entry of Muslim refugees. Muslim leaders in the United States take the podium to address thousands of people and state that Jews are “termites” and that “there’s nothing creepier than Zionism.” The streets of London and New York and college campuses have people calling to destroy the Jewish State, while the leaders in Iran state that they will destroy the “Zionist entity.”

Anti-white, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish voices are loud, public and echoed in parliaments and universities. Each is waiting for the other to back down or run recklessly into or from battle.


The world came together 75 years ago to turn back hate that had metastasized into consuming a country and a powerful army bent on taking over a continent. While it took far too long to get there, the forces of good eventually won.

The forces of good have similarly defeated ISIS just now, but remain caught up in debates about confronting the radical Islamist ideology. How can there be any debate about enabling a country like Iran obtaining nuclear weapons? How do we allow people who call for violent jihad in the streets to roam the hallways of universities instead of the confines of a prison cell?

American forces helped the people of London emerge from their bomb shelters 75 years ago, but the people of Israel still live with bomb shelters in every home and hotel, because neither they nor the world will forcefully defeat the ideology and power of radical Islam in the same manner it was willing to confront the Nazis.


Bomb shelter in a luxury hotel in Tel Aviv
(photo: First.One.Through)

The world effectively routed Nazi Germany. Will it do the same against radical Islam? If it lets the radical left sideline a mission only half-way complete with charges of “Islamophobia” and “white supremacy,” much of the western world will eventually resemble an Israeli society living with bomb shelters within reach.


Related First.One.Through articles:

The Banners of Jihad

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel

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

“Mainstream” and Abbas’ Jihad

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Mayor De Blasio is Blind to Black Anti-Semitism

New York City has seen a large spike in anti-Semitic attacks according to recent reports. According to the New York Police Department, the vast majority of hate crimes in the first quarter of 2019 were against Jews.

Anti-Jewish 59%
Anti-White 10%
Anti-Black 8%
Anti LGBT 8%
Anti-Muslim 3%
Anti-Asian 3%

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the attacks, but repeatedly falsely attributed the incidents as stemming only from “white supremacy.” In May 2019, de Blasio saidThe forces of white supremacy have been unleashed and … those are profoundly anti-Semitic forces,” and yesterday he doubled down on the sentiment statingI think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement,… I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right.


NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
(photo: Gregory P. Mango)

De Blasio is correct in stating that white supremacy is a force of antisemitism, but he routinely refuses to acknowledge that black antisemitism is just as large a factor in hate crimes in New York City. In a city with a population which is roughly 43% white and 24% black, white people commit 58% of the anti-Semitic crimes while black people commit 36%. The ratios between white-black populations and white-black anti-Semitic attacks are virtually identical. It is the Hispanic and Asian communities which live in New York City who do not commit many hate crimes against Jews.

But De Blasio is a liberal mayor married to a black woman, and is running for president as a Democrat. As such, he believes that his pathway to higher office is to minimize black antisemitism and inflate charges against the right. It is a motivation of personal gain rather than fighting against a surge of attacks against Jews.

An average NYC Jew is now 13 times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an average NYC black person, but the mayor is protecting blacks against the charges of antisemitism in a reversal of protecting the accuser over the accused.

De Blasio is putting personal gain and politics over protecting the innocent. What kind of president do you think he would be?


Related First.One.Through articles:

NY Times Discolors Hate Crimes

Covering Racism

Farrakhan’s Democrats

Murdered Jews as Political Fodder at Election Season in America and Always in Israel

NY Times, NY Times, What Do You See? It Sees Rich White Males

Inclusion versus Attention, and The Failure of American Leadership

Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing Antisemitism

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

What Kind of Hate Kills?

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